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Forum Index : Solar : Deciding if I should build this solar heater
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Warpspeed Guru Joined: 09/08/2007 Location: AustraliaPosts: 4406
Posted: 12:59am 22 Jun 2021
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I have never liked the concrete slab idea, or even a brick veneer house. High thermal mass can really work against you, either heating or cooling.
My house is very old, floorboards, weather boards, but extremely well insulated. The roof space is high and well ventilated. Its also the older design with lots of doors and individual rooms, not open plan like many modern homes.
So it all has a very low thermal mass, even the interior walls have now been insulated, and I can heat or cool individual rooms very quickly and quite cheaply. There are five air conditioners and six gas space heaters distributed around the house and workshop. All are hugely overpowered for the areas being heated or cooled. Very comfortable, and I have no desire to rebuild, even if I could afford to do so.
Have a good mate, got married a few years back and has built a huge house on a small block. Big windows, black roof tiles, open plan construction. A very nice modern home with every convenience, but its not toasty warm in winter, or cool in summer like my place.Cheers, Tony.
Revlac Guru Joined: 31/12/2016 Location: AustraliaPosts: 1024
Posted: 07:53am 22 Jun 2021
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Well, My Old Man built the house I grew up in, was there for 22 years, (never met the neighbour on one side) the house had a good concrete slab, double brick walls (50mm air gap between the 2 brick walls) and insulation in the roof, the roof was just a gradual curve and the tin sheeting went the full length of the house.
We never had any heating or cooling (no aircon) of any sort, it was always good inside compared to outside, mostly because the inside temperature did not change much, neither dose an underground house.
This was in SE QLD, summer temps up to 46c outside when I was there, winter used to get some good frost, a 60l bucket of water had 20+mm of ice on top and the grass we grew for the animals would snap if walked on.
Now 80km west of there in a timber house with insulation its difficult to keep 15c above the outside temp and in summer up to 48c and we have to use aircon and still about 15c below the outside temp.
The double brick house with concrete slab was great, might not be as good in other locations. Cheers Aaron Off The Grid
Davo99 Guru Joined: 03/06/2019 Location: AustraliaPosts: 1578
Posted: 06:06am 23 Jun 2021
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I think a great deal depends on the quality of the house and how it is set up.
I would gaurantee this place was built with saving every $$ possible in mind. Learning about the original owner and seeing his other handy work would confirm that.
I think I would prefer an elevated house simply because it's easier to change things and run pipes cables etc. With a slab house you are pretty much locked in unless you want to spend significant money. On a raised house you just cut a hole, fill the old one and that's it.
In thinking of it, I don't remember seeing a NON slab house being built. The double story monstrosity they put next to me at the old place was slab both floors.
If I ever did build I would pay a lot of attention to the efficiency of the place. Before we bought here, must have looked at 100 Homes pretty far and wide including Qld and I do not remember a single one that was said to have an energy efficient design. We looked at all range of homes from stone to just built brand new and not one had anything more than solar panels and a water tank.
Chances are I would have never bought this place had I not been so Ignorant. I had only lived on older houses before and tried paying attention to a number of things but the windows escaped me. Live and learn.
I don't like it here and would go through the hassle of Moving for somewhere different in the area but Mrs has been dead against it. That said, she has taken interest is some homes around the area. I look at what's going from time to time and again, still haven't seen anything promoted as energy efficient which is kind of surprising given the area is acreages and lifestyle homes rather than shoebox first home buyers specials.
The things you could do starting from scratch with some out of the box thinking would be fantastic. One could incorporate a Pool and use that as a heat / Cool bank for a start and incorporate a lot of things into the design.
rogerdw Guru Joined: 22/10/2019 Location: AustraliaPosts: 852
Posted: 01:56pm 12 Jul 2021
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Well I'm still at it.
Wife and kids were away for the weekend so I made a plan to get stuck into building the big version for the roof. Had all the main steel for a few weeks but been dragging my feet ... plus had to clean up a fair bit to make room to build this thing.
The main frame is 4.1 meters wide by 2.4 meters high and will have the ducting down the centre and with the evacuated tubes sticking out each side, horizontal ... 60 in total.
Looking at the size of it and realising the weight, I'm starting to wonder how I'm gunna get it up there ... might have to call in a few favours.
