Well I finally quit talking about it and started the little aeration project up on the mountain. We worked on it so hard we barely ate some days and definitely didn't take as many pics as I should have. The project took us a solid 4 weeks of working pretty much every single day.

We had to have a place to put all the solar components so we built our first ICF building. A couple buddies helped me stack all the styrofoam and put the rebar in place. 8" thick concrete core. 18 yards of concrete total in the walls alone. 2 by 12s with spray foam for the roof. Inside dimensions of approximately 10 by 16. I say approximately because we had to move the walls around on the footer to get the embedded vertical rebar centered in the styrofoam walls. We made the footer 24" wide just so we would have some cushion for something like this and because I like overkill.

A couple buddies helped me out with the project. The guy in the sunglasses helped us for 3-4 days.


None of my projects would have ever been possible without this guy!


More stacking...




Rain couldn't stop us from stacking!


Finally we got it ready for concrete. Well, plus a ton of "mountain bracing" that I wish I had gotten a pic of. We basically cut a bunch of aspen poles to brace it with.


So we called in the pump truck. Of course it rained the day before and he got stuck.... The driver was ready to say forget it, no way he could make it up there. The little Cat skid steer was just enough to help drag him up the rest of the way. Wish I had a pic of that too! The driver was GREAT and didn't mind giving some guidance along the way to a first time ICF'er.




On to the solar pole mount. It is a MT Solar 9 panel pole mount. IMO, the heaviest duty one you can get. MT Solar recommended an 8" pipe in a 4'x4'x5' hole with ~3 yards of concrete to withstand 90mph winds. I did a 10" pipe in a 5'x5'x6' hole with ~6 yards of concrete. Then we filled the 10" pipe with concrete as well. Did I mention I like over kill?

saddled the pipe and welded some 4" drill steel to the bottom to keep the snow from eventually shoving the pipe through the concrete (sounds crazy but it happens all the time up there).


Holding a 17' long 10" pipe plumb while you pour concrete is no easy task!


Some pics of the MT Solar mount and my son helping me tighten bolts. This thing is no joke! I am very impressed! Extremely heavy duty and my Grandmother could adjust the tilt. You leave the center panel out, use the chain hoist to raise the array and lock it down. Then just install the last panel in the hole. Worked just like they showed it on youtube!









EDIT: Spelling

All panels installed. Nine 340watt Solar World panels. 3,060 watts.





We knew we weren't going to get perfect sun in that spot due to some trees that need to go. The trees were going to be gone eventually anyway so we went ahead and put it there. Then I noticed the panels were completely shaded by 3:00. Couldn't have that so we sped up the tree removal.



Luckily, my buddy is the master of clean up on the skid steer.







Not too bad looking now. All seeded with Sainfoin and Durana clover.

Every year as we are bringing up equipment, we pass tons of big boulders so we will grab them and bring them on up to use in the lake or around the cabin. This is what happens when my buddy is backing up and forgets where he temporarily dropped one of the new additions!


On to the electronics....

Wiring up electricity is not my specialty to say the least so I paid a little extra and got my "epanel" prewired. After that it was pretty much plug and play. So easy even a caveman, me, could do it.



Magnum 4400 watt split phase inverter with a midnight solar classic 200 charge controller. All pre assembled as part of the "epanel".


Inverter/epanel/charge controller combo on the left. Sub panel in the middle and a heavy duty, electronic 230v timer on the right.


Timer


690 amp hour, 48V battery bank. We made all the battery cables ourselves out of 2/0 welding cable. It was a little scary making the final connections on this bad boy. It just felt like I was hooking up jumper cables backwards or something. My buddy got way back and I just kind of turned my face the other direction. Luckily I didn't screw anything up!



Wiring needs to be cleaned up but here it is currently.



EDIT: Spelling

A few snapshots of the numbers we are making.

Our highest output so far, but I think we will beat it. The altitude actually allows us to produce MORE than the panels are rated for! Finally, ONE advantage to being on the mountain!


