As you know, I’m quite interested in renewable energy and solar water heating is pretty high up on my agenda. It’s described as “New Technology” and nothing can be farther from the truth as putting water into dark-coloured containers and leaving it in the sun has been known for millennia.
Here in Greece almost every house has the modern equivalent of this, such as these gravity-fed tank systems here. Cold water is more dense (and hence heavier) than hot water, so the cold water falls down from the tank into the heat exchanger underneath and as it is heated by the sun, it becomes less dense hence it is lighter and so rises back up into the tank. As it cools, it descends again, and so the cycle repeats itself. Nice and primitive, with no moving parts (except a pump that pumps cold water up to the tank to replace the hot water that is drawn off by the user).
It’s something similar to this that I will be having, except that my tank will be inside the attic of my house, to protect it from the heavy frosts that we have in winter. I have a variety of options as to how to stop the water in the heat exchanger from freezing, but I’m still undecided.
One thing about being on an obscure island is that occasionally you encounter unusual and obsolete motor vehicles that will have long-since been transformed into a pile of baked-bean tins had they been on the mainland, and Agkistri is no exception.
The vehicle in the background is quite interesting. It’s a Piaggio APE50 – a 50cc three-wheeled pickup and long-term readers of this rubbish will recall, in one of its reincarnations long-since lost to history, that I found an older version of one of these on wasteland in Belgium back in the 1990s and a friend and I rescued it and took it to the UK, where it resides in Stoke-on-Trent (or did anyway, the last time I heard anything about it).
But the one in the foreground is even more exciting. This is a three-wheeled motor scooter pickup from, probably, the 1950s. I’ve never seen one of these before so I had a good look around at it. It’s powered by a Zundapp engine similar to that fitted to the Zundapp Bella scooters, and has an external primary chain and, would you believe, a shaft drive from the gearbox to a conventional rear axle. Clutch is on the left-hand side of the handlebars, front brake is on the right, rear brake is a footpedal as is the gear lever.
Now, if only I had room in my suitcase, this would be winging its way back to France with me, for I think that it’s magnificent.