It's really only the main frame that will be the issue ... the rest I will assemble up on the roof.
I started by drilling the aluminium angle with 32mm holes to take the ally tubes ... then tackled the c-section with 63mm holes. Took a while but very pleased with how it went.
Then I cut up the steel and welded the main frame together. Need to do a lot more welding yet, but its getting there. It's upside down at present.
If nothing else, you can see I'm serious ... or mad!!!
I also tried out my new low temp melting point aluminium brazing rods ... and discovered the so and so's sold me plain aluminium rods!!! Supposed to melt at 480 degrees, but my tubes were melting before the rods would. So I've ordered from elsewhere, hopefully with better luck this time.
Cheers, Roger
Davo99 Guru Joined: 03/06/2019 Location: AustraliaPosts: 1578
Posted: 01:19am 13 Jul 2021
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Great to get an update on this interesting and yes, very serious Project!
I was reading thinking " Is he talking about welding AllY" having tried it and spoken even to experts who think it's not at all easy. I forgot about those new Rods though. If you bought them on Fleabay, send the Crap back or just as for a " Not as described " refund. Sick of these crooks getting away with ripping people off selling misrepresented garbage.
If you were doing plenty of this it Might be worth looking at getting a Spool gun for your MIG. I guess as this is likley to be a one off, probably not worth it but hey, He whom dies with the most toys..... I want to get a TIG torch for my MIG next and have a crack at that. Then again, There is nothing I can't do with the MIG but another skill wouldn't hurt to have.
I see you are using Gasless MIG. I have used that myself and get sick of people putting it down. I have challenged a Number of people to break my gasless welds and none have been successful so far. When you really grill some of the so called experts as to what is wrong with it, generally it comes down to something like " It doesn't look as good" in the end. Yeah well this isn't a sculpture I'm selling for thousands to the Guggenheim to display.....
If I were welding pressure Vessels or critical stressed components, then I would obviously go with gas but the reality is my backyard hacking welds rarely if ever fail. The same can't be said for the materials I use which I have torn and bent particularly when making implements for the tractor. Amazing the forces that can be generated so I use 3mm now as a minimum and 5MM when I'm not sure. Only time I have had a problem with the gasless welds was when I forgot to go over something I tacked and even that didn't fail Immediately.
Can't wait to see how this comes together. One day when the family are out you are going to have to crank this thing up in summer and see what power you can get out of it! I'll bet the numbers will be huge!
A side thing that was discussed was floor heating. I know a bit different to what you are doing but I was looking on fleabag the other day for High temp silicone wire. They are now doing a carbon fibre " Wire" for floor heating which seems far more economical than anything I found before. I did look at this a while back when we were re doing the kitchen. I thought it would be great to have underfloor heating in there as we were re doing the tiling anyway. The cost was ridiculous however so that got passed on. This new carbon fibre cable seems a Fraction of the price and I probably would have gone for that had I seen it at the time.
Not much use with air heating but you were talking about putting up decent PV panelage. I was wondering about putting this under some rugs to use as a floor heater. From the little I have read so far, it should be no problem to control the temp just with the current and the more wire you use, the lower the temp can be while still putting in decent power. I'm going to order 20M or so to have a play and learn with. There are a lot of complicated and exy controllers for this but I'll start with a Simple PWM controller and maybe a thermostat and go from there.
I have also been trying to find out more about absorption cooling where heat is used to make cold. If that were a viable DIY setup, could make the most of the hot air setup and with the amount of hot air available in summer, should be able to turn the house into a cold stores you could put perishables in!
Look forward to more updates as this progresses and certainly the results when it's up and running.
rogerdw Guru Joined: 22/10/2019 Location: AustraliaPosts: 852
Posted: 01:50am 13 Jul 2021
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Haha ... I just came in for coffee and remembered I hadn't switched on the fan this morning because it was a bit grey outside and the temperature wasn't very high yet ... and I get this blast of hot air ... went up over 86 degrees! Has taken 20 mins to get down to 42.
Don't think I'll risk it in summer, unless I have some scrap I want to melt!!!
Maybe I can build a clothes dryer for summer ... this thing for the hot air and a couple pv panels to spin the drum. Mmmm.
Still waiting for my differential controller ... you'd think Canada was on the other side of the earth or something ... err ... wait ...
I'll reply to the rest of your comment later tonight ... gotta get back to work ... someone's cracking the whip.
