Hello Everyone!

A brief introduction: Hi I am Jacob.

TL;DR: There is no tl;dr because you should have more patience and attention span than a gnat on a high wind.

The Fantastica Chronicles Day 418!

Adding Another Shelf In The Arched Room, De-Cluttering The Greenhouse & Re-Sealing The Broken Solar Panel Glass

The weather turned a good bit warmer but I still ran the heater for a little while in the morning to knock the chill off me after making espresso on the outdoor stove. For the last month or so my hearing has not been all that good because one of my ears has a bunch of wax built-up in it and although it is slightly better now (after pouring peroxide in it for a few weeks) it still is not back to normal. So, instead of listening for the familiar sounds of my espresso being done brewing I wind up going outside a bunch of times to physically look at it to see if it is finished which all too often leads to me getting a bit of a chill from the cold morning air. Thankfully the ear has not hurt all that much or anything but it sure has been annoying!

I got a pretty early start on things outdoors and after doing my usual chores I scavenged up a piece of plywood from my dwindling building materials that I have stored atop the shelter and expanded the shelving that I recently added to the arched room. Once again I did not spend a whole lot of time leveling the shelf or making it 'pretty' and just made sure that it was stout enough to support whatever I put on it. With that done I began pulling all my plumbing supplies out of the greenhouse and consolidated the majority of them into a single large tote before storing the tote itself on one of the new shelves in the arched room. I also got some of my electrical materials and other odds and ends removed from the greenhouse and got them stored on the shelves in the arched room as well. The greenhouse is still quite cluttered with stuff but I am at least making headway on getting it cleared out.

During the afternoon I recruited one of my fellow homesteaders to assist me with carrying my largest solar panel from the rear yard of the homestead proper (where I had it powering the solar shack) to the tree stump workbench that is between the shelter and the greenhouse. After fastening the solar panel to the work bench to hold it still I began the tedious process of removing all the old polyurethane on it. Some of the polyurethane I removed rather easily in big pieces just by peeling it off but the rest of it required the use of a razor blade scraper to remove it. The only parts of the old polyurethane that I did not remove was where it was still intact around the edges of the panel where the glass meets the aluminum frame. Around the edges it had actually held up rather well which was good to see because it is important that the 'sealed edge' remains intact so that water cannot wick its way between the safety glass and the solar cells themselves.

Once I got all the polyurethane removed I used denatured alcohol to clean the glass but after doing so I noticed that there was still a good bit of residue from the old polyurethane so I vigorously scrubbed the entire glass with paint thinner, let it evaporate and then cleaned it again with denatured alcohol. After all that the glass appeared to be clean enough and did not have a bunch of streaks so I poured some oil based polyurethane on it and spread it over the glass with a wide bladed putty knife. I once again could not find my plastic putty knife so I used my metal one instead which worked rather nicely because the polyurethane did not seem to stick to it the way that it did with the plastic one.

I only put one coat of polyurethane on the panel because it was late in the day and I wanted it to dry really well before I applied another coat to it which I have learned the hard way is the best approach when sealing a panel with polyurethane. Considering that this is the third time that I have sealed the broken glass on that panel over the last two years I should probably just bite the proverbial bullet and buy some real epoxy designed for sealing broken solar panel glass. Doing the repair the 'cheap way' works and all but I really do not want to continually have to scrape the old polyurethane off each year, clean the glass and re-coat it with polyurethane. The oil based polyurethane sure held up a lot better than the water based stuff that I used the first time that I sealed the panel but the oil based kind seems to discolor more rapidly and thus drops the electricity production of the panel.

Anyway, I am still debating on where to set the panel up once I am done sealing it because honestly there just are not any super good places in the woods to place it where it will get a decent amount of sun and not be prone to falling branches from the trees. I did build my chicken coop in a place where its roof faces south and it gets a few hours of sun each day (and maybe for four hours in the winter when the leaves are gone) but it is also sort of close to my fire-pit so I would have to move the fire-pit if I wind up doing that. I have continued to entertain the idea of mounting that panel (and my other panels) on the roof of the shelter but lacking the materials to build a proper frame for them atop the roof I am hesitant to hack something together that might not be capable of withstanding the high winds. I knew that when I built the roof to slope downhill instead of towards the south (uphill) that it would make mounting panels on it difficult but it sure is better than having a bunch of rainwater (and snow melt) running beneath the building.

Well, I better get to wrapping this up and get the heck on with my day. I hope that everyone is doing well and has a nice day/night.

More about me: I have been doing property caretaking (land stewardship) for many years (decades) and live a rather simple life with my dogs doing what most folks would consider to be an 'alternative minimalist lifestyle' but what I often just think of as a low-impact lifestyle where I get to homestead and spend the majority of my time alone with my dogs in the woods doing projects in the warmer months and taking some downtime during the colder months.

A little over three years ago I began sharing the adventures (misadventures) of my life via writing, videos, pictures and the occasional podcasts and although my intention was to simply share my life with some friends it undoubtedly grew into much more than that over the years and now I find myself doing what equates to a full-time job just 'sharing my life' which is not even all that glamorous or anything but hey folks seem to enjoy it so I just keep doing it!

The way that the Fantastica Chronicles came about is that I was living at another place when I started chronicling and sharing my days but eventually I wound up moving to a new place. The new place is a homestead named 'Fantastica' so I started with 'Day 1' upon my arrival here and just kept documenting my days much like I had done for the previous nine hundred and fifty-seven days at the last place that I lived.

I have mostly done that 'documenting' at Fantastica exclusively with words (and pictures) opting not to do the videos because as I learned at the last place, sharing videos over an intermittent and slow internet connection is horribly time consuming and what I often think of as an 'ulcer inducing' experience. All that said, I opted for simplicity with the documentation and have no real regrets for doing so.

The way that I look at it is that I give it all my best each day and while some stuff I write is better than others I think that for the most part I do a pretty good job at doing what I am doing which is simply 'sharing my life' as candidly as I possibly can and whatever folks get (or do not get) from it there is always the satisfaction of me doing what I set out to do... which is to simply share my life.