Our best overall day so far, over 10KWH, but I think we will beat it too.


And here is what we are doing in the lake. Trenched in a 750' run of 1" airline from the solar shed to the lake. Built a manifold with 10 valves to regulate Summer/Winter diffusers. Those are Vertex diffusers. A Quad, a Dual and a single. I never got to measure exact depths, but the Quad station is in close to 20' of water. The dual is in 16'+ and the single is in 8'+. They are all in the deep end of the lake because I wanted to attack the biggest problem first. I have a 1HP motor running a Gast 1550 so we are making somewhere around 10CFM. Trying to start out conservatively until I see what the system can handle so the pump is only running 6 hours per day right now. So far it seems the system is in float the entire time the pump is running!




I need to install some more diffusers and especially some shallow ones for Winter. I just ran out of sinking line. I will swap over to a 1/3HP motor for Winter so I can easily extend the run times.

EDIT:Added the video

Dang!!!!! That WAS a project, and it looks great! You guys worked your butts off didn't ya?

This winter, it would be interesting to see how the solar panels are able to shed the snow.....

I had a TON of help from POND BOSS on this deal.

Highflyer spent a lot of time walking me through the stone ages. Picking components, sizing the system and helping me not be scared to tackle it. He even came out and looked everything over and helped me answer lots of questions about the lake!

Esshup has talked to me about this a ton over the years as well. Wouldn't buy my stuff from anyone else! He also reassured me to push through when I turned the aeration on and some Incredible Hulk looking algae started forming!

Phil from Michigan has talked to me about this for years now and is hopefully gonna design me a 3phase motor setup for this Winter! A genius when it comes to anything electrical and IMO a big loss to PB!

Bill Cody has also answered tons of questions about my place over the years.

Can't say thank you enough to these folks and all the others that have provided input as well! I would not be where I am at with my lake if it wasn't for Pond Boss.

Thanks Scott!

Images like this give me a good bit of confidence. As you can see anything that faces South just does not hold snow. That little generator shed in the pic doesn't "shed" the snow. There is no pile up under it. Actually, you can see where the snow in a ring around the base of the shed has melted due to the shed putting off heat gained from the sun. It's the same with the boulder in the background. The sun is so intense up there it doesn't take much and the snow melts. The MT Solar mount will let me tilt the panels just a hair shy of totally vertical. I won't put them there but they will be extremely steep. When tilted up like that the bottom of the panels is still 7' off the ground. That combined with them being black and the 10" black steel pipe under them is gonna kill the snow, IMO.

That's a cool picture!!

I was just going to ask you about a 3 phase compressor and a PLC that a little bird told me about....

Thanks again! I am crossing my fingers for that! A 1/3HP rig that would only draw 1 amp would be the Silver Bullet for the Winter out there! We could probably come real close to running that 24/7.

I think so! Plug n play will make it easy to install.

Well deserved Hell Ya!

I can't wait for the Jan 18 pics!

Side note, I would redo that cabling. But nicely done!

Amazing! What a man will do to raise fish in his own pond, I love it

Incredible! Certainly makes a guy appreciate the limitations of his own brain.

Great project and great photo documentation for others to get ideas. I am anxious to see how the solar aeration performs for you during Colorado's winter conditions.

Great stuff!

This would be perfect for an article in the magazine.

WOW! That is really, really impressive... You have exemplified, Where there is a will there is a way.

Thanks everyone! It has definitely been an adventure. I am looking forward to seeing what the DO data looks like when I get out there in September. Hoping for a big improvement. After 4 years of failure, I am ready for a win!

An article would be very fun. I would want Highflyer to help me with it.

awesome project wbufferjr...great pics...thanks for sharing

(headed to Telluride this weekend, cant wait for the Colo temps)

Very impressive.
Could make a nice article, like Chris says.

Thank you Mr. Lusk! We will make it happen!

ZEP - you will be very close to our place. You should find a reason to come back that way in late September and stop by! I'll be back out there for archery Elk season and to collect a bunch of data. Also have a list of loose ends to finish up to prepare for Winter.

