8 Days a Week

Exactly 8 days ago, we started trying to save our beachfront.  We have made significant progress, but still have months of work ahead of us.  After working 8 Days a Week (click to listen), here is where we are:

After shoring up the sand around the end of the dock and in front of the buttonwood tree and the tropical almond tree, the stalwart crew started working on the breakwater.  They started under the dock and worked to the north for a few days.

Positioning the boat for offloading the sand bags about 20 feet from shore.

 The sea was not too rough the first day, but the water was high.

Elan, Richard (carrying bag), Mason (getting bag off boat), and Tiger (shifting bags in the boat) dove right into the work.

Our boat, Patience, has an electronic lift on the engine, so it was perfect to use in the shallow water.

This is load number 2.  To left of Richard and Elan is a bank of submerged bags.  See how the water glides over the bags.

The wind died down as the day progressed, and by load number 3 the water was noticeably lower.  The wind actually has more influence on water level than the moon does.  Together, the sun and moon account for only 18 inches of difference in water level on the tide charts.

Load number three.

One more load on the north side of the dock.

The last load of the day as seen from the dock.

 So this is how it works; the cement and sand and empty bags are at the end of the road at the north side of the mouth of the Monkey River.  Our place is a little more than a mile up the coast.  So the guys mix the sand and cement, keeping it dry, shovel it into the bags, and the tie the bags off.  Then the bags are loaded into Patience and boated over here where the bags are offloaded. One team stays at the road's end filling bags while the other team brings the bags here.  But the boat needed repairs on Thursday, so all 5 of the crew worked on filling bags all day.  That meant things moved very quickly on Friday and Saturday with bags at the ready.

Friday morning.  A turtle gap will go here.

 We have seen hawksbill turtles nesting on our beach, and green turtles are very common around here.  And even loggerhead turtles might be around, although we have never seen one here.  Anyway, we want this remain an attractive area to nest.  Dennis looked up the flipper width of the turtles so we could be sure to make the turtle gaps large enough.  We decided on 4-5 feet since flipper width is a little more than 3 feet.  We will also replenish the sand in the 3 spots we have seen them nest before and make a clear path for them to get to the nest sites.

After going about 40 feet to the north of the dock, the crew started extending the breakwater to the south.

The water on the south side is much shallower than on the north; progress is much faster.

At the end of Friday we had about 75 feet of breakwater.

View from the loft.  You can't see it because the tree on the left is in the way, but there is a nice turtle gap in the breakwater.

At the end of Saturday, after an 8-day week, the breakwater is about 90 feet long and has 2 turtle gaps incorporated into it.  We have not lost any more sand where the breakwater is and may have actually gained some back in front of the breakwater.  The breakwater seems to cut the big waves off at their knees so that only small wavelets make it to shore.  And when the waves slow down like that they drop whatever sand they are carrying.  Time will tell.

You can see the turtle gap behind the elbow in the tree branch.  This photo was taken from the front steps.

The water is starting to clear, and if the east wind holds off, there won't be much Sargassum coming in overnight.  But in recent weeks, the wind picks up a little in the afternoon and then starts blowing around 6:00 pm.  We have another 300+ feet of breakwater to build like this, which is Stage One.  Stages Two and Three involve putting posts in to mark the location of the breakwater for boaters (it is well out of the way of the channel, but sometimes people like to to put in at the shore.  The smaller canoes and dories can go through the turtle gaps.

Look at that nice clear water 60 feet offshore.  It will be a happy day when the water closer to shore is clear again.  This photo was taken from the little balcony in the loft.

There is more to life than building breakwaters.  One of our friends in Louisiana who own a lot a little more than half a mile up the beach from asked if I could see how their beachfront is holding up.  So Laquita - this shot is for you.  It looks very good.  Your lot is protected from the destructive east wind by Greater Monkey Cay.  There does seem to be one coconut palm that has toppled over.

What a difference 0.5 mile makes!  Relatively intact beach just north of us. There is that little palm in the center that seems to have tipped over into the water.

 Still lots of wildlife to photograph.

Colorful little crab hiding under an old palm stump.

 And the air is filled with butterflies.

The always photogenic Gulf Fritillary.

It is an Ill Wind That Blows No Good

And an ill wind it is indeed.  The following is a slightly edited email that I sent to my family, with photos added.

It has been a very mixed week for us.  In less than 48 hours we lost more than 8 feet of sand all along our beachfront.  We now have a small cliff that the waves slap against instead of a gently sloping beach that the waves roll onto.  

