Because Iām a big wuss, and hate to be cold, we took care of paperwork in the trailer until the sun came up and started to warm things up.
Once it was warm enough to get some work done, we were outside and hard at it to wrap up our last few punch list items and get things ready for the county inspector who was scheduled to show up for final inspection.
Denise got to work changing out the WiFi dongles on the inverters, while I installed a circuit to temporarily power the sites Starlink until they finish the building wiring and get it permanently installed. This would allow us to have constant communication with the system.
Once communications were solid, we began final system testing. While we had tested everything previously, those tests were brief, and we had made wiring changes since. So we wanted to test for longer periods of time and with the new wiring just to make sure that everything was working properly.
To that end, we had turned off the solar charging a day or so ago, and requested that the staff that ran the place not run the well pump for several days and let the tank levels drop so that we could pump and load test for several hours.
And so, after some double checks, the deep well pump was energized with the flick of a a switch andā¦
Almost nothing happened.
Except the pump ramped up to its full rpm in near silence, and for the first time ever, the gentle hum of the 40 hp pump 1300 feet below could be heard along with water flowing through the 6ā lines.
It was a near silent moment that told the story of how this location had undergone an amazing change, and that the roar of the diesel generator that had always powered this pump was now pretty much a thing of the past.
It was sort of hard to wrap your head around how different things now were for this site and what a huge difference it was going to make on how it operated.
The pump hummed faintly and the whoosh noise of 4000 GPH of water babbled on and the rest was silence and we had to check the inverter readouts several times to make sure everything was actually working properly.
But, fortunately, everything looked great, and while the pump worked away deep underground we had other things to do.
We began going around and double checking that everything was ship-shape for the inspection-covers on, labels in place, area cleaned, etc.
periodically we would check in on the power system and make sure that the batteries, inverters and pump were all functioning as expected.
About that time we received word that the county inspector wasnāt going to make it out because apparently he was too busy elsewhere.
That was pretty aggravating because we had scheduled this inspection two days in advance.
And while I didnāt expect any issues with the inspection as we almost never have problems with inspections, one of the reasons our inspections go well is we make it a point to meet the inspector during the inspections so that we can answer any questions or address any concerns.
Obviously that wasnāt going to happen today, and lamenting about the situation wasnāt going to help, so we just threw ourselves into wrapping everything up seeing as we were no longer held back waiting on an inspector.
The next thing to tackle was generator testing. We had developed a new SOP for the sites generator operation and built them a short instruction placard.
We ran through the process we had developed and let the generator connect to the inverters to commence with load testing.
Not surprisingly, given the generators age and condition-there were some issues with generator operations.
The inverters would connect to the generator, sync with it, use its power to run loads and charge batteries-and then randomly reject the generator and drop it, only to pick it back up and reconnect. Sometimes it would stay connected for 20 minutes, sometimes only a couple minutes.
We spent hours going over inverter settings, tweaking things and trying to make the generator connection more reliable and solid. We even got tech support involved. While we were able to identify a few settings that needed improvement, nothing fixed the random generator disconnects.
We suspect there is some software glitch with the inverters.
We finally had to throw in the towel on better generator performance and move on. The issue isnāt a big one for this site, because they will rarely need their generator, and it still functions to accomplish what it needs to. Itās more annoying than anything.
Meanwhile, in the background, the deep well pump stayed running the whole time, quietly moving thousands of gallons of water into the storage tanks, which was the most important thing and what we wanted to see happening.
By this point, it was already 3pm, and it was looking questionable if we would actually get to go home today, as we still had a metric shit ton of tools and materials to load onto the trucks, plus load and connect two trailers. Getting the trailers road ready usually takes 2-3 hours by themselves.
At that time, the site manager showed up for a crash course in the new way to run their power system and pump.
We spent about 30 minutes giving them the rundown.
When they left, we had a decision to make: try to finish packing up and leaving today; or get mostly packed and wrap up and leave early early tomorrow morning?
Weād had enough of this place, so we threw ourselves into high gear to make our exit as soon as possible.
Track cleaning time!
One of my tasks was to clean the excavator tracks, blade, and anything else that holds dirt and rocks.
Because nobody likes the douchebag running down the highway sprinkling rocks and breaking windshields.
Plus, itās a DOT violation. š¬
Squeaky clean!
At least, squeaky clean for a dirty old excavator. ššš¤·āāļø
As the sun raced for the western horizon, I craned the job box onto the Freightshakers mid deck.
While I was loading the Freightshaker, hooking it up to the equipment trailer and preparing the excavator for travel, Denise was similarly hitching and loading the RV and dually.
The sun certainly made it home before we did, dipping to its bed below the western mountains as we were finally getting the rigs moving.
But we were finally in motion and headed home.
I snapped a couple last pictures of us outside the gate of the job site as we made one last walk around check of the rigs before rolling off into the darkness chasing the now vanished sun towards home.
It was a long two hour drive in the dark with fully loaded trucks and heavy traffic. The Freightshaker went into limp mode 10 miles from home and wouldnāt rev past 1600 rpm, making for a stressful 50 mph final leg. Fortunately we hit light traffic at that point and it was all downhill, so I was able to limp on to our exit and all the way to the shop, where I shut it down and itās problems are now the problems of another day.
This one had been long enough.
It was time for our customary drink upon safe arrival at home!
It had been a long day, a long project, and quite the adventure, and was definitely worth a celebratory drink.
Or maybe two. š» š¤ šš