you can get them put up post and pole with metal sides and rafters and metal roof with a vapor barrier insulation in the ceiling to keep the sweat away. for about 10 to 20 bucks a square foot. no floor. concrete is about 4 to 6 bucks a sq. foot which can be added just as easily later as its a slab poured after construction.

ground prep can be a few hundred dollars from a backhoe with bucket to leveled perfectly and graveled. i have a few of them from 25 by 36 to 30 by 80.
they are by no means theft resistant.
but unlike a container with 8 foot 4 inch wide you can have a real garage door and get into it with a car without a lot of trouble. and can easily run electric into it and put in lights

price on my sheet in front of me is a 24 by 30 for $13,000 included all site work if fairly level, 4in. concrete, one double wide garage door, one 36inch side door and one side window. and insulation vapor barrier in roof.

This is in Montana? No foundation below the frost line? Those buildings are going to start looking a bit rough after a decade.

on a slab. there are garages and houses all over the world in cold climates built on a slab.

here we have a pole building with a slab inside.

I know, but how long they last depends on the details. Although at <$20/sf I guess nobody's expecting a 50 year lifespan.

in dry country they last 100 plus years no problem. on the coasts the metal goes in about 40 years, although they coat it better nowadays so that may be extended.

the reason they are cheap is that the labor cost is small, and they are erected in a couple of days by a small crew.

I have these which is a 400 watt kit w/ everything you need all in the box. Fwiw if you order from them they'll accept a "best offer" of 5-10% less. They've been fine so far. The one caveat w/ hooking up solar panels to a charge controller is to follow the instructions and do it in the order they tell you. If you do it in the wrong order you'll fry the controller. I learned this the hard way 20 yrs ago and have come across plenty of people who made the same mistake.



In Missouri you can get a 30'x40'x10' pole barn erected by the Amish for $7399.00
Specs:
engineered trusses 5ft on center
treated 5x5 poles
#1 treated 2x6 bottom band, #2 or better 2x6 roof purlins!!! others charge extra!!!!
#2 or better 2x4 wall purlin 2' on center
double 2x10 top wrap
FULL 29 gauge 45yr warranty metal srewed on
1 10ft sliding door with cam latches
1 3ft entry door
RAT GUARD INCLUDED!!
other options include, insulation,windows,concrete slabs,wainscott,lein-to's and much more.
Built on your level site.

Solar panels arrived! 300 watt kit from Renogy with their "Wanderer" charge controller.

Does anyone offhand know of a guide to installing these? Captain, the small and incomplete charger instructions says to connect the battery to the charger and then connect the panels. What NOT TO DO: connect solar panels to the charger and then connect to the battery.

I think I got it .... but if anyone knows of a simple how-to on hooking these together ... otherwise I may just see what happens....

Well, I think it's working. Flashing green light for charging! ... of course I didn't get it done until after peak sun.

The cables used to connect the panels, the MC4 branch connectors, are incredibly awkward to clip in and move the panels around.

Thanks for everyone's help. I'm pretty excited to finally install them. I'll have to figure out how/where I really want them, but seems like the roof is the easiest.

These cable barely reach inside. May need to ponder that also ....

the panels need to be angled at your latitude angle for about the best charging.

Pics

nice panels. 300 w needs at least a 30 amp controller which i assume you got as its a kit.

this kit should charge and maintain three full sized auto deep cycle batteries.

if everything is perfect you should get 16.65 total amps charging. but since it never is you should expect about 7 amps. and your batteries are say 100 amp hour times three. so easy to see how long it takes to replenish. and you want to not let your batteries draw down less than half. or they severely start to lose life.
times of heavy usage your generator will be put to use.

State of Charge Sealed or Flooded Lead Acid Gel battery AGM battery
100% 12.70+ 12.85+ 12.80+
75% 12.40 12.65 12.60
50% 12.20 12.35 12.30
25% 12.00 12.00 12.00
0% 11.80 11.80 11.80

so use a volt meter and when batteries are not hooked to charger and at rest and the surface charge has worn off, if they read 12.2 volts they are as low as you should draw them down. at full charge they should be 12.6 to 12.7 volts. 12.5 is acceptable.
when hookup to the charger(panels) you should see 18 volts in the sun.

