Winds, winds & more winds

12-28-09

Winds, they are big around here, last night we had the strongest winds yet, it made the first night's weather seem like a walk in the park. A couple of gusts must have been 70-80 mph, it really made the cabin feel like it was going to blow over. Fortunately Bob had strengthened the cabin up a bit more, he put in a few more cross braces and the biggest improvement was a heavy cable that he strung up from the windward side. The winds seem to come mostly from the west to east, so he placed this cable from the top of the southwest corner of the cabin going to two different trees, that really made a big difference, the cabin didn't shake nearly as much as it had before. I spent several hours last night in prayer, praying for the wind to calm down and praying that the cabin would hold up. Both prayers were answered, the wind died down around 2 in the morning, and the cabin held up just fine.

Today we found one of our fans, we placed in next to the wood stove, it really helps circulate the heat around the cabin. So far we are running 2 lights (low voltage), a fan, recharging my cell phone and laptop, and a portable radio on a 45 watt solar panel and one of our deep cycle batteries. We don't have all of our electrical systems set up yet, we have 4 more solar panels to hook up and the other 3 deep cycle batteries. The only time we ran the single battery down to the point that the inverter started fussing about it was when we tried to recharge 3 of Bob's 18 volt rechargeable batteries for his tools, we were also running the 2 lights and my laptop at the same time. Actually I stayed up late and watched a couple of movies on my laptop, and it was enough to run the deep cycle battery down. I don't know at what point the inverter starts fussing, but it will not allow the battery to run down completely, that is a good thing.