Cheers, Roger
Murphy's friend Guru Joined: 04/10/2019 Location: AustraliaPosts: 648
Posted: 07:34am 13 Jul 2021
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Roger, I can't see how you "drilled" those big holes so neatly. Did you do what I would, drill a 10mm pilot hole and then use what's called a 'chassis punch' to remove the remaining material?
rogerdw Guru Joined: 22/10/2019 Location: AustraliaPosts: 852
Posted: 08:40am 13 Jul 2021
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I did drill pilot holes, though only about 5mm ... then used a holesaw to create the holes.
I screwed a guide block to the drill press table then slowly did each one.
I was going to try kerosene or even WD40 when I did the aluminium ... but when I was in Bunnings I spotted a spray can of cutting oil put out by Suttons, who also happened to have made the holesaw set that I have ... so I used that for all of the holes and it certainly went well. Was $19.95, so expensive ... but seemed to help.
Took all evening to do the aluminium angle ... had them clamped back to back ... so the saw had to go through 12mm of metal.
The C-section I clamped back to back as well ... so halved the setup time in shifting it through. Those took pretty much all day to do.
I was amazed at the swarf coming off the cutter. If I fed it in properly I could get a curly piece a couple feet long before I backed off, blew away the swarf and lubed it again.
Got a nice box full of washers now. Cheers, Roger
Davo99 Guru Joined: 03/06/2019 Location: AustraliaPosts: 1578
Posted: 09:43am 13 Jul 2021
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Is it called Venom Cutting fluid?
I just looked up the MSDS. Much to my surprise, the active ingredient is... NAPTHA! The very same stuff that is in EVERY fuel conditioner and engine/ Oil treatment I have ever looked up. I didn't expect that, thought it was more going to be fish oil but there you go. It's mainly Naptha with what looks like a bit of oil but type unspecified.
Naptha is available in the paint section for $9 a litre. It's a great solvent and very clean burning as well. Bit surprising they use it in a cutting fluid ( to me anyway) but it is low flammability.... despite also being called Shellite ( lighter Fluid) or Coleman fuel or white spirit.... all stove fuels.
IF you want to clean out the fuel system/ in your car or small engine, wack some of this stuff in. Want to clean the engine of oil sludge, put some of this in, idle the car 5 Min and drop the oil and all good.
Seems works well as a cutting fluid as well. Would not have picked that. I use that Cheap " export" brand degreaser for Cutting fluid... and about everything else. Buy it by the box for $2 a can when it's on special at Supercreep. It works as starting fluid, degreaser, cutting fluid, loosening rusted nut's and bolts quieting squeaky seals and belts and weed killer. It's my big fat version of Windex! :0)
You are really putting a lot of work into this Roger and looks like you are doing it to a very high standard as well. You should be documenting this build and making " Plans" and selling them on the net. You well know how flavour of the month all this green initiative is. You could mention them on the washing machine Forum but they would all want " The Gubbermint" to come do it for them and complain they weren't doing enough when they didn't :0)
Based on the area you are doing, you should be getting around 4 Kw on a sunny day. That's decent heat! Still want to see what it will do on a Summers day. You could probably direct the heat up under a bit of 1/2" plate and have a solar BBQ. that would be novel and useful. Either that or make a DIY air Frier. One thing I like doing in summer is making dried Tomatoes. I plant a ship load and then have plenty to cut up, put on trays, herbs, oil and put in the oven for a couple of hours on low heat. I can honestly say with the backing of my food fussy daughter, I have never had dried tomatoes with the incredible flavour of what I make. I imagine you could do the same just by ducting the hot air over the top of a tray. You only need about 90o as a min but I do mine at about 120 just so they aren't there all day but slower would be better.
I actually missed the fact you drilled all the metal looking at the pics till I read your post. It looks factory neat. I have some sort of steel that is perforated like the wider stuff, don't know the name but they use it for making walls and partitioning in offices which is where I got it. Your's looks every bit as factory neat as that does which is what threw me.
Great to see the handywork of a clever, practical, capable man!
rogerdw Guru Joined: 22/10/2019 Location: AustraliaPosts: 852
Posted: 02:44pm 13 Jul 2021
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Yeah, in my naivety I thought I'd just buy some aluminium filler wire and weld up the pipes with my oxy. Well I found out the hard way that that wasn't going to work ... so I bought what was supposed to be those flux cored brazing rods ... but weren't!
