I
like to tinker. I like things mechanical. A little music is good too,
especially if it is creative. And I love things that are free: like the
wind. The sound of it, the feel of it on my face, and the intrinsic
energy inherent in it.
Over six
years ago, I put up a rooftop-mounted wind generator, and then another the
following year, and then a third a year or so after that. It wasn’t hard
to do and didn’t require any special-function tools, just the regular ones
everyone has. Even so, I figured that I better leave the tools handy.
Those mechanical whirlygigs, I supposed, will need attention, and more
than likely, lots of it and real soon. I get a typical wind of 10-15 mph
almost every day, stronger in the winter, and much stronger in a storm.
Notice the weather beaten and wind eroded appearance of the stain on my
homestead, certainly in need of a fresh coat. I even had a hurricane back
a year or so ago. No one liked that. Not the house, not me, not even the
wind generators. But nothing broke, so those tools still lay dormant!
Normally, due to a genetic flaw from somewhere in the past, I seriously
lack organizational skills. I just leave my tools wherever the last
project was. This tool filing system came about from having to drop
everything and quench the fires typical of every do-it-yourself
homestead. Then, of course, there were those especially special fires,
the hot ones, the ones you can’t put off, not even for a moment. We all
have them.
Mine may involve immature but awful big and awful friendly
livestock playing with the ladder I’m standing on, or even worse, a bunch
of eternally immature Australian shepherds trying to herd a slow-moving
porcupine or an even more recalcitrant skunk towards an open door. Such
episodes dull the mind, they so laden it with immediate panic that not
only is the tool hopelessly mislaid, perhaps even thrown, that even after
the rescue, (or climbing back up the ladder after being tossed off it) my
brain is still dulled to the point where I cannot not even recall WHAT I
was working on... the tools laid down or tossed in haste, become
hopelessly lost almost forever... until the lawnmower finds them.
But, for the most part, sans panic, this drop-’em-where-you-are process
works out ok, I only have to remember what the last thing I worked on was
and... voila! there’s the tools. All in all, it works pretty good
for me. Of course, now and then I need to have duplicate sets of cheap
Chinese tools scattered around. I’d be derelict if I didn’t mention to
you, however, that this filing concept breaks down when it comes to
rooftop projects. And since this is dealing with a rooftop project, I best
mention that this filing system works dangerously poorly for this kind of
project. Being clanged on the head by a big pipe wrench, even a cheap
Chinese one, rolling off the roof because the roof somehow knows I am
within reach is not my cup of tea anymore. I don’t think it is anyone’s
cup, except perhaps Evil Kneivel, but I think he is dead. Or at least
severely wounded.
So,
it comes down to this: when the wind generators get broken, I have to hunt
for the tools because I know they are not on the roof. That could take
days; it could even take weeks, but the doggonnest thing is... the
dang wind generators don’t break! So much for tinkering. So much for
chaos, one less need for duplicate cheap
Chinese
tools or choice words because the tools are not on the roof where, in a
perfect world, they should have been left.
Who needs tools if the dang things don’t break? Well, I suppose,
there’s still the tractors... they are always broken, or rusted, or... well, never mind!
Alas, that’s not entirely true. There have been some repairs made to the
wind generators and this update to the Rooftop Wind Farms article
is designed to highlight the maintenance issues I’ve faced and then pave
the way to subsequent articles on installing a fourth wind generator.
To
recap from the Rooftop Wind Farm article, I have three roof mounted wind
generators: two Southwest Windpower 400 watt Air-X units and an 800 watt
Mallard 800E along with some solar panels that supply my electrical power
needs. I do have, and I highly recommend if you live off grid, a
backup gasoline powered generator. In fact, I have two backup gas
generators; one is a small 1,000 watt unit that I use most when the sun and
wind abandon me for more than 4 days at a time.
It is a cute little fuel
miser that will run my computers, both at once when I need to, plus fire
up lights, a boom-box, low-power tools and assorted other things including
the radio dish for my internet connection, wireless router and some other
electronic doo-dads. I also use a second and larger gas generator, a
3000 watt unit, to juice my power tools or water pump... the big boys,
the watt suckers, like the two-burner electric stove I use for burning
dinners on occasion. It is less miserly on gas so I use it only when
required. But with the backup generator, I can cook beans and steak at
the same time. I cannot with my alternative energy setup and do not mean
to imply that it is a totally sufficient system for the typical
household. At least not at the scale I live on.
