Bodega Prep: Organizing for the Backpack Container

Organizing the bodega for the arrival of the backpack container is a lot like getting your pantry in order after a Costco haul. Imagine you’ve somehow ended up with 72 cans of creamed corn (don’t ask why!). You wouldn’t stack those in front of the 18 cans you already have, right? No, you’d push the older cans forward and tuck the new ones in behind them. It’s just good pantry sense. And while this metaphor doesn’t quite explain your creamed corn obsession, it’s the perfect analogy for what’s happening now at Sowers4Pastors.

The bodega is being prepped for the upcoming shipment of backpacks that will arrive in a couple of months, and it’s a dusty place (because, well, Honduras). Over the course of several days, a team of 8-10 people will be busy moving things around, taking inventory, and making sure everything is ready for those backpack boxes. And yes, the dust will be a challenge, but nothing a few brooms and dust rags can’t handle!

But here’s where things get tricky. In previous years, the ministry would bring down boxes of shoes from the States, and it’s not as simple as hitting up Amazon for exactly the right sizes. It's more like ordering for a whole shoe store. You get a range of sizes in each set, but S4P tends to need a whole lot of size 4 shoes for girls and size 6 for boys. That leaves them with extra-large and extra-small sizes that aren’t in high demand.

So, instead of repeating this cycle and ending up with stacks of shoes in sizes no one needs, S4P has teamed up with a local cobbler to custom make the sizes they’re short on. The cobbler recently visited the bodega to check out the current shoe inventory. His shoes are top quality, and while they cost a little more per pair, it’s more cost-effective than being stuck with a bunch of shoes that don’t fit anyone.

And just like with the shoes, the older stock gets pushed to the front while the new shoes coming in will be organized in the back.

It’s not just shoes, either. The bodega also has some supply of clothing, baby dolls, soccer balls, and other toys that need to be organized. So, there’s plenty of heavy lifting and strategic arranging ahead for the team. They’re working hard to make room for all the new boxes and still keep everything accessible for distribution.

On top of all that, the bodega is also home to the solar energy system that powers Kirstin’s house and the office. Allen is planning to rework the system to connect to Brandy and Rachel’s new home, which is still under construction. When a friend from the States comes next month to help with the electrical work, the team will need to have a clear space for him to get to work.

In the meantime, please pray for the safe and timely arrival of the container and for the paperwork to go through smoothly. Pray that there are no delays caused by dock worker strikes or hurricanes! S4P is hoping to get the container with backpacks shipped before the holidays, with a food container scheduled for the beginning of the year.

 - posted by Christi

Good Morning, Gracias!

Regardless of your preferred network, the chances are good that you have watched at least a few minutes of a morning talk/news show in the past few months. FYI: Those shows are known as breakfast television. They are filled with headlines, human interest stories, and some witty banter. Well, dear “viewers,” welcome to Good Morning, Gracias! This post is sort of like one-stop shopping for everything you need to know about what’s going on around the Sowers4Pastors homestead.

We don't even talk about the
construction in this post, go figure.
It's continuing on, around and
in-between teams.

The big headlines over the past few weeks have involved visiting teams. That means we’ve missed talking about some stories that deserve a little attention. It’s sort of like when the great C.S. Lewis died on the day JFK was assassinated. (Does that count as witty banter? Perhaps.) Anywhooo… Other happenings didn’t stop just because teams were present. For instance, work around the coffee farm was going strong.

That’s what is known as a teaser. Now you will sit through a commercial for coffee before returning to the story about the crew chopping weeds between each coffee plant. With machetes. On 50 acres of property. Oooh. Aaah! Then they fertilized by digging a hole on the uphill side of each coffee tree and putting in a handful of fertilizer. Next, they headed out with the backpack sprayers. There is no mechanization when it comes to coffee farming, so each guy had a sprayer filled with fertilizer and water, weighing in at a whopping 50 pounds when full. They walked up and down the hills of the coffee farm, spraying, refilling, and repeating.

A member of the security crew
checking things out
around the farm

So much water was used that there was a mini-incident. You may recall that the property has two water tanks. I’m pretty sure their technical names are “the big one” and “the small one.” The big tank is about the size of a 3-car garage and holds 60,000 gallons of water. The small one is the size of a very small bedroom and holds 6,000 gallons of water. For a brief time, it was accurate to say that the small one HELD 6,000 gallons of water because the crew forgot to flip a valve to refill the small tank before completely draining it. I have it on good authority that it was definitely a valve and not a switch.

It’s time for a human interest story for all of you animal lovers. The Sowers family now owns a pig. Are you surprised? So was Trish! Somehow that little bit of news slipped right past her. The pig joined the family when a teenage team member, Caleb, decided to raise support to buy pigs for some of the families of sponsored children. Caleb raised the money and Russell went out to purchase them. As long as he was buying pigs, Russell chipped in and purchased an extra one for the homestead. It’s pretty far from the houses, so it’s not like Trish has been walking around like Mrs. Magoo, completely oblivious to the livestock.

Don't tell the little guy, but his
name is, "Bacon."

