Day 138 - February 12th (Day 60 of 65)

Busy morning. I have organised our shutters from ShutterKits. The manufacturer only got back to me yesterday, and I now know why! They have two factories. They were in the process of moving into the new one when the other got flooded out.

Had a chat with the owner. A very friendly guy. He showed me the various options and designs. In the end I chose the standard 68 mm blinds in Cedar. We will need to stain they upon arrival. They also need to be assembled, but this looked rather simple. Essentially we ordered a blind for every window with the exception of the bathrooms, sliding doors and rumpus room. The total was around $500 more than I thought, but I hadn't allowed for GST or for the fittings. Still @ $4k, it is a pretty good price for the large number of shutters we ordered.

Met up with Adrian Decarli from Infinity Solar at the property as well. He was very professional and knew what he was talking about. Found out that a lot of Solar installers do their training through these guys.

Essentially he recommended two panels. One is made by a company called Schott whilst the other is made by Solarworld. The warranties and guarantees were very similar to each other

A Solar Panel apparently degrades over time, and so the manufacturers have different guarantees on their products.

Schott -> Year 1 - Output at 97% of the rated output.
               Year 2 - 30 - Degrades at no more than 0.7% per year. (82.5% at end of 30 years)

Sunmodule -> Year 1 - Output at 97% of the rated output.

                      Year 2 - 25 - Degrades at no more than 0.7% per year.

The yield measurements seemed to be a lot higher on the Sunmodule however?  Probably go this way....

As for the inverters, We have a choice of a 3.2Kw, 4.2Kw or a 5.3Kw unit...It will ultimately depend upon the amount of power we may want in the future....

The last thing I did was organise the fence. Went to Stratco and purchased a Ebony border and Merino coloured panels. 28 panels instead of the 26 I had thought as the ones I decided upon were a little shorter. 

I chose the Good neighbour Smartspan @ 1800 high. I didn't mind the Wavlelok, but the sample looks like it has lifted away from the other panel inserts, so I decided not to go for it in the end....

Good Neighbour SmartSpan

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Good Neighbour Superdek

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Good Neighbour CGI

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Good Neighbour Wavelok

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