Your property being on the top of the hill would be great for solar.  My panels are out in the open but since they are down the hill a bit it is almost 10am before the sun starts to really hit the panels from the east.  Then in the afternoon the trees to the west start to shade the panels around 5pm.  A south facing hill top with no trees near by will expand your number solar hours.  Today my top panel started producing 1 watt at 7:30am but the array really didn't start producing any decent amount of power until 10:30am.  

I just became aware of this ground mount company https://www.sinclair-designs.com/ and like their design.  They have a way to easily adjust the angle of the panels.  

A guy on YouTube, Engineer775, has video's on their system.  The hardest part will be getting the array supports far enough into the ground.  He mentions they drive them 8 to 12 feet in the ground.  With the amount of rock we have here that would be very difficult.  Other than that they system is very simple and easy to bolt together.  

Their site shows $3,400 in cost for 20 panel adjustable system.  I'm going to assume that price is before tax and shipping.  My mostly home built system was about half that price.  It can be done even cheaper than I what I did, especially if someone has more space to work with.  The solar panels aren't heavy and wood or even light steel works fine, it just doesn't look as clean.  

Some interesting results after cleaning.  

The output of the first array increased by 9-10%.  In addition to cleaning I also changed the angle of the array which might be factor as well.  

The second array lost about 4% in production.  It is possible the main supports shifted when I tilted it near vertical and that changed the angle of the array.  I will check that tonight and get the angle set.  The first array is around 33 degrees.  The second array should have been tilted at almost 30 degrees but I will verify where it is at first as I did not check it after cleaning.  The front supports are a fixed height so I assumed the angle did not change.  


This graphic shows production at 2:35 yesterday and today.  Both days had the same weather and skies.  All day long the second array has produced less than it did the day before.

Checked the angle of the second array and it was only 28.8 instead of 32.  One of the main supports was out of alignment, they just went in the ground about a month ago and the ground hasn't fully settled around them yet.  I reset the posts to vertical and then set the array tilt angle to 33.8 degrees.  Hopefully that brings the production back up tomorrow.  

For the adjustment system on the second array I'm trying a concrete block method that I came up with.  The actual legs on the mount are cut to the shortest length needed to achieve steepest angle of the panels for winter.  Then to raise it as it goes into summer a concrete block is added under each leg.  This gives me a very easy way to slowly and equally raise both sides of the array.  The array is balanced enough that I am able to pick up the corner with one hand and slide the block under the leg with the other.

With how this array is built one concrete block corresponds to about a 2.5 degree of tilt change.  In my area the month to month tilt angle changes about 5 degrees every month.  Every month I just add or remove two blocks and it will keep the title angle at a nearly ideal setting.  

An example of what I did tonight.  I started out with 6 blocks under the leg and took it down to 4.  It is still and design in progress as I do some real world testing.  Finding a way to clean up the appearance or hide it is something I would like to do.  I might not need the full block.  I might be able to cut it in half and then build some type of housing/cover around it to make it look better.  

I've been playing around with the angle the second array and the best I can get is it matching the output of the first array where as before it was about 10% higher.  The conclusion I've come to is the tilt angle of first array was too shallow before cleaning, somewhere between 28-30 degrees. After cleaning I adjusted both arrays to 33 degrees and they produced similar output.  I've been using the angles of the two arrays to see if I can get a better angle but it looks like I'm close enough there is not much more to be gained.  This is my production chart from earlier today.  It shows both arrays producing very similar numbers.  It also points to the next subject, inverter power clipping.  The panels are 280 watt panels connected to a 215 watt microinverter.  




Some background on solar production for those interested.  

There are two general ways solar arrays are setup.  First is using microinverters, tiny inverter at each panel, which is what I have.  The second is a string array where the panels are put in series, combined into strings, and sent as DC power to a large DC to AC power inverter.  The downside of a string array is if one panel is shaded it will affect and limit the performance of the entire string where a microinverter system will only have one panel limited.  SolarEdge has a new solution of a DC optimizer at each panel which is supposed to restrict any limited performance to just one panel.  It is supposed to be cheaper than microinverters and allow individual panel monitoring.  I have not played with that type of system yet but it sounds very promising.

