I've mentioned this before but it's worth mentioning again. A guy around here built a butlers pantry on the back side of the kitchen. He super insulated the room and put the heatpump water heater inside it. The heatpump water heater makes hot water and exhausts cool air as if it was a small airconditioner. So the pantry off his kitchen stays about 60F 12C. The cool air is a free byproduct of taking showers and using hot water.

Additionally, he made the access door to the butler pantry a hidden door. This shelf is the access to the pantry

Thanks @masterbrains

Great tip for your speed square as a saw guide.

Ended up going to neighbor's house to help him with wrapping up his solar project. Finalized the wiring in the shipping container that is his mech room... we have a 50amp feeder from his meter base to the mech room that's fed from utility for emergency use, and we have a 100amp feeder going back to his house.

Modified his panel box today to have a transfer switch, took about 30-45 minutes to install some new 4/0 alumumim SE rated cable... that stuff is stiff. So now his house has a transfer swtich to go between solar inverter power and utility grid.

Carried his four 16kwh batteries out to the mech room and got his inverters powered on. They are not programmed to be split phase YET but they did power on and make 120v each.

While I was finalizing the wiring inside the mech room, he was pulling 10AWG THHN in conduits going to 6 columns of solar panels. Each column is 4 panels in series on one face of his roof and 4 panels in series on the other face of the roof. Those panels are combined to make a 4s2p set of panels an there are 6 sets of these. He's getting the wires into the mech room tonight.

Batteries we put in service today. 64kwh.

Two different times now... we"ve found this little heifer INSIDE the hay ring. It cracks me up every time.  😂 She's always looking at me like.. "Hey... can you help me out here?" She has no problem finding her way IN but seems completely at a loss on how to get back out. Lol. She's a sweet little Jersey though. I pick the ring up and she walks out and lives me a couple of times, as if to say "thank you" and moves on to grazing.

DIY track saw

We honestly deserve the upcoming collapse 😔

We got a skid steer adapter for our older tractor. Just installed it yesterday, took about 20 minutes. Easy Peasy. Now to take the pin mounted bucket to a welder to get the skid steer plate welded on.

That tractro has the 3rd function on the loader, so now I can use a grapple with it, in addition to the hay spear and articulated bucket.

Went over to the solar project's house last night. He's got two 10000va victron quattros and we had left them idling all night the night before. Each one pulls 125w at idle, so 250w will heat up a 8x8 room in a shipping container pretty damn good. He had 3" of open cell foam sprayed on all 6 walls of that room. He has ZERO worry about batteries getting too cold in winter. All jokes aside, my inverters are in the outer ring of my basement so I had no idea inverters would warm up a small space so much.

Last night I programmed his inverters to be split phase and programmed them to charge from grid when battery is low. To talk to the inverters you need their MK3 USB-C adapter and it connected right to my phone. Their software walked me right thru setting up and at the end offered firmware update. BOOM done.

The MPPT chargers connect by bluetooth, same, it said firmware update? BOOM done.

As I connected inverters, MPPT, shunt to their cerbo controller things just populated on the screen. BOOM done.

Sure, these systems are complex and intimidating... but the setup is the best I've ever seen. Quite refreshing. Highly recommended.

I can't believe what I'm seeing... it's 360 days until Christmas and people already have all their Christmas lights up.

Food for thought for ICF houses. You can do the floor for the 2nd floor and/or the roof with litedeck ICF blocks. These don't have to be mcmansions... they just make a really well insulated house. Any size house. ICF is the trifecta.... air tight, insulation and thermal mass.