North America

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Low Batteries Are No Longer Scary

I never did get to recalibrate the battery monitor since the big winds the other day because I’ve needed to use an inordinate amount of juice to keep the office running this week. I’ve been keeping an eye on the amp hour count up and down and the voltage at the end of the evening to make sure that my battery levels are at acceptable level until I can get a full charge.

All would have been well if we had gotten the sun we were supposed to get today, instead of a low cloud cover, which meant I drained almost 30A today. When the solar charger clicked off tonight, I unplugged my fully charged computer, and looked at my voltmeter. The reading was 11.9V, which is about 40% capacity, but I didn’t freak out because I know now that within an hour of unplugging the computer, my voltage creeps back up a few points as the batteries get to rest.

Regardless, I was low and I was pretty sure I’d have to run the electric blanket tonight as I should have done so last night and I ran the furnace for a full hour this morning! So I turned on the engine while I made dinner.

To my delight, a steady 17A began to flow into my batteries! It’s true! If you’re below 80% capacity, your alternator charges more quickly to bring you up to that 80% mark! It didn’t take long for the amount to slowly taper down and I cut the engine at 10A coming in. I’m now sitting at about 12.46V, which is about 80% capacity. Not great, but we should be getting sun tomorrow, plus I have errands to run so I can take some load off the house batteries by charging the computer in the truck.

So I now know that, really, there’s little point to running the engine to get a charge if I’m above 80% capacity, but it is totally worth doing so when I go below that.

I’ve been boondocking for over a month now in okay weather and it keeps getting better and easier as I slowly figure out how to use all the information available to me to manage my power use. The new solenoid has been a big help, as has been able to borrow a generator twice, that’s for sure, but they’re just a tiny part of a much larger puzzle I’m putting together.

And with that, I’m off to plug in my electric blanket. It’s going to be another coooooold night.

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Sunset On the Beach

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As for the last picture, I had a eureka moment as I put water on to heat for washing up after dinner. I was having leftover pasta and that stuff is a bitch to reheat as it sticks and dries out. I simply put my meal in a bowl that I set in the pot of hot water, put on the lid, and turned the flame to medium-low. Ten minutes (and a bunch of sunset pictures later), I had a hot meal waiting for me that was a breeze to clean up after!

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Do You Need To Replace It?

Since I want to continue downsizing my life, I think about whether or not I need to replace something when the original breaks or stops functioning. I thought of replacing the dishes that were broken in the accident, but decided to first live without them for a while. Guess what? I don’t miss them.

While doing the lunch dishes today, I somehow collided my Las Vegas and Halifax mugs. The Vegas mug won.

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The Vegas mug that I won at Circus, Circus wouldn’t have been much of a loss. I have a couple other mugs the same size and that format is ubiquitous anyway.

But the Halifax mug is a real loss. 🙁 It’s an unusual size, holding about one and a half times the fluid of a standard coffee mug. When I bought it, I had been searching for some time for a mug that held that much and which was nice and thick. I’m sure I could find another one eventually, but this mug took a lot of shopping to find. It’s my slow morning mug. I usually limit myself to one cup of coffee a day, but on the slow morning, I get a little extra to savour. Slow mornings used to be Sunday but are now most often Monday.

I’m not going to rush out to replace my Halifax mug, but I am going to keep my eye out for a replacement. I know I am going to really miss it just because of how devastated I was when I noticed the giant chip and crack going all the way down it. Usually, breaking something in the kitchen is no big deal, but this really bummed me out. Monday mornings just won’t be the same without it! 🙂

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Fun At the Saloon

This evening, R, S, L, Caroline, her husband J, and myself headed out to play some shuffleboard at the Saltwater Saloon. It was so cool to be hanging out with Caroline tonight; she’s one of my most longtime blog readers! Caroline, a little more twist and a little less shove next time. 😉

I was surprised to have a pretty good chicken burger from the grill attached to the saloon. It’s really nice to have the full service convenience store, gas pumps, grill, and saloon just a mile or so from the beach. It’s close enough to get out without too much effort, but not so within walking distance as to encourage frequent consumption of three beers on a weeknight. 🙂

This weekend, there is talk of heading down to the marina at Indianola. No shuffleboard there, but lots of fishing to watch.

I’m fairly certain that my social calendar hasn’t been full since my first Klondike summer!

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Thinking About Saskatchewan

It’s hard to believe that I will be back in Canada in about 10 weeks. I don’t really want to think about that, but the fact is that I’m heading for rural territory with no idea of what services, if any, will be available to me. As things stand, I have no internet options whatsoever besides public wifi for Canada since I broke my ties with Telus. I’ve conceded that the only decent Canada-wide plan that would work for me is that offered by Bell with its Turbo Hub, so that’s what I’m looking at getting. I did email SaskTel to see what my hard wired options are and got a stock reply that had nothing to do with my question, as expected. I’d rather stick with a nationwide provider and mobile internet anyway.

When I bought my property, there was zero cell service in the village and for miles around. Now, I’m seeing coverage up to the limits of the community. This gives me hope that a booster would work. I contacted a company that puts together booster systems for folks in rural municipalities to see what they have to offer for my situation and at what cost. At this point, I’m looking at $300 for the Turbo Hub, plus about $70 a month for 10GB (remember I got FIVE GB for that price from Telus), so even if I end up forking out an extra $500 for a booster, I’m still well ahead of what it would cost to get a hard wired connection, if one is even possible.

I want to avoid landing without having a solid plan for getting online even if it takes a week or two to execute that plan. The loose ideaat this point is to get to my property and take a few days to meet the neighbours and establish a good enough relationship to determine if a summer there will be feasible. Who knows, the neighbours could end up being great and offer to sell me power, hard wired internet, water, and access to a toilet for dumping with a macerator, or they could all be horrible people who decide to run me out of town. I just won’t know till I get there.

It is encouraging to see that cell phone coverage map expand exponentially. I’m still seeing a big dead spot around my old homestead in the Gatineau Hills, but that’s no surprise. Saskatchewan is the second to last frontier in Canada (much more so than even Yukon, the NWT, or Nunavut, and just ahead of Quebec outside of the Montreal-QC City corridor)), so I’m gratified to see them moving ahead quickly, with their coverage map jumping in leaps and bounds.

I’m not looking forward to going back to Canada, but I’m slowly taking my head out of the sand about the notion of it. 🙂