So, a sundial is pretty much useless, unless it is in the sun. I decided, since this was a scientific sundial, indeed a precision instrument, that it needed a precision base.
With left over materials from our last solar job, I fashioned a base using 8 inch sonotube, 3 inch PVC conduit and an 80 pound bag of ready mix.
Scientific Sundial, mounted
I knew were a large rock, by large I mean car sized, was in my yard, I found it the first year while digging trenches for drain pipes for the gutters. I dug down with a post hole digger and placed about 18 inches of sonotube on the rock. I also drilled into the rock a little bit with a masonry bit and put a 1/2 inch rebar into the rock, pinning the sonotube footing in place.
Then I filled the sonotube and the 3 inch PVC with ready mix concrete.
I waited two days.
Scientific Sundial, about 5 pm
Using the Solar and Moon calculator App for my android phone, I determined that solar noon was 12:57:58 pm today. I don’t thing that two seconds will make that much difference, so at exactly 12:58 pm, I aligned the 12:00 noon analemma with the shadow made by the Gnomon. This sundial is now aligned to true north/south.
I wanted to get a sundial for our kitchen garden for the last several years. There seemed to be many choices, all good. Truth be told, I couldn’t make up my mind. I also had several other projects going on simultaneously. I figured I should finish some of those before starting something new.
Fast forward to this summer. I was researching sundials for some other reason when I came upon a company called Scientific Sundials. They looked really cool, and they are completely customizable. I ordered one and it showed up yesterday via US Mail.
Scientific Sundial
I’ll be making a mount for this one and putting it up when I build the new front porch.
Back in the day, way back in the day, when I was just a young lad of fourteen or fifteen, one of my jobs was mowing the grass at a local church. The Church had a cemetery behind it, which we also mowed. The one thing that sticks out in my mind is grave maintenance. In older cemeteries where wooden coffins were used, eventually the coffin rotted away and the ground on top of the coffin subsided. We had to go up to the large pile of extra dirt and fill a trailer full, then go back to the area in question and fill in the depression. It happened quite often.
Last summer I began to notice a small area in my front yard where the ground was beginning to subside. I really didn’t think too much of it at the time. This spring, the area had grown into something like I used to see in the cemetery, which made me wonder.
Depressed area in the front lawn
It may be a little difficult to tell from this picture (it is hard to take a picture of a depression), but the area is roughly six and one half feet by three feet and it is down a good 6 inches in the middle. I drew a box around it. It faces due south, which also makes me think it is man made. I was always told that graves should face east, but apparently that is not necessarily so.
European settlement began around here in 1680, the town itself was founded in 1703 and land ownership can be traced back the “Great Transfer /Groote Transport) land grant in 1728 by the crown. This general area was a part of at least two farms dating from around 1810. It would not be at all unusual for there to be a family grave or burring ground somewhere on the property. Many times those graves were unmarked, the information passed down from one generation to the next. The original farm house was across the street where the field is now, the foundation stones and wells still exist. This area is about 75 feet away from the old house. I believe that house was abandoned sometime in the late 1940’s in favor of the one at the end of the street.
I will ask down at the farm house and see if anyone knows anything. If another spot like this develops nearby, it is almost certainly a burring ground. Lends new meaning to “Knowing where the skeletons are.” What to do about it, I just don’t know.
The weather turned nice last week, prompting the grass to start growing. Since we moved in in 2004, I have done nothing to encourage my grass to grow, yet every year it grows vigorously starting about the second week in April. Sometimes, if it is a dry summer, by August things slow down.
All in all, the yard is in pretty good shape. I took a day in February, after the double blizzard, and picked up all the branches. The white pine lost three large branches. Today, I got out the trusty Toro Lawn mower and cut the grass for the first time. There was a lot of leaves stick and other debris that I mulched up too. That is going to make excellent compost.
Before things get too far along, I need to repair all the damage done when installing the solar system last November/December. Basically, I need to rack out all the stones and reseed a around the footings and where the trench for the conduit was dug.
Inspections. There are three inspections. When scheduling the inspections, thou shalt count to three, no more, no less. Three shall be the number thou shalt count, and the number of the counting shall be three. Four shalt thou not count, neither count thou two, excepting that thou then proceedest on to three. Five is right out. Once the number three, being the third number, be reached, then you are done.
The inspections satisfy some needed safety concern. The first inspection is the electrical inspection. I know the local inspection agency from several other projects and they are familiar with my work, so this one usually goes pretty easily. I hand him the three line drawing, he looks it over, we catch up on things, he peers into the disconnect switches, shakes the ground wire, looks at the service entrance panels, asks how I like these new inverters, etc. It usually ends with “nice work, that will be $120.00, certificate is in the mail” and he is off.
The next one is the utility company inspector. They already have the paper work that was submitted with the application for a net metering account. Generally, they come out and verify the inverters shut down during a power outage, then proceed to write every scrap of information down that they can find, disconnect switch ratings and model numbers, inverter power factors, breaker ratings, etc. They stand in the yard and peer up and the panels, point and mumble amongst themselves. Fortunately, there is no charge for this inspection.
The final, final inspection is with the town building code enforcement officer. He comes out, looks at it, asks for and receives a copy of the electrical inspection certificate. Asks if everything is installed the way the manufacture specifies, looks at it some more from a different angle, then knocks it twice with the heal of his hand and says “Yup, that isn’t going anywhere.”
A few days later the certificate of use arrives in the mail and the project is done! Yay!
So, now for a few exciting things, first of all, if you have never witnessed a power meter turning backwards, here is a little video:
This is a video of the panels in action, generating power:
Finally, this is a monitoring page from my solar company website. It shows how much power each panel is generating, how much power the system has generated and what the peak power output is on any given day.
The Homeowners blog is my story about fixing up a run down ranch house located in the southeastern Catskill Mountains of New York State.
I cover many do-it-yourself projects, tackle some projects that should be left to the pros, touch on subjects like renewable energy, self sufficiency,
raising two children and so on. For a full disclosure, visit the about the author page.
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