The biggest issue with either type of solar is something called "power clipping".  Each inverter type has a maximum power production limit.  When that limit is reached it cannot convert any additional DC power into AC power.  The larger the inverter is the larger the price tag and it becomes a point of balance in price vs performance.  Most of the country is looking at a 6-10 year off for the solar array, so adding thousands of dollars more to the cost to make sure there is no clipping might not be the best financial move.  The sales people will try sell the idea of clipping as a positive thing, it is not.  It does mean your inverter is being fully utilized and not oversized with a large price tag.  It also means you are missing out on some power if your inverter(s) were larger.  

My system has clipping for about 2 hours a day.  The image below shows the power ramping up as the sun gets higher and around 12:11 the production hits 2.24kW.  This is for 1 leg of the 220 produced so double that for total array production.  That would be 4.48kW at the peak but I have 5.6kW of panels.  The microinverters are rated for 215 watts with a peak output of 2.25 watts.  No matter how much sun my system gets 5.6kW arrays will only produce 4.5kW.  The rest of that clipped or lost.  

The missing power is not good but it is also not as terrible as it sounds if the system design was calculated properly.  How many minutes do you see where the power was maxed and clipped?  One minute for sure and maybe 5 minutes out of about 40 minutes pictured were capped.  That puts me around 2 hours a day when I get peak power I have power clipped 10-15% of the time.  Even if we use 100% of the time that is only 2.2kW for those 2 hours, or 20 cents of electricity.  Divide that by 20 panels and each panel would produce 2 cents more power per day.  A microinverter costs about $150.  If I were to swap out the microinverter for one that wouldn't clip it would take 7,500 days( 20 years) to break even.  Not worth it.  At the time I put my system in place the microinverters were being discontinued and very cheap.  The next step up would have been over $100 more per inverter.  It's simply not worth it and the sales people will never show you comparison prices or math like this.  

A string array with SolarEdge optimizers would allow a string array to produce more power over the day even if it had the same 4.5kW limit.  With microinverters each panel is limited.  Look at the top image and you will see most panels  at 215 or higher and a few panels under that amount.  When it hits 215(225) that panel is capped.  In a string array it could go all the way up to 280 watts.  Then the panel slightly shaded only putting out 208 watts would help offset that before it gets to the large inverter. With panel optimizers and 1 larger inverter the chart below should be a lot flatter and stable instead of having dips.

I found a SolarEdge 5000 watt inverter for $2,299.81 and the 6000 watt model is only $2,381.51.  Using the numbers above that extra 20 cents of day in solar for no clipping would still take 400 days to break even but long term it would be worth it, especially since it would allow someone to add more panels down the road.





A chart of how the day turned out during my peak solar hours.  Obvious power clipping is occurring.

Since my second array is now online it is a good time to review the solar performance of the single array over the last 4 years.

Below is the summary of my electricity usage going back to Oct 2019.  The solar array went online in Dec 2019.  The first summer May through October it generated more power than the property was using.  In Oct of 2019 I still had a credit of 381 kWh. Heating for winter quickly used that up.  Oct 2021 I had 473 credits.  Not sure what happened in 2022.  I don't think I used much more power and weather seemed fine.  I might not have adjusted the solar arrays and/or they were dirty.  The statement showed 19kWh credit but their graph did.  Either it was pretty much zero.

That brings us to 2023.  The house seemed to use more power than expected so I bought a home energy monitoring device.  It monitors to the legs coming and then each circuit in the house.  The company is called Emporia https://www.emporiaenergy.com/ and their device is not that expensive compared to other brands, $164 for the device to monitor 16 circuits.  

