u/Subject_Night2422

Hello team,

Looking for real experiences from fellow off griders.

I currently live fully off grid, septic tank and disposal field, rain water, solar. I live in a tiny home with 4.8kWh set of panels and about 12kWh set of batteries. Hot water and cooking is gas. I have everything else running as a normal house. Normal size fridge, tv, smart speakers, smart lights, computers, etc.

Now, I’m about to build a 3bdroom house and I a list of things I’d like to do.

First thing is I want to ditch gas and go full electric so I will need to upgrade the solar as the current will be moved to be used with the tiny home as a rental. I can get about 50 panels as a set of 30 and at least another set of 20 which I’m lowballing here as I need to calculate roof space for the new build. The 20 set would be mounted on the house roof and be used as primary. The 30 set would be mounted as secondary and feed the primary if it was mains power. I’d also add two sets of batteries.

Now to the questions. If you have experience with those below I’d love to hear from you,

- Heat pump hot water. I like the idea of the outside unit and sounds like I could make it work with about 4 panels (2kW) during the day.

- Cooktop. I think this is a power hunger but I don’t spend the day cooking so should be able to live with it. My current oven is electric and I can use whenever I need without issues unless we’re in the deeps of winter.

- I’m really thinking of heated floor in the bathroom. Would you have an idea of how much power it uses?

Please highlight anything else I could be missing. Anything you can think would be great as it could be the case you don’t know what you don’t know.

TIA, team.
Appreciate it.

Posted the other day about wet weather gear.

Just a follow up post as today started drizzly and that is usually enough for me to bail the ride and take the bus but last time wasn’t nearly as bad so I was a bit gutted I didn’t ride. Today I bit the bullet and just rode the bike. Turned out pretty wet but it wasn’t cold. Based on the lack of replies and the shared experience of the few looks like it’s just what it is.

My old fox mtb jacket held for a bit but it wasn’t too bad. Maybe I will just harden up and carry on with what I have.

So I should I do?

Hey team,

I need a bit of help. Struggling a little bit here. I got a 8gb PI5 and in the heat of the moment I end up getting the 26 TOPS AI hat. Printed a case and all but the project I abandoned the project I was gonna use the PI and now I have this guy sitting here with the AI hat asking for some work.

What sort of project would you guys suggest? I have a look at the internet for some inspiration but there was nothing that really caught my eye.

All right, team,

A bit of a discussion here outside crazy AI vibe coding time machines in Perl and just a general peasant user living his life using AI.

I have a Claude subscription that I use for coding. No troubles at all. I use sonnet 4.6 for pretty much everything and get great results out of it and so on. As I have the subscription I try to use to general life things like as an assistant to organize my day etc etc. I also use the free version of ChatGPT for general chatting about general things, how does this work, what should I do about that, how can we go about those type chats.

So, here is the thing, I find ChatGPT a lot better for that kind of life things to the point I’m considering pay for the sub for support and get a bit more out of it and leave Claude just for coding. Claude is more robotic and the chats don’t feel nearly as immersive as the ones I get from gpt.

Is that a misled feeling? I understand the training for models can be different and all that but just trying to gauge here.

TIA 🤖

Hey team,

“You don’t know what you don’t know” situation here.

I have a bench that has a 20mm ply top about 1800mm long x 600mm deep that I’m planning to router a set of T-tracks across the long way. While looking for the T-tracks I found dog nuts(?!?) that I can drill and add those. Good finding as I didn’t know about them but, beyond T-tracks and dog nuts,

what are other sort of accessories I could look into it?

TIA

Hey team,

Let’s ask you something. Got a M/L checkpoint al5 lately and loving the ride. Really enjoying my 10km commute to work each way and the odd weekend ride. When I got the bike I was in between the al5 and the checkpoint+ SL5. Mostly because I wanted to go further and see more.

Discussions around with friends and I decided for the mechanical. Last week I went to the shop and had a chance to try a M SL5. I really enjoyed the subtle touch of the motor and how smooth it was. I’m quite drawn to the idea of getting the bike but that model in brown is pretty rare here atm the moment and the shop has the M size.

So, with the background in place,

How much diff you think I’d notice from the M to M/L?

When I tried those two sizes in the shop I didn’t notice much difference but the shop chap said the M/L looked better.

What’s your take?

TIA

Hey team. Had a NBD the other day that I didn’t post here was it’s a real basic one. Got a trek checkpoint alr5. Loving the bike.

I’ve been a mtb for years but lately I’ve been enjoying the fast rolling tracks more than the tech ones. Also got a simple Merida sculptura 100 for the odd city cruise a few years back and love how light they are and how smooth the ride is. Decided to get the checkpoint so I could explore more and it’s been great but I have a quick question.

I’ve been an aluminum bike guy for forever and know I can put them to good use without concerns. The checkpoint is aluminum but the fork is carbon. I see some guys on IG and YT riding on tracks and going for it. How much can I do with my carbon fork?

The other day I put a little detour through a nice rolling track that I’d full send with my full suspension but wasn’t sure if I could just make it go with the checkpoint.

TIA

Background story… driving back to Wellington from Auckland last weekend we had quite a bit of time to kill and got to the topic working 4 days and how to maximize that. As we get a few Friday and Mondayrized holidays I argued that if I was paid for 4 days and holidays were a right then I was entitled to take Thursday off on top of my Friday already off.

Would an employee have legal grounds for that conversation?

Hello,

What’s the deal with the rock collection in the Hutt River?

I want to build a small garden feature and need a few but not many. I looked online but didn’t really land on anything very clear.

TIA

Hello team,

Is there a way to search for caches besides the browsing way using the app or the website?

Like, I have some series around my area that are a bit of a mix of traditional and mystery caches sometimes involving multis as well. Some of the guys will make a public list which is pretty handy to list the caches, some are described in the description but some are just lost in the wild so what I’m looking for is to search by name for example. Haven’t seen a way to do that but I could have missed that too.

TIA