On Monday, Trish was home alone when it started raining. The welcome rain suddenly and unexpectedly turned into the first electrical storm of the season. She knows what to do when Allen is away and she needs to disconnect the home’s solar power unit. This time, there was no warning and a lightning strike hit too close for comfort. Trish jumped up to see if they had lost power and was reassured to see the microwave light was on. When Allen arrived home a couple of hours later, he walked over to flip a light switch. Nothing. Nada. Zip. They checked other switches and some lights worked, while others didn't. Weird.

Allen headed out to the bodega and flipped the breakers. He also replaced the meter. Recognizing that they needed to power down, he disconnected the inverter and reconnected. He then tried to reboot the system. Things have mostly recovered, but they are operating on a prolonged “brown down” until the parts that were already ordered arrive with a team in about three weeks. In the meantime, they are functioning with about 95% of their normal power.

It’s time for the Good Morning Gracias book club. This month’s recommendation is… wait for it… the Bible. Ha! Oh, there’s that witty banter again. Hundreds of Bibles have been purchased for the bookstore. There is a huge variety of editions that are currently getting inventoried and priced to go on the shelves.

A picture of the mountains around the farm, which also just happens to be a picture of pastors picking up food for a small feeding center by motorcycles purchased through the ministry!

Puppy did not want his picture taken

The time has flown by and we must close this episode. We leave you with the stunning green vistas of the area surrounding the buildings. Thanks to the rains, everything is bright green. Now, because we want to keep the ratings up, we’ll throw in the new kitten and an adorable litter of Rottweiler puppies.

-posted by Christi.

Here Come the Solar Panels!

Everybody sing!

Here comes the sun. Na-na-na-na! Here comes the sun, and I say, it’s all right . . .

This blog post is actually about solar panels, but since there’s not a good song about solar panels, you’re stuck with “Here Comes the Sun.” Hope you don’t mind.

Solar panels on the back of Russell's roof

The addition of a new solar panel system on the Sowers’ property means that they now have lots of power. Their system was originally designed for one family. It was great at keeping one refrigerator and one washing machine doing the things that refrigerators and washing machines do, but it couldn’t really keep up with the new demand for electricity. The property is now home to Kelsea, Russell, Iris, RJ, Abbey, and (until schools reopen) Ben, in addition to Trish and Allen. The crew members also use a lot of power, in their work. The old system was strained under the extra burden of a new house and a new building used to store coffee, rice, people, etc. There are also additional security lights at night now, which add to the electrical consumption.

Allen gave me a little crash course on how the system works. For starters, you need solar panels. Those go on the roof, pointing in the right direction to catch some rays. We probably all knew that much. If you know the rest of the process, there’s a good chance that you have your own orange apron from The Home Depot.

One of three controllers

The key parts go something like this:

The power comes in through the solar panels and down through electrical lines to the controllers. A series of panels is wired together into a string, which is then wired into a single input box, and then goes into the controller. The controllers convert the incoming power into the type of power that the batteries and the inverter can use (24DC). Some power goes to be stored in the battery, and some goes directly to the inverter, to be used as electricity. The inverter changes the power in a bigger way, so that it can be used as household current (120AC).  (In Trish’s Cliff’s Notes version she sent me in Facebook Messenger, I learned that the change that happens in the inverter is the same as the difference between using a household plug versus the power that comes out of the cigarette lighter in a vehicle. In short, it’s techie stuff.)

This is the inverter

From the inverter, the power goes through an ordinary electrical panel box. From there, the system is just like the electrical system in a house that’s connected to a power company. There was also some mention of breakers, but I’m a bit fuzzy on that portion. (Trish here - basically, the guys installed a whole lot of breakers, in a whole lot of different strategic places in the system, to protect the various equipment. They also installed equipment so that the entire system can be turned off very easily, and switched over to using power from a generator.)

I will now use my own knowledge of the electrical system to wrap up this lecture. Are you ready? When you flip the switch up, the light goes on. When you flip it down, it goes off.

4000 pounds of batteries, which power
the system when there's no sun

The Sowerses now have two and a half times as much power as they used to have. Russell’s system is about one and a half times as big as the original system, and consists of 20 panels, 3 controllers, 1 inverter, and 2 giant forklift batteries.

Since Allen travels so much (thus using less electricity for months of the year), they left both warehouses on the system with Allen and Trish’s house. Even though the rainy season is arriving in Honduras soon (which will mean less hours of sunshine), they are all set to make the most of the sun.

Power control room in Russell's house

Sun, sun, sun, here it comes!

- posted by Christi

A Very Informative Phone Call - Part 2

This post picks up where the last one left off. To recap Part 1, like an announcer trained in speed talking: Containers are in. Boxes were a mess. Backpacks, shoes, and tax paperwork are sorted. They’re getting ready to distribute backpacks and do some sponsorship program “housekeeping." There. Consider yourself up to speed. Better yet, read the previous post! Now, on to Part 2.

Before the teams start arriving at the end of January, the vehicles have also been getting some attention. The trucks that will transport teams are getting new tires and brake work. Nothing goes to waste, so the older tires are being put on the farm vehicles. It’s much easier to deal with a flat tire on the farm than on the roads to and from the airport or feeding centers. They do what they can to avoid having flat tires when transporting teams. Besides the tires and brakes, the vehicles are getting any other needed repairs. You’re welcome, teams!

