1st try @ solar calculations

Arkansasoffgrid

I found a interactive site and came up with this as a 1st rough draft for daily usage.
29 13w cfl x 1.5hrs =565.5w
3 ceiling fans 25w/ea x 10hrs =750w
2 hair dry 1800w x .1hrs =360w
1 microwave 1200w x 1hr =1200w
1 fridg "360kwh/yr" =1000
1 6 cup coffee pot =100
1 mini-split ac 500w x 12hrs =6000
1 clothes washer 280w/load =280
1 gas dryer 250w/load =250
1 wtr pump 216w x 1.5hr =324
1 laptop computer 33w x 3hr =99

Total daily usage 10925.5 watts @ .90% eff = 12144 watts. Max peak load was 4485 watts, but I think its unrealistic to assume all these appl. would run at once. It suggested 15 200w panels @ 4hrs peak sun & 843ah batt @ .30% discharge for 24 hrs autonomy. This will be a 48v system.
Would appreciate input/experiences since this is my 1st attempt @ energy calculations for our home. Also generator suggestions for these figures.

Cariboocoot

Re: 1st try @ solar calculations

Lots of big power users in there. 10kW hours is a pretty large off-grid load demand. What's more all the numbers are speculative, not measured. Be prepared for surprises.

If you run the 10kW hours per day through the Icarus formula you get this:
10,000 / 0.52 /4 = 4800 Watt array.

Look at it from a battery POV: 10kW hours / .90 inverter efficiency = 11kW hours plus consumption about 11.5kW hours DC / 48 Volts nominal = 240 Amp hours used, 25% DOD = 960 Amp hours.

Standard 10% peak current array calculation: 96 Amps * 48 Volts / 0.77 = 5984 Watt array. or in actuality two 3kW arrays on two controllers because no single controller would handle 96 Amps @ 48 Volts.

I think I'd be rethinking loads to see if they could be shaved down a bit. Using an inverter capable of gen support for those occasions when you need to run large loads like the laundry will save quite a bit.

icarus

Re: 1st try @ solar calculations

Half your load is the mini split. Adding insulation, shading etc to drop that load by a lot...would help a lot. Evap cooler perhaps.

If you need A/C, consider dumping the hair dryer would make sense. Also the coffee pot. If you have gas (Nat or LP) a stove top Mr. Coffee is a pretty good alternative. Do you really need 29 CFLs going all the time? Do you really need a dryer if you need A/C? Line drying is free.

The old axiom is, do everything you can do to conserve. Wh, then do some more conservation, and then do your load calcs. Also, remember, loads always grow with time, people always over estimate thier PV potential, and at the same time underestimate thier loads.

Good luck and keep in touch,

Tony

Arkansasoffgrid

Re: 1st try @ solar calculations

Ok those were worst case scenarios, home is getting 6" spray foam insulation in walls, ceiling's, & floor. So ac shouldn't run that much. Clothes dryer winter only, wife has 5+ft of hair so hairdryer will probably run 2-3 times a wk. Coffee pot can definitely be stove top. Was planning generator support if needed at bath time. Would like to run home off one of the 4kw offgrid kits sold on this forum.

stephendv

Re: 1st try @ solar calculations

Arkansasoffgrid wrote: »

1 mini-split ac 500w x 12hrs =6000

There's a big difference between 12kWh/day in summer vs. 12kWh/day in winter. If the mini-split will only be used in summer, then you can halve the energy requirements for winter and can then use a much smaller array (At a glance, if that system were installed here in Spain and you needed 6kWh/day in winter, you could probably get away with a 3kW array.)

I would go through those numbers again and split them up into summer/winter, and then work out the estimated energy from PV for both summer and winter separately, instead of an average of 4 sun hours for the whole year.

NorthGuy

Re: 1st try @ solar calculations

Your main load is the mini-split, so it might be highly seasonal. In summer, you need cooling, which is mostly a day time load and you have much more sun. Most of your other loads are day loads too (or could be made into day loads). But how much heating do you need in winter (if any)? Heating is needed mostly in the night time. The challenge here may be to design a system that will fare well in both summer and winter. Do you run PVWatts to figure out the difference between your summer and winter insolation?

The generator should be sized to meet the usage. Some people like to use a small generator and spread its usage over time to make it more efficient. Others prefer a big generator to run less and charge batteries. You can go either way.

