This week has been trying, to say the least. We have loved our time in New Orleans but knowing we’re leaving soon has given us itchy feet and we were ready to leave, but just a quick stop to get some solar power installed, and then we can hit the road. A guy at work who was quite handy had agreed to help us out with installing the panels, and we were assured it was quite easy. Bonus. Save us some cash, huzzah… yeah, something like that.
But first, we finished out our time in NOLA fantastically, the Bayou Boogaloo was going on in our front yard which was nice (yet another free festival of food music and merriment). We also met up with some fellow travellers (www.tilthemoneyrunsout.com) and they filled our heads with ideas of how to make money on the road and where to go. And to be honest it was nice to spend time with someone other than just Jonathan. I adore him, but 24/7 for 4 months is a lot, plus we had run out of things to talk about so it was good to add some new people into the rotation! I finished up work while our contact put on the panels. All was well, they were taking in energy, our battery levels were going up. Fantastic! But then he looked at the inverter, and wasn’t confident he could install it, so we decided rather than having someone who wasn’t sure they knew what they were doing have a go, we would try to find someone to do the last part. He had done the bulk of the work so we weren’t too upset. The first place we pulled into wasn’t confident so we tried another, they were good, they said they could do it no problem, it’ll be a mere two hours. Tops. 4 hours later we’re still sitting there…. 5 hours later they say it’s in, our battery was mysteriously at zero but we were sure they had just unplugged it for a bit no worries…. Drive on, sing ‘on the road again’, get excited to get moving! In the morning we switched on our brand new inverter* (having stayed at an RV to recharge our batteries) to find our batteries draining at 5% a minute. A lot of time was spent on google, we had theories, we called the RV place, we called the guy who sold us the inverter, and just couldn’t get to the bottom of it?! Ladies and gentlemen, 3 long days spent at the mechanics, a relay switch, a transfer switch and all of our wits, including theirs, ends later and we are none the wiser but we couldn’t sit there anymore we just couldn’t. It’s a bit better… sort of… Jonathan has become obsessive about checking it’s “state of charge” and googling possible solutions and for now we’re living with, and driving to figure out what our next move should be… * for those who an inverter means nothing to, it basically allows us to run our wall plugs (so we can charge laptops, run fans, etc) as well as the, microwave, TV, fridge, etc without needing to plug into an outside plug. It ‘inverts’ the 12v coming from the battery, into 110v mains (although naturally it needs pretty big batteries to start powering all that stuff, but that’s for another lesson!) Comments are closed.
|
AuthorHairventures Archives
October 2018
Categories |