In March I installed the device and it changed my entire perspective on how much power I was using and where it was going.  I find one phantom load which was the main goal.  I had a couple small LED bulbs in a fixture controlled by a dimmer.  It should have been using 7 watts at full power and I had it dimmed by 50%.  That circuit was pulling 67 watts instead of 3-7.  I turned the dimmer off completely.  I also had lights coming on in the evening, all LED that I didn't expect to use too much power.  They were all pulling the correct amount of power and individually the power draw wasn't anything I was concerned about.  But added all together and seeing it pull real time in the monitor caused me to change how I did thing.  I turned off some shop lights instead of just letting them run.  I adjusted my outdoor light timers and reduced how long they ran in the evenings.  

The end result is very noticeable in March.  
650 kWh used in 2020
811 kWh used in 2021
325kWh used in 2022
45 kWh used in 2023

I did change how I heated things in 2022 which greatly reduced how much power I used for heating.  Then in 2023 after reviewing all my circuits, turning off the dimmer that was using power, adjusting the timers for lights...my total usage was only 14% of the low value in 2022.  

Another way to look at it is on the solar credits I accumulated.  The best year was 473 kWh credit in October.  It is only September and I already have 939 kWhs of credits!





Another example of the Emporia device helping with power usage and showing me a problem that I was unaware of.  One evening I was monitoring the usage and started noticing this huge 1,500 watt, 12.5 amp, spike that was going on.   With nothing going on in the house that is a significant power draw that kept happening over and over.  It was too consistent to be wires arcing but possibly some thermal overload was being triggered and automatically reset.  I spent about 30 minutes checking things out inside the house before realizing the well pump outside is what kept turning on.  There must have been a small leak in a garden hose somewhere that it would bleed the pressure in the hose over the course of a minute and cause the pump to kick on and bring everything back up to pressure.





This is what the device looks like with the 16 circuit monitors.  I'm not sure that it paid for itself yet but it has been very insightful and has helped.  The graphs showing the green lines of solar production all come this device along with the ability to monitor if my used generated excess solar or used power on any given day.  If the device saved me from having to replace a burnt out shallow well pump then it has been worth it.  

One benefit of having Enphase microinverters and two separate adjustable arrays is I can use them to monitor my ideal tilt angle on a continuous basis.  I had set the horizontal array to what was ideal angle for the month and then set the vertical array at a slightly steeper angle.  I believe the angles were something like 32 degrees and 35 degrees.  What that shows is as sun moves into a lower path the horizontal array will start producing less than the vertical array.

That difference in production is starting to show now.  All the panels on the vertical array are producing the same or more than the highest producing panel in the horizontal array.




On 9/26/2023 when I first lowered the angle on the vertical array the vertical array had slightly lower production than the horizontal array.

@Kitties-with-Sigs

Here is the crew of kits from this year.  I haven't seen Fiona in about 2 weeks.  She's never been gone that long so I'm going to assume something has happened to her.  The male did come by once in the last week.  The one I call Little rarely comes by.  That leaves the 5 young ones from this year.  Usually one of them stays on the lower side of the terrace but last night he came up with the others.

The fox I call Little has shown up.  She has a very bad limp and cannot put any weight on one of her back legs.  I don't see any wounds so I'm not sure what happened.  If it isn't coyotes then I have a feeling someone is trapping along the creek.

Indeed.  My time with the foxes seems to be coming to an end. Original mama is gone, first generation daughter hurt bad, this years little ones that hung around mama have stopped showing up, and the two remaining foxes that I have been seeing were the ones that I would have expected to take off on their own this time of year.  

Tonight only 1 fox showed up and it would not let me get anywhere near it.  It was sitting in my stack of wood slabs, which is where Little ran to the other night.  But the fox took off if I got close, so I couldn't verify if she was limping.  I tossed a bunch of food out in the area.  If her leg doesn't heal the only way she makes it through winter is if she sticks around the house and I can feed her.

I hiked up and down a 1/4 mile of the creek and found nothing.  No signs of the foxes, no human laid traps, no signs of humans having any involvement in the area, no animal carcass of any kind.  Fiona's den was this side of the creek by the old mill.  The neighbors said they noticed the foxes disappeared but haven't seen any other activity, human or animal.  