Arkansasoffgrid

Re: 1st try @ solar calculations

Planning on wood heat for winter, with propane as a backup.

Organic Farmer

Re: 1st try @ solar calculations

I am not on the bandwagon of shifting loads from electricity to petroleum, because that still means that your consuming and paying for energy resources from off-site.

6" of foam is a lot of foam, and foam is expensive. You get 100% of the benefits of foam from 1" or 2". Foam is expensive. Then shift to fiberglass batting. I sprayed-on 2" of foam, and then I hung 9" of fiberglass. Often working two different materials can give you the benefits of both, while cutting costs. Like combining steel rebar with concrete.

Consider LED lighting rather than CFL.

We heat with wood, we go through 3 1/2 cords/year here in Maine. We have never cooked with electric, we hare currently cooking with propane, but we want to shift away from propane and using only wood. We live in a forest, so wood is here.

I question the need for 2 hair dryers, however they only run for a few minutes. If that is your luxury then fine.

A microwave is not a big deal, again if you rarely use it for more than 5 minutes/day.

There are coffee pots that only run when brewing, then the coffee sits in a thermos.

As everyone has said the mini-split ac is a huge load. When we lived in the South we used a swamp-cooler.

A gas clothes dryer, consumes both gas and electric. Just looking at one fuel, can mislead your thinking about how much it uses.

A well pump is a need.

I think laptops are way better than desktop computers.

NorthGuy

Re: 1st try @ solar calculations

Arkansasoffgrid wrote: »

Planning on wood heat for winter, with propane as a backup.

If there's no electricity needed for heating (although there may be motors to distribute the air over the house) you only have half of the loads in winter, and you're not that far north, so the best way is to size everything for summer, and it'll be automatically enough for winter.

Since most of your loads are day-time, you only need minimum battery bank. To get you through 24 hours while charging between 50 and 80%, you need 12kW/0.3 = 40kWh of batteries - roughly 800AH. That's how much you need in a cloudy weather. When it is sunny, you will only use a fraction of this and your batteries will be on float most of the time. In reality, you may get away with less than this because you may not need cooling when it's cloudy (may not be true in your situation), so 6kW/0.3 = 20kWh - roughly 400AH. This would be absolute minimum, not much room for error. IMHO, something around 600AH would be reasonable.

Panels should provide all the power during the sunny weather plus losses, say 15kWh/day. In addition to this, you need some extra power to re-charge your batteries when you're coming out of a cloudy period, say 5kWh/day. Assuming that sunny day is 5 hours of sun, you need 20kWh/5 = 4kW of panels.

Let's see how it works in winter. Assuming 2 hours of sun, you can produce 8kWh. This should be enough to support 6kWh of loads, but because of the losses in batteries, it's rather tight. Since panels are cheap, it won't hurt to go with 5kW array.

Assuming you size 600AH/5kW, you won't need generator much, only in a cloudy weather. You will need 60A of charging current, which, with 85% charger efficiency and 55V, is almost 4kW. If no sun at all, you'll need o run it for about 2 hours every day for charging. Generator produces AC, so it is much more efficient to feed it to the loads than to convert to DC to charge batteries then converting back to AC. All these conversions take out 40% of power. So, you can choose to do charging at slower rate to make generator run longer. During the longer run, it'll power more loads directly. The minimum you can go with 600AH batteries is 40A, which is 2.5kW and this will re-charge your daily use in 3 hours or so.

While generator charges batteries, it also needs to support loads. And you want to pile up as many loads as you can. Assuming you add 3kW of loads. Then your generator can be (4+3)/0.8 (safety margin) = 9kW. If you want to go with slower charging, it is Ok if some big loads come up and decrease charging current temporarily, it will only make it run longer, which is why we wanted to go with smaller generator in the firs place. Therefore, in this case (2.5 + 1)/0.8 = 4.5kW. So, you can either go with slow-charging 5kW generator or with quick-and-done 9-10kW.

westbranch

Re: 1st try @ solar calculations

We did a Time of Day use estimate, hourly for the day 07:00 to 23:00 as our overnight use would only be the fridge and any other items that might run 'silently' but all the time, clock fans, etc.
Used Excel, and did totals for each item per day and totals per hr of day. Gets you thinking about just what you really use ...

have fun.