The solar panels are also getting an update. With the additional people living and working on the property, the old system wasn’t able to keep up. The old system is still in working order, so it will now be used to power Allen and Trish’s new-to-them home, the bodega, and the multi-purpose building. The new system will be used for Russell and Iris’s home.

Click HERE to see a video of work on the solar power system!

While Russell and eight crew members worked to sort through backpacks and shoes for the children who will be receiving them, additional temporary workers were brought on to help maintain the farm. Since the second harvest was completed, there’s a lot to be done. The men worked to hoe between the trees and remove the weeds. Currently, they are fertilizing the coffee. There’s a big rush to get the fertilizer in before the last rains of the season. The rain activates the fertilizer so it will still be doing its fertilizer thing during the dry season.

Because there just wasn’t enough going on in this plot, Allen has also rented twenty-nine bee hives for the next month. The farm already had two hives of their own. The bees will, well, be as busy as bees while the coffee is flowering. Hopefully, this additional pollination will increase productivity and improve the coffee for next season’s harvest.

Click HERE to see a video about renting bees!

In case you’re wondering where one goes to rent bee hives, that’s a pretty cool story, too. One of the local pastors is known as the area bee master. The bees give him a source of income and helps out the farmers. He rents the bees to people who grow melons and other crops. This man really is an expert in the field. He is known as a queen maker because he has learned how to manipulate the colonies of bees so they produce a second queen - then he harvests the new queens and sells them to those wishing to start colonies. The bee pastor is currently spending about two hours each day on the Sowers' coffee farm.

Allen has also been working to get a number of school projects underway, thanks to a donor who wants his donations to be used for this purpose. Allen was able to find three schools that meet the donor’s criteria and he’s working on getting the paperwork together. These projects will involve building 6-8 classrooms. Eventually, there could be as many as 14 new classrooms built, in multiple schools. The projects will also include construction of multi-purpose buildings and a school cafeteria.

Russell recently made a day trip to Tegucigalpa. The generous group that helped Sowers4Pastors purchase food to provide children with two nutritious meals for a penny had one request. They asked that some of the food go to a location in Tegucigalpa. While there, Russell was able to see Rachel, since that is where she lives, and he dropped off the boxes which came in the shipping container for her family and ministry.

Speaking of the food to feed children two meals for a penny . . . Allen’s birthday fundraiser was a smashing success. Through donations on Facebook and the Sowers4Pastors website, enough money was raised to purchase three containers of food. That equates to 1.5 million meals! Thank you all so much!

 - posted by Christi

Come Rain or Come Shine

Don't expect to see THIS in Honduras!

This is the time of year when everyone at Sowers4Pastors starts spending a lot of time and energy keeping an eye on the weather. And it isn’t because they’re dreaming of a white Christmas!

This is the dry season in Honduras, however there are frequent cold and cloudy days at this time of year - which is a big, he-honkin’ deal when your home runs on solar power! A sunny day means you can do something really special--like laundry! Not only does it mean you can run the washing machine, it also means you’ll be able to hang the clothes out to dry. But laundry isn’t the only reason the Sowerses are paying super close attention to the 10-day weather forecast.

As you know, it’s time for the coffee harvest. At the end of each day of harvest, Russell and members of the regular crew work at the depulping station to remove the fruit. Then they wash the coffee beans. The next essential step is to get the beans completely dry in a timely fashion. They lay it out in the sun on giant tarps. When there’s no sun, there is a big dilemma! It takes days to thoroughly dry the coffee and they are racing against the clock because the drying process must be completed before the beans start to grow mold.

Here's our VERY newly constructed de-pulping station!

Larger coffee farms have huge concrete pads to spread the beans on while drying. Each hour, a “coffee raker” turns the beans to allow complete drying. The Sowers’ coffee farm is at the stage of the game where they have a coffee pulping station set up. They even employ an expert coffee raker! But they don’t yet have the concrete pads. The goal is to have concrete poured for next year’s harvest. This year’s final picking is almost complete.

Coffee beans, on tarps, being raked to dry evenly

This season has been relatively cold and overcast. As Trish said, “If it’s not sunny, we’d rather it rain because it’s good for the coffee plants!” Plus, it takes a lot of water to wash coffee! While Allen, Trish, and Russell are pleased that an extra water tank was built this year, they are definitely using more water than ever before! They are hoping to build up their water supply in their tanks before the rivers dry up.

As an interesting side note: Coffee farms at higher elevations, which experience colder weather, have not finished harvesting. Certain schools at higher elevations delay the start of their school year because they aren’t finished picking until the end of February. That means Sowers4Pastors has a little extra time to get the backpacks out to the children in those areas.

In addition to harvesting and drying, it’s the time of year when pastors plan to build churches. The making of adobe bricks and rain don’t mix! As soon as the walls are up, churches need a roof by the middle of May. That means it’s a time when Sowers4Pastors receives a lot of requests for new church roofs!

The dry season is also the time for bridge building because the lower rivers allow for easier crossing. Currently, there are two bridges in the planning stages. Teams will be coming to Honduras in March and April to build them. Missionary life is busy, come rain or come shine.

