… anything like my goal today, more’s the pity.
I had something like a late night last night and so this morning I wasn’t really feeling up to it, although I did have the usual couple of hours on the web pages.
Before lunch I managed to assemble both sides of the solar shower unit.
You’ll notice the extra-long leg on the side that will be furthest away from the wall. Because of the slope of the land I need to build it up like that, and then cut away the surplus length.
You might also notice that the top rail is fitted the wrong way round. I did when I came down from lunch and so I had to change them round. THat wasn’t easy as the head stripped in one of the screws and I was there for about three quarters of an hour drilling it out.
But I was sidetracked for about three quarters of an hour. Checking on the dump load for the excess solar charge (which is a home-made 12-volt immersion heater), and we’ve been having some right excess loads just now – 180 and 190 amp-hours for the last few days, I noticed that the extension cable that leads to the immersion heater was red-hot.
Not up to carrying the load of 35 amps that’s been going along it at times, so I’ve had to resite the immersion heater so that it doesn’t need an extension cable. The wires aren’t getting so hot, but I still don’t like them and so I’m going to make something of a design alteration – instead of using one cable and bridging the two terminals of the element, I’ll remove the bridge and use two cables. That way, only half of the current will be running down each cable. Either that, or use thicker cable.
But I’m impressed with the load that it’s been carrying and the heat that’s been put out.
Back at the solar shower, I had a change to the design. And a positive one too.
I had completely forgotten that I had an old enamel shower base that I picked up in Brussels. I stumbled across that today by accident and found that it’s 80cm x 80cm. That will go quite nicely in the 90cm x 90cm shower unit, but two of the corners need trimming off, which I shall do tomorrow.
So here’s a photo of the framework of the solar shower unit. It’s all assembled now and bolted to the wall of the lean-to where it will live for the next couple of years.
The shower base isn’t installed yet – as I said, it needs trimming to fit. And the woodwork hasn’t been treated, which was what I really wanted to do tonight so that the second coat of wood treatment would have gone on tomorrow first thing.
But it wasn’t through lack of effort. It was 19:45 when I knocked off today – long after my usual knocking-off time.
But I do want to finish it as much as I can tomorrow. We’re on a four-day week this week with it being Easter starting Friday and I’m not working on a Bank Holiday under any circumstances.
