The key to making my Solar work!

I have posted a few things related to my standalone solar setup.  Since then I have made a few small upgrades, but they have proven to be the key in making it all work. 

First, I replaced the batteries with two new batteries.  They are 12v batteries in series, and they are for wheelchairs!  FWIW, wheelchair batteries are made to take a beating... Think about it.  They are 35 amp hour batteries that I bought from Amazon.  Link to them here.

The batteries have been working without any problem.  The next upgrade was some wiring and added safety measures (in line fuses).  I won't go into details here because they were mostly cosmetic.

The final upgrade was a purchase of two cigarette lighter receptacles. The cost was about five dollars each but came with the wiring.  I made a mounting bracket for them, and wired them to each of the batteries.  Even though the batteries are hooked up in series for 24v, I can still wire each individual cigarette lighter receptacle to a single battery so it remains 12v.  The last thing I did was purchase two Aukey flush mount car chargers.  These were much cheaper when I bought them, about 5-6 dollars each.  These have dual USB ports and 2.4 amp per port for charging.  This was the key to making my solar solution work. 

The original setup for charging anything was the 24v 600W inverter that changed the DC into AC, then had the extension cord running to a power strip.  I had a bunch of wall chargers plugged into the power strip.  The solar batteries would never last long, and I could only keep the inverter on in great sunlight or for an hour or two after the sun went down.  This was very limiting. 

After talking with a good friend of mine over a few beverages, he suggested to keep the charging at DC.  So use a cigarette lighter receptacle, a car charger, and plug our mobile devices into that.  Let me tell you, this solution WORKS!!  Keeping everything at 12 volts is so much more efficient than using the inverter.  Now we are able to charge anything without discharging the solar battery completely, which is much better for those (wheelchair) batteries.  Even better - we can now charge our battery banks, even overnight, without discharging the solar batteries.  We have a few Anker battery banks.  One is 10k another one is 20k.  Bother have IQ which charges our mobile devices FAST!  We have two other battery banks - a 13k and another 15k, but I don't have links for them. 

My original idea when setting forth with this solar experiment was to charge portable battery banks, our mobile devices, and even AA and AAA batteries (I have a USB charger for them) with the power generated from the sun.  Keeping everything DC made that possible. 

At the very least, we can say that our mobile devices and rechargable batteries are running on clean energy from the sun!  Funny that a cigarette lighter receptacle / charger was the solution to making it all work so much better!

Low cost foam cannon

I've had some people reach out to me about a picture I posted of my car covered in foam.  I kept seeing a bunch of people trying it, so I did some research to put together a kit of my own.  You'll need a few things:

1.  A pressure washer.  This can be electric or gas powered.
2.  The foam gun
3.  A car wash soap and a way to measure it.  I like the Chemical Guys Mr. Pink
4.  Recommended but not needed -assorted nozzles and fittings.

The above three items, not including the pressure washer, will cost about 50$.  Keep in mind you can save some money by getting a smaller amount of soap.  The link above is for a gallon.

There's a few process points that are going to be helpful.  I"ll list them out below.

To mix the soap in the bottle for the foam gun:
Add your water first.  Then add the soap.  You'll want about 3-4oz of soap.  Then gently swirl the soap in the water to mix.  You don't want foam in the bottle, so this process will help to mix the soap and water without making foam.

Foaming the car:
There's a few debates about this process.  The one thing that is not argued is to rinse the car as best you can first.  You can do this with a hose nozzle, or with the pressure washer gun. You're trying to get the car wet and remove as much of the contaminants as possible. 

I broke down the processes by how soiled the car is.
For dust only / garage kept cars - rinse, foam, let the foam dwell, rinse then try.
For a regular daily driven car - Rinse, Foam, let the foam dwell, then two bucket wash.  Rinse again.
For a heavily soiled car - Rinse, foam, dwell, rinse again, foam again, two bucket wash then flood rinse with a hose.