LIVING OFF GRID

This blog is about our travels in our solar powered "Airstream" and living off grid, in our passive solar home, near Bancroft, Ontario, Canada.

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Monday 23 November 2015

A COUPLE OF POINTS

Woke up this morning .................. no power in the house and minus 10*C outside. Not good. This has never happened before and got me searching with my flashlight.

I quickly discovered that I had left the truck plugged in and the draw from the block heater is considerable.



 After 10 hours our batteries had been drawn down to 47%. To protect the batteries our system shut itself down; turned everything off.

Our generator would normally activate once we reached 60% but since we are home I had turned it off. Now it's running, the lights are on and batteries are being charged. 

Always something.

On a more humorous note we've noticed our black squirrels collecting stones and carrying them off out of sight. We thought they were confusing them with walnuts and taking them away to hide as a winter reserve of food. 

Not the case. A google searched gave us the answer. Seems the squirrels gather stones for two reason. The stones help radiate their body heat back on cold days and the stones help anchor their nest and keep the leaves from being blown away. It's what we do when we secure a tarp; place a few chunks of concrete or large pieces of heavy wood on top to keep the tarp from blowing away. Squirrels do the same thing.

Never knew that.


Our view this morning. Winter is approaching.

Enjoy today and thanks for stopping by.

2 comments:

  1. So cool about the squirrels. I have a ton of them here--they nose around under the birdfeeder all day. Then, I guess, they sleep with the stones at night.

    Glad you got your system working.

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  2. Hi Kate;

    Good to hear from you. I hope sleeping with the stones isn't like sleeping on stones. Not comfortable. It's remarkable how these little creatures know how to stay warm. Who taught them this?
    Safe travels and thanks for keeping an eye on us.

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