Thom

Re: 1st try @ solar calculations

Organic Farmer wrote: »

I am not on the bandwagon of shifting loads from electricity to petroleum, because that still means that your consuming and paying for energy resources from off-site.

6" of foam is a lot of foam, and foam is expensive. You get 100% of the benefits of foam from 1" or 2". Foam is expensive. Then shift to fiberglass batting. I sprayed-on 2" of foam, and then I hung 9" of fiberglass. Often working two different materials can give you the benefits of both, while cutting costs. Like combining steel rebar with concrete.

Consider LED lighting rather than CFL.

We heat with wood, we go through 3 1/2 cords/year here in Maine. We have never cooked with electric, we hare currently cooking with propane, but we want to shift away from propane and using only wood. We live in a forest, so wood is here.

I question the need for 2 hair dryers, however they only run for a few minutes. If that is your luxury then fine.

A microwave is not a big deal, again if you rarely use it for more than 5 minutes/day.

There are coffee pots that only run when brewing, then the coffee sits in a thermos.

As everyone has said the mini-split ac is a huge load. When we lived in the South we used a swamp-cooler.

A gas clothes dryer, consumes both gas and electric. Just looking at one fuel, can mislead your thinking about how much it uses.

A well pump is a need.

I think laptops are way better than desktop computers.

Are you planing to have the stove outside for summer use ? Will it make the kitchen to hot in the summer ? Great idea no brought in fuel. I want a summer outside kitchen for bread baking.


Thanks Thom

SolInvictus

Re: 1st try @ solar calculations

westbranch wrote: »

... our overnight use would only be the fridge....

You can eliminate the fridge's load on the batteries at night by powering it through a timer. Set the timer to turn it on in the morning when there is enough power from the PV panels to run it and turn it off in the evening before the power decreases below what it consumes. Add bottles of brine for the freezer and water ice bottles for the refrigerator. Brine is salt water. The more salt you add to the water the lower the freezing point ( Getting Your Salt Content Right for Brine Freezing, PDF file). It is possible to add enough salt to make it freeze below 0 F. A lot of heat must be added to ice or brine to melt it, and while it is melting, the temperature remains constant. You move the ice bottles from the refrigerator to the freezer in the morning to refreeze the water and then from the freezer to the refrigerator in the evening to keep it cold. You can put some 1 gallon water jugs in the refrigerator as additional thermal mass. It works better if you improve the insulation of the fridge (for example, glue Styrofoam on the outside or put a blanket on top), but it is not required. You can also remove the light bulbs in the fridge or replace them with LED bulbs. I bypassed the defrost timer on mine to disable the heating element which requires me to manually defrost the freezer occasionally.

This essentially turns the fridge into a battery storing the PV power from the daytime in the form of water ice, frozen brine and cold to be warmed at night. If you run a fridge like normal, it draws more than half of its energy from the batteries using up those batteries much faster. This idea limits battery discharge to dark, cloudy days (sometime the clouds are thin providing enough PV power to run it) and starting power for the compressor. It also means the fridge will not be running in the evening if you make dinner using electric kitchen appliances. If you are miserly with using the battery power, the batteries will last longer and cost less.

Arkansasoffgrid

Re: 1st try @ solar calculations

Please keep replies coming, this is the type data/experience I was looking for.

SolInvictus

Re: 1st try @ solar calculations

Demand side management can range from minimal to extreme.

Clocks and smoke detectors can be operated from rechargeable batteries that get recharged only on sunny days. It is also advisable to use battery power clocks because the frequency stability of an off-grid inverter is not as good as the grid causing AC clocks to drift faster than normal. You could use a mechanical windup alarm clock or kitchen timer. Eliminate phantom loads with the switch on a power strip. The power supply of my laptop computer sucks 12 W when the computer is off making it essential that I really turn it off with the switch on the power strip.

After several sunny days with a properly sized PV system, you will have surplus power that will be wasted if you do not find a use. You could use the electric coffee pot on those days instead of the stove top pot. You could turn on incandescent lamps to heat your house. You could send the surplus power to an electric air heater or heater wire that is embedded in the floor in mortar under tile or in a concrete slab. You could embed resistance wire in the ground beneath a greenhouse or chicken coop. Some freezers have a super freeze mode. You could heat water. For example, if you have at least 500 W of surplus PV power, you could use an induction cooktop to boil water during the day and store it in a vacuum insulated thermos for use at night to make soup or as preheated water for cooking. You could insulate a 400 gallon water tank and install an electric water heater. The water from this tank preheats the cold water before it enters the hot water tank reducing propane consumption, or you could pump the warm water through a radiator in your house. Sizing your system to run your air conditioner will probably mean that you will have the surplus power in the Fall, Winter and Spring, but not summer.

