There are some jobs that seem like bigger milestones than others. Yesterdays removal of the batteries from the old solar system felt like one of the big ones.

The house was originally 100% off grid and then converted to mains electric much later. Which means the house had two completely separate wiring systems, both of which I have to remove, a process that is 90% done. I think I was dragging my feet on removing the batteries because they are really heavy and under a spider infested house, both of which are very good reasons to avoid something.

I mean 600kilos of heavy, that’s 1300 pounds for the non metric readers. You will be glad to hear my back is surprisingly okay after loading and unloading these yesterday, other than a little muscle soreness I am largely unscathed. I of course was unaware exactly how much they weighed when I was loading them aft to the rear axel in the back of my ute for the 30 min drive on winding country roads to the recycling center.

I’m no engineer but that load definitely altered the sports car like handling of an old hilux, which I assume had Lotus like 50/50 weight distribution beforehand. I traveled at 20k per hour under the speed limit with steering that felt like it was now attached by rubber bands to make a car that handled like the house from UP. I did however arrive at the scrap metal dealer largely unscathed but with noticeably worse fuel efficiency than usual. Upon arrival I was pleasantly surprised to shock the dealer with how many batteries I had precariously packed into a single work utility, I was less pleasantly surprised that I had to unload most of them myself.

A pallet and a bit of batteries comes to 593 kilos plus a box of copper wire took the load up to over 600. It was nice to get $350 back instead of paying to get rid of things with tip fees, though technically I could have dropped these off for free at the tip because they are recyclables. But I will happily take the cash to spend on the next item at the farm so I can tick something else off the list.