Tag Archives: solar water heater

Tuesday 21st April 2015 – AT LAST …

furniture in bedroom les guis virlet puy de dome france… we finally have some furniture in the bedroom.

The chest of drawers is a couple of years old, the chair and cushion is from last year, but everything else, including the fluffy carpet that you can’t see, is from yesterday.

No mattress yet, but that will be up there tomorrow one way or another and that will mean that tomorrow night will be my first night sleeping down there. I have new bedding as you know, and I’ll have a good shower too so that I’m nice and clean for my nice new and clean bedroom.

I spent all morning installing the bed, and that was much longer than it ought to have taken. However, one of the sets of laths was 80cms, not 70cms – misfiled by someone at IKEA I reckon, and as I had no intention of driving back to Clermont Ferrand, out came the chop saw and that dealt with that.

After lunch, I emptied out the two chests of drawers, cleaned them, dismantled them, took them downstairs and reassembled them. So they are in place now. And that took me nicely up to 18:20 when I called it a day.

During my lunch break I did another load of washing seeing as how we had a nice day, and I emptied out the beichstuhl – such delightful jobs that I have to do around here. And I also fitted into the lights under the eaves of the house two of the new LED lightbulbs that I bought yesterday. 1.7 watts each, so that’s an equivalent of about 20 watts of incandescent light, they are much smaller and weigh less than half of the weight of the usual LED light bulbs. So with these, there’s not that much risk of them falling out of the bulb holders.

After having crashed out for an hour this evening, I made another mega kidney-bean and aubergine whatsit, and I remembered to put the olives and peanuts in it too, which is certainly progress. That will do me for the next 3 days too.

But I forgot to tell you yesterday – something that I saw that goes to prove just how far ahead of the times that I am. In IKEA yesterday there were a couple of proud notices – “all the water in the toilets comes from the rainwater that falls on the building” and “all the hot water in the toilets is heated by solar energy”.

Well, regular readers of this rubbish will know that I have been doing this for almost 20 years. As I have said on many previous occasions … "and you’ll say it again and again" – ed … the world is slowly catching me up.

0

Thursday 24th April 2014 – 19.5MM …

… of rainfall we have had between 20:00 and 21:30 – and there’s much more forecast; No issues about watering the plants then, that’s for sure.

I was up before the alarm again this morning and after breakfast that gave me almost 3.5 hours on the website. I like being on summr hours!

First job outside was to sow the beetroot and spinach seeds that I had left to soak. That meant doing a little bit of hoeing of course. And then I finished off the solar shower. That is exactly how I want it now, but there are some kind of pressure issues that need to be resolved. We’ll have to see how it goes.

After lunch I did a little measuring up for my next trick, but while I was doing that, my eye was caught by some blossom down in the jungle that is the bottom of my garden.

Of the 20 or so fruit trees that I planted in 1999 and 2000, one is still there, but it seems that there’s another one too. Way down the slope a little, and this is what the blossom is.

It’s surrounded by a pile of these scrub trees and is getting no light at all and so I resolved to deal with this issue.

By the tile I had knocked off I reckon that I had cut down over 20 trees (one or two of them were significant too) and the tree concerned is now clear of oerhanging trees. That will bring more light to the tree, and also more light to the rest of the garden, includind the vegetable beds.

Not only that, I managed to make my way out the other side too into clear space for the first time for 11 years and that really is something to celebrate.

And then tonight we have the rain …

I’m not sure what to do tomorrow.

-3

Wednesday 14th March 2012 – WHAT A SHOWER!

Even though it is soon to be the annual conference of an … errrrr … organisation (said he, using the term loosely) that featured quite heavily in these pages at one time or another, it is not to that which I am referring.

Neither am I referring to my visitors either.

And I use the term in the plural because I had more than one today.

First off at 09:00 this morning, the phone rang and it was Désirée, the local estate agent.

And 09:00 too, you might be thinking, but to everyone’s surprise, including Yours Truly’s, I’d been up for hours. And I mean hours as well. I’d been trying to speak to Désirée for a while and at last she was free and so she came round here for a chat.

Amongst the things about which we chatted, and probably the most important, was the building that I own in Montaigut. Long-term readers of these pages will know that I own something like a derelict warehouse there and I use it to keep some cars, namely the Traction, the 2000E and the Mark V Cortina estate.

Above it though is a large space that was formerly six large rooms on two levels, but the dividers, both horizontally and vertically, are long gone. I need to do something about this place and converting the upstairs into two apartments is what I have in mind.

And so I had a good pick of Désirée’s brains – after all, she’s the professional.

Another visitor was Bill, who came round with a radio-cassette player out of an old car. There was a tape stuck in it and being an electronic unit you can’t get the tape out without power.

At least, most people can’t get the tape out but with the aid of three long fine-pointed screwdrivers and a pair of fine long-nosed pliers, I can manage to do it.

