Solar System

2023 February 

    Installing a solar system is pretty complicated, so Josh did a lot of research to make sure that everything was safe and legal. First we needed somewhere under the house to put the connectors that come out of the batteries, and turn the power into something useable. Here is the metal box which has been attached under the house, ready for installing the inverter and other associated paraphernalia. This box is actually a gun safe from Bunnings, as it was a reasonably priced and suitable sized metal box which was readily available. Hanging down in front of it you can see the wiring that the electrician put in during the electricity rough-in. It was placed here ready for connecting to the solar system in June 2022. This would sit and wait for a while before more action happened to it.

     Josh continued putting up the plywood walls and the kitchen looked pretty good. I was working on filling the gaps on the walls as Josh was working on putting up more walls.

     We discovered some of the trickier parts of this material. It didn't like to lay perfectly flat and some sheets stuck out from the sheet next to it by quite a few millimetres.

It was time to try and find a good wood filler. I wanted something that was able to be sanded and painted, but was also had a bit of flexibility in it so that it wouldn't crack when the wood moved. This was one of the products I tried. Also I was hoping that it would be easy to apply into tricky places. This product was very light, as it seemed to have been whipped with lots of air like a mousse. I didn't like it enough to buy it again, especially at nearly $15 for a pretty small amount.

Another product we tried was Spakfilla. It was $12 for a much larger amount. They say on the pack that if it gets a bit hard you can just add a bit of water to get it soft again, which really doesn't seem like something that you want to be having in your walls.

Every screw hole needed to be filled, and they looked like this before filling. They had to be cleaned up of all the splinters around them before filling, so I used a stanley knife or a sander to get them neat and tidy. Also the ones that weren't quite deep enough had to be screwed in a bit further, so I pulled out the drill for that.

And they looked like this after filling. You can see in this shot that I have been sanding the joins between sheets to try and make them flat. This was difficult as the plywood has such thin layers that when sanded, it revealed the layer below it. I had already learned this when sanding the plywood laid down for the floors. Also the plywood would flex when the sander was pressed on it, and then bulge back out when the sander was removed, so it was impossible to get flat joins. Ah well.

This wall alone would have taken a few hours to fill all the holes and the gaps. Easy enough until I had to be crawling around on the floor for the bottom ones, and then up and down the step ladder to reach the top ones, and trying to remember to take everything that I needed with me each time I went up, including knife and drill if needed. For application I tried the spakfilla tool which is a plastic rectangle, and also a flexible knife. Each had its own advantages and disadvantages.

 Then I sanded off the filler to try and make the wall lovely and smooth. I wasn't happy with this product which refused to sand down to a thin layer, instead just removing itself from the area completely and revealing the screw once it was sanded down a little bit. I think it was the Nordsjo expensive mousse one.

Time to try yet another product. This polyfilla was about $17 from Bunnings, but the pack in this picture is an old one I found somewhere.

This wall corner looked a bit of a mess after I tried to fill it in nice and smooth.

Here's an example of a tricky corner join I was filling. It was difficult to fill such narrow gaps and took ages for each section.

I went back and tried again the method of mixing sawdust with wood glue as a filler. It was not very good as it had a lot of shrinkage and then dried very hard and was extremely difficult to sand.

Here is yet another product I tried in the elusive search for a good wood filler.

Here is a pic of me from July 2023 with the sander, continuing to work on the walls a bit more each day.

Yet another product being tested. I mustn't have liked it because I didn't buy it again.

Wait there's more. No I didn't like this one either.

I had added some more safety equipment for the heavy duty sanding, I didn't want to breathing in the plywood or the filler.

My favourite wood filling product by far was the Polyfilla Large Cracks, I even went back and bought a few more of these they were so good. So by my count I tried 8 different fillers before deciding on a good one.

Next time we will be putting up the first ceiling, in May 2023.