Projects While Travel is Curtailed - September 2020

Solar Panel Cleaning

If you're residing in California this fall, you are likely used to seeing lots of ash and dust in the air.  The many fires have caused local air quality to remain unhealthy for several days in a row. The past two days have finally been low in particulate counts and we've been able to exercise outdoors. 

About a month ago, we scheduled our solar panels to be cleaned this past week. The above photo shows how much ash had accumulated on our solar panels and the difference after rinsing. Our local window washing company uses a soft brush and clean water to rinse the solar panels. This approach avoids the use of any harsh chemicals and ensures no solar panel damage from cleaning. Of course, we don't know how long the air will remain reasonably ash-free. In the past, our solar production improved about 20 percent after cleaning heavily soiled solar panels. As a side benefit, cleaning the panels helps a local business in these tough economic times. I suppose as a homeowner I could do this cleaning but, frankly, my days of climbing on the roof are in the past. I've heard of too many stories of acquaintances falling off the roof or from ladders.

Re-Landscaping the Front Yard

With our travel curtailed, we decided to use the time at home for some yard work. Originally, we had plans for changing our front walkway and plantings since late 2019. The original walkway had two steps to the sidewalk and we wanted a gradual sloping walkway. The plants were installed by the original building contractor and was not particularly creative nor unique from any other house in the development.

With the pandemic upon us, the actual work had to be postponed from spring 2020 to fall 2020. With a local landscaping company performing the very heavy workload of removing and replacing the concrete walkway, moving large boulders and a large planter into place, adding topsoil, removing and adding new plants and adding bark and pebbles, the project is finally done. The front yard looks great and maintenance should remain minimal. When travel restarts, we prefer not to have a lot of yard maintenance facing us upon return.

The steps were removed from the walkway

The pebbles will keep the bark from floating onto the sideway during heavy rain.

Another Trip Postponed 

We were scheduled for a March 2021 cruise to Hawaii. With the recent increase of COVID-19 infections in Hawaii and possibility of limited access to Hawaiian ports, we decided to move this to later 2021. Whether the trip will depart as scheduled remains questionable, but March seemed just too unlikely.