2017 Life Logs, Day 303: Solar Power for Justin and Jo
Date: Monday, October 30, 2017
Weather: WINDY; High 62, Low 50 degrees F
Location: At Home in The Studio, Falmouth, MA
My day started with a rude awakening. I walked out the door at 7:30 am to head to Hyannis to report for jury duty. It was very WINDY, but things on my deck looked fine except for one plant that was blown over. But as I walked toward the parking area, I saw plastic buckets where they shouldn’t be and then I saw that about three panels of the tall wooden fencing that runs the border between The Studio and the condos next door were blown over. And there were leaves and small branches everywhere. Then as I drove out of the parking area, I saw neighbors out on the street staring at the very large tree that had uprooted and fallen over and was blocking one lane of the street. I turned right to go down by the water and had to drive around another fallen tree. The road along the ocean was a mess with standing water in some places and in other spots sand had been washed across the road by ocean waves. It was mounded so you couldn’t see the road and the ocean waves were not too far from my passenger door. Things got better once I headed inland from the shore road and although I saw a lot of fallen branches on the way to Hyannis, Falmouth Heights Road and the road along the ocean was the worst I saw. I got to the court house just in time and delivered the mandatory questionnaire to the proper authority. She looked at me and said, “You do know you don’t have to be here.” Well, no, if I had known that I wouldn’t have driven all this way. She explained that if you are over 70 you don’t have to serve as a juror, so I declined the kind offer of serving and headed out the court house doors. I was so relieved as I was expecting a call or text from Justin when he got to Maximo Solar today. So, I headed straight home to wait for his call. Fallen tree clean-up was well under way when I got home, but then I discovered that cable TV and internet were down. One day without internet couldn’t be too bad, right?
It wasn’t until I got the call from Justin and could not look up the answers to his questions about various solar components that I realized just how much I miss instant access to information when it is not available. Our three-hour marathon went something like this. Justin described to me three different systems. The connection was often garbled, but I took notes the best I could. If I had questions, he would hang up and go talk to the consultant. He might text those answers to me to see if I had more questions. Then he would call again and as we discussed the options, we always ended up with more questions and the process started over again. It finally got to a point where I needed advice. So, Justin went back to talk to the consultant to get more questions answered and I called Heather. I learned a new skill today. I had to constantly put either Heather on hold to check incoming text messages from Justin or visa versa. I have never been successful at putting one person on ‘hold’ while answering another in-coming call. But I got a lot of experience this afternoon! Heather could check things online for us and she is way faster at math than either Justin or me. There were three solar systems we were discussing today. One of them was a Tesla system, and the other two were conventional solar battery systems. One had a 4kW inverter with 9 panels for $12,000 and the other was a 6.5kW inverter with 12 panels for $19,000. We wrestled with pros and cons and ended up buying the $12,000 package. I had not previously researched any of these packages and I don’t know the specifics on what we bought. I do know it took about three hours to finalize the deal and it won’t be installed until December, maybe a little earlier. It is exhausting to figure things out without normal communication, but we did it. Just after 3 pm I got the call from Justin saying the sale was complete and that he was on to the next task . . . on his way to Home Depot to get fencing for the animals.
It is evening and I still have no internet, so I drove to Heather’s to send this. Ollie is doing Sudoku and Sam is working on a book report. My mind needs a rest, so I send this and hope I have internet so I can research/communicate normally tomorrow.
