Per subject line. What's your most "redneck" install?
In northwestern Arizona, there's a place I go to every spring to camp and wander the desert for a few days. There's an old semi-improved permanent spring there that used to fill a couple water troughs for the range cattle. Long abandoned, the concrete troughs nothing but a pile of busted chunks, but enough of the piping remains such that it outputs a constant 1 liter/minute into a bucket or whatever. Nice to have this water source - makes extended stays (and keeping the SunShower full) possible.
Also at this site is an old cattle feed hopper made out of big lumber and corrugated steel. I have re-purposed it into my solar power station.
One of SanTan Solar's $50 Trina 250W panels, an EPEVER 4210AN, a Costco "marine/deep cycle" battery (yeah, I know about those, but they are cheap), a 1kW WaganTech MSW inverter bought from Fry's before they went belly up.
On the piece of plywood along with the EPEVER is a Raspberry Pi Zero 2W for monitoring along with a USB to MODBUS adapter to get the data from the 4210. I access the rPi in headless mode using VNC and phone/tablet/whatever.
Also stuffed into the hopper is a Haier mini-fridge that one of my neighbors down at the industrial park put out next to the dumpster. Figured it was toast, but when I plugged it in, it worked. Didn't even smell bad inside...
Anyway, the solar system provides more than enough juice to run it plus the other loads. Uses 55W when compressor is on. Very nice to be able to make ice for margaritas. Beats the holy hell out of an ice chest.
Planks under the fridge from dismantled wood pallets (from my shop dumpster again) that the recyclers didn't pick up or were of a non-std. size they didn't want. I hate seeing usable lumber going to waste.
So, post the best of your worst here. "Electrical code Nazis", chill out and just enjoy the show. We know it doesn't meet spec ;-)
In northwestern Arizona, there's a place I go to every spring to camp and wander the desert for a few days. There's an old semi-improved permanent spring there that used to fill a couple water troughs for the range cattle. Long abandoned, the concrete troughs nothing but a pile of busted chunks, but enough of the piping remains such that it outputs a constant 1 liter/minute into a bucket or whatever. Nice to have this water source - makes extended stays (and keeping the SunShower full) possible.
Also at this site is an old cattle feed hopper made out of big lumber and corrugated steel. I have re-purposed it into my solar power station.
One of SanTan Solar's $50 Trina 250W panels, an EPEVER 4210AN, a Costco "marine/deep cycle" battery (yeah, I know about those, but they are cheap), a 1kW WaganTech MSW inverter bought from Fry's before they went belly up.
On the piece of plywood along with the EPEVER is a Raspberry Pi Zero 2W for monitoring along with a USB to MODBUS adapter to get the data from the 4210. I access the rPi in headless mode using VNC and phone/tablet/whatever.
Also stuffed into the hopper is a Haier mini-fridge that one of my neighbors down at the industrial park put out next to the dumpster. Figured it was toast, but when I plugged it in, it worked. Didn't even smell bad inside...
Anyway, the solar system provides more than enough juice to run it plus the other loads. Uses 55W when compressor is on. Very nice to be able to make ice for margaritas. Beats the holy hell out of an ice chest.
Planks under the fridge from dismantled wood pallets (from my shop dumpster again) that the recyclers didn't pick up or were of a non-std. size they didn't want. I hate seeing usable lumber going to waste.
So, post the best of your worst here. "Electrical code Nazis", chill out and just enjoy the show. We know it doesn't meet spec ;-)