Not sure what happened to Mini.  The last time I saw her was over a week ago.  She would come up near the house and wait for me to come out.  Same with Little and one of the others.  Now no foxes are waiting at the house or even by the area I usually feed them.

Something has happened, I just don't know what.

This is the only guy that showed up last night.  He is very standoffish and always has been.  He was about 75 feet away.  He looks fat but it is just how he was sitting.  The weather has been warm, hopefully more start to show up when it gets cold again.  

There is a definite lack of energy in my back yard now.  I used to pull up and there would be foxes sitting by the corner of the house or I would see multiple foxes running across the back yard.  I could shine a flashlight and see multiple sets of eyes looking at me from all over the yard.  Walking down to the picnic tables I would have foxes running behind me or around me.  Now....nothing.  The one that showed up last night didn't come out until after 15 minutes off calling for them.  

Saw two foxes tonight and several sets of eyes glowed elsewhere but did not come close.  

I took this video of the fox with the bad leg the other night but she was also out tonight.  I'm not sure if it is Little or Mini.  As time goes on she looks like Mini but some of the behaviors I seen had made me think it was little.  If she sticks around the house she will be safer and I can make sure she has food to eat.  

Anyone have ideas as to what type of injury this might be?

It’s impossible to figure out, but my guess it automobile. There are no marks/blood and it is groomed meaning it’s not excessively licking at it. So no broken skin, just internal.

Car is a possibility.  This one often comes and goes from south side of the property up near the house.  I'm not sure where it goes after that as most of the area becomes houses on smaller lots.  That main road sees constant traffic at 35mph or faster.  Not a lot of cover of places to hide compared to my back yard or along the creek.  I'm not sure why it travels the way it does.

There is another fox that seems to be hanging around it now.  The last 2 nights they have appeared together.  The second fox is from the same litter but one that has always been skittish and kept its distance.  It did not compete for food with the injured one and would let it eat first.  As the weather drops it will be interesting to see if the behavior remains the same.

Some good news and bad news.  Little and Mini both appeared tonight along with a 3rd fox that has hung around in the background.  The bad news is that Mini has the exact same limp on the exact same rear leg that Little does.  Mini should be a female and is the only one of this year's litter that will come closer to me.  

In the clip below the first fox is Little and the second fox is Mini.  Little is doing better and occasionally puts a slight amount of weight on the leg.  Mini's limp is not as bad as Little but is very similar.  Not likely that both got hit by a car in the exact same spot.  Now I'm leaning towards something human related.  But so far I have not found anything.  

I wonder if it is bad genetics, like hip dysplasia or something

Any updates on the house / property, other than the foxes?

They are a year apart in age.  Not very likely that they both would come down with the genetic problem within 2 weeks of each other.

I've been posting a lot about my solar system and the energy monitoring system.  I just adjusted my solar arrays to their near maximum angle for winter.  I have 2 different sites that provided the solar angles, they by almost 15 degrees.  I'm not sure which one is accurate yet but I will be running tests over the course of the next month as we hit the winter solstice, the short day of daylight and the sun sits the lowest/further south in the sky.

Other than that lots of fall clean up for the daughters October birthday and then the kids Halloween party.  I have about 40ft of useable flat space back with a decent covering of grass.  Clean up the yard, prepping for the party, the parties themselves, and clean up after the parties takes a decent amount of work/time.








This is what the back yard where the fire pit is now looked like when I bought the place.



Another picture from 2020.  This is how tight the seating area used to be once I removed all the brush from the picture above.




The birthday parties are generally tent camping sleep overs.




I have a 400 watt LED stadium light that I can use to turn 200 ft of my backyard into daylight when needed.  Ignore the mess closer to the house, other projects are still on going so things are sitting out.




The retaining wall is still an ongoing project.  Finally got leveled out the dirt a bit and backfilled it with gravel.  Still have to glue on all the caps, trying to figure out how to cut the inside corners to make them fit right.  There is still the massive walnut stump on the right that needs to be removed.  That's going to mess up that area pretty good.  There is also about 1,000 sq ft of brick pavers behind the tree and next to the house that need to be picked up and moved as well.

