2015 Christmas Reality

On the way to becoming a solar user, we needed to remove a maple tree that was in our south-east sector and greatly affected the sunlight that fell on the top of our roof.  The tree was 75' tall and had three trunks, and many exposed roots that our John Deere tractor didn't enjoy running over.  The stump is showing in the second image, but what isn't available is the size or a person to lay across the trunk to show its full size.  This trunk will be cut up on another day by the same folks who took the tree out.

When the tree was completely cut down, all the limbs (wood) were place in an access area for our neighbors' son to load into his pickup truck.  He made 2 loads on Tuesday and 2 more loads last night.  I heard he has split all the wood and estimates a total of 4 cords.

Also the roof is being renewed in the areas where the solar panels will be placed. Two hearty souls are climbing the ladders and taking off the old roof and replacing with new 50 yr shingles as I write this.

I suppose this is a Christmas present to us.  We use electricity to heat our home along with gas heaters in the basement and camera room that I installed years ago.  Some of our neighbors are seeing as much as 80% off of their electric bill in the summer time, and not quite as much in the winter when the sun is behind the clouds .  We hope to judge the performance of the few panels (14) we are installing before we add more in the spring.
This past summer we visited a nearby home that had 28 panels installed.  We noticed that the electric meter on the side of the house was running backwards.  The owner smiled, and said he hasn't paid an electric bill for two months. We also noticed that he had a swimming pool and hot tub.  
This is the feeling we would like to have... watching the electric meter run backwards!


working side by side for the first hour