Minor nit but you shouldn't ever be seeing 18 volts on your meter unless it's hooked into the wires between the panels and the charge controller. Doing so wouldn't make much sense or be useful.

Volt meters built into charge controllers (his didn't come with one), show the voltage on the battery side of the controller and that voltage shouldn't ever read more than 13.8 volts (or 14.6 volts during equalization). If he hooks his after market voltage meter up it should never read more than 14.6 volts.

Voltage any higher than that starts to damage the battery and boils off the acid in flooded cell batteries. The charge controller's main job is to ensure that you never see 18 volts going into your batteries.

yes before the controller and you can see what the panels are putting out as i said.
at or after the battery you get to see its charge rate. if the charger is asleep then you can see the battery charge/status at rest.

Solar panels appear to be working as they should, though I don't really know how much energy they're generating.

Is anyone here into knives? I recently bought an Opinel after seeing one on IG. Can't believe I'd never heard of it. Made in France, they are very cheap and simple. Not for heavy duty use, but they're good at a picnic.

Apparently there are millions of these around. I bought one new on Amazon for $15 but have been buying others on ebay hoping to get cheaper. Then cutting down the place reshaping the handles and finishing them. Here's one example.

Before:


After:




It's a lot of fun and pretty easy, and you get to dremel off a chunk of steel which is always cool....

What are you doing to and with those knives and why?

touch your volr meter probes to the solar panel wires and if you get 18v. thats great then touch your battery terminals with the panels hooked up and should have around 13.4 going in as its past your regulator. then all is good. let there be light.

Cutting the blade down, reshaping the handles, staining and then doing a coat of poly. No real purpose. I put one on ebay and I've got another half dozen sitting around. Just kinda fun.

My voltmeter --all of them-- has so many settings I don't even know where to begin. I could spend all day watching YouTube videos on using it.

I'm thinking about doing a ground-mount installation instead of on the roof, but I'm worried line-loss would exceed any benefit from better placement. Does anyone know about how much I'd lose /foot with 10 gauge wire?

Way back I asked GoalZero this question and with their system they estimated about 1%/foot which seemed too much, so I worked on moving the panels as close to the charger as possible.

It's about 100 feet to where I'm thinking about, basically building them on top of the wood pile/shed.

A few more of the knife projects. The larger blade is the "Old Hickory." You can buy them in 2 packs on Amazon for $22. Carbon steel blade, absolutely basic. I took it in to the restaurant the other day to play around with.

those old ontario blades are nice carbon steel. they do rust. i have a bunch of them for things. the french knife is cool. ive had one for years but never even cut something with it.

you best stick with low voltage wire for the panels and get them close to the usage spot.

I don't know exactly what your loss would be but it'd be very substantial for a run that long. You definitely want to stay under 40' total between panels and battery bank. The general rule on boats is any boat over 50'-55' has to have a higher voltage (24 or 48v) dc system because the loss in a 12 v system is too great in wiring run that far. Given that the batteries are never in the very end of the boat means never running anything 12v more than about 40'-45' max and the longer the run the larger gauge wire you'll need.

It looks like your kit came w/ 20' of cable plus an 8' tray cable. You really shouldn't be adding any more wire. 28' from the battery bank is a long way.
I'm sure they took this into account when designing the system and wiring to give you the maximum flexibility w/o losing capacity.

#10 awg has 1.29 ohms per thousand feet. (at 75 deg C - which is hot, but the table in the NEC lists that because it a common max temp. rating)

You're rated at 300 watts at 18 volts, but you'll rarely have that much power, so say 10 amps. I = P/E

P = I^2 * R
= 100 * .00129 = .129 watts of loss per foot. So, I think it's more like half a percent per foot.

When like designers design PV systems they usually go for something like 2% loss for wire runs total. At 20 feet with #10 you're looking at a pretty severe power loss. Even at 20 feet I'd probably bump that up to #6 AWG which has .051 ohm per thousand feet.

But, yeah, shorter distances are always better and if not you need fatter wire or you just have more loss.