 - posted by Christi

The Pilot Episode of Missionary Mayhem

If you know her personally, you know Trish Sowers is most emphatically NOT a drama queen. That’s why it’s more than a little ironic that this very laid back woman is generally surrounded by enough mayhem to make Lucy Ricardo feel right at home. Since Russell and Allen were out and about during the time of our weekly phone call, I had a chance to catch up with Lucy, er, Trish. Think of this as more of a script for a pilot episode of some sitcom about Honduran missionaries than a blog post.

Setting

The political situation in Honduras appears to be semi resolved. It looks as if the winner of the election is probably going to actually be the president. The other side will probably continue to protest, but they have said they will be non-violent protests. And both sides made a point of saying they will keep things calm over the holidays.

Because of that, the Sowers4Pastors shipping container, which was being held at port until it was safe to transport was finally able to make it all the way home on December 26. But, due to the delay, the container was scheduled to arrive the same day as a short-term missions team. Let the zany antics commence!

Allen drove to San Pedro on Christmas night so he would be able to meet Michelle Spanos and a team of college students on the 26th. The students were arriving from various parts of the U.S., due to the holidays. There was a plan that Russell would drive to San Pedro and transport the earlier arriving team members back to Gracias, while Allen stayed to meet the late comers.

Meanwhile…

Russell got word that the container would be arriving very early on Monday morning, so he changed the plans, having Allen to collect the earliest arriving team members, while he stayed in Gracias to unload the container and then headed to the city to collect the later arriving team members. After waiting a few hours for the container to arrive, however, Russell got word that the container wouldn’t be pulling into Gracias until noon! So, Russell hopped into the new-to-them, big, white van to head to the airport to pick up the visiting team. He left the crew in charge of meeting and unloading the container. Russell was less than a half hour out when he saw the container heading the other way. He waved to it as it passed, knowing the crew was about to get down to the work.

The view out the windshield of the van, as the
container truck arrives from the other direction

At some point during Russell’s trip to San Pedro, the driveshaft on the aforementioned new-to-them, big, white van broke. If you recall, this van was purchased especially for use with visiting teams. This was its maiden voyage, so to speak. Russell was able to rent a vehicle to transport the team, but because it was the last minute he was only able to rent a pickup truck for a one day rental.

The visiting team members were bundled and put in the back of the pickup along with their luggage for a chilly, drizzly ride to their lodging. Keep in mind, their hotel is a few hours away from the airport! Trish referred to that as their “mission trip adventure number one!”

The following day, while Allen took the team out for their activities in the Gracias area, Russell was making another trip to San Pedro, to return the pickup truck and collect the newly repaired van.

Scene at Home

Because of the overcast, drizzly weather, not much power is coming in at the ol’ homestead. The generator has a problem in its breakers and every so often it stops charging the batteries. It runs for about five minutes and then someone has to go out to do whatever it is you do to make it start running again. Trish and Ben have been taking turns getting it up and going, so that the buildings have lights through the night. Laundry is piling up because of the lack of power, too,  but even Trish is not quite ready to go out and beat the clothes on a rock. She’ll wait until she can use her washing machine, thankyouverymuch.

Random possum photo 

Oh, and there’s still a possum at large in Allen and Trish’s house. It mostly keeps to itself, but you might run into it if you have to get up in the middle of the night. Since the family is busy with back-to-back teams, Project Possum Removal has been penciled in for about two weeks from now!

 - posted by Christi

Not a Powerful Day!

Our house runs on solar power, which means that a day like this limits us - a LOT. We have to run the refrigerator and freezer, of course. We can usually postpone washing the laundry and running the dishwasher. Our oven is fueled by gas, but the oven has an electric thermostat which uses a surprisingly large amount of power, so we don't bake on rainy, overcast days. We also limit computer and TV usage.

The sun has been obscured now for several days in a row, so we're limping along without much power this week.

There's a strange, glowing object in the sky!

Is it? . . . Could it be? . . .  It's the sun!

Last night we had crazy strong winds, and the winds seem to have swept away our persistent patch of cloudy weather. And just in time, too . . . I really need to get some of this laundry done!!!

Cloudy days and days and days

We've had quite a string of days with heavily overcast skies - about 5 in a row now. It's a bit like living inside a cloud. With this kind of weather we bring very little power in through our solar panels, and so we live a limited existence. In the evenings we can't run any electronic items for entertainment, but that isn't the worst of it. We can't bake anything. We end up reducing the number of hours a day we run the freezer, and after several days of low power we've even had to unplug the refrigerator a few times. Ben isn't able to do the part of his schoolwork that requires him to use the computer (he's heartbroken about that, I'm sure), and I'm using the laptop computer for my work, instead of the desktop, to save on power that way.

Last night, I really wanted to follow the election results as they came in, but the amount of power stored in the batteries at the end of the day (I should say: at the end of what passes for daylight hours right now) was unusually low - in fact, it was about the amount we would normally have in the batteries in the morning before the sun rises, after using power out of the batteries all night. So, we unplugged everything in the house except the laptop computer and the internet modem, and sat around in the dark watching the results roll in.

According to the sketchy weather predictions we get here, we should expect this cloudy weather to continue through the beginning of next week. We'll certainly be glad to see the sun again, when the clouds finally decide to give us a peek of it!

Cloudy Day News - and Construction Progress!

