car battery progress
Added 2025-07-03 20:52:27 +0000 UTCMy first planned layout for the car batteries was to build a tower, as this would minimize the amount of copper needed. However, I realized that I'd spend an eternity building a tower that could hold 14 tons, and that its material costs would negate much or all of what I'd save in copper. Thus, I decided to lay them all flat like the first time. An all flat arrangement does give more cable resistance, but this is small compared to the battery resistance, and the fact that the batteries cook in the sun means that value will drop more than what the copper adds. Plus, all the batteries spread out will look cooler in the video and thumbnail.
I still had to build a bit of a structure for the all flat arrangement though. They will sink into the soil without some sort of base, and the wooden pallets I used last time already disintegrated. So, I took a couple road trips to pick up a bunch of plastic "nesting" pallets. I dug the feet of these into the ground, and now they feel solid enough to hold the batteries in place. I've placed 150 of the batteries so far, and will move the rest over the next couple days.
Unfortunately my wagon is out of commission so now I have to carry all 14 tons of batteries by hand. It's infuriating how often pneumatic tires are put on small tools because they never last. I bought this wagon just two years ago and it has only gotten light use, yet two of the tires are popped. When I get around to it I'll toss the current tires and replace them with solid ones.
Oh I found a cool imperial moth near the door of my shop yesterday, as shown in the last pic.
Comments
It's one more thing to do and those and stuff like that keeps adding a lot of time but I had a friend who turned me on to these solid aftermarket wheel setups. It was easy to swap out the wheels on my hand truck with these and then after that they just worked. There's nothing special about this brand, it's just meant as an example. https://a.co/d/1ILnGGh Good luck slinging all that lead around I do not event the physical setup work you need to do on this one.
Just_Chris
2025-07-04 00:21:39 +0000 UTCHaha, reminds me of my wheelbarrow experience, first one my dad insisted be a plastic bucket, came with a metal frame, plastic cracked literally the first time we used it. Second one was metal bucket with wooden frame, that one lasted until we had it full of firewood, it started tipping, I tried to save it, broke the wood. We ended up bodging the steel bucket onto the aluminum frame and that has worked ever since. The wheel was originally pneumatic on the metal frame but when it kept deflating I just grabbed the solid one we kept off the wood frame and threw it on instead, now it's basically bulletproof. For the batteries, I get a tower wouldn't work, but I wonder if you could still get away with two layers, at least for some batteries, though I guess 28000lb is indeed a lot... maybe you get a bunch of old pickup trucks, rip off the body, and use their frames as one layer and put more under them? would be a funny thing to see and I bet the scrap yard would let you take the old rotboxes out.
stella
2025-07-03 22:39:11 +0000 UTC
