South garden 4 O’Clocks, taken by Tom
Wednesday I was up at 4AM again and got my post up. Then I started work on paying bills/budget. I moved onto making phone calls, one of which was to the electric company regarding the meter they replaced in mid September and smart meters. The wait to get to a person was half an hour and as I sat there, I was looking at the bill.
If you recall, during the summer it took me weeks to get July and August’s bills/budget done in early September. And when I did September’s mid month I sort of zoomed through. I don’t pay the electric company, so I don’t look at the bills well.
But I started looking at the bill as I sat there and it dawned on me that I had next to no credit on October 1! It should have been nearly $300. So I started going through all the bills and it looked like I’d been losing credit since the spring.
Back in 2023 when the inverter failed and was down for a whole year, I had created this chart of generation. So I pulled it up and filled it in up to date, using the electric company’s bills for the first number in each box.
But I was eventually transferred to the solar division of the electric company after determining I didn’t yet have a smart meter. It was again a half hour wait, so I pulled up Sunrun’s site and entered the figures from them (2nd number in each box). Quite a discrepancy.
I finally got a person and she said it was apparent the system was failing, again, and she also told me why there was a discrepancy. The note why is on the bottom of the chart.
So I called Sunrun as it was now noon and they are in California and of course didn’t reach a person, but left a message. I am not fooling around for a year this time. If I haven’t heard from them by Monday I will be filing a complaint with the Better Business Bureau and the Mass Attorney general, and on several sites that review solar companies.
I found in 2023 that’s the only way they will respond to a customer complaint.
The only other thing I managed on Wednesday was to finish drying the laundry. I was just very low energy.
My son had gotten the yard chairs washed and he loaded them into the truck. I drove it to the barn and he got them put away.
I had just settled into my chair when the contractor arrived. No nap for me. He’d brought the boards for repairing the porch post wood. And he’d brought the tools to start the bookshelf repair.
We went out back of the house and he got the shelf cut to size. Then we went down to the workshop to try to match the stain.
We finally determined that wiping it with paint thinner then rubbing a cloth with stain in it (and slightly dried) gave us nearly the same color. So he decided to take it home and get it right before staining the actual shelf.
While we waited for the staining to dry, he went up and cut off the screws that had held the old shelf. It was like having sparklers at the Fourth of July.
He had found some nice bronze shelf brackets and he got those installed. That was as far as he could go until the shelf was finished.
He was, of course, carefully inspected, sometimes from a distance if he was making noise.
Next he got the gable end back up, with dabs of glue and longer nails. The last thing we did was go look at the farm sign. I’d asked him for an estimate for restoring it. He said he’d think about it and let me know.
He left at 6:05PM and the inspector was in his death throes. So I got him fed and made supper for myself. It was to drop into the mid 30’sF on Wednesday night, so I had the house closed up tight and got the shades pulled at 7PM. I was in bed by 8PM.
On Thursday I plan to harvest everything out of the Small garden, broccoli, leeks, beets, and get them processed. My helper friend will be here all afternoon. I also hope to get something done on bills/budget. I still have to get the mums planted too.
So stuff got done, but not much by me.