Exactly one month ago, we landed back at a place you all may recognize by this picture alone:
That’s right – we were back up at our favorite camp up on Mingus Mountain for one more round of upgrades that they had been trying to get approved for several months and that all finally went through. We squeaked it in between a bunch of other stuff.
The first thing we had to do, was install some Wi-Fi dongle on the Pyres batteries in order to have remote diagnostics. It was decided due to the remote location in nature of the camp the little bit of money that needed to be spent to put the batteries themselves online would prove to be valuable for both the camp and ourselves down the road. We also spent most of the day with Pytes very helpful Tech Support updating the firmware in all of the batteries and chasing a little glitch that had occurred over the winter during cold temperatures that traced back to an older version of the batteries BMS firmware.
Here’s Denise running the laptop and helping the remote firmware updates.
It took all day to get all 30 batteries updated with new firmware, their new Wi-Fi dongles installed and talking to the cloud, and to resolve a little issue that we had with the big 200 amp bypass switch. After that day, we met up with Dan number two, who is the head maintenance guy at the camp, for a couple of cocktails and a tour of a potential new project we may be doing up there. More on that potential project a little later.
The next day, after sleeping in some seriously uncomfortable bunkbeds at camp meant for little kids( we were traveling light and left our work trailer behind)-I woke up with a screaming headache ( I swear not related to the previous evenings beers!🍻 😄😄 I often suffer from serious headaches-especially with altitude changes. 🤷♂️), a terrible hairdo, and the need for a lot of coffee!😄😄
Our mission for day two – once I got my headache down to a mild roar after pumping about a gallon of coffee into Me-was to go down to lower Camp where we needed to resolve some electrical issues with existing wiring, upgrade some panel and grounding, upgrade some kitchen lighting, and resolve a few little minor electrical repairs.
You know you’re about to have a crappy day when this is your job site. 💩 😄😄
I’m not really going to explain what the electrical issues were in this particular building for reasons of privacy, but if you look at this picture and understand what is going on, then it will be a case of if you know, you know.😬
During our investigation into this building‘s electrical system, we found this really cool old switch! It is all porcelain with top and bottom connectors like you don’t see anymore. For a reason too. 😄😄
We spent most of the day resolving some kitchen lighting issues and installing a whole bunch of new LED wrap fixtures in the kitchen and prep areas but for some reason, I have zero pictures of any of this.😄😄🤷♂️
By the end of day two, the kitchen lighting upgrades were complete and we believe we knew what was going on with the other buildings wiring issues, but had not yet located the cause of the fault.
It was then time to turn in for another night of questionable sleep in little tiny bunkbeds that were definitely not made for adults.😄😄