#Thegreatpoolpondconversion - 210131
Woke up last monday with some serious back pain that hasn’t abated yet.
It was clearly from sunday’s effort moving 1500 pounds of bagged of rock.
The pain has been bent over pretzel intense so there’s been no running. And there’s a race in two weeks.
So taking it easy.
Saturday was very light work stapling the screen to the frame.
Sunday I was laid out on the couch while she planted a bunch of mature, chomped on butterfly weeds that were languishing in pots unprotected.
Then we put the screen in place so they can convalesce.
There are lots of small fish; 30 maybe - some seem to be teenage size, others still tiny.
You can just make out small fish in the upper left.
The white flecks are food.
The black dots are tadpoles.
Legs starting to emerge.
In this week of idleness we struck on another big idea.
Originally the solar was going to be simple - one panel, one pump.
Then it became a bit bigger and more complex when we added the filter pump.
That meant more power so 2 panels.
Two panels meant a controller and at least one battery.
We want it to continue to run for some time when it gets cloudy or dark, and that means more batteries.
This was all going to be housed in a movable, weather protected box behind the filter system’s final resting place next to the jasmine bed.
With the panels as a ‘roof’ over the filter.
The third (and final!) revision to our ‘solar system’ is that we determined, then decided we can move the panels to the barn roof, about 40 feet away.
We’ll put the solar controller, batteries, and distribution panel in the barn which solves the protection and weather problem.
Moving to the barn is easy and totally doable by us.
There’s no backtracking or undoing because all the solar is still in a temporary kind of state.
The panels will be way more efficient on the roof. No trees, lots more sun, and it solves the AM/PM problem.
And since it’s low voltage wiring, we only need to slit the ground and push the wire down. No trenches, conduit, etc.
After, it would be easy to add a panel or a battery or whatever, with relative ease and comfort.
Meantime, indoors we planted a new batch of 50 or so butterfly weeds from our own seeds (the first time).
There’s only three more ‘big’ parts to the project.
- moving and screening in the filter
- add two more small beds, one with a trellis and fence to hide the air conditioner
- a fence on the other side of the deck to replace the last piece of fiberglass fence that blew over during Wilma - 2005.
So we may have hit a sort of visual end point; what it looks like now is mostly what it’s going to look like.
And yes, totally what we planned.
There’s plenty more work besides those three construction projects, but they won’t change the visuals much and they’re smaller in scope.
- chute and water wheel
- the solar
- bird perches, feeders, houses
- a bunch of tweaks, miscellany, plants etc
The pond at night.
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