For me aircraft grade aluminum is right up there with space age technology. The space age was 50 years ago.

Unfortunately most items don’t have standardized labeling. You can frequently find “contractor grade” or 'builder grade" listed but you won’t find much beyond that because no one wants to put 'retail grade" on anything. You have to look at the items. Does it look like metal but it’s plastic? Trash.

And when doing home repairs don’t get contractor grade. It’s the worst quality possible. I do extensive amounts of cooking and most of my stuff has been from restaurants supply stores, antique shops or handmade by me.

Tried adding pictures directly but as with so many Lemmy communities I got a 403 error. So they are attached via the imgur link.

My DIY is normally “build it from scratch” instead of “buy a thing that does it for you.”

The way you have it listed they are all “inverters”. But an inverter is only one component of a solar system. In fact it’s not even part of a DC only system. Most of what you have are complete systems minus the solar panels. Way more than an inverter.

It is a useful tool for figuring out needs based on what’s going to be running. But it seems too DIBuy instead of DIY. The results say inverters but they are all plug and play all in one systems. Not DIY.

Now I understand that popping prebuilt systems in the results is easier than building a DB of the constantly changing variety of batteries, inverters and charge controllers. But right now it seems all buy and no build.

But not Hercules. Which is my default after my Makita stuff got stolen out of a work truck.

I picked up a Kill A Watt that shows peak usage so I can make sure the CA is rated correctly.

Thank you for the input on batteries. This has me conflicted because if there is just one battery and it fails the system dies. But if I have multiple batteries and just keone fails the system still dies and I have to replace every battery anyway since you can’t mix and match. But that last option has more cables needed.

I have a basic handyman electrical kit so I can crimp standard household gauges 10 and smaller wires but will eventually have to get crimps for heavier cables.

I’d love a calculator where you plug in how many watts you need at a given volts and it tells you the inverter size, battery capacity including cranking amps and solar cell wattage for a given zip code so that I can minimize the amount of manual math needed.

And at what size system do I need a cooling fan? And how big does that fan need to be?

An issue we have this week is the hurricane. Multiple people on Facebook looking for a place to sleep that has power so they can run their CPAP. Any system capable of charging a tool battery (essential for chainsaws after a storm) is more than capable of running a CPAP overnight. And with a tool battery adapter you can charge a cell phone.

The problems I have with that:

1. most power tools do not have 12v chargers
2. that limits the ability to charge multiple types of tool batteries without having a dedicated 12v charger for each brand of batteries. I want to be able to plug in a Makita, Hercules or DeWalt charger into the inverter so that I’m not brand locked.
3. if the 12v too battery charger dies the whole system is useless. By plugging a standard AC charger into the inverter you can pull a backup charger you pick up at a pawn shop and just plug it in.

I get asked about what appliances to get all the time because I’m a handyman. I wrote up this short guide to copy and paste:

Tips for buying a fridge or any major appliance:

• Don’t until you absolutely need to, because…
• Most modern ones are crap and won’t last more than 5 years, but…
• The EU just made it so that any new major appliance must be repaired by the maker for 10 years because they are sick of all the waste created by cheaply made crap
• When you do buy one make sure it is one that could be legally sold in the EU so you can get one that lasts.
• Do not get any fancy features.
• The more features an appliance has the more it costs, obs, but…
• The more features an appliance has the more things there are to break which means more long term cost of ownership.

Ice cube trays still work when the ice maker says to change the $40 filter. Any smart appliances (IoT device) is a network liability and the next thing you know your dishwasher is part of a botnet hoggin up your bandwidth and there will never be a firmware update to fix it.