House is finally complete

When we purchased this property there was a small house in pretty sad shape.  Our goal was to completely redo it and transform it into a nice home that we could rent.  As in all projects this one turned out to be much more work and expense than we expected.  So most of my energy has been poured into this project leaving little time to develop the mini farm I envisioned. 

Just around Christmas we were approached by a neighbor who knew someone needing a place to rent.  And they wanted to be in by January 1st so we had to really work to finish up the million little projects that needed to be done.  New Years eve we finished up and now have a signed lease on the house.  Which means we can get back to developing our mini bee farm.

The bee farm has a solar powered shed that sits in the middle of the lot in an area that gets lots of sun.  The solar system consists of four 100 watt panels, a 5000/10000 inverter, MPPT controller and several AGM batteries that were fried last week when I tried running a plasma cutter on the solar system.  Earlier this week I noticed the solar wasn't working and found a puddle of something under one of the batteries.  Bad news for sure.  There were several factors that caused their demise so this turned into one of those learning experiences.

The good news is I found the most amazing deal on a top of the line bank of 4  almost brand new AGM batteries.  The catch was we had to drive to Orlando to pick them up but the price and quality was well worth the drive.  Plus we were able to try a new (excellent) vegetarian restaurant in Orlando called the Dandelion cafe.  The new battery bank boosts the battery power to 460 ah from our old batteries @ 220 ah.  What this means is we will have plenty of power to spare and can power almost anything (except a plasma cutter) we need.

Tomorrow I'll install the new batteries and will finally be able to focus all my time into building bee hives and working on gardening.