Projects that others want to use take priority.  Hence why the backyard firepit area was done first.




Also refinished a picnic table for the parties.

Before





After.  This is just the walnuts that dropped overnight.  I despise walnut trees in locations where there are people.  

With the sun heading its lowest angle across the sky I'm starting to get some shading on my panels from trees located to the south of the arrays.  Even with the leaves off and just the small branches at the top in the sun it is still cutting my power production by about 40%.

11:35am bottom right panels partially shaded.



12:35am max power across the array. The panels are 280 watt panels but the microinverters max out at 225 watts.  I'm experiencing some clipping, loss of power generation but not much.




My home energy monitor shows that 1/2 the array is producing 2.25 kW.  There is only about 20 minutes where it is at or close to this limit.  Outside of that the panels aren't producing more than 225 watts so the limit of the inverters does not matter.  Each green bar is a minute.  Where the bigger difference is would be from panel to panel.  The top panels get more sun and would be able to produce more than the lower panels.  I'm considering buying some 250 watt microinverters and replacing some of the 225 watt versions to see how much the panels might produce.  I still have 5 panels sitting inside that I could add the to array.  I would move the 225 watt versions to them and figure out some other type of mounting system.

I'm familiar with the steel snap traps.  That could have broken the leg but as someone mentioned there should have been excessive licking or the foot should be flopping a bit.  Something noticeable I would assume.  If the same trap got both I would have expected the little one to have a worse injury due to being smaller.  

There are 3 foxes that come every night now.  Little, Mini, and one that I just call Bro.  Both Mini and Bro seem to be the offspring of Little as I have seen them both approach Little and take food from her.  The two that were on the lower side of the retaining wall seemed to have moved on, which is what I expected.  That is what the foxes that were skittish and kept distance did last year.

The three foxes that show up are on edge all the time.  If they hear any type of noise in the brush they rush to investigate.  That would suggest an animal is what attacked them.  Something could have grabbed their rear leg and dislocated the hips or tore ligaments.  Someone mentioned a genetic condition like hip dysplasia but I'm thinking animal attack induced dislocation.  Mini is almost back to normal, being younger she should heal faster.  Little is getting better but still limps 80% of the time.  

I need to setup more trail cameras to see if I can capture video of any other animals coming around.

There are still 3 foxes that show up.  They are always alert and skittish.  They haven't been fond of the corner that I was feeding them in.  Now they come up towards the house to be fed and are a little more relaxed.

As for other projects I was working on the retaining wall caps up to Thanksgiving.  The long part of the wall is done and I have the sidewalls laid out.  The sidewalls are a pain as I need to hand split a cap and then custom cut a cap to get the right fit for each step down. There are 9 step downs on each side.  It isn't hard work but tedious and time consuming trying to split the caps with a hammer and chisel.  

After Thanksgiving I got sick and was out about 5 days and just as I was getting over that I did something that flared up my sciatic nerve and I'm still not able to walk without intense pain.  Updates will be few and far between for awhile.  My wife has taken on the task of feeding the foxes while I have been down.

Pretty sure this picture answers the question of what has happened to the foxes.  This picture was taken on the bridge in the back yard.  Anyone good at coyote hunting?



Enhanced pictured

Indeed.  Fina is gone and probably several others.  If I could walk well there would be a revenge plan in play already.  As it is I don't even have a good camera watching that area to start patterning the coyotes.  That will be coming at some point.

These 3 are still alive and doing as well as they can.  Little, Mini, and Bro.  Little still has a mild limp.  Sometimes she puts weight on her foot but sometimes she hops around on just 3.  

We are near the shortest day of the year.  Last month I adjusted my solar panels to pretty much their steepest angle.  The vertical array is about 45 degrees which according to the numbers I had at the time was the maximum angle that I would need. However, I found a second source of information that suggested 55-60 degrees is what the panels should set at.  I adjusted the horizontal array to 55 degrees.  

This picture makes it clear that the 55 degree angle is better for the few weeks around the shortest day of the year.  




What affects things more than angle is the sun is so low in the sky that tree tops shade some part of the arrays almost all day long.  At noon, almost every panel was shaded in some way.  Just the top 4 panels on the vertical array managed to get full sun.  

 


Then with winter it cloudy a lot more so there are many days where there is almost no solar produced because of it. This was the power production at noon on 12/17.

In my area solar production in the winter doesn't drop much due to the angle of the sun or the shorter days, it is the overcast gray winter weather!  I have 5.6 kw in panels but my microinverters will clip at 225 watts each giving me a max production of 4.5 kw.  The peak power produced was 4.46 kW so the panels and angle work just even in winter.  It is the 5 other days with clouds that killed my production.




The day chart for the whole house show how the production has dropped and the blue lines are days I used more power from the grid than the panels generated.




On a weekly average I'm just skimming by.  Down to only 116 watts of extra production the first week of January.  Hopefully we get some sunny days soon.

This winter is being brutal when it comes to the solar production and energy usage.  Another week of generating maybe 40% of the solar I should be due to clouds and snow.  I'm running an electric space heater in a small room and it can't keep up.  If this were an off grid type scenario I would be screwed.  The graph of the daily production for the week is at the bottom of the image.  Only 3 out 7 days really produced anything and one of those days was about 60% of what it can produce.  

My wife and I had talked about something like that when I first got the place.  A winery and bourbon tasting room would be easy enough to put together.  Unfortunately the house isn't ready for company.  There is a reason I don't post anything about the inside of the place.  I might be able to get a couple rooms in the front fixed up for such a thing but that would still be questionable.  There are a lot of items that need work is understating the issue by a lot.  Some of the issues are new, in the last 15 years, while others are problems 100 years old.

 I haven't ruled out something like that though.  Not sure how the place in the link you included is getting away with mini stills.  I bet they are running taxed product through it and just allow people to infuse different items in it get the flavors.  It is my understanding all the raw product must go through a specific locked measuring device to ensure the government gets their cut in the form of taxes.

One example of an issue I need to deal with is this header over a doorway.  The original opening was a back door from one of the additions added on to the original Craig structure.  The rot and termite damage could be 15 years old, 50 years old, or 100 years old.  Fixing the rotten wood is easy, figure out why it rotted and how termites got to it is the really big question that needs to be answered and resolved.  The only way to figure that out is by pulling that wall apart.  There is a lot of demo work that will need to be done before I can start repairing much less have something finished and ready for guests.  

January was brutal for power usage vs solar.  Blue lines are net loss days and how much power I needed to pull from the grid.  The green days are net positive and how much I pushed to the grid.

=Finally a good solar day today.  My micro-inverters max output is 225 watts each and for the last 2 hours I've had maxed out production.  I did buy some used 250 watt inverters to try.  I just need to figure out how to swap them out correctly and not confuse the system.  

The lack of sun in January really did a number of the solar production.  The February bill, which covers January, is about 50% higher than it was last year but I only had half the panels up at that time.  That means my 20 panels produced 1/4 of what 10 panels produced last year.  Cloudy with snow or rain is not good for solar production.  The good news is I had 1,700 kWhs in credits and the electricity cost was still covered by the solar.

 I was hoping for a year where every month was a negative usage but that didn't happen.

If someone is thinking about building a place off-grid then stuff like this needs to be factored in.  You will need some type of backup generator and should be equipped so you can run it for a month if need be.

I've been working on digging out a pair of stumps.  It is hard to tell the scale but the deepest part of the hole is about 5 ft deep.  Rumor has it that the tree grew where an outhouse was previously.  I found some oddly placed concrete slabs about 1 ft down which make no sense to be there.  One picture shows part of it but I pulled out 3 other sections from that area, almost like it was poured to cover something.  So far the only items I have found are glass bottles and some pieces of flat glass.  It got dark and I wasn't able to pull the stumps out of the hole and now it is raining.  Once the stumps are out I plan to dig further down to see if I find anything else.  

I bought 5 used 250 watt micro-inverters to test out and use to determine what my panels are capable of.  The micro-inverters that are capped at 225 are about to max out with the current angle of the panels and a clear day.  The 250 watt microinverters are just shy of their peak.  

Had a little bit of rock delivered to backfill the hole I dug removing the tree stumps and digging for Elijah's secret stash. The only buried items I found were a few older glass bottles.  There were rocks stacked the way they would for a structure foundation but so far minimal items have been found.  The rock is 17 tons of #2 recycled concrete.  The delivery fee cost was the same as the material.  

In addition to there being tree stumps in that area that part of the ground had a depression due to water run off and a decent slope to it.  The rock is not only to fill the hole but to also provide a stable base so I can extend parking or just a patio in that area.  Plus rock is cheaper than even fill dirt.  The dirt from the hole will be used to help smooth out a steep slope to get into the back yard.  

Yes, pretty much.  I stopped them a few feet shorter than I should have but it was still close enough that most went right in.  I didn't want to move 17 tons of those rocks with my little tractor so I made a clear path the driver.  That also gave me a reason to move a pile of 57 stone I had and put a fresh layer down in the driveway.  You can tell I'm not one of the arfcom millions given that my driveway is gravel and not concrete.

Rock delivery



Rocks all pushed in and you can also see the fresh 57s on the driveway. The entire area with the large stones was a depression and it was always wet.  I got stuck in it with my mower, truck, and even tractor.  That will never happen again now that there is stone all the way down to bedrock there.  I still need to finish cleaning up the area and figuring out what I want to do with the slope of the hill off to the right. It drops off pretty quick.




Half the #2 stone was larger than 2 inches, here are some of the worst ones.  That is 57 stone under them.   It was recycled concrete instead of limestone.  Price per ton was $12.50 going with recycled concrete vs $16.50 for limestone.  

I'll be putting 57s over it once I figure out what I'm going to do with the area.  I may use the area for parking if I need it.  Since the entire property is on a slope every inch of solid flat ground is valuable.  I may dig out a little bit more between the stone and the big pile of dirt/rock and then get more stone delivered.  The big mound of dirt is stuff I have collected over the years to fill in areas to flatten out the ground as well.

Those big rocks are one that I liberated from a hill that was being cut into.  I have rock walls that need to be repaired and I want to put in some stone steps.  It's also left overs from the stone wall that I rebuilt at the creek.  

Had my best solar day this past week.  The upgraded inverters finally got maxed out but the peak solar period lasts less than 2 hours. Having the 250 watt microinverters show that I don't have too much clipping and the 225 watt inverters on the 280 watt panels are a pretty good match.  If all the panels had the 250 watt inverters instead I could generate up to 1kWh more per day.  That's only 10 cents more power in a day.  

The tulips continue to come up but not in the quantity they initially did.  Not sure how many years it has been since I planted them but the number that comes up now is probably 30% of what I planted.  They have stayed at that level for the last several years.  






I've been working on smoothing out the yard, aerating it, and reseeding the grass in the back yard.  The area near the fire pit was doing ok but I decided to rework it along with the rest of the yard.  The rest of the ground was very compacted, had various types of random grasses, cover, and weeds, and the ground was bumpy with ruts from various vehicles tearing it up. I spent about $300 on grass seed and also added pelletized gypsum, fertilizer, and grub killer.  

I bought a tow behind plug aerator and then created a drag to bust up the plugs and hopefully smooth everything out.  I've aerated both sections multiples times, making them look like putting greens each time.










Looks like very little or thin grass right now.  Trucks would try to backup the hill and just spin and be dirt.  Whatever grass was there did not have a good root system or couldn't develop deep roots because the ground was so compacted.  Hopefully something decent will come in.  




Then I would run over them with this homemade contraption of a piece of chain-link fence with towing chain zigzagged over it.  It is great and busting up the plugs and any clumps.  It also does a good job at pulling any rocks to the surface so that I can easily pick them and remove them from the yard.  The dirt to the right of the drag is what the above areas look like after I go over it once or twice.