Shack Go Live v1.0

The garden shed is built, as is the covered area beside it for the smoker.

 The solar panels are up and things are happening. 

It took a few days to get the floor built, then get the shed together on top of that. 

Friday last week I started carrying the "solar wall" - basically a board full of electronics to the new shed, only to manage to trip over, tearing up both sides of my hips and doing some damage to the timber the "wall" is built on.  

I'll avoid showing those pictures. Suffice to say, having a qualified nurse for a wife helps in getting patched up. It does however illicit little sympathy.

That night we were absolutely smashed by rain - my 5 year old son was in the shed with me at the time it hit. He was too scared to leave, so we were stuck in there perfectly fine. 

Eventually the rain slowed enough to vacate. A couple of hours later I returned to a wet floor. The rain was intense enough to come up under the ridge in collect up in the cut outs the "snap lock" system uses on the Colorbond panels. It was also intense enough to be coming through the overlap in the roof panels. A couple of hours with a tube of Sikaflex later, and I managed to get it sealed up reasonably well - aching hip and all. 

Luckily, I'd put in the ceiling lights on the Thursday night, so they were ready to go when the "solar wall" went in on Friday. 

The solar panel install didn't quite go to plan - a few changes were made to the sizing of the "smoker" area that provides the roof space for the panels causing us to need to orient the panels differently. Still, it worked, and within an hour of them being attached to the roof, us cutting a hole into the wall of the shed and putting in a 3D printed gizmo I designed big enough to handle the power cables and some antenna cables.. we had power being generated. 

The above changes also mean that one of my recently created garden beds has been impact and now needs to be reworked to regain some symmetry. 

This week I've started the migration of shelving and benches from the garage into the shed. I also managed to get the discone installed and wired in. 

There are however a massive number of things to sort out now:

- The ground. The covered "smoker" section is currently dirt and there is grass out the front of shed. This needs to be levelled gravel, which is easier said than done in a yard with little rear access. We also need to deal with where we're putting a greenhouse and moving a smaller shed when we do this. The only way to get the gravel into the backyard is via the garage.

- Side wall. The long side of the smoker area won't be left open. I need to frame it in, with half having a "picket fence" style wall to create a wind/rain break and the whole side being covered in shade cloth. The "picket fence" wall won't stop either - it's just intended to reduce it significantly. The area needs plenty of air flow and needs to let the smoke out.

- Garden bed - needs to be fixed, including moving some large pavers.. and moving the fairly young lemon tree that the XYL now insists is in the wrong spot. 

- The internet. Our Wi-Fi doesn't quite give a reliable signal in either building in the back corners. The WiFi module on the solar board works in some conditions but not others. The PC in the shed can't see it at all (but my phone does.. mostly). I've ordered a weather proof access point that will integrate into our network though it can't be fully exposed. Short term it might need to live in a Systema box mounted to the mast the Fixed Wireless antenna is on. Longer term, it'll be under the veranda when it's finally built. 

- Batteries. My old 100AH deep cycle is around 7 years old and it's about done. It hasn't failed yet, but it's not up to the task. This will need replacement soon. 

- The garage. It was a disaster zone before the move. Now it's effectively an indoor landfill site. I need to spent my last day of leave working through it to pull out what I want. Everything else will just get pushed into the rather large "rubbish" pile that will fill what I expect to be multiple skip bins as soon as I can afford them. There's a lot of crap outside that can go too. 

- Antennas. I still need to get a HF antenna around to the new shed. Given the cable run requirements, it's an expensive exercise that will need to wait until I knock off some of the more pressing problems.. like batteries and skip bins.

A lot to do and it all sounds like hard work.