We've had about four or five cloudy days in a row. This is worthy of mention when your household electricity comes from the sun. We count on the few hours each day when we (usually) receive an overwhelming abundance of power. During those hours we run the washing machine and dishwasher, and other non-essentials like vacuums, extra computers, etc. Later in the afternoon, when we have an abundance of power, but not an "overwhelming abundance," we run fewer items, so that we can store up power in the batteries for use after dark.

On cloudy days like today we spend a lot of time turning things on and off. This morning I have plugged and unplugged the chest freezer a couple of times, and I have also started and stopped and started the dishwasher and clothes washer quite frequently. Having lived with solar power for several years now, I've developed a sort of "unconscious consciousness" of sun vs cloud, so that I notice a subtle change in the quantity of light and can jump up from whatever I'm doing and adjust our electricity usage as needed.

Today it looks like I will get one load of dishes and three loads of laundry done, which isn't too bad for an overcast day. I have to stay on top of it, and keep things running whenever we do have enough power, because if I dawdle and need to run high-usage appliances into the afternoon hours when I should be storing up power we'll run low in the evening, and we'll have to curtail our electricity-using activities then. The teens and Ben are used to this . . . they'll watch DVDs on the TV or play Xbox using the TV when we have lots of power, but they'll watch a movie or play games on a laptop computer when power is somewhat limited, and they'll read and play board or card games when the energy situation is dire. We've never had to resort to using candles or oil lamps, as we have a generator we run when the weather has been especially dark.

This particular cloudy day, while difficult for running appliances, was lovely weather for mixing and pouring concrete! It's an especially exciting day, because todays construction project was creating the footers for the basement walls of my new house! (Sorry the photo quality is lower than usual - Boo was experimenting with the settings today.)

Next step: putting up the actual basement walls!!!!!

Living with solar power

I actually started a post on this topic a few days ago . . . and that was the day our power went out! After our power was restored, I wanted to write about the actual events of the day, not an overview post like this. Today I'm coming back to this topic: what is a regular day on solar power like?

Living with solar power is different. I wondered, for a while, if we were doing it wrong, because it takes so much more thought than living on the grid. I guess I assumed when your system was up and running correctly, the situation would be as mindless as flipping a light switch in a regular house. It's not.

In talking with others about this, I discovered that some people feel the "intentionalness" (I'm pretty sure I just made up that word) of living with solar power is a benefit. Those were more green-minded people, who worry about hurting the planet through excessive energy use. I have to admit, I'm usually too busy keeping my family from being buried in dirty laundry to worry about how much power the washing machine is using. But it is definitely true that nowadays our family knows, at most every moment of every day, how much power is coming into our system, and how much we are using. There's no question: we are not just carelessly using electricity without thinking about it.

Here's what this looks like:

When we first get up in the morning, we check our power level. How low has the charge on the batteries gone since sundown yesterday? How much sunlight is there now? The answers to these questions determine our next course of action. Because the electric coffee maker, the microwave, and the toaster are especially high energy users, we often choose not to use those at breakfast time. Allen saves previously brewed coffee and reheats a cupful in a pot on the stove, if he wants/needs a cup of coffee before we have enough power to make a fresh batch. We rarely bake a breakfast, as our oven uses electricity (for it's thermostat). Our stovetop works on gas, so we can cook breakfast with that.

As soon as the power level starts rising significantly, we plug in the chest freezer. We have enough power to run the refrigerator all night, but the freezer uses more power, and since we aren't opening and closing it as often the freezer stays cold much longer without power than the fridge does. We do want to run the freezer as many hours each day as we can, however.

Some days we only receive enough sunlight to power the fridge and the freezer (and maybe the internet and laptop) through the entire day. On those days we don't do any laundry, we wash dishes by hand, and (if necessary) we run the generator to have enough power to get us through the evening. Days like this aren't common, but when we do have this kind of heavy, cloudy weather it often lasts a few days at a time. The laundry can really pile up!

Assuming that we're not having a low-power day, the next appliance we add, once we have enough power to do so, is the washing machine. Our family needs to wash several loads of laundry every day, to keep up (construction work means lots of very dirty laundry), and we're often running the washing machine as long as the input of power allows. Most days, around 3pm or so (depending on the level of sunlight) we have to stop using the washing machine, as we want to end the day with powered-up batteries, to hold us over through the dark hours.

On normal-to-very sunny days, we have very large amounts of power coming in for a limited number of hours. Best case, this might be from 8am to 2pm or so. During those hours, we can often run the fridge, freezer, computer, washing machine, dishwasher, etc, all at the same time, and we are still throwing away extra power (so as not to overcharge the system). During these hours, we're always having to be alert to use whatever appliances we need to use, while the power is available. Making sure the washing machine and dishwasher get unloaded and reloaded immediately when they finish their cycles is high priority. We also try to do any baking during these hours. We can't think we'll be able to "get to it later." The batteries just don't store that much power.

Not long after we stop running the washing machine we also turn off the freezer for the night, and we gradually start changing our mindset from "use all the power you can, while we've got it" to " conserve all the power you can, so we'll have enough for our after-dark usage."