I was thinking it would be fun to have a Pond Boss get together at the cabin after archery season in September 2018. For all the folks that have helped, been interested over the last couple years or maybe looking to do their own system.

Just a quick update. I went out to the cabin for two weeks last month. Fixed the battery cables and went through the logs. Our high power was pretty interesting. Had a high of 4,024 watts later in the trip but didn't get a picture of that for some reason. Panels are only rated for 3,105 watts. While running the 1HP compressor for 8 hours per day, I only had 4 days since the end of July where the system did not go into float (basically trickle charge).Batteries did not appear to have used any water at all.

Sounds to me like you are on the way to good aeration! Congrats on sticking it out all these years. This may just be the answer you want for that persistent winterkill problem that has plagued you.

Roger

Thanks Roger! I sure hope this solves the problem. I am trying to look on the bright side.... IF all the fish still die, at least I don't have to deal with a generator to run the cabin anymore! Haha

You got it my friend!

Figured I'd update this thread with my solar wins and losses.

Here was one of my losses from 2017/2018 Winter. This was a gut punch for sure. Mother Nature enjoys kicking my butt.


Summer 2018 I got the array all repaired and decided I would not give Mother Nature another chance. We took out over 30 Aspen trees that any chance at all to hit the array. The very last tree we cut fell on the newly repaired array. That was definitely Mother Nature Roshambo'ing me. No pics were taken of that.

Besides the twice smashed array everything has worked EXTREMELY well. The system has produced substantially more power than I have needed to run the aeration AND run the cabin during our Summer vacations. The batteries have been so lightly used they have needed very little maintenance. They are flooded lead acid batteries so by maintenance I mean adding water. They have gone half the year at a time and only need a small amount of water added. In order to further protect the batteries, the system is designed to cut off when the batteries are drawn down to ~60%. The system will automatically come back online once battery voltage has recharged back to an acceptable level. We have only seen the system drawn down to that point once or possibly twice I cannot recall for sure.

Heading into Winter 2018/2019 with the solar part of the system working better than ever.

Wow! You have suffered through some damages. Glad to hear it is all up and running again and working well. I bet that solar system really works nice with your cabin.

Great job!

Thanks John! It is a massive improvement for the cabin. No more drone of a generator when you need power. No more late night or freezing cold fill ups for the generator either! Not to mention the first Winter in the history of the cabin that fish have survived! Hoping for two in a row this Winter!

It should be better this time around! What is the plan for the setup of diffusers and each pump that runs them? Did you get all the lines running downhill so no condensation issues this year?

So excited for you!

send a game camera shot, you have to have a few inches of ice already?

Canyon - I have a quad and dual vertex running in ~20' of water and that's it for solar powered aeration. I have a 1/2HP Thomas 2660 pushing those for 9.5 hours per day. We did get the lines rerouted and straightened out. Hopefully no condensation issues!

Just got more snow today. I was going to update the other thread with today's pic.

You have a beautiful place and congrats for your project working so well!! What state is your lake and cabin in??

Thanks Flame! We are in CO.

wbjr:

pictures in the 8-8-17 post are missing (black X)and some of the subsequent posts.

Photobucket is back online so is there a way you can find out why those pictures are not showing but the other photos in the same post are showing?

Canyon - I posted all those pics on 8/8/17. They are all hosted by Imgur and they are showing up fine for me right now. Not sure why they aren't working for you???

If it is working on your end then we are fine. I have noticed that browsers that have 'safe search' enabled (like my work network has) that the safe search tries to filter out image search. I have had it before that some images on imgur are considered unsafe and are filtered out by the safe search.

when I go to the box with a x and look at properties, grab the link on imgur and then go to another tab in my browser and paste that link then I can pull up the picture just fine. So your pictures are fine, problem must be on our filter system at work.

Sorry about false alarm and keep posting those awesome pictures

10-4

Thanks Canyon!

Unbelievable project, congrats!