… a few of my critics.
But I bet that it won’t!
Yes, it’s a halogen heater with two bars – that’s 800 watts – quite happily burning away this afternoon in my attic.
Considering that it’s the middle of winter, receiving more than 200 amp-hours (that’s over 2.5 kw) of solar energy must be something of a record and with the batteries fully-charged by 10:00 I had to do something with the surplus energy – solar-heated water might be fun but I felt like being adventurous.
At first I ran the heater at 400 watts but at the peak time (between 13:00 and 14:00) I ran it at 800 watts and the system took it quite happily.
I was quite impressed of course.
My next step now is to find a small microwave oven, and to cook my tea in it. You all know the reason behind this story.
For the benefit of those who don’t, a coule of years ago I was sharing my thoughts about running a microwave oven in here with someone whom I thought was a good friend. And what he did after this was to post the details of this chat into an internet discussion forum of which he was a member so that they could all have a good laugh about it and call me some rude and offensive names.
Of course, no friendship can remain after that kind of behaviour. And I am determined to prove them wrong.
This morning the temperature in here was just 9°C – rather disappointing because last night was quite warm outside, just a mere -14.1°C.
It was far too cold to go outside and work this morning of course and so I stayed in, had the halogen heater on and read a book or two. The room slowly warmed up (and I mean slowly) but with halogen heat, it heats a person pretty quickly and I was quite comfortable here with that
After lunch (durng which I encountered the likes of deep-frozen tomato) I carried on with the ceiling in the bedroom, seeing as there was no shopping to do today (I’d dealt with that in Montlucon yesterday).
That kept me busy for a couple of hours right up until 18:00 and then I knocked off. I’d done enough down there and I was freezing.
And so I came up here and lit the fire.
Tea at 21:00 was agony. Minus 8 in the verandah and everything was frozen to everything else. Outside we had -13°C and that was at 21:50 – I shudder to think what it might be now.
I cannot fathom why you don’t already have a microwave. Internally I gather most are 9 – 15 volts DC.
Well they make them to run in caravans from leisure batteries so there should be one that will work for you.
It’s the current consumption that’s the issue. I wanted to see if I could run something at 800 watts for a continuous 15-minute period on my system before I went out and invested in a microwave. But yes, Krys, they do indeed have 12-volt microwaves, and that was the point of the discussion I was having a few years ago, the discussion that attracted … errr … adverse criticism.
But now I know that I can do it, next stop is to find a cheap basic microwave, an ASDA or Tesco type of thing at £30 or so. When the house is organised (whenever that might be) I’ll be buying a big woodstove to cook on in the winter. For the summer I’ll be using a slow cooker, an electric steamer and hopefully a microwave oven. I want to get away from the idea of bottled gas.
You could make your own gas… All it needs is for you to build a methane digester and you’re there.
that’s a plan for later
Here’s another thought too… They devised for Africa where voltages and current may be very variable during the day, a novel gas generator. It needed a dumpy gas cylinder that was part-filled with water. Then electricity was passed through to crack the water. The oxygen was let out through a vent while the hydrogen was contained. That hydrogen though at low pressure was good for cooker fuel.