All these years of a misspent youth, that’s what I put it all down to.

2012 first GARDEN FIRE BONFIRE les guis virlet puy de dome franceIn between the visits I finally managed to light the fire, the first of the year. And that is busy (even as we speak) disposing of much of the waste wood and the weeds that I have been pulling up this last couple of weeks.

You’ll notice though that it isn’t on the site of where the greenhouse will be. There was far too much stuff to burn, and the trees were overhanging far too much.

But I’ve left some over there – I’ll burn that off tomorrow and that should kill off many of the weeds on the site of where the greenhouse will be.

But back to the shower thing. At 18:00 I noticed that the water in the solar water heater was at 31°C today, and that the water in the dump load was off the scale again. So 5 litres of that water into the solar water heater gave me 38.5°C and I had my first home-grown shower of the year.

Just for a change I actually feel properly clean.

And I was right about the wind as well.

0

Tuesday 13th March 2012 – A FEW MORE …

… records tumbled today.

We had the glorious weather again, so much so that the water that is heated by the surplus energy from the solar panels, the “dump load”, was heated to such an extent that it went off the end of the temperature gauge – ie over 70°C.

That’s the first time this year.

The water in the solar-heated tank (a black plastic box with a glass lid) reached 26.5°C and that’s the highest so far (but still a far cry from the 45°C of midsummer) and if it hadn’t have been so windy, I would have put some of the water out of the dump load into the solar-heated tank to bring the temperature up to about 38°C and I would have had the first solar shower of the year.

But it was far too windy – I would have died of exposure I reckon, and the fact that showering outside in the all-together is the way that it’s done around here, it would have been indecent exposure too.

Talking of the wind, it’s died down now, after the last few days, but once again I had more wind energy created today than the cumulative amount of wind since I installed the power meters 2 weeks or so ago.

Mind you, I don’t think that we will have that again tomorrow.

But here’s an interesting and little-known fact, one that I can now prove. And that is that you can often have more power from a low-powered wind turbine than you can from a high-powered one.

Confused?

Well, let me explain.

Most electric motors, and wind turbines are no exception, have magnets in them and these operate the coils of the motor. Of course, the bigger and more powerful the motor, the bigger and more resistant are the magnets. And so you need more force to overcome the resistance in the magnets.

When you have a low-powered wind it will overcome the resistance in the magnets in a low-powered motor, and make the motor turn. However, there will not be enough force in this low-powered wind to overcome the resistance in a big magnet in a high-powered motor so that this motor won’t turn.

And there I was today, watching the little Rutland 90-watt wind turbine quite happily ticking over and giving me 10 – or 15 watts for much of the day while the big 400-watt wind turbine was doing nothing at all.

And then, all of a sudden there would be a stronger gust of wind and the big Air 403 wind turbine would start to turn, and once it had built up steam it would be there with 50 watts, or 80 watts, or even 113 watts on one occasion, while the smaller wind turbine was giving out 30 or 40 watts.

But be that as it may, the smaller wind turbine chucked out in total three times as much energy as the larger one over the 24-hour period under review. And it’s done that consistently over the last few years.

There are lessons to be learnt here of course – namely a collection of low-powered turbines will do more good than one big one over a continuous period, especially in a place like this.

0

Friday 2nd March 2012 – WELL, I DIDN’T …

… quite have my early night last night.

I started talking to someone on the internet just after I posted last night’s blog and it was 02:00 when I finally went to bed.

But here’s something that doesn’t happen every day – not only was I awake when the alarm went off, and not only was I breakfasting, but I was actually outside weeding the garden when the alarm clock went off this morning.

Wide awake at 07:30, I was, and I’ve no idea why. I must have wet the bed or something.

But it was a good day to be wide awake so early. By the time that I came in for a coffee – at about 11:50 – it was 24.6°C outside with gorgeous blue skies and everything. It really was marvellous.

Terry came round a little later. He had a job of work to do in the vicinity and so he popped by to sey hello. And I swapped a few 4mm bolts for a few sacks of sawdust – the composting toilet depends on sawdust, and plenty of it, and I was starting to run low, although you might not think so with all of the wood that I have cut up just recently

With it being so nice, I quickly coupled up the solar water heater -cum – shower unit. I was not really wanting to do that as there are a few improvements that I want to do, but it was a shame to miss out on the solar heat and the possibility of a shower some time in the near future.

I could certainly do with a shower anyway, and I’ll be heading to the swimming baths at Neris-les-Bains if it stays nice tomorrow.

With so much solar energy (we had 243 amp-hours today – that’s about 3KwH) the water in the dump load reached 48°C. That was the cue for the first load of washing for the year.

And there was plenty of that to do as well.

tabletop washing machine les guis virlet puy de dome franceAnd it was nice to sit outside this afternoon with a butty or two, a coffee from the electric coffee machine, and watch the washing machine do the business using water heated by the surplus energy off my system. It really is a sense of acccomplishment for all of this to happen.