The top photo shows the dock from about a year ago on Sept 30, 2014,  middle on Aug 27, 2015 and bottom on Sept 1, 2015.  On the 27th we added 6 feet of boards to the dock to bridge the gap; you can see they are a more golden color in the middle photo.  On the 28th, we had to support the new end of the dock because another 3 feet of beach was gone.  Very sad ...

This is due, we think, to the major El Nino that has taken hold and radically changed the winds blowing across the Atlantic.  (The same winds are blowing in all that Sargassum Seaweed, too.)  We mobilized our construction crew to help shore up the beach around a buttonwood tree, a tropical almond tree, and the dock.  So far the buttonwood and dock are ok and tomorrow they will start protecting the almond tree.  We are using sand bags filled with cement and sand.  This is just a band aid that will have a longterm negative impact on the situation unless we do more extensive (i.e., "expensive") work to make a breakwater out in the water about 20 feet offshore.  So we will start on that too. Big sigh as money flows like water ...

As if that wasn't disheartening enough, as I was driving into Bella Vista early Sunday morning to pick up 6 bags of cement (96 lbs each), I had a flat tire on the Monkey River Road.  I had passed only 1 person on a bicycle and was miles away from anything.  Fortunately, as I was assessing the situation, I saw a pickup truck approaching and flagged them down.  It was like a clown car - out poured 3 adult males, 2 adult females, and I never did get an accurate count of the children.  Anyway, they changed the tire for me; good thing because I wouldn't have been able to get the lug nuts off with our little piddly lug wrench and they got the donut tire on.  Now this is Sunday morning at 7:30.  So I drove to Bella Vista, a tiny village only 3 miles down the paved Southern Highway from the junction of the Monkey River Road.  I found a "24hr" tire repair place. Picture a 1950s gas station in Appalachia, sans banjo music.  And sans gas for that matter.  But they were very nice and are my new BFFs; even have them in my contacts on my phone.  Got the tire patched (it had a big nail in it) but they said the donut was better than the repaired tire, so we left the donut on the car.  

As I was talking with them, I asked about cement deliveries.  One of the guys said he had a brother who sold cement. (There is always a brother or an uncle or a cousin, isn't there?)  I asked if they could make a delivery that morning since I wouldn't be able to haul any in the car with only the donut tire.  Their truck was already loaded with cement blocks ready for delivery to someone for Monday, but they rallied and got that delivery made right then! and then they delivered 40 bags to us in less than 2 hours, 40 minutes of which it took to drive the Monkey River Road.  Amazing!  I had been planning to get only 6 bags to make it through the day with our crew, so this turned out much better than what I had been trying to do.  Although again, money flows like water.  So our crew was able to finish up what they needed to for today and have the supplies they need for tomorrow.

Tomorrow, Dennis will get a new tire either in Independence or Dangriga and then drive to Belmopan and spend the night there.  He will be picking up more sand bags (empty bags) and looking for a pump that we need to make our breakwater.  On Tuesday he may have to drive on to Spanish Lookout if he can't find the right pump in Belmopan.

This afternoon was somewhat less fraught.  Our friend Percy stopped by with a nice kingfish for us that he caught out on the reef and one of the village boys came selling some fresh caught monkfish and jacks that we bought.  We now have a nicely stocked freezer and had delicious monkfish for dinner.  For dessert we had figs (purchased at Trader Joe's in SanJose CA - thanks Lizanne!) that have been soaking in port (purchased by Dennis at the Belize City Brodie's store when he picked me up at the airport) since August 15th.  The figs were accompanied by mascarpone cheese; perhaps not as lovely as the the ricotta from Cowgirl Creamery in Point Reyes Station CA (Ok, not nearly as lovely as the ricotta from Cowgirl, but we takes what we gets).  We are taste testing Black Mission Figs v Calymyrna (sp?) Figs. Calymyrna win, hands down.

end of email

Since that email, Dennis has scoured the country of Belize for the pump we need and has not been able to find one.  So we have ordered it on Amazon (free shipping in the US with Prime!) and it is on its way to our shippers (Easy Shipping to Belize) in Florida.  They will have it to us in about 3 weeks.  But he was able to purchase 1000 bags for sand.  We will use sand and cement in the bags to start constructing a breakwater about 20 feet off shore in water that is no more than 2.5 feet deep at high tide.  That should absorb some of the energy from the waves from the high winds that we have been experiencing. The plan is to set mangrove trees out there to make a living breakwater.  We expect that we will have to tend the breakwater periodically and move sand (hence the need for the pump) to shore it up.  All that sand that washed off our beach is still there, it is just in a different place out in the water instead of at the edge.  Here are some additional photos of the situation.