On an average power level day, we can probably bake something (something that doesn't need too much baking time in the oven), watch a movie, run lights in both houses, and run a laptop with internet between the time we stop bringing in power from the solar panels and when we go to bed. Since we're not a family that generally stays up late, it works for us.

What I have just described is, of course, only one level of activity around the place. At the same time we are also trying to get school and ministry work done, and care for the animals and the garden, while remembering to keep track of the incoming power and matching our usage to that level.

Yes, it can get frustrating. It's like a juggling act - would my best use of power be to quickly unload and reload the dishwasher, or should I bake something . . . oh, but the sun is broiling the garden right now, and if I don't rush out there and water it right now it could be bad . . . meanwhile the child who was told to sit tight until I get back to read them their spelling words is still waiting . . .

And that gives you some idea of what it's like to live with solar power, at least in our house. I'm still kind of hoping we're doing it wrong, and it will someday be like flipping a switch.

Yikes! Where'd the power go?

There's an upside to having off-grid power at your house. Very frequently the power goes out in Gracias, and we still have power up here at our house. We don't have to wait around in the dark for the power company to repair their system.

There's a downside to having off-grid power at your house. When the power goes out, you're the one who has to make the repairs.

Today our power went out. There wasn't any warning, just one minute there was power, the next minute there wasn't.

Christopher and I didn't know what to do. We really needed Allen. Unfortunately, Allen was out working on the bridge project, and he'd left his phone in his vehicle. Russell had his phone on him, but the speaker on his phone had gone out, so he couldn't hear us trying to call him.

Rachel was spending the day in town. We called her, and since we couldn't reach Allen by phone, she jumped onto a bus, and headed out to the bridge project, which is about 20 minutes from town. Before she got there, Chris tried sending Russell a text message, and Russell got that. I have no idea how he realized there was a text message, when he didn't know he had a phone call, but at least we were able to contact them! (We called Rachel, and she got off the bus and headed back to town, without a word of complaint or anything - what a trooper!)

Over the phone, Allen coached Chris through the process of disconnecting our inverter from the positive charge, and reconnecting it . . . and like a miracle, we had power again! I guess it was like re-booting the computer.

Later in the afternoon the power stopped for a moment, and started right back up again. Based on this, we figured the end was probably near for this piece of equipment.

Last year we had a nearby lightning strike which damaged this inverter. Although it still worked, we knew it was damaged because after the strike the internal fan ran constantly, rather than coming on and off as needed. We've had a spare inverter stored for just such a situation as this. If we didn't keep a spare on hand, non-working equipment could mean doing without power for a long time, until we can get new parts to us down here.

So, when he got home tonight, after an especially long day at the bridge project, Allen switched out inverters - by flashlight, because of course there's no power when the inverter is disconnected - with the help of Chris and Boo.

And that's what happened today.

Finally!

Several long-awaited events have come to pass in the last few days.

Our container shipment from MD, which arrived in port in Honduras in mid-December, finally got through customs and arrived at our house this past weekend. Hurrah!

The big new batteries, for our solar power system arrived in the shipment. Allen is busy working on a bridge project right now, but as soon as he has a free day - probably this weekend - he's planning to install the new system and we should be back to having enough power for our daily lives, without having to suppliment with the expensive running of the generator! Hurrah!

We just got word this morning that the final, on-paper notification, regarding the dismissal of our tax audit, arrived from the IRS. So, we have officially gotten beyond this tax audit, without having to pay anything additional to the IRS. Hurrah!

This all calls for a celebration, and a big Praise God! - don't you think?

What life looks like, since the lightning strikes

Now that we've had two inverters fried by ground surges of electricity (related to lightning strikes about 600' from our house), we're limping along on a minimal amount of available power. We now have only a tiny inverter working, and it can't process very much battery power into usable household electricity. Here's what we've done, to keep things running.

We removed several of the solar panels from the roof, so that less power would be flowing into the system - we hope that not sending this excess power to our batteries will help them survive until December, when the new batteries are due to arrive.

The tiny inverter cannot run the refrigerator at all. We have chosen to continue to use the fridge, rather than using a cooler. We regularly put bags of ice in the fridge and freezer, and then we run power to the fridge twice each day, using our gas generator. While we cool down the fridge we also run any other appliances which use large amounts of energy, like the washing machine, the grain mill, and the shop vac. Of course, this system doesn't keep the food in the fridge as cold as when the fridge is plugged in full time, so we've made a few changes. We cook our hot meal of the day at lunch time, and we try not to make enough to have any leftovers. Leftover foods go bad really quickly in our current situation. We've used up all the food that had been stored in the freezer compartment before the lightning strikes, and now we purchase small amounts more often, using the freezer as if it were a very cold refrigerator, storing all meats, cheeses and dairy products up there. The freezer doesn't get cold enough to freeze anything, so we don't have ice, and we don't store anything long-term in the freezer.

We actually have the computer on most of the time now, as the inverter is willing to run either the computer or the TV/VCR, and we need to keep one or the other running to use up power out of the batteries during the daytime, so the batteries aren't charging up too much.

In the evening, when we're running the generator for the fridge, the sun is down, and so no power is coming into the batteries from the solar panels. During this run of the generator we also charge up the batteries, so we have enough power to run lights, and computer or TV/VCR until bedtime.