These systems to consume surplus power can be operated manually or set up to trigger automatically when a certain battery voltage is reached, such as just before the charge controller enters absorb mode.

You can point some PV panels with an azimuth of southeast and southwest and an elevation of 45 degrees to increase the power generated in the morning and evening. These PV panels will generate about 94% of the power compared to pointing them in the optimal direction, but you spread the power out through out the day when you are more likely to use it, thus reducing the load on the batteries and the huge spike of power around noon. You will be able to attach more PV panels to the same wattage charge controller without wasting power. With PV panels currently being cheap and batteries expensive, I think it is worth it.

Run your air conditioner during the day when there is enough power from the PV panels to run it. In the evening turn it off and let the house temperature rise. You could use a timer to control it similar to the fridge. To reduce solar gain in your west facing windows, install awnings, use insulated inserts in the windows with reflective aluminum or plant trees that shade the windows in the summertime.

If installing PV panels on the roof of the house, insure there is an air gap between the roof and panels. That will help cool crystalline PV panels allowing them to operate more efficiently and will shade your roof reducing heat gain during the summer. You can not beat aluminum for reflecting sunlight off of a roof or outdoor battery box keeping the interiors cool.

Cariboocoot

Re: 1st try @ solar calculations

Yeah, nothing like filling your 'frige/freezer with jugs of water to make sure there's no room for the food. Oh yes you take it out when you put food in, and vice-versa. Lots of jug juggling which achieves nothing because unless the mass remains in the cooler and cold it offers no advantage.

Some people are full of good ideas, others are full of something else.

NorthGuy

Re: 1st try @ solar calculations

Cariboocoot wrote: »

Some people are full of good ideas, others are full of something else.

How do I tell them apart?

Cariboocoot

Re: 1st try @ solar calculations

NorthGuy wrote: »

How do I tell them apart?

Aye, there's the rub!

zoneblue

Re: 1st try @ solar calculations

Coot youre getting more cynical by the day mate.

BTW some marine compressor fridges have built in gel packs, and the controller detects charge voltage and deep cools the packs, then on battery discharge lifts the thermostat to let the gel packs unload. This keeps the danfoss unit more or less off over night.

SolInvictus

Re: 1st try @ solar calculations

Cariboocoot wrote: »

Yeah, nothing like filling your 'frige/freezer with jugs of water to make sure there's no room for the food. Oh yes you take it out when you put food in, and vice-versa. Lots of jug juggling which achieves nothing because unless the mass remains in the cooler and cold it offers no advantage.

Some people are full of good ideas, others are full of something else.

There are many free ideas here. Demand side management can be a pain in the rear end with some ideas being more convenient than others. People can pick and choose what is best for them. I hope some people can learn from my experience of living off-grid for two decades and making it work with a system that began with 400 rated watts of PV, eight 390 Ah, L-16 batteries and a relay switched charge controller. I hear you screaming that is impossible to keep them charged with that dinky PV array, and yet I made those batteries last 14 years before I replaced them with the 8 Crown CR-395's that I currently use. It might be of some use to the readers here to understand how I did it. The idea with the fridge is one of many, and it is a good one for minimizing the negative impact that a fridge has on battery longevity.

Yes, one has to move ice bottles back and forth between the refrigerator and freezer. However, a second freezer in the garage could be set up to work automatically.

I began with a refrigerator/freezer that ran from propane or electricity. For the first 10 years I ran it only from propane. Then I expanded my PV array by adding a 120 W PV panel which generated enough power on sunny days to power the 250 W fridge for about 4 hours. I ran it for many years using a combination of electricity and propane. With cheap PV panels and efficiency of standard fridges improving, this is no longer a good approach.

My current fridge is an all electric Amana 20 cubic foot with an Energy Star rating of 575 kWh/year to 789 kWh/year (1.6 kWh/day to 2.2 kWh/day) that I obtained used. I made this thing work by adding two 135 W PV panels to increase my array to 750 watts without significantly discharging my batteries and having enough electricity for all of my other uses. I have not used my generator to back up my PV system since the 1990's. Demand side management is effective.