The dock extension covers part of the gap where sargassum seaweed has accumulated.  The sand used to extend all the way to the base of the pair of white posts that support the dock.

The crew preparing sandbags to shore up around the buttonwood you see to the right.  It has always leaned toward the water at this angle, but I really don't want it to tip in.  We learned from other people's experience that you need to mix cement in with the sand, keeping it dry, and then set the bags in the seawater.  Without the cement, the sand just washes away in less than a week.

A view from the other side of the buttonwood showing the sandbag barrier.  Overnight, sargassum seaweed was washed up over the bags.  We will back fill the space with sand now that the barrier is in place.

I couldn't bear to end the post with such dismal photos, so here is a lovely sun rise from a couple of days ago.

As I was pulling up some older photos of the dock, I saw that in the months of October and November, we typically gain a lot of sand on the beach.  I do hope that the El Nino that has caused the heavy waves that washed out our beach doesn't mess up the typical cycle of beach replenishment.  This is the beach I want back:

The tree at the left is the buttonwood in happier times last November.

Just When You Thought It Was Safe ...

As the manufacturer says “It’s one mean battery”!

Below is Dennis's second post in the continuation of the Solar Installation. Cue music here.

The Solar Installation Part Two – Batteries and Battery Bank

In the first installment, we discussed how to site the solar panels on the roof of a new cabana built so that the roof was oriented optimally.   In this installment, we are going to go over the steps to estimate the electrical usage; how many storage batteries are needed and other concerns about the batteries.  We will save consideration for how many solar panels are needed and how much sunlight reaches your panels (insolation) for a subsequent blog. J

How Much Electricity Do You Use?  The next step in setting up your solar system is determining what you use electricity to power, how long you use it, and ultimately how many watts are used.  This is the dreaded (i.e., pain in the butt) “electricity inventory”. You can find forms for this on-line that vary in complexity – search for  “battery calculator solar”. I opted for simple.  We itemize all the items we are likely to use on a regular basis. There are tables of values for electric appliance wattage on-line, but I felt more comfortable using a Kill-a-Watt meter to quantify the electricity usage where I could.  Plug the Kill-a-Watt meter into an electrical outlet and plug the device/appliance into the meter.  Set for Watt.hrs and collect the data.  It will sum the amount of wattage used over the length of the collection period.  Some would argue this is another aspect of my compulsiveness – ahem.  (Note from Wilma:  some would be right!)  For those items we could not quantify with the meter, we did use average values found online.

Push the "Amp" button to make it easy!

We got some surprises however.  We were using more electricity than we thought, so would have underpowered the solar system by solely using the values published online. For example, the very efficient (aka expensive) refrigerator we bought was actually using 50% more electricity than claimed.  Hrumph! (Note from Wilma:  Maybe because our ambient temps are around 85F instead of the 70F used in the test setting?)

Here are the results from the dreaded “electricity inventory”. 

We excluded power tools used in construction since these would be used on an intermittent basis and would be powered by our gas generator if used for more than a few minutes.  I decided to round up the daily usage estimate to 6000 watts to allow for devices and appliances we do not have on site currently:  a television and a microwave.  (Note from Wilma:  also a sewing machine, washing machine, maybe a small toaster oven.)  These will ultimately be here and used, but not for some time.  We have a good collection of DVDs too.  We will not be connecting to satellite TV service however.

One item to note is how you get Amps, in the first column, from watts AC in the second column.  It is calculated from a rearrangement of Ohm’s Law. Basically, Watt.hours = Amp.hours X Voltage, or Amp.hours = Watt.hours/Voltage.  Luckily there is an easier way to get the Amp.hours however - just push the Amp button on the Kill-a-Watt meter!

The Battery Bank.  You now have an estimate of how many Watt.hours of solar electricity you need to generate and capture for use.   Now you need to determine how much battery capacity you need to store sufficient electricity for daily use, keeping in mind a few other items, however.  You want your usage of electricity to be a small amount of the total capacity of the battery bank, referred to as the Depth of Discharge.  If you have a smaller amount of usage, the batteries last longer.  If we use only 5 to 10% of the battery capacity, our specific batteries may last around 20 years.  In other words, the battery capacity is not a measure of the total that you can use because you want to avoid discharging the batteries more than 10% of their charge carrying capacity.  Unless, of course you plan to replace your batteries frequently – not a good financial decision!

Redrawn from:  http://support.rollsbattery.com/support/solutions/articles/8136-cycle-life-vs-depth-of-discharge-5000-series

You also want to make certain that the solar system will be able to fully charge the batteries, otherwise the batteries will be consistently undercharged which may lead to premature failure due to sulfation of the plates in lead-acid batteries.