This has all been quite easy to do, and wouldn't be much of a problem except that we'd rather not have to run to town so often for ice and perishable foods, and it's expensive to run the generator so much.

In just a few days, our wedding guests will start to arrive, and they'll be bringing us a new inverter. Then, we'll be back to limping along with a sufficient inverter but not enough batteries.

Who knows what will be next?

Lightning Strikes - What I've Learned

Right from the start, I want to make sure to explain that this post is about what Trish has learned. Science was never my subject, so much of what I've learned about lightning strikes is pretty elementary. I don't want you to think this is what Allen has learned. Allen is learning, too, but he started off knowing much more than I did!

First of all, I learned about lightning rods. Our system is grounded, but it didn't help us in either of our recent lightning strikes. Here's why:

A lightning rod draws lightning to itself, to keep the lightning from hitting something else that would be damaged by the strike. There is a limit, though, to the usefulness of the rod. It will, apparently, only draw lightning which was going to hit very close to the rod in the first place. So, if the lightning was headed for your roof, and you have a rod on your roof, the lightning will hit the rod and your roof should be spared damage. If the lightning was headed for a tree in your yard, the rod may not pull the lightning away from the tree, because the tree and the rod weren't close enough together.

When lightning hits a correctly installed lightning rod, the electricity hopefully travels down the rod to a metal cable, which runs from the rod to the ground. Then the electricity is disbursed through the ground, normally without causing harm to anything.

We haven't had a hit to our buildings, or even all that close to our buildings, so clearly a lightning rod isn't the solution to our current problem.

Most of that I already knew, to some extent, but here's what I'm learning that's new to me. After lightning hit a tree some 600' away from our buildings (two different times!), the electricity went down the tree to the ground, and then traveled through the ground to our buried electrical cables (which run between our two buildings and are encased in a "protective" plastic conduit). The electrical surge traveled along the cables and then into our equipment - traveling up to our equipment along the grounding lines which we had installed to take electrical surges away from the equipment in the event that we should experience a direct strike on the house!

Do you get this? The steps we took to protect our equipment actually facilitated the movement of these electrical surges into our equipment! Ouch!

Apparently if we were "on the grid" we might not have such a problem with this. When lightning hits the interconnected grid of electric lines servicing multiple buildings, the surge can spread out and cause less concentrated damage over a wider area. In our case, since we are the whole "grid" we are likely to take the entire force of the electrical surge, and therefore we can expect to experience a large amount of damage.

So, there's our problem. And we're not the only ones with this problem. Allen has been doing quite a bit of research on this (as we upgrade to better and more expensive equipment in the near future, we need to do all we can to protect our investment) and he has discovered that there is no generally accepted solution for the problem of ground surges damaging off-grid solar energy systems. Some people, in areas where they experience frequent lightning strikes and where the problem of electricity surging along the ground is common, take the risk of having no lightning rod or grounding of any sort on their electrical equipment. Their rational is that the probability of damage from a ground surge is higher than the probability of a direct strike to their equipment.

We're not yet sure what we'll be doing about this. But now you know about as much as I do about the situation.

So, about yesterday . . .

Those who guessed that the tree in the photo was struck by lightning were, of course, correct. Here's what happened:

If you recall, about a month ago lightning struck a tree on our property, and the electrical surge traveled to our house and destroyed the inverter connected to our solar energy system. After that happened, Russell went to the city, and bought a replacement inverter, but the new inverter was smaller than the one that blew up. Russell had a friend who loaned us another (even smaller) inverter, and with the two we could handle running the fridge, the computer, and some lights, and watch a bit of TV in the evenings.

Yesterday afternoon we had another storm, and another nearby lightning strike. This time, as you can see in the photo, the strike blew up an entire tree! (The tall tree you can see behind the exploded tree in the photo is the one which got hit a month ago.) At the moment of the strike, the new inverter blew, with sparks and smoke and great excitement. Allen wasn't home when it happened, so Gus and I had to handle things, quickly disconnecting the destroyed inverter from the batteries. We're always learning new things around here!

Because we had been running two inverters, and only one was damaged, we can still run either the computer or the TV, and we can run lights. But the remaining inverter is too small to power the refrigerator, so we're using up the contents of the fridge and freezer as quickly as we can - tonight for dinner we had hotdogs, leftover hamburgers, leftover mac and cheese, leftover chili, steamed broccoli, and fried bologna. Currently we run the generator a couple of hours each day, so that we can use the washing machine. Now we are also running the refrigerator during that time. The food in the freezer is still mostly frozen, but soon we'll have to empty the entire fridge and move anything that's still good into a cooler.

In two weeks our wedding guests will arrive, and my parents will have a new inverter in their luggage. So, it's just a short period of time that we expect to do without the refrigerator. Of course, having all of this excitement right before the wedding is just - well, just probably more excitement than we needed right now, but we'll make it! ;-D


Oh, and by the way - Allen believes he has figured out why our equipment is so very vulnerable to lightning strikes (even strikes that aren't directly on the buildings, or all that close to the buildings) and he's working on a plan to more fully protect the new equipment. Please pray with us that we'll be able to keep the equipment safe in the future!

