Additionally, my sister has hired a guy to clear 2 acres across the street for her house. Gotta clear it enough to do a PERC test for septic. I'll get photos as the work progresses.

Her plan at the moment is a walk in basement into the side of a hill. The basement will be flanked by 8ft wide storage areas that are covered by a concrete porch. So we've got to dig into the hill 10ft deep.

At this moment the plan is ICF walls EVERYWHERE... in my house the outside of the basement is 8" concrete blocks. But ICF straight blocks replace 6 CMU blocks. Once you pay $2.50 a block and pay a guy $2.50 to lay it, 6 x $5.00 is $30... and ICF is $25.

The main floor of the house may end up being from SuperFloorUSA. It's a steel joist system that will hold the concrete floor and not need shoring during the pour. I've mentioned several times before that my house costs $350 a year to heat and cool. With the additional thermal mass of a concrete floor in her house, she may end up with even less energy needed.

More about sis.... We are looking at building a pole shed like the one I recently built that will cover two shipping containers, likely 40ft wide and 50ft long. That way she can open the doors of the 40ft shipping container and still have a roof over it. They'll either run power to that pole shed or we'll do a temporary solar setup, haven't decided yet. She and her husband will move their camper up here to live on site while building.

Rural South Carolina hardware store.

Often when we calculate the payback time on a solar system, we look back at our bills. We need to look at the future cost avoidance. How much will power rates rise in the future?

Bobby the Bobcat is around....

Here's a handy corner umbrella holder. You should always have umbrellas available in case of tyrannical reign.

Welll.... we have to cut about an inch off the end of the metal siding and I got about 3/4 through my first cut of the day and the sheet metal nibbler died. I managed to complete the cut with sheet metal shears and got exactly ONE sheet up. Damn it... So I can go to horrible freight and buy their nibbler and a battery for $220 or wait til thursday for a 120v one to ship here. Guess we're waiting til next weekend to start again.

Additionally, my sister came up today to look at the work the man has done clearing 2 acres for her. We shot grade on the hill and found a place to locate the house that provides a 9ft elevation change from one end to the other.... we were hoping for 10ft, but 9 is close enough. Now she knows where septic can go and we start the SC DHEC perc test process.

EDIT: additional note... South Carolina *only* requires a septic to live on a property.

What would you do if your toilets stopped working and you had no running water for two weeks? How would you manage human waste, wash your hands, or deal with wastewater if the sewer system wasn't working either?

I thought this might be worth sharing.

Emergency Sanitation and Hygiene Inventory: Could Your Household Manage 14 Days Without Running Water or Working Toilets?

It covers emergency toilet options, safe waste storage, handwashing without running water, off-grid sanitation, and how to figure out whether your supplies would actually last 14 days.
There's also a free printable Emergency Sanitation and Hygiene Inventory Checklist to help you assess your own setup, along with links to other free preparedness guides and printable checklists covering food, drinking water, first aid, backup power, and emergency communications.

Hope some of you find it useful!

https://preppingcommunities.com/emergency-sanitation-and-hygiene-inventory/

The guy with shipping container conversion that we helped last week just got his victron gear mounted to the wall.

EDIT: This guy has 3 rows of panels, each with 16 panels. Each MPPT connects to a group of 8 panels. Since the Victron MPPTs are limited to 250vdc, that means that 8 panels are connected 4s2p configuration. All told it's about 21.6kw of panels. He has 10kw of multiplus inverters and off camera to the right, a 1.2kw Victron Phoenix and a Chinesium 3kw inverter. Suffice to say his batteries should be full about 2hours after sunrise.