In this episode of Occupy the Land, we tackle end-of-summer maintenance on our Arizona desert homestead! With cooler 63°F mornings, we set up a new flex-fuel generator (propane and gasoline) as a backup to our trusty diesel generator, ensuring uninterrupted power while we repair our solar system’s charge controller. We haul four food-grade IBC totes to store 3,000 gallons of pool water for gardening and construction, and Donna assembles a chicken coop to protect future garden beds. Amidst impending monsoon rains, we prep for a side-by-side vehicle purchase and share the greening desert landscape, showcasing our off-grid resilience and progress!
Heat. Heat. Well, now that it’s the end of the summer, it’s time to do maintenance It’s on our power system. We’re only using four of the nine panels we have over there, you know, because we have uh one charge controller that’s uh not working right and we we’re doing fine. We had enough power and I didn’t want to disconnect anything or be without power in the product because we got a lot of needs for power and we had enough that’s keeping us going to where we get 100% by the afternoon and then goes through the night. So, we’re fine. But we got the capacity for super power. But uh we’ll go ahead and work on that this weekend. And uh the generator, of course, we can just, you know, pop up everything with the diesel generator. It’s been working for years. It came with the bus. We’ve been five, six years on this thing. And all I’ve had to do is, you know, change the oil, regular maintenance, filters, and so on. And uh had to change some hoses and a belt and, you know, had the radiator redone, you know, over the years. So, but it’s just getting tired. and I need to do a bunch of maintenance on it after the summer, but I didn’t want to be without power. I’m like, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope. You know, you know, one is none. You got one thing and it goes, you’re done. And you have uh another backup. So, two is one. One is none. So, when before I start disconnecting everything, I need to get a backup generator to the backup. And we have this shore power connection that we can take 30 and 50 amp into the bus. and you do shore power, you go in the RV uh location or something like that, you plug in and it’s uh now the backup gets a backup. So, we got this uh Flex Fuel Super Quiet Hopefully inverter that does propane and gasoline. And I don’t think I’m going to be using gasoline because, you know, gasoline you got to, you know, you deal with gasoline. I’m just rather not. So, we’re we have this 100 lb uh tank that we use for heating and cooking and so on. That lasts a long time. Then we have uh another tank, you know, in there, you know, that we use uh when we’re on the road. But to fill that up, you got to take the bus in to fill it up. So, screw that. So, you can use little uh five gallon ones. And this uh 100 pound um tank, you know, will last us for months. You know, we haven’t changed that since I don’t know the winter. But um we’re going to go ahead before I disconnect and start doing work on this. I wanted to have a generator that was there ready to go because you know you’re without power. That sucks. So I’m going to go ahead. I got it out and that’s what I’m going to be doing today is you know I just got to put oil in it and push a button they say. We’ll find out and I’ll let you know. Here we go. Now the generator came with the adapter for putting it on the propane instruction manual and so on. And I think that’s a spark plug wrench. And uh uh looks like you can charge an external battery with that or jump it or whatever. I’m not sure what that is. We’ll go through the manual. But the big thing is an electric start. Yay. And a remote. So here we got the side open. We’re going to put oil in it and so on. It’s all nice and pretty clean. So what I’m going to try and do is get this working. And I may build or create some kind of a shelter for this cuz I don’t want it to get all dusty and dirty and being a pain in my butt. So, we’re going to go ahead and just get her going first and then we’ll start worry about getting a cover for this and doing maintenance on our electrical system upgrade and get it to a lot more power. But I need a backup to the backup to the backup and make sure that we’re not without power cuz that’s a thing. So, here we go. Quick start guide. put the oil in. Uh plug in the battery. Uh turn put on the um propane adapter, turn it on, you know, pull start it a couple of times. I don’t probably get it circulated, but you can just, you know, press the start button and it goes pinky swear. That’s what they’re saying. So, I’m going to go ahead and put oil in. I’ll go ahead and go through the manual and then we’ll do the first attempt to start. And I’m sure you probably got to get the propane to circulate into it a little bit or something. We’ll see how fast and easy this is. Now, this thing was uh uh about $1,100 and it was on sale for $7.99 something. And it was a a deal, one of those Harbor Freight um Insider Track. You got the card, you get a special deal. We waited for this before it went down. It was about the time that we knew we were going to need it. Have to do maintenance on the electrical system. So, I wanted to get this. It’s not one that you’re going to be running a lot long time. We got batteries and solar and so on. It’s just to peak it up, make sure a cloudy day kind of deal. And back up to the generator. It definitely diesel, you know, diesel is the best way to go. More fuel efficient and so on. And uh but this is great for doing a lot of things. It’s on wheels and it’s got a handle. You can move it around. And um until we get our workshop power all set up. I got the stuff. I just need to get a couple of batteries. But um uh it’s portable and it can run my welder and plasma cutter and all that. So co so I want to get this going. We’ll see how easy it is. All right, it’s together. We’ll see if we can get her started. I got oil in it. You know, I put the oil in there, filled it up, and then connected the battery. It was uh just has two um prongs that kind of plug in together. That was simple. I’m gonna leave it the cover off and till I make sure it goes. I I don’t want to try and pull start it cuz I don’t like pull starting. So, it’s got the remote. Now, you just plug in the uh propane into a jack it has there. Comes with this hose. I just plugged it in. Then, uh has a regulator that goes right into the tank. I turn that on. And then I’m supposed to just push this twice. Slow. One. Two. Boom. All right. Oh crap. And it’s not that loud either. All right. The exhaust comes out here. Hot. All right. Well, now I got to see if I plug it into the bus. All right. Well, let’s let it warm up and do its thing while I get the electrical out. We’ll see what’s up. That’s not that loud. Very cool. All right. Let you know. All right. Well, so I’m getting everything set up to put together this uh greenhouse, but it looks like the weather may have some plans for us. It’s coming pretty quick over the mountains over there. So, we’ll see. I’ll get as far as I can and we may have to stop and pick it up at some other time. We’ll see. Heat. Heat. N. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Well, it might be raining, so I’m going to go ahead and I’ll wait and get the adapter. I need a a 30 amp to 50 amp adapter for the generator. So, I just ordered that on Amazon. It’ll be here Tuesday. I’ll just deal with that. But, I think it can right now I can run my uh welder and plasma cutter and stuff. So, I might get some projects done there with that before I put in my uh solar in the shipping container over there. But this, if it rains like it is right there, that’s a coming here. And even if it doesn’t rain here, that water’s coming here. So, we’ll um go ahead and, you know, work on that. Now, Donna is putting up a um it’s like a chicken coupe thing that she got, and she wants to put that up to be able to protect the garden from the animals. So, I’ll go ahead and go over there and help her because uh and sometimes she doesn’t want help. Leave me alone. Let me do it, but I’ll go see if she needs some help. But there’s the rain is coming. It’s been threatening, promising, pinky swearing that it’s going to be raining, but it just never quite really gives us the deluge that I want to see. But, uh, it looks like we’re going to get some here directly. And, uh, so we need to go check and make sure everything’s under and so on. I covered the generator and waited for uh, when I’m going to actually plug that into the bus. But, I got plenty of stuff to do. Let’s go check on Donna. Well, what’s coming in is pretty substantial, so I’m not going to fight it. I got some of the uh framing set up over here, and I’ll just leave all these other rods out here and pick it up either later today or or when I can. Hi, welcome to Occupy the Land. Occupy the land.org. What we’re doing is we’re putting up this was pretty inexpensive. It was only like a h 100red bucks or $120 or something like that, but it’s in pretty good quality for what we’re doing. Now, it has uh coated chicken wire and then it has the frame and you put it up and they give you a bunch of these zip ties that you know is going to go sunrot within a year out here in Arizona. You’re going to have to be doing this all over again. So, we have these uh wire ties that are for doing um rebar. And what we do is you just put it around. While we’re putting the different sections together, we’re going to go ahead and do this so we know that later we’re not having to redo this when it rots. So, let’s just boom. So, we’re redoing all this so that it’ll stay good and closed later. and we don’t have to worry about the sun rot. We’re almost done with this. Um Donna’s finishing the end on there. We got to do this end over here with the door and so on. And then we’re going to go get railroad ties that we have a gazillion of and put this up and then screw it down into the railroad ties. And that way it’s not going to blow away or go anywhere. And then we might be able to put the shade on one/ird of it. Then we have to put together another raised gardening bed. And then Donna gets to play gardening. Put one of the IBC totes over here for water. You know, keep that full. And this is on the other side of the wash, just on the other side of where the uh building pad is for the main home. So, it’s kind of out of sight, out of the way, but close enough to be able to go to be able to go over here and be able to work on it. So, that’s what we’re doing today. And it’s in the wind, you know, but it’s really nice temperature. What is it, you think? Um, probably 80, but dry. It’s much drier than it was yesterday. Yesterday was very humid. I doubt it’s in the water. 70. It’s going to be 70s for all this week so far with nighttime temperatures in the 50s. So, this is what you come to Arizona for is weather like this. But there’s three, four months that you just you’re shriveled up beef jerky if you don’t keep hydrated. But the rest of the time it’s just awesome. Now the wind is really being a thing. So what we’re we got a windmill that generates supposed to be I don’t know,500 watt wind which means about 200. And uh but it makes wind at night constantly. So cuz it’s usually pretty breezy a little bit. So I’m looking forward to getting that up. I think I’m going to get some batteries. I’m going to make that part of the system on the workshop just to keep keep them up because I don’t have a lot of demand there except when I’m welding stuff. So, we’re just keep working on it. We got the tractors back in the the shop. We had to take it back. And I think they found out what it was. There was debris in the fuel system. They got to take the fuel tank down and wash it out. Put that up. That’s a gazillion dollars. But I got a bunch of other stuff done on it for free. So, you know, I’m not complaining too much. So when we get that back, we’re going to start, you know, building on the dome again. So we really needed the time to get ready for the rain and we needed the time to do. So we had a lot of other projects that we needed to do. We got done. So it wasn’t like we’re sitting on our hands, but um we’re looking forward to getting the tractor back. Now Donna wanted to get a side by side a four seating razor Polaris something with a you know a little dump bed in the back. And it looks like we found one of those. So either tomorrow or Wednesday, the day after tomorrow, we’re going to go and get that. And uh I think Yeah, I think he said we need to get it on Tuesday or Thursday. So we’re going to go ahead. We don’t have to get it those days. That’s just when the Well, the DMV thing is open to transfer. I want to do it all at once in here. But um but it’s road legal. So then we can just go to town in it here, be sipping it across the desert. So that that’s what Donna’s always wanted. She’s really big into that and I’m fine, whatever, you know. So, we’re going to go ahead and do that. And uh you know, it’s getting to be nice. We’ll share it with you. Peace.
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Nice 🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