fresh home build coming soon

[skyking]

Yes I am aware of the battery issues. I rolled the dice at that price point. Please note that it is not in my basement or against the outside wall.
I had leftover ICF blocks and built a battery vault into the retaining wall. There it is out the kitchen window. It gets a 4" foam core fiberglass epoxy lid on it that will be 4" above the pavers out there.

If it does not work out, I will replace it but the batteries will not go inside the house in any case.
That vault has it's own power outlet and will get a pair of doors and be conditioned as needed.
No we don't burn wood nor have propane or natural gas. All electric.

The equipment room is too small for the HPWH so it gets a louvered door to the rest of the basement shop area. It is conditioned and I will welcome the dehumidifier action of the water heater.

I worked in commercial plumbing and opted for a floor sink next to the water heater location. These are very handy for the leak pan, blow off valve, and the condensate drain.
The floor is slightly beveled into it so I can sweep a spill in there too.
I had cut down all plumbing and conduit below grade so I could get a great finish. Here is the guy hand troweling around that floor sink, his hand is on it and it has 1/4" plywood on it still.
The water heater sits about where he is.



It is a zurn cast iron like this. I can get a split grate or just cut a full grate as needed.

I also put in a condensate drain across the room near the air handler. The room is otherwise finished flat, I don't care for sloped floors to drains and pipes running across or stains, and also trying to install stuff on a sloped floor. It just has that little bevel there.

 

[skyking]

The PV wiring is complete to the inverter, and the battery conduit is complete to the vault. Tomorrow we will assemble the battery and pull in the wire.


My string layout had some exposed wires across this access. I used scraps of rail and spare clamps to guard them at the 3 places here on the West Wing.

 

[skyking]

After we got the battery connected to both the feed and the RS485 BMS communications, I gave the inverter a sniff of the grid juice and connected with it via the app and Bluetooth. I had to quit that before updating firmware but I got as far as the battery and inverter talking, and I connected the solar panels and the integrated APS brand RSD control module sent the GO GO GO signal to the Panel Level RSD units and I saw some of that high voltage goodness.
With the panels damped by RSD, they put out ~0.8V per panel.
When the blue lights came on in the Surge Protection Devices (SPD), I was reading 442VDC on the big strings
I can't get carried away with this testing until I get the grid agreement done with the utility.
Waiting is the hardest part.

 

[Brovane]

After we got the battery connected to both the feed and the RS485 BMS communications, I gave the inverter a sniff of the grid juice and connected with it via the app and Bluetooth. I had to quit that before updating firmware but I got as far as the battery and inverter talking, and I connected the solar panels and the integrated APS brand RSD control module sent the GO GO GO signal to the Panel Level RSD units and I saw some of that high voltage goodness.
With the panels damped by RSD, they put out ~0.8V per panel.
When the blue lights came on in the Surge Protection Devices (SPD), I was reading 442VDC on the big strings
I can't get carried away with this testing until I get the grid agreement done with the utility.
Waiting is the hardest part.

Nice setup on the bunker for the batteries. Your wiring looks really neat and clean.

You cannot configure your inverter to do zero grid export? When my system was installed I just configured my Sol-Ark inverters to do zero-grid export before I got PTO.

 

[skyking]

Nice setup on the bunker for the batteries. Your wiring looks really neat and clean.

You cannot configure your inverter to do zero grid export? When my system was installed I just configured my Sol-Ark inverters to do zero-grid export before I got PTO.

I can, but that is not how it will get employed. The only thing that would do is charge and then start cycling the battery. The house is not wired at the far end LOL!
That is more than a month away at least. So the only logical operation is to turn off all the load breakers as I have done, and start exporting.

Picture of what I mean:

Those would be great for backing into and getting shocked right now LOL.

 

[skyking]

I daisychained that bunch of 3/8 pex spaghetti into one continuous 4000' loop for a 100 PSI pressure test. The inspector warned me that hooking it to the manifolds can cause problems at 100 PSI. Now I can locate and bolt down the manifolds, plumb it all up, run the 1" trunk lines to the equipment room and get my <master plumber of devices> up to build out the equipment room in sweat copper.
I could do propress, but the cost is high and no advantage when you have a pro doing the sweat work.
I am very fortunate to have a real graybeard of a guy who does all the complicated plant work for the company. I can do this stuff slowly and get by, but he has a vision in his head and it becomes a thing of beauty.