Installer Prices

Haha! Her father is an electrical engineer. I’ll just have him convince her of the practical benefits. Much easier than having that discussion myself!

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Nah, practicality does not enter the picture, when it comes to women and aesthetics, ask me, just went through two major bathroom renovations, i lost on ALL decisions

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We had a “discussion” after I put in some thin trucking down the corners of two rooms to house some cat6 I drew from the ceiling… with the recent renovations, all walls were cut open, inserted tubing for the cat6 and put network port 2x4s in the wall.

She is much happier. :sweat_smile:

*Edit, to be fair to my wife, she is actually very reasonable. I won a few decisions with our recent renovations. I got my 3m baksteen braai, got to decide on the patio roof as well as boma… 3 out of a very large number is still more than 0!

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That chimney would rather have spoiled the front view of the house - unfortunately!

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Haha for sure! The house looks great. I like the raised stoep with the planters (I assume) at the front door. The front door itself is really beautiful. Is it a type of oak?

No, it’s meranti with an oak stain… needs to be sanded and redone as it made these black marks.

We installed a new front door, also Meranti, recently, but the people that sanded it didn’t follow the grain of the wood (and potentially use a too coarse grit). So now it looks like it’s been scratched all over. Contractor will have to fix it up though… hopefully it ends up neat.

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You are a brave woman. I’m just doing a bathroom here and it’s giving my grey hair!

We have been doing our braai room, living room, dining room, tv room and outside patios (including floors throughout the house, repainting everything etc.) since October last year (with a 6 month old baby at the time)… Never again will I take on more than one area at a time. We technically had to continue now with the kitchen and a small bachelor’s flat/office but my nerves, patience, and not least of all, the funds I was planning to spend, are really at their respective ends!

If I had much hair left, they would be grey.

Here, hold my beer …

Our dressing room …

  1. Bedroom cupboard under that underfelt holding the plastic down, rained twice, cupboard survived.
  2. Goes to the main bedroom.
  3. Passage to the rest of the house
  4. We lived in a section of the house behind that wall whilst the rest of the house roof was removed for the slab.

Took 7 weeks from start to finish, the last tile was laid down on 25th Dec at 12:20 am, tiler refused to leave until he was done.

End result - done and dusted, the 2nd floor.

Building Kari’s way is so much simpler, alterations like a bathroom are just eugh!

Bonus for us was we worked from home, onsite 24/7, me being the project manager/owner builder with some seriously committed contractors/engineers/builder to make it all happen in that time frame, as every step was dependant on the previous one being done on time, or we would have gone into Feb.

Best time EVER! :wink:

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Looks good!

Some minor nitpicks:

  1. According to SANS 10142-1 section 6.1.12: “Where flexible cords are used, the strands of the conductors shall be protected to prevent the strands from being cut off in terminations.” I take that to mean that the PV cables should be terminated with bootlace ferrules.

  2. I would put the breakers before the fuses so it is possible to replace the fuses during daytime without having to worry about getting zapped.

  3. The draft 10142-1-2 regulations require “Each PV string shall be numbered on the cables and on the PV panel itself (e.g., on the panel on the roof, on the cable at the inverter and on the combiner box) by a suitable identification system.” I believe this may have been incorporated into the 2020 edition of SANS 10142-1 (I only have access to the 2017 edition).

Is that ACDC breaker rated for DC operation?

If you have multiple strings going to one MPPT you have to put the breaker after the Fuses. The stings needs to bee combined before the breaker so that you can isolate all of them with one breaker, unless you want to put a breaker on each string, but that becomes pretty expensive quickly.

It looks like there are two strings, each with its own breaker, going to a separate MPPT.

Great observation. I would replace that with a NOARK… ACDC breakers struggle to switch AC under load, I would not try and switch DC with them.

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Had a chuckle at this! The ACDC house brand breakers certainly don’t have a good reputation. I don’t know how much of this is deserved, but I won’t put any in my DB boards in order to find out.

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Sorry, I saw the 3 Red and 3 Black wires coming from the roof…

Dont get me started…

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Thanks for pointing out these snags! They will be coming back to finish the installation and label things.

I think I do need 2 Noarks. The ACDC breaker they can use for AC somewhere else. Do you need to break both the positive and negative or can one double pole switch break 2 strings?

I have 3 strings (4 panels, 2 panels and 2 panels). The 2 panel strings are combined in series. The combination needs to happen after the breakers as I want to be able to combine them in parallel and connect them to my off-grid inverter in case of a long power outage if needed.

I’d rather they use MC4 connectors to combine the strings so it’s easy to connect/disconnect (after switching the breaker off of course)

Please break both. Does your solis have Duel MPPT’s? If they have, then the combining must happen before the breaker. You should then have a breaker and a Surge Arrestor for each MPPT. The way the combined it seems correct, its just the ACDC breaker that should be replaced,

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