Project Offgrid - Initial Planning & Digging Ditches

Now that I've collected most of the hardware for Project Offgrid, it's time to start the actual work — gathering materials, planning the panel rack, and digging a lot of trench.

Materials

Over the course of a few weeks, most of the materials I will need arrived.

A.... ton of sand and concrete.... a half mile of copper cable.... Some 2/2/2/4 for PROPERLY connecting electricity to my garage... Some 2" conduit...

Of course, will be needing hardware for connecting conduit together. I will be using mostly 2" EMT inside of the garage. Its overkill- but, there won't be a lack of room.

The PV cables will be 12ga copper THWN-2.

I will be building a rack for the solar panels, out of 2 7/8" drill string. This is thick, heavy steel pipe... I have, about a ton of it. 20 sticks. Each one is 32 foot long.

Of course, need an inverter, and an automatic transfer switch...

And.... a bunch of conduit and pipe. (and strut channel)

1" PVC going to the solar panels. There is some 2" schedule 40 PVC here for running new plumbing for the pool. Separate project- BUT, I have the ditch-witch here. So.... its going to happen too.

With that said, I should have plenty of materials to get started..... So...

Day 0. Planning

The first day of working on the project, is just planning. I cut an area of the field where I wanted to put the panels.

And, then started staking out where the holes would be.

The base frame itself, will be 64 foot long, 8 foot wide, with posts every 16 ft.

      |<-16'->|<-16'->|<-16'->|<-16'->|
      O-------O-------O-------O-------O    ──┐
      |       |       |       |       |      │ 8'
      O-------O-------O-------O-------O    ──┘
      |<------------ 64' ------------>|

I am planning on putting the panels at around a 34 degree angle, with the front about 5 foot off of the ground. For the side profile, here is a diagram-

panels tilted 34° / |
                /   |  ◀── back of array, ~10' up
              /     |
            /       |  
          /         |
        /           |
       O            |
       |            |
    5' |            | ~10'
       |            |
  ═════╩════════════╩═════  ground
       ╰─   8'    ─╯

The vertical posts will be 2 7/8" drill-string.

The panels will be mounted on 1/4" 2"x2" angle-iron.

A bit overkill, but, I was able to acquire all of the materials pretty cheaply. Far cheaper then using standard solar racking....

Especially- after you account for the overpriced mounting hardware.

Day 1. Digging Ditches, and Finding buried treasure.

For the first day of work- I started after work around 5:30pm, digging ditches.

I started by digging ditches from the house, to the garage, and the front-gate.

Not- for the solar- but, for running the CORRECT sized wire for my garage... which was wired with 8ga copper, WITHOUT a suitable breaker. (The other side was spliced directly behind the 200amp main breaker)

As the cable did not run where I thought it did, we did manage to find it with the ditch-digger.

This had the side-effect of..... performing a rapid unscheduled disassembly on the panel inside of the garage. Not- a overwhelming issue as I really need a new panel with a 100 amp main breaker anyways.... and ideally, a bit bigger. I am not a fan of tandem breakers everywhere.

I am running a line to the front gate, as it was previously..... powered from extension cords ran along the fence line.... Sometime in the past, they did manage to short out, and catch on fire too.

I plan on powering the gate opener, and a street light.

Ditch digging

And, after a few hours on the ditch-witch.... I had around 300ft of fresh ditches dug.

This is 10ga 4-strand cable, which will be used to power the gate.

The cables/conduit will enter the house in this area.

Finding Buried Treasure!

I did find a few interesting things underground... such as...

The fiber optic cable for my internet!

On a positive side, I do have most of the ditch dug to lay the new fiber after memorial day weekend....... Until then, I am on the backup cellular WAN link.

I found, the old power cable going to the shed!

I also found, a random water pipe running out to the shed. Which is interesting- because there isn't water in the shed, that I am aware of.

But- it runs straight out to my shed.

I DID expect to find a water-line, just- not... going to the shed.

I did also run across a completely unexpected electrical cable buried- which didn't go anywhere. So.... I pulled around 25 ft of 10ga solid copper out of the ground. No idea where it was coming from, or where it went to. Neither end was connected.....

Long story short- I ran into nearly every possible thing that could be ran into.

Info

Call before you dig!

Just- remember, such services aren't going to mark your private lines.

If the location of your cables, pipes is not documented, do suppose there are services you can hire to help locate them.

Or, just expect to hit it, and have 5$ of pipe fittings ready to go to fix it.

A random tip

Make sure you have a trenching shovel. It will make the job of cleaning out the trenches much easier!

Day 2... Going under the sidewalk.

I spent most of the day acquiring and implementing a backup cellular link. And- it was raining pretty good most of the day.

But, I did decide to go ahead and start making a hole under the sidewalk for laying conduit, and copper.

After digging through my pile of steel scrap, I did find a suitable piece of steel to place under the side walk to help support it, and to provide a channel for which to pass all of the cables and conduit through.

To actually dig the hole, I went and fired up the pressure washer. I placed the piece of pipe as far in as it would go, and used the pressure washer to start cutting/blasting the dirt out of the way.

And, this worked fantastically well.

There is a very good chance, you are going to get a bit muddy doing this.

And, you will fill your trench with water.

But, after about..... 10 minutes or so, I had the piece of steel located under the sidewalk.

Don't worry, its there.

After starting on the other side, I DID run into an unexpected pipe... or two... or three.

While there is a hole going to the other side, I noticed something was blocking... After reaching a few foot into the dark root-covered hole, I was surprised to find... ANOTHER 3" pipe, along with what felt like a 1" water pipe under the side walk.

So- I will prob have to pull the piece of steel back out, and either go deeper, or go from a different location.......

Next Steps....

So... Planning on digging another 250-300 ft of trench out to the field tomorrow.

I'm already anticipating finding the lateral lines from the septic system, and getting to repair those. Hoping, to not find anymore unexpected water lines.....