My fridge has the freezer on the bottom and the refrigerator on top. I insulated the top of the fridge with a folded blanket that allows me to use the surface to store things. I did not otherwise insulate it. I removed the three, 40 W incandescent bulbs that illuminated it. I bypassed the defrost timer to disable the defroster. I rearranged the glass shelves so that air flow was minimized from the top shelf. When idle, the refrigerator stratifies the temperature with the top shelf becoming warmest (4 C to 10 C) and the bottom shelf and crispers at 0 C. Insulating the top of the fridge lowered the temperature of the top shelf to ~5C in the morning. I put things on the top shelf that can tolerate higher temperature and to defrost.

My ice bottles are used plastic peanut jars (they do not break when the water freezes solid) ranging in size from 250 g to 1.1 kg (weight of the food) making them fairly small. I place three 1 gallon plastic water jugs on the bottom shelf of the refrigerator. Because I drink the water from one of the jugs, its water level varies. I never move these jugs into the freezer. They simply provide thermal mass for the refrigerator when it is not full of food. On one day I move three 250 g peanut jars containing ice between the freezer and refrigerator and on the next day, I move two 1.1 kg jars and one 250 g jar. The ice in these 5 containers (one of the 250 g jars is the same jar which allows me to monitor the rate that the freezer freezes the water) takes 3 days to melt completely with the fridge running for 2 hours each day. I have 8 brine bottles in the freezer and 3 more ice bottles that I use in a portable cooler when I go to town. Food provides the rest of the thermal mass. My ice and brine bottles occupy a small fraction of the available volume, and the sacrifice is well compensated by reducing the load on my batteries. The amount of thermal mass that must be added to the fridge could likely be reduced by insulating it better. Mine has 1.5 inches of Styrofoam for the refrigerator and 3 inches for the freezer.

In the summer my fridge needs to run 5 hours to keep the ice and brine frozen, and in the winter, about 4 hours. Because of the various directions I have orientated my PV panels, I have enough power from the PV array to run the fridge from 7 am to 4 pm. It is important that I can start it early because the weather pattern in the summer is clear in the morning and cloudy in the afternoon here in Arizona. Note this refrigerator consumes about 60% of its Energy Star rating, 1.1 kWh/day in the summer and less in the winter due to my efficiency improvements.

I have the timer attached to a power strip which is conveniently mounted on the wall where I can manually shut the fridge off on cloudy days or when I use high powered kitchen appliances, like the microwave oven or induction cooktop, further reducing the load on my batteries. Regarding the timer I have had a General Electric model 15079 and Defiant model 457864 (similar looking units) fail after a few months of operation. I am not sure if the failures were caused by running the fridge, my modified sine wave inverter or defective units. I am currently using a Brinks model 44-1021 digital timer which thus far, is working fine. I get ones that contain a battery so that I do not need to reset the timer every time I shut off the power. I also have a mechanical timer for backup.

Usually the freezer can go 2 to 4 months without needing a manual defrost. Defrosting is most frequent in late Winter and Spring. To minimize the need for defrosting seal all water and ice in containers that do not leak water vapor. That includes ice cubes in an ice cube tray.

This setup works very well for overnight use keeping the refrigerator cold and the freezer frozen. Corn picked fresh from the stock and frozen on the cob in airless plastic bags, is preserved for 2.5 to 3 months. If it is boiled, frozen, cut off the cob and sealed in airless plastic bags, it lasts at least 3 months (I haven't tested longer). It does not work so well after three cloudy days when I run it for only 2 hours/day to minimize the load on my batteries. If there are 4 or more consecutive dark cloudy days, then I have to discharge the batteries more to keep it cold and frozen.

My goal is to make my current battery array last 20 years. I do not know if I will achieve it, but I will try using an obsessive level of demand side management. My batteries usually are at a 90% state of charge and fluctuate a few percent above and below that value. I doubt that other people will adopt my level of demand side management, but I want to toss out a few ideas from which they can pick and choose.

zoneblue

Re: 1st try @ solar calculations

My goal is to make my current battery array last 20 years. I do not know if I will achieve it, but I will try using an obsessive level of demand side management. My batteries usually are at a 90% state of charge and fluctuate a few percent above and below that value

So you dont do a full absorb daily? How do you make that happen, out of interest?