Probably unlikely to do much ally welding in future, especially if these rods work as well as they claim.
What I really should do is go get some welding lessons so I have a bit of a chance ... but I've managed this far and I need to finish this job first.
That will be very interesting to see the results, sounds like a great experiment to try.
I did read of a low tech/low cost heating method for the home office, where they just used a heated mat to put their feet on ... and that supposedly made a big difference. I use a 150 watt heat lamp under my bench at work ... and apart from being rugged up, that is all the heat I need ... and I have it off as soon as I've warmed up. Rarely runs more than an hour a day in the cold weather.
I do keep wondering what I might be able to do with a lot of heat during the summer time, coz I'm sure likely to have an excess.
Yes, that's the stuff. Only 300ml, but I was happy with it and the dispensing method is very convenient.
Thanks for the kind words. I remember my dad showing me a plaque on an old chaffcutter at home on the farm when I was a kid which read ... "IFWO RTHDO INGDO ITW ELL" ... and you could almost consider it a curse.
We were there for a nephews birthday a while ago, and I took my son down to see it ... and it is still there after all these years.
If I spent as much time building stuff as I do fluffing about thinking and planning it ... I'd be on the fifth iteration by now ... probably be selling them or something.
It'll probably never find its way off my hard drive, but I have taken a heap of video of what I've done so far ... so if I ever got around to editing it, I could post it easily enough.
Once it's working autonomously and I can quote some real life, ongoing data, I certainly would be keen to see more built, though there would be dozens of different ways to do it. I guess if people don't have the ability to just copy what I've done already, I'd be happy to have them give me money for some blueprints ... for the cause of course.
It's certainly a different crowd over there ... they've been in the washing machine so long that most are completely brainwashed anyway. I'm sure they'd find some reason to berate me for building it the way I have, so I don't think I'd be bothered. I don't need to explain myself to them.
That's actually pretty close to the mark judging from my experience with this existing device ... and if I let the heat build up before turning on the fan ... I would expect it to pump out maybe 15kW for 5 or 10 minutes ... and slowly dropping back to around 4 or 5kW after half an hour ... assuming the sun stays out of course. Nuthin happens with no sun!
And this one will have an insulated duct system, insulated ducting to the rooms, extra reflectors onto the tubes, and possibly a preheater inlet system ... so all those figures could possibly be improved on.
That's interesting you should suggest this Dave, as I read a feature on a local lady who has set up a fruit and vegetable drying business and is doing well. She is picking up excess produce off local farmers and often paying them far more that what they can get at market ... value adding, and then selling it in a heap of fancy boutique places here in SA.
A photo in the article showed several commercial dryers/dehydraters in her plant ... and they'd cost megabucks to run too by the look of them ... so being able to do it with free heat could easily make a commercial proposition.
In fact in my research on evac tubes, I had seen examples of them being used for drying food ... so has always been in the back of my mind. I have plenty of tubes, so could easily purpose build another setup. It'd make a great story for the greenies, though I'm sure they'd find something wrong with the idea.
Now there's an idea ... I'm not really a green thumb so haven't made use of them ... but on our block, we have a huge glasshouse ... well actually five glass houses joined side to side. Maybe should be growing tomatoes to dry.
Haha, thanks. I wish I could carry that over into other areas of my life sometimes.
It would be interesting to know the dimensions of the pre-made stuff ... might have saved myself a lot of time.
You mentioned boys and their toys earlier ... there is one tool I'd love to have one day ... and that is a profile cutter like Colin Furze uses for a lot of his projects ... now that would be cool. Then I'd purposely be designing stuff with weird and complicated shapes just so I could use that tool.
Thanks for the encouragement.Cheers, Roger
Warpspeed Guru Joined: 09/08/2007 Location: AustraliaPosts: 4406
Posted: 10:38pm 13 Jul 2021
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Getting back to the aluminium welding.
I bought some of those trick aluminium brazing rods to try, and they do work very well with just a propane torch. Only two disadvantages, they are bloody expensive, and the aluminium must be in perfect pristine degreased and unoxidised condition.
