A Slow Day

Monday
May 11, 2009

I slept in this morning as did Gina. Of course my sleeping in was only until 6 o’clock but that’s a lot for me. Now Gina on the other hand slept until 9:30. This was going to be a slow day for both of us. Gina spent her day in Louisiana pressure spraying the house and trying to move things around in preparation for Nicole & Shane to move in at the end of the month. I spent the day at work trying to earn a dollar. I thought I would put a picture of the ship as it was arriving in Corpus Christi last Saturday.

Helix Producer I Arriving

Artist Concept drawing of final configuration

This is the project that I have been working on for the last 16 months and still have approximately 8 months to go before it goes offshore and starts producing oil.

Once I got home I installed a new filter in the Rear AC unit for the truck and surfed online for a little while. I’m still researching my electrical install for the truck. My dilemma is I just don’t see a need to install solar power yet mainly due to cost so what is the best way to recharge my batteries? My thought process is that I have two choices: buy a large enough generator to run the heaviest load which would be either two Honda 2000 watt generators and operate in parallel which would charge the batteries as the power went through the inverter or buy a separate battery charger and buy a small 1000 watt generator just to charge the batteries. The normally process would be to just connect your power to the ac input of the inverter and allow the inverter’s built in battery charger to recharge the batteries. The problem is once you connect an ac power source then you cannot use the power from your batteries. If you have a generator that is big enough then there is no problem. The concept here is replacing solar panels with a small generator and battery charger. The cost of solar power for what I’m looking at is approximately 6000 dollars and the cost of a small generator plus battery charger is 1000 dollars of course this doesn’t include gas. This is a big difference to me when I’m just not sure if we are going to boondock very much. I’m not in a big hurry for setting this up but just researching.

While I was eating dinner I had a neighbor stop by and ask if he could use my powertank to fill his trailer tires to 110 psi and his compressor was struggling. I said sure so I got it out and brought it down and within 5 minutes the power tank had all four tires at 110 psi. I will tell you these power tanks may not be cheap but in my opinion worth every penny when you consider what is required to use a compressor. Mike I think you’ll be selling another power tank to a guy named Greg. He’ll also be buying a pressure pro tire monitoring system too. After I finished that I came inside and watched “House”. I tried to talk to Gina but they had a real bad electrical storm come through Louisiana and knocked out the power so I called her back later and then she cooking dinner for Thomas, his girlfriend and Malinda (Gina’s friend). She said that she would call me back. However, I never heard back from her before I fell asleep. So folks that was our day. Not very exciting but it was another great day.


Until tomorrow, Gina & I hope everyone has a pleasant and wonderful day, enjoying what our Father has so graciously blessed us with.