So what type of battery do you want to use?  We had some bad experiences with deep cycle cheapo lead acid batteries and more expensive AGM (Absorbed Glass Mat) batteries when we were relying upon our diesel generator for charging, and were not encouraged.  But we had seen a battery installation in Western Belize at DuPlooy’s Jungle Lodge and Botanical Garden in 2010.  They had installed twenty-four 2V batteries wired in series to produce a 48volt DC system.  These batteries are manufactured by Surrette Batteries in Canada, a Rolls company and are the top of the line batteries for renewable energy applications.  I looked at space, weight, price, and decided we could do something similar with Surrette 4V batteries, requiring twelve 4V batteries wired in series to get the 48 V system. 

Here is how batteries are wired in series using 12V batteries as an example:

This is what we did for our original battery bank and is similar to how we would wire the 4V batteries together. The negative pole of the first battery is connected to the positive pole of the second battery … and so on.  While the voltage is additive, “The Amps Remain The Same”.

According to the manufacturer, the capacity of the 4V Surrette battery is ~1900 Amp.hr at a slow discharge rate of 100 hours.  The Watt.hours for the bank of 12 batteries would be 1900 Amp.hours X 48V = 91,200 Watt.hours or 91 kilowatts.  With numbers like this it seems we are becoming our own electric company!  (Note from Wilma:  Well, that is actually the idea, isn't it?!)

We now have enough information to perform a battery bank calculation to determine how many batteries are needed.  Here is the actual analysis, but this calculator does not appear to be online any longer. 

You should use no more than 50% of the battery bank capacity, to improve battery longevity, which gets us to having 45 kilowatts of storage and at least 5 days of using electricity without reducing usage and not having to run the generator (by the morning of day 3 of overcast skies, we would turn the generator back on).  If we are careful and reduce our usage during overcast periods, then we could go much longer.  By keeping the depth of discharge to between 5 and 10%, the batteries should last around 7000 charging cycles or approximately 20 years before (anticipated) failure.  Poor maintenance can decrease the time to failure – ahem.   We certainly don’t aim to be guilty of that!

To summarize, we have planned to have the capacity to use 7500 Watt.hours of solar power for at least 5 days of autonomy, which will not draw the battery bank down to less than 50% of capacity, while normally keeping the daily depth of discharge to between 5 and 10%.  We are going to wire twelve 4volt batteries together to produce a 48V system.

Now a practical issue:  each battery weighs 315 pounds when filled with battery acid (34 liters of acid, BTW).  There are 12 in series plus a spare battery.  How do you support this weight 10 feet off the ground since the combined weight of the batteries is 4095 pounds?  You make floor joists composed of two 2”X8”X8 ‘pieces of treated pine lumber with plywood in between, glued with Liquid Nail, a construction adhesive in the USA, and nailed from both sides, spaced 16 inches on center, supported on reinforced concrete beams.  Then you lay a plywood subfloor, glued and screwed down on the joists, with the edges epoxied to prevent water intrusion and delamination.  And finally nail tongue and groove flooring on top of that.  The box enclosing the battery bank weighs about 1060 pounds (more on this in a subsequent post on Insurance).  The total weight of batteries and box is 5055 pounds, distributed over a 27.5 square foot area (2.75X10 feet).  This reduces to 188 pounds per square foot.  Whooh!

This is overbuilt support for the batteries, done intentionally since you not only have to support the weight of the batteries and box, but you have to consider there is an earthquake slip fault line about 130 miles away off the coast of Honduras that moves Guatemala eastward every now and then.  A million years from now Guatemala may have some nice seashore and a decent East Coast!  See the very bottom of the Magnetic Declination Map in the first installment for where Guatemala is moving eastward. The last significant earthquake was a hefty 7.1 on the Richter Scale in late May, 2009 (see here for images of the aftermath, originally linked to Trip Advisor by our neighbor Sue Harris).  It shows the destruction in Monkey River Village, with cabanas sinking to ground level from the effects of liquefaction of sediment, concrete buildings cracked asunder, and mud geysers erupting from formerly solid ground.

We would like to ensure that the batteries and box remain where they are and not fall through to the ground below during the next “Big One”.   Our original cabana and this addition include features to mitigate damage from liquefaction as shown in a previous blog post.

This is getting to be pretty thick reading, so I will stop here for now.

The 3rd installment will deal with how many solar panels you need, how much sunlight you have, how many watts produced, and does this meet your needs.

It takes a fair amount of planning and effort to “go green” or off-grid.  Cash too, as will be explained in a future installment on costs and safety.