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Our small solar powered cabin

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1 Mar ’12 - 4:04 pm

Is that because of the cheaper materials and sturdier structure with the cinder blocks?

Naderhood

Farm Hand

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5 Mar ’12 - 2:07 pm

Is that because of the cheaper materials and sturdier structure with the cinder blocks?

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1 Mar ’12 - 4:19 pm

So this is my dad's cabin (we refer to it as the loveshack)

I had mentioned to him that I was thinking of going solar with it, the next day he showed up with the solar set up

uh, that's not quite what I meant.

so I ordered the material listed above and a couple of days later they arrived

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1 Mar ’12 - 4:32 pm

So we started by unpacking the panels, this is going to be just a simple 12volt set up

we flipped the panels over per the directions

and plugged in the wires according to the diagrams

we drilled holes into the deck to be able to feed the wires through

and to feed the ground wire down

we used 1/2 cpvc joints as spacers to keep the panels off the wall to allow airflow behind the panels, we had also taped cardboard over the face of the panels until we were ready to fire the system up

first panel mounted

the wires from this panel were fed under and over to the other panel and hooked in parallel with the other panel, the connections are plainly marked on the back of the panels

and we mounted the second panel

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1 Mar ’12 - 4:46 pm

next we had to had to install the voltage regulator, inverter and inverter shut off. Even when nothing is powered on by the inverter it will still trickle draw from the batteries, so it's good to have a quick shut off for when leaving the cabin

so we started by tracing out the regulator and drilled pilot holes

and cut out the rest

I climbed under the cabin to feed the wires from the solar panels up to my father

while I was down there he cut out and installed the disconnect and fed the wires for that down to me

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1 Mar ’12 - 4:54 pm

we pulled the wires for the batteries and the disconnect for the inverter and wired them up

and mounted the inverter to the wall

it's almost professional!

we went back to the wires for the voltage regulator and wired that up and installed it

so at this point the cabin is done, we just have to hook up the batteries. The wiring goes like this. Panels in series runs to regulator, from regulator, runs to batteries, from batteries to inverter, inverter shut off runs to inverter if you want to use it, if you don't want to you can just use the shutoff on the inverter