But as for the washing itself, most of it is going to have to be done again. I tried to do it using these washing nut things but they turned out to be a dismal failure and haven’t made mush impression at all on the dirty stuff.

I’ll have to buy some “proper” washing powder stuff and do it again.

After all of that, I spent the rest of the afternoon in the garden again.

I didn’t have the fire going because I had the washing hanging out, but there’s now a huge mountain of weeds and so on ready to be burnt and I might do that tomorrow morning.

The area to where I’m going to move one of the compost bins is now clear. All I need to do is to dig up a few small tree stumps there, and compact some hardcore down to stop the weeds from penetrating from underneath, and then I can put the first of the bins there.

And when the pile of weeds has been burnt, I can start to put the greenhouse there where it ought to be.

It seems to me that everyone is starting to come out of hibernation now.

-2

Sunday 26th June 2011 – Just so as to show …

… everyone what today was like here, I’ve posted a pic of the temperatures that we had today.

temperature solar water heater les guis virlet puy de dome franceThe maximum temperature outside was 33 °C today and at 17:36 this evening it was still over 31°C. In the heat exchanger the temperature reached an impressive 63.7°C and the water in the solar water heater, the black plastic storage container with an old caravan window over the top was 42°C.

That was the cue for a beautifully warm solar shower and I didn’t miss out. It really was nice.

And so this morning Marianne forgot to ring me about this meeting at La Cellette but I was wide awake having had a severe attack of cramp in bed and so I made it in time. And with about 10 officials, one representative of the press and one photographer, they had a grand total of 0 visitors for the two hours that this meeting was on. Ahhh well ….

Marianne invited me to lunch which was nice of her and we had quite a chat afterwards, and back here seeing as it was such a nice day and with wind too, I did a huge pile of washing – something that I haven’t done for a while.

We followed that with the solar shower and that was really it. It’s Sunday, my day of rest, and so I’m not going to be working too hard today.

-7

Saturday 21st August 2010 – Here’s an interesting photo.

solar water heater temperature les guis virlet puy de dome franceThe time is 17:47, the air temperature outside underneath the solar shower is 31°C, and the water in the solar heating tank, all 20 or so litres of it, is 44°C.

Today has been a right scorcher right enough and I almost scalded myself when I had a shower. Believe me, 44°C is really hot and I am ever so impressed that I have managed to heat to this extent 20 litres of water in a black plastic container with an old caravan window over the top

But that’s not all either. The automatic water heater ran for several hours and I had 44.5°C in that. And that’s 50 litres of water in an open bucket with a 12-volt heater element floating on top, heated by surplus energy from the solar panels that would otherwise be dumped. Just imagine what the temperature would have been if it had been 30 litres of water in a sealed and insulated container.

That’s going to be my next trick – making an immersion heater, and I have a 30-litre container all lined up for use. All I need now is the time.

I reckon that the water heating, in summer anyway, is making great strides, and I have plans for the winter too. They involve some of that flexible copper tubing would round the chimney of my wood-burning stove. I also have 3 solar panels and a 400-watt wind turbine in the barn and I don’t use the power from there all that much – just the lighting in the barn, the washing machine and charging up the power tools. So if I made a portable immersion heater then in winter I could take it to the barn and rig up an automatic water heating system over there. I reckon that the batteries in the barn were fully-charged on an average of one day in two throughout last winter. Probably not by much, but nevertheless it will be worth seeing what happens over there and what results I would get.

While we are on the subject, I bumped into Simon at LIDL today. He had a 12-volt water tank in his van and he took it out a while ago. He’s offered it to me so I’ll install that in the barn for now and see what happens.

I had an expensive day out shopping today and I blew a mammoth €35. And all on the usual stuff today – nothing exciting or extravagant. I don’t know where my money goes. And while I was in the Carrefour I had to give directions to this Dutch guy who was looking for a public convenience for his little girl. And it wasn’t until we’d been talking for a few minutes and he said “are you English? I think that your Dutch is excellent” that I realised that we had been talking in Dutch. Well – he might have been, and I was replying in Flemish – ik spreek een beetje Vlaams – but I’m really going to have a go at remembering some of the languages I used to be able to speak.

What got me thinking about languages too was that I had a visitor this evening – the guy off this building site who wanted to talk about solar panels. He studied in the Soviet Union round about the same time that I was driving buses there and I reckon that I can’t remember anything at all of all the Russian I used to speak.

I’ve also been tidying up here. I have some tie-wraps with screw-holes that will be ideal for a job that we are doing on Lieneke’s house. But can I hell find them and my place is just a total tip. It’s high time I exerted myself to make an effort – yet another job for when this perishing job on Lieneke’s house is finished  

0