u/HelpfulPuppydog

Saw maybe a dozen police cars, with more arriving as I went by, here. Any idea what was happening?

I have 2 separate solar systems on my home. a 3 kW system installed in 2010 and another 3 kW system installed in 2016. The 2016 system has a Fronius inverter, and has mostly been humming along, with the exception of replacing a datalogger board in 2021. This didn't cause us to lose any power generation. The 2010 system has 17 solar panels with Enphase microinverters, and the microinverters have been a headache from the get-go. I have replaced half of them under warranty over the years, with me having to pay for installation of the final set before the warranty expired last year. It has sometimes taken months to get replacement parts from Enphase. I now have 2 microinverters that are producing zero Watts and one that is barely producing. The Enphase system warranty has expired.

Is it worthwhile trying to find a contractor who can scrap the Enphase microinverters and tie all the solar panels into one inverter? (No, I'm not able to climb on my roof and DIY anything.) We are considering adding a battery, but got really high cost estimates last year to bring our Enphase inverters and combiner up to the models that would then allow a battery to be added. And that battery would only be served by the Enphase panels.

I understand that it would be another $$ commitment, and would likely never pencil out. Our local public-owned utility, SMUD, has some battery rebates available. I don't see us ever buying an EV.

Anyone with experience in this situation? Thanks.

I'm replacing a Ring doorbell and 4 old POE cameras and NVR at my home. My landscaping has grown out enough that a few of the cameras are just pointing at treetops. I'm going to run more CAT6 cable to different spots so I thought I'd re-do the entire config.

On prime day I bought the Duo 3, and I really like that camera. It covers the whole front of my home. I set it up to test it and it works just fine with the app. I tried to get it to work with my Avalonix NVR (2019 vintage) as that NVR works with ONVIF Amcrest cameras, but it would not consistently show video from the Duo 3. So I'm thinking to just buy a new NVR and cameras and hope everything works together.

I also bought the black POE doorbell, and plan to connect that to the new NVR.

Should I buy a bundle with cameras and NVR? Or an NVR and separate cameras? I can't really tell which cameras come in the bundles. Also, I saw in some of the 1-star reviews of Reo NVRs that they use on-screen keyboards. You can't plug in a keyboard? That's the thing I hate the most about my current NVR.

I have some old household extinguishers I am looking to replace, and see that ABC types are recommended everywhere. Our home is all electric, with the exception of a gas cook top. On the Home Depot site, someone asked a question earlier this year if the Kidde ABC extinguisher was good for a vehicle. The answer, from Kidde, was:

Hello. Yes, but the chemical used is designed to melt on hot surfaces which is how it smothers fires. It can corrode electronics and machinery such as a car engine. A BC class fire will not put out paper, wood, or trash fires but will put out electrical and liquid fuel fires and will be much less corrosive as it mainly uses baking soda and calcium carbonate.

So do I still want an ABC, given that it's going to wreck any hot metal (car engine, stove, oven) I use it on? I understand the fire will likely do more damage to a computer or cook top than will an extinguisher. I've seen one ABC and one BC being sold together as a set. But then I've got to know what is feeding the fire I'm trying to put out. I know I'm down a rabbit hole here, just trying to make a good decision.

https://preview.redd.it/3zzrmnu3gw8h1.jpg?width=3000&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=881a2e7a2a046e01843c3bae8b365da09e07f5b3

I'm trying to hang a flush mount LED ceiling light (took down a boob light fixture). There's not enough room to accommodate the house wiring and the fixture. Is this box just screwed to the joist? What should I be doing instead?

Edit: This is on the upper floor of a 2-story home, the attic is above it, but I think a plywood sheet walkway is there.

They're BAAAAACCCK!

OK, maybe not a zombie, but definitely close.

During COVID, we bought showy (?) milkweed from the Sacto native plant society. Planted it in a raised bed, cared for it, and it rarely bloomed. Never seemed to attract butterflies, which was it's whole reason for being. So this spring we decided to yank it out and plant some flowering shrubs. Dug down about 5 inches, pulled out any roots we could find, added a bunch of garden soil, redid the irrigation, and the flowering shrubs are doing well. Went out of town for a week and when we came back, there are milkweed stalks blasting up through the new plants. So we trim them down to ground level, and a week or so later, they're back. And healthier than ever.

I don't want to tear up the new bed to get rid of the milkweed. I can keep pruning it out. Is it worthwhile transplanting it? Any ideas on what to do next?

I have M365 personal (classic, no copilot), just me. I have shared a notebook of shopping lists with someone who has a MSFT account. If I update a notebook, adding to or modifying the list, it doesn't update for the other person. If she pulls the notebook page down you get the spinner like it's syncing, but it doesn't. It also does not throw an error message. If I sync to my Win10 box, I can see that it synced. Any ideas?