But for fresh new store bought aluminium. it works great if you can get enough heat into it. Perfect for one off small jobs, but doing repetitive brazing to heavy gauge sections will be very slow and use up an unbelievable amount of propane and those (solid gold?) brazing rods.
As you have discovered, aluminium filler rod and oxy acetylene torch definitely does not work. ANY type of aluminium welding requires pure argon (available from Bunnings). Bunnigs are good, because you pay only once for the cylinder without any ongoing rental costs. It costs nothing to keep an argon bottle in the shed for years. You pay only for the refills. That argon will also work very well with a MIG welder welding either steel or aluminium.
Aluminium wire is obviously very soft, and it does not feed well through a normal MIG hose, so you really do need a spool gun for aluminium wire.
Your best bet for welding aluminium is argon plus a TIG welder. That is nice and slow, and with a bit of practice its possible to make good strong welds either with or without a plain aluminium filler rod.
If you buy an electronic Chinese TIG and and a Bunnings argon bottle, you can weld both aluminium (dc) or steel (ac) with it. And its excellent for welding either very light gauge sheet metal, or very heavy sections.Cheers, Tony.
rogerdw Guru Joined: 22/10/2019 Location: AustraliaPosts: 852
Posted: 11:52pm 13 Jul 2021
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I'm relieved to hear that Tony, hopefully they will do the job when they get here.
My tubing is secondhand, though I think it was all offcuts from new material and is in good shape. I have buffed the ends and it has come up beautifully.
Mmmm ... so can I use the oxy to heat it or do I need to get some propane?
And in my naivety, I wondered if I preheated the join area somehow close to temperature and then used my hot air desoldering gun to do the job. The melting point is supposed to be 480 degress and the hot air device goes to 550. I know, dreaming!!!
Haha yes, though that is what I used to join all the pipes for my first device. I didn't take any photos because they'd be too embarrassing to show ... but they did stick together. Though a lot of them would have a lot of globs of metal inside where it started to cave in!!!
Ok ... so I forgot to address that in my reply to Dave.
I do have a bottle of Argon which I bought when I bought the welder ... and it came from a place where I was able to buy the bottle outright and just pay for refills when needed ... ie. no bottle rental.
Whoops, I'm definitely out of my depth here ... I just assumed if I wanted to go down that track I'd just buy a roll of aluminium wire to put in the machine. Now I understand what Dave was saying.
Okay ... well I do have an electronic Chinese MIG/TIG plus my argon bottle ... and I did actually try using the TIG with the first lot ... but I made such a mess of my attempts that I went back to the oxy and did a far better job.
I definitely need some lessons.
Incidently, I did speak to a friend who is a welder and does amazing work with aluminium ... but his eyes went all funny and he developed some sort of tic ... so I didn't actually have the courage to ask him if he'd weld them for me as a paid job.
If these other rods don't do the job, I'll go back to him and have another go.
The photo isn't that good to see, but the ends did polish up well ... no corrosion or pitting.
Cheers, Roger
Warpspeed Guru Joined: 09/08/2007 Location: AustraliaPosts: 4406
Posted: 01:04am 14 Jul 2021
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If you already have a TIG welder and argon, that is definitely the way to go.
Plenty of info, and many you-tube videos on TIG welding.
Its rather like oxy welding in a way, in that its nice and slow, and you can really concentrate on what you are doing. MIG welding is much faster, but I find it much more difficult to control, at least for a beginner like me.
I have a big three phase MIG for the really heavy stuff, but much prefer TIG for the smaller more fiddly jobs. I originally started out using gas with the big MIG, but bottle rental from CIG was absolutely brutal. Went to gasless MIG, and as Dave says, it works perfectly well. Since I needed argon anyway for the TIG, now use that in the big MIG as well.Cheers, Tony.
Davo99 Guru Joined: 03/06/2019 Location: AustraliaPosts: 1578
Posted: 01:37am 14 Jul 2021
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Yeah well I made the exact same mistake years ago. I don't know who would buy those rods... Other than other people making the same error. I have since spoken to expert welders that do it every day and even they think gas welding ally is akin to Mission Impossible. Might be OK for TIG I spose which in my View is gas welding with electricity.
There is a lot of info on YT but I have seen it's even more pedantic and argued than the correct voltage to charge batteries or oil mixing ratios for 2 stroke engines. That said, you can still get some overall ideas and then just do what works best for you and your setup.
I remember doing a welding Job for a mate many years ago. I could tell he didn't look over impressed. When we went to fit the job up, he discovered he had laid it out wrong. No Problem, we'll cut it and do it again. Once he got it apart, he admitted he thought it looked like crap but trying to get the thing apart proved they were structurally as good as it was going to get and probably stronger than the metal itself.... Which later proved true when the part failed at multiple places OTHER than at the dodgy looking welds.
Getting used to my new welder a bit now. Made a new Burner the other day and it was watertight first time out. May be basic for some but was an achievement for me so quite happy with that and there was probably 400mm all up of leakproof weld I had to do.
I was looking for silicone wire to connect heater elements submerged in sand. Then I saw they use the high temp wire itself as a heating element. Looking some more I saw the Carbon Fibre stuff which is much cheaper and set up for the job. There are even controllers that allow multiple loops to get more heat with shorter wire runs over larger areas. I actually just bought a heap of heat pads. I wanted some for the plant cuttings I am trying to strike to grow more hedges around the place. I believe keeping them above 12oC on the soil temp will make them strike and grow much better so I thought putting a heat mat under the trays would be better that trying to heat the whole little greenhouse.
I could make whatever element I wanted with the carbon wire and would be especially useful for these low output requirements as well as testing it for home heating. The output per meter is pretty low so will require a fair bit to be effective I think. Some of the setups I have seen on the net though are eye watering with the power Consumption. I saw that at a Home we looked at that had underfloor. It had it's own Circuit board with more breakers than the rest of the house and capable of pulling about 4x the power as well. You'd need to be rich or turn the back acre into a solar farm to be able to run that.
I like a warm Room. The little heater here in the office is on a PWM and turned down to about 650W. I have burnt 203 Kwh of power though it so far this winter. Since the Diesel Carked it, I have been running a little heater out the back 24/7. It is pretty weak though, I doubt it's pushing any more than about 1500W. I am also realising how damn effective that little thing really is. Hopefully the new fan will arrive next week.
Confirming our earlier thoughts about heat soaking, I'm 107% convinced of that now. The other day Daughter turned off the fan heater because " We didn't need it going through the Day". Didn't get turned back on till about 8 Pm that night and everyone was complaining about the cold. The temp out the back had dropped to about 15 and it felt like 5. Then the AC had a hard time brining the temp back up because outside was about 5 and falling. Of course go into daughters room later and she has a fan heater she bought going in there with the room sitting at a cosy 43 C! Couldn't damn breathe in there!
Take away from that was Dad will look after the house Temp control and worry ( or not) about how much power we are using and you leave it the hell alone unless asked to do something.... Like help put up about another 30 Panels I have to get round too.
Well if you want some more, I'd suggest the $9 / Litre Naptha with a bit of oil in it. I am amazed at how many uses that stuff has and how cheap it is ( relatively) in pure form as against diluted into other products and sold as different solutions.
I Don't remember but my father must have shown me something that said " Just get it working for now and you can come back and do it properly later". I think that must have been right beside the sign that said " There is nothing so permanent as a Temporary solution". Seems to be the mandates I have followed. :0(
I will say for myself, Having moved out of home when I was 12 and living with my grandmother, there was no one around to teach me Jack so 90 % of what I knew I had to teach myself. I did have an uncle that would teach me things which I appreciated very much but not like having someone there all the time. Later on my father in law and I had big plans for what we were going to do and what he was going to teach me when he retired but soon as he did he got sick and never recovered so that never happened either which haunts me to this day.
That's why I love the Net/ YT so much. I have taught myself SO many things off the net and done several Very worthwhile and Profitable new Business ventures I have learned. Pretty funny when you can do something the first time and people say this is great, how long you been doing it? Well as of now, about 4 Hours! :0)
Always said you can use the net to watch porn, look at anti social media or play games or you can use it as the most powerful learning tool ever devised. Look at this very site as an example!
Yeah well you are not alone there. Unless I have every stage of a project clear in my head how I am going to go about it, I am extremely reluctant to start. The one thing I detest is getting near the end of a job and then the 2 volt light in my head slowly flickers into the realisation that I could have done the job so much simpler/ cheaper/ easier/ better than what I have had I thought about it more which means I'll never be happy with it. OTOH, I can think and plan things to the Nth degree and then still work out I could have done it better. Either that or my smