Archive for May, 2009

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Time lapse of the pool construction

May 26, 2009

I cleaned up the webcam data of the pool construction and created a time lapse of it.

Pool by:  Stone Creek Custom Pools,  Fort Worth Tx.

Dave Betts of Fort Worth Texas based Stone Creek Custom Pools started work with excavation back in Oct 2008 and completed it 5weeks later.  We gave him our ideas and rough drawings of what we were looking for. After some changes and touring 3 other pools to see what we wanted in the Grotto and possible slide we finally had a 3D plan ready.  After a  few short days waiting on the city permit we started digging which was less than a day.  All the contractors were very professional and one even worked over time to beat some approching rains.  Laurie had her 1st pool also done by Dave Betts back in 2005 which came out great so we already had a very comfortable feeling working with Dave and costs on this project.  On New Years day the pool was filled and with some chemicals to clear up water everything worked right from day 1.

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1Megawatt Generated !!

May 16, 2009

In the last couple days, during weeks of cloudy days and spring rains, the sun broke between the clouds enough to push our solar pv system over 1 Megawatt of generated power!!!  The Xantrex system is reporting the the lifetime statistics – Energy produced is 1.022MWh and some 623.6lbs of CO2 Avoided in under 3 months time.  Altho nobody sees CO2 its more of the fact that we were that independant in generating our own power. Even on a fully cloudy day the system will produce 200-1000watts which is suprising.  So dont let anyone tell you that you need full sun and anything less gets you nothing.

Our local power provider, TXU on the other hand is still dragging along with any sort of billing package allow for the excess power that HAS been pushed back into the grid.  Each email and phone call for the last 2months comes back with, give us a couple more weeks.  Last month I change our daylight power loads to be the heaviest with the pool running during daylight hours as to not push to much excess back to the grid for now.

The landscaping has already been growing with the warmer days pushing 90 and all the rain.  The Geo-thermal A/C fills the underground reclamation tanks enough that we water half the lot in the mornings and by the evening the rest of the property.  Depending how the home reacts to the hot summer the tanks might fill even quicker but with the foam insulation we can already tell the house doesnt loose much to the outside elements.  By the end of next week I should also have a report back on the air-quality of the inside that our HVAC company is sampling with a small in home monitor.  We arent expecting anything suprising but we want to make sure the home has enough fresh air.