Limping along with some new equipment

We've got a new "normal" at our house now. Russell wasn't able to purchase the exact inverter we'd hoped for (one we'd looked at in a store, and considered buying to have on hand in case of an event just like this - but we'd decided not to buy it, of course), but he was able to purchase a smaller unit. He also was able to borrow another (even smaller) inverter from a mechanic friend of his.

With this smaller equipment we can't run as many appliances at one time as we could do previously. This means that we can't use up all the excess power which pours in during the sunniest hours of the day. So, to protect our equipment from having to deal with so much incoming power, today Russell removed four of the solar panels from the roof.

So, this is what our day looks like now: we run the refrigerator and the computer during the day, but nothing else. These are running on solar power.

In the evening, we use the generator to charge up the batteries and run the TV/VCR, computer and the washing machine. When two or three loads of wash are done, we're done running power for the night.

This is a workable situation, since without this equipment we'd really have a hard time running the fridge at all - so, it's much better than the alternative. Of course, we're still having to wonder if additional batteries are going to die . . . that would mean that we'd have to find another, lower level of "normal."

Sigh - we're still limping along, but a bit slower now

We're trying to keep our dying solar energy system running until we can get some new and improved components in our container late this year. We've been gradually losing batteries, and recently we had an apparent electrical surge from a nearby lightning strike, which caused the fan on our inverter to quit.

This morning, perhaps related to the same apparent surge, the inverter itself suddenly blew up (we had replaced the fan, so overheating shouldn't have been the problem). It didn't blow up all over the place, but something inside the unit blew, with a big "bang" and a shower of sparks. Sigh.

What does this mean? I don't mind your asking, as I don't really understand too much of the technology we're using here, but Allen explains it to the rest of us. Here's the scoop:

Currently, with no inverter, we can't use power from the batteries we still have. That means that if the power keeps coming in from the solar panels, the batteries would overcharge and possibly be damaged. So, the first order of the day today was for people to climb onto the roof and cover the solar panels with blankets.

We can (hopefully) purchase a new inverter in the city of San Pedro Sula. As soon as we made the decision to try to do this, Russell hopped into the Land Cruiser and headed out. The inverter we think we can purchase is smaller than our current one, and it won't work in conjunction with the new components we'll be installing in December - so it's an unexpected and unplanned purchase, but it still seems to be the way to go. Having the temporary inverter will allow us to continue using refrigeration . . . really, I think, that's worth something, and the inverter should only cost about $100.

After he'd driven about an hour from home, Russell remembered something we'd all forgotten with all the other excitement this morning - that a bridge on the road between here and San Pedro Sula washed out recently. We don't know if traffic is getting through now or not. We're hoping and praying that he can drive through to the city - otherwise it seems like he will park, walk across, and catch a bus to the city on the other side.

If we can't get the temporary inverter, we'll be running power only from our generator. This works fine for laundry and computer use, but the refrigerator needs long hours of continuous use, not short spurts.

Using a generator for that purpose gets expensive. With an inverter, we can run the solar panels (or the generator, when there's no sun) to charge the batteries, and then use the stored power, but without an inverter, we only have power when the generator is actually running.

The good news is that the components which are dying are parts which we were already planning to replace. They were originally cheaper than some other options - and perhaps we got what we paid for. The parts which were more expensive are still running, and will work with our new components.

The bad news is we have a wedding coming up, and guests, and lots of reasons why this is a bad time for us to try living with such limited power. But, we'll figure it out.

The Wacky Stories I Tell . . . here comes another one

So, here's what happened today.

We have afternoon thunderstorms most every day this time of year. As today's storm approached, we had a really close lightning strike. Really close. Like we wondered if it might have hit one of our buildings. (We later discovered that a huge pine tree, about 600' from our closest building, was hit.)

We were checking around for damage, and especially checking out our solar equipment, when dh noticed a "hot plastic" smell in the vicinity of our batteries, controllers, and inverter. Not good at all. However, the system was still running, and everything plugged into the system seemed to be running fine.

With additional investigation, eventually the menfolk narrowed the smell down to the inverter, and realized that the interior fan was no longer running.

So, they took apart the inverter (tricky business, because they had to remove the equipment from the charged up batteries), and found that they couldn't repair the fan.

I need to mention that yesterday Russell was working on sorting through our stored man-junk. You know the kind of stuff, if you have a hands-on husband. Russell had found a small, cheap fan, which was designed to be attached to a piece of large construction equipment, to keep the driver cool. We had installed it, but it had fallen off the machine and never been re-installed. It was sitting in the pile of stuff to be thrown out or given away.

They grabbed it up out of the pile, figured out a way to mount it next to the inverter so that it blows air through the inverter, and we're powered up and running again.

Really, is anyone even going to believe me anymore?

Oh, and in case anyone is interested, the system is grounded.

Gifts for Gracias Christmas Project - a reminder!

I wanted to take a moment to remind everyone that the container with the Christmas gifts and donated household items is due to leave Maryland sometime in November. All the information you need to create gifts or gather donations can be found on the pages linked at the top of this blog.

We absolutely must ship the container on time this year, as we will be pretty much desperate for our new batteries (for our solar energy system) by the time the container arrives. It is horribly wasteful to pay to ship a container that isn't entirely full . . . so please, do what you can to help us fill it up!

Thanks so much!