Recall we buried the 8awg rubberized feed wire from barn to subpanel a month or so ago.

Yesterday I finished rewiring the subpanel and finally got to connect the feed wire. Went pretty fast.

The voltage drop from barn to panel went from 2 whole volts to about 7/10 of a volt. That’s a great success.

Here’s the before

and the after

A bit more professional and ‘beefy’, which accounts for some of the efficiency. Also circuit breakers make it easier to turn a pump on and off - don’t need a screwdriver any more.

We had the aerator on a low voltage disconnect (upper left of before pic), so if a shady day came around and the batteries drained, the waterfall and filters kept working longer.

That’s no longer necessary. With 4 batteries and thicker wiring and proper busses, there’s enough power to run all 3 pumps all the time. In fact we learned this a while ago when i made a mistake and the three pumps ran 6 hours on battery! We used to never get more than 30-45 minutes doing a sunny day test with the panels off. A lot of that is due to the much thicker wires on the batteries (2awg vs 12) and the distribution panel (8 vs 12), and that 2 of the solar panels don’t goof off any more.

Because the rewire went so fast, I had time to start distributing the 40 yards of mulch. Oh wait, did I say we got 20 yards? Well we did, through the free website service. Then the local guy who delivered it called me directly and asked if we could use more, so we got a second 20 yard load. We’re letting neighbors take all they need.

When there’s time (HA!) I’ll still try to write up the entire evolution of the distribution panel with pics because the progression is kind of interesting.