12 x 16 House

Started by Beavers, June 27, 2009, 09:15:45 PM

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kenhill

I have my generator on a shelf like you sitting on top of 2 foam mats.  Somehow it causes the whole generator shed to vibrate.  I can lift it up and the sound reduces dramatically.  SNot sure what to do.  I had left over insulation and completely covered the inside of the shed with insulation and it did not help.

ChugiakTinkerer

Back in the day of vinyl LP albums and turntables, there were many anti-vibration mats marketed that supposedly prevented needle skips by absorbing vibration.  Perhaps a mat of similar material could do that for the gennie?  I've seen some ant-fatigue mats designed for the workplace that could work perhaps.
My cabin build thread: Alaskan remote 16x28 1.5 story


Don_P

Cut a hole through the floor and set the gennie on a concrete pier isolated from the shed?

Beavers

Did the rubber mats seem to help at all Ken?  I never thought of doing that.  I was just planning on building a small enclosure just big enough to hold the generator.  I already have a vent installed in the shed wall and I got two small 12v fans to help with airflow around the generator.

kenhill

I have not run it without the mats.  One are the kind you snap together at a work bench and the other mat is an anti fatigue one.  They are stacked on top of one another.


Beavers

So we've been back living in the little house full time for about 6 months now.

I haven't gotten anything major accomplished to the house this summer.  I have gotten a lot done...just not big photo worthy projects.  ;D

I did get my flooring boards milled and the loft extended.  Extending the loft has added a lot of room.  Without that space living there full time would be much more difficult.
Did some more work on the outdoor dining area as well.  I finished screening it in and built a raised paneled screen door for it using only hand tools (other than cutting the groove for the panels).  It was my first attempt at door making and I was pretty happy with how it turned out.

When we lived in the house the first time we never had a refrigerator and relied on coolers and ice.  That was a major pain and not something we wanted to do again.  I got a Dometic propane fridge.  Right now it's living in the shed next to my battery bank.

As far as electricity goes we have learned that we really don't use very much.  I'm guessing about 90% of our electrical use is running fans in the summer.  We would usually run one box fan and a small oscillating fan at night.  10 hours of that would run my 4 gc batteries down to about 50%.  It would then take 3-4 hours of running the generator to recharge the batteries every evening.  The generator has turned out to be about the perfect size.  I can run the Iota, chargers for my Ryobi batteries, fans in the house, and the swimming pool pump all at the same time.

For lighting we have been using Ryobi LED lights.
https://www.homedepot.com/p/Ryobi-18-Volt-ONE-Cordless-LED-Workbench-Light-Tool-Only-P727/207017500

I can't say enough good things about these lights.  They are super bright and have very long battery life [cool]

Now that we aren't running the fans our only electrical use is charging batteries for the lights, and charging cell phones/laptop.  I'm only running the generator about 4 hours a week now. 
I would like to double the size of my battery bank next year.  It would be nice not to have run the generator every day. 

While it would be nice to get some solar and not have to run the generator I don't think it's worth the major cost and time it would take me get it set up.  There are a lot of higher priority things on my list.

I really wanted to get an addition done this summer but it just didn't happen.  Time and money were both lacking.  I know where I want to get with the house and shop and all the other things I want to do around the place.  At times it seems overwhelming to think of how much work there is to do.   Even though I didn't get any of the big projects done, I did get a lot stuff done that make the house much more livable and comfortable.

I'll try to get some photo's posted, but our internet is insanely slow and uploading photo's doesn't work very often.