SolInvictus

Re: 1st try @ solar calculations

zoneblue wrote: »

So you dont do a full absorb daily? How do you make that happen, out of interest?

The relay switches 352 W of PV or up to 24 A. For the first 10 years, that is all the PV power they got. With an equivalent of 4, 12 V batteries, when their voltage reached 14.3 V, there was 6 A charging each battery which meant they were essentially at the final absorb state and very well charged.

When I added the 120 W PV panel, its output was not enough to overcharge the batteries when I was home using power, so I connected it through a switch, fuse and diode to the batteries. When the relay switched off, the charging current would drop from around 30 A to 6 or 7A crudely simulating an absorb cycle, but that seldom happened because the propane/electric fridge was running from electricity.

When I added 2 more 135 W panels, I used the all electric refrigerator running on a timer as a shunt controller. It works fabulously with one 120 W and two 135 W panels. Because one of these PV panels has a south azimuth and the other has a southeast azimuth, maximum power output happens between 10 am and noon. The power from the PV panels tapers off in the afternoon which is effectively what happens during absorb. Then the timer shuts the fridge off around 3 pm given them another burst of current before sunset.

On cloudy days I reduce my power consumption. When there is a sunny day after several cloudy days, I continue with the reduced power consumption until the battery voltage is above 14.0 V to get them recharged as quickly as possible.

Basically the idea is to minimize the discharge of the batteries which can not be done when a small battery array is cycled down every night.

hogan646

Re: 1st try @ solar calculations

SolInvictus wrote: »

My ice bottles are used plastic peanut jars (they do not break when the water freezes solid) ranging in size from 250 g to 1.1 kg (weight of the food) making them fairly small. I place three 1 gallon plastic water jugs on the bottom shelf of the refrigerator. Because I drink the water from one of the jugs, its water level varies. I never move these jugs into the freezer. They simply provide thermal mass for the refrigerator when it is not full of food. On one day I move three 250 g peanut jars containing ice between the freezer and refrigerator and on the next day, I move two 1.1 kg jars and one 250 g jar. The ice in these 5 containers (one of the 250 g jars is the same jar which allows me to monitor the rate that the freezer freezes the water) takes 3 days to melt completely with the fridge running for 2 hours each day. I have 8 brine bottles in the freezer and 3 more ice bottles that I use in a portable cooler when I go to town. Food provides the rest of the thermal mass. My ice and brine bottles occupy a small fraction of the available volume, and the sacrifice is well compensated by reducing the load on my batteries. The amount of thermal mass that must be added to the fridge could likely be reduced by insulating it better. Mine has 1.5 inches of Styrofoam for the refrigerator and 3 inches for the freezer.

Hi, I was just wondering how much salt you add to the peanut butter jars. Thanks.

SolInvictus

Re: 1st try @ solar calculations

I have experimented with the salt concentration, and I advise you to do the same. The amount that seems to work best for me so far, is 2.5 tablespoons of salt and 3 cups of water (37 ml salt & 710 ml water). I have some bottles with 4 tablespoons of salt and 3 cups of water (59 ml salt & 710 ml water).

The bottles with more salt are to keep the freezer colder over night between sunny days, and the bottles with less salt allow the temperature to increase more to help get through several cloudy days while keeping the food frozen.

YehoshuaAgapao

Re: 1st try @ solar calculations

Computers, DVRs, air purifiers, fridges, freezers, and vampire loads in my house add up to about a 600 watt minimum constant load at my house. Loads can reach 1100 watts, and two active swamp coolers would raise that to 2000 watts. Max load about 2500 watts. Min load 15KWh/day, max load 50KWh/day. This doesn't include microwave, laundry, air conditioner (Late June - Early Sept), anything other than fridge plugged into kitchen outlets (toaster oven, coffee maker), dishwasher, range (house is all-electric) or garbage disposal. I have an oversized drainback solar water heating system that I leave unplugged from the grid - that load is about 150W for the two pumps (heat exchanger is in the drainback tank - AET Eaglesun DX-120-96). I'm on grid in-city, lots of gadgets, sister lives with me part time, niece, nephew, nephew's best friend live here intermittently.