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By kimquirk, on August 30th, 2010
Pole Mount PV
We’ve had a pretty good summer for solar photovoltaic (PV) installations in the Upper Valley of NH/VT. A typical PV system consists of a number of solar panels and an Inverter to change the DC (direct current) from the panels to AC (alternating current) which is used in our homes.
Often the [...]
By kimquirk, on August 19th, 2010
You can plan what you are going to do next weekend, next month and even years into the future…but life sometimes takes a turn that wasn’t in the plan… as it did for my family last week when my husband, Kent, had a mild stroke.
It was a ’small’ stroke from the doctors perspective, and [...]
By kimquirk, on August 1st, 2010
Garden Harvest
Cucumbers, Lettuce, Basil, Spinach, Broccoli, Thyme, Parsley and the very first tomatoes have arrived! Ok… so there are way too many cucumbers and the spinach and broccoli “bolted” which, I think, means they had shoots that flowered before they really had much in the way of spinach leaves or broccoli heads (very small). [...]
By kimquirk, on July 12th, 2010
Biking in the Rain
We’ve had some extremely warm weather here on the east coast last week. Fortunately (I think) the 100 mile bike ride for cancer last Saturday (the Prouty) was entirely in the rain… which meant it wasn’t hot. It was wet, a bit more dangerous than dry conditions, uncomfortable in many ways, [...]
By kimquirk, on June 27th, 2010
Hose
A client came into my store a few weeks back to discuss his idea for an inexpensive “batch” water heater that doesn’t require any high tech parts or pumps. The idea behind a batch heater in general is to pre-heat water from the well or from the town source with the sun or a [...]
By kimquirk, on June 13th, 2010
Arlington, MA, 6/6/10
Back in January I set up the weather station I got for Christmas near my house (see Weather or Not). It was relatively easy to get it up and running and to run the software that gives you a graphical view of the data as well as an historic perspective. It took [...]
By kimquirk, on June 9th, 2010
Community Garden
A few weeks ago I wrote a blog on the seedlings that I started for garden this year (Seeding the Summer). Well, the little plants are now in their summer home in my small corner of the Shaker Community Garden plot. The picture on the left gives you some idea of the size [...]
By kimquirk, on May 31st, 2010
Solar Electric Array
I’ve been working with a customer for a few weeks on an idea that he had for his guest house. His guest house is used only about 1 week every month. But, even when the house isn’t being used it is still consuming electricity — a few outdoor lights, enough heat to [...]
By kimquirk, on May 16th, 2010
View from Mt Cube
Kent and I went took full advantage of a sunny Sunday afternoon to hike up Mount Cube in Orford, NH. The picture on the left is the view from the top.
Why do people like to climb mountains? I think most people can really appreciate the connection with nature that you [...]
By kimquirk, on May 7th, 2010
Seed packets
At the end of last summer, I was not sure I wanted to start a garden again this year. Last year started off only ok. Most of the plants that I started from seed died early, but there was some good early success with corn, tomatoes, rhubarb and squash — see “My First [...]
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