We are pretty excited! We now have a signed contract for the purchase of our house in NJ.

There is good news and potentially "bad" news in this. The good is that we have a buyer who wants our house. More good news is that they have to sell their house first. This is good because, at this point in time, it is way too late to do an actual move to the cabin. We are not sufficiently prepared to winter there. We need more storage, wood for the fire, a washer, second fridge, etc. Plus, I've committed to continue working through mid-May 2016. So, them needing to sell first will buy us some time.

The bad news is that we may have no place to live if they sell their house quickly and want to close on ours and get moving. But, we'll take that chance and work through it if it happens because "a bird in the hand...." and all that.

Now, we are re-motivated to get back to work sorting and organizing around the house. We need to figure out a way to move when the time does come. (We did put a deposit on a climate-controlled 10x20 storage unit in Laramie recently, so we have that as a repository for all our stuff.) We are thinking of having a POD delivered to the house and each weekend move more stuff into it. Does anyone have experience with that type of move?

Lots to think about and do!

I posted a lengthy article about our off-the-grid utilities earlier. In that article I said we'd need to add some additional PV charging capacity in order to be able to live at the cabin full-time. 

It has been quite a journey and taken all summer long, but last week we made significant progress. (I say "we", but all the work is being done by Burnham & Sun, a PV specialist from Fort Collins.)

First, earlier this summer the new batteries did get installed. We now have 12 batteries instead of 8, and since they are new we should have significantly more storage capacity.

Our new solar panels are finally installed!

And, at the end of last week, the new PV panels were finally installed. It has been a nightmare trying to locate contractors to do the excavation work, trenching and concrete work needed. The front range of Colorado is undergoing a huge growth spurt and contractors are simply not interested in small jobs that are two hours away. Sam at Burham & Sun finally got some people to do the work and  the panels are mounted. This week, she will lay the conduit and cables, wire the panels into a charge controller and hook them up to the batteries.

The next step in our need for additional power is to re-install the wind turbine. I bet that will be an interesting adventure, too.