Boy, I’d be really really careful about anyone that is cold-call selling you.
I think at one point we generated leads for one of the bigger realtor sights by running every address in a state through our physics based building model that could figure out if had a good house for solar. I wouldn’t be surprised if there are more companies doing that these days. That’s the problem with the solar estimation sites, they are all connected to installers so using them will get you on someone’s mailing list.
dishwasher has started making a loud GRRRRRRRRRRR noise occasionally. I think it may be when draining the water, because it doesn’t make the noise until it’s been running for a while. Not sure, how would you even diagnose this? dishes are getting cleaned normally, sound hasn’t gotten better or worse after suddenly appearing a few days ago.
is it a stand alone unit or built in? If built in I think you want to have someone look at it before it stops draining altogether. Any warranties in place?
it’s built-in, about six years old so no warranty
Yikes, that’s close to the buying a new one is going to be cheaper than fixing an old one age.
yeah this is a shitty cheapo model
We’re under contract to install solar panels on a new garage, so while we aren’t done with the project, I have done a fair amount of research and legwork on solar stuff.
Some random thoughts from a non-expert:
Look to your electric utility to provide some unbiased (or at least not the “we’re directly selling you” bias) information about solar energy. They may have some good basic info that will give you a good grounding (
) in solar.
Hopefully your utility does net metering. This is important because there will be times when your array is making more juice than you are using, and with net metering, you get credit for that. That will offset your bill at times when you are using more than the array generates.
I’d also be wary of cold-callers. When I was looking for companies to get bids from, it was clear that there are some big outfits that are only doing solar as a money grab. I’d rather work with a company that cares about the reasons for doing solar, and also cares about doing a good job.
Personally, I’m a bit leery of the “roofer who also installs solar” model. I can see why that might have benefits, but my take is that solar is primarily an electrical project, so I want the installers to be expert electricians first and foremost. Just my take, fwiw.
Get at least a couple bids. The first company I reached out to had a note in their intake/info form that said something like, “Installations start at $25,000 and go up from there.” I wrote back and said that, based on the kilowatt/dollar rule of thumb that I had seen (which I found on our utility solar information pages), our small installation shouldn’t cost more than $15,000. Their customer service person replied that maybe this wasn’t the right company to work with… I guess they don’t want to work with people who care about getting ripped off. The company I’m going with gave me a proposal that included two different panel options, both of which were around $13,000.
The company I’m going with claims to be the only union electrical company in western Washington (Artisan Electric). If that matters to you, maybe you can look for a similar outfit in your area. (If you want, I can reach out to them and find out if they can recommend someone near where you are.)
I’m guessing they’ll try to sell you on a battery backup/storage system as well. I think that’s a big money maker for installers. All I’d say is that it’s up to you on that. Keep in mind that the solar installation won’t power your house when the grid power is out. So if that’s a big deal to you, you’ll want to consider the battery backup. Otherwise, you may feel that the additional expense and complexity isn’t worth it. Also, something that’s coming down the pike is electric vehicles that have “bidirectional charging,” which allows the car’s batteries to power your house (or put juice back in the grid). I think that may allow a future EV to serve the role of a battery backup in power outages.
You mentioned trees around your house. Your solar proposal/bid should include (or at least be based on) a measurement of the unobscured sky as seen from your roof. There’s this cool camera/instrument that is used that takes a picture of the sky from your roof and calculates the percentage that is clear. Using that number, the installer can estimate the actual production of your panels (as opposed to the rated numbers, which are more “best case”). I.e., just because a proposed installation has 10 400 watt panels, that doesn’t mean you’ll always get 4000 watts generated, it depends on shading, weather, etc. That should get factored into their estimates of annual production, which then gets rolled into an estimate of payoff period (i.e., the system pays for itself after X years).
I think most installers handle getting permits from the utility and/or city, but that’s something you’ll want to verify. They also typically help you get all the various government incentives that are available. Again, just something to look for.
Anyway, I hope some of that is helpful. If you have more specific questions feel free to post them.
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I believe the F150 can already be plugged into your house to provide power during blackouts.
Do you have a puddle of water on the bottom inside of the dishwasher after it completes a cycle? If so you might just have a clog around the blade and the motor is forcing the water through to slow. If its dry, youve probably got an issue not worth trying to diagnose.
Well my Comcast out despite website saying no outage in my area and when I logged onto the website to do the diagnostic thing they couldn’t contact my router. Haven’t changed anything as far as the hardware/wires since I setup a couple years ago. The other lights flash on the router/modem thing and reattached/restarted a few times with nothing improving. Am I looking at like a squirrel chewing through the cable in my wall or something??
Could be anything, including, i think, your modem going bad. Just have Comcast come out and fix it (don’t they do that for free?)
I ended up scheduling them to come out then 6 hours got a text saying actually we fixed the issue in your area so everything fine now. Not sure why they couldn’t have known there were wider issues before lol
Because Comcast (and all telecoms) are the WOAT
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Gonna do some forum updates and resolutions on the help-seeking I’ve done here. First of all, the solar, roof stuff. We’re going to get a new roof, but not solar at this time. I guess I didn’t mention it, but the main reason we were talking to the solar guys was because of a roof leak, which I thought would be a simple question, and we were thinking about solar anyway. The roof leak looks to be best treated by a roof replacement (the current roof looks like it was done with mediocre workmanship as seems to be typical for this house, and more than just the current 2 trouble spots may be an issue in the near future), and the best bid for the job (which wasn’t from the cold callers) didn’t any solar shit. So, no solar for now, but a better roof with a better warranty and ventilation, and hopefully better overall workmanship.
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I replaced a roof and then put on solar panels separately the next year. It worked fine. Based on my experience you could still do solar in the next couple years without replacing the roof again. You don’t have to do them together but you don’t want to put new panels on an old roof.
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Sounds like a good plan. To me, observing from afar, it seems like you’ll have a better chance of things going smoothly by keeping the project scope limited to just doing the roof. Then do the solar as a separate project when you’re ready.
https://www.sfgate.com/local/article/Flying-termites-swarm-Bay-Area-after-rains-16554701.php
This article is from a couple years ago but this happened today following rain yesterday. Our backyard is covered in termite wings. The article suggests they don’t necessarily pose a danger to our house (“And you probably don’t need to worry too much about them eating your house. Most modern homes were constructed to prevent termite infestation, according to Sutherland.” - our house is about 60 years old? Not sure if that qualifies as “modern”) but it’s still a bit worrying 
We have some agave plants in the front yard that cannot withstand full direct sun in the summer and need to be partially shaded. For the past few years the solution has been fragile and wholly inadequate. I wanted something that would be easy to install and remove depending on the season. It installs on the west side of the plants to allow full sun in the morning but shade in the afternoon/evening.
The new solution consists of:
A) A sturdy yet slightly flexible frame made from 1/2" pvc
B) A slip-on “pillowcase” made of sunscreen fabric
C) A pair of sunken (~11") guides made from 3/4" pvc
Pretty happy with the results:
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How windy does it get there? You may want to cut some flaps into it to lower the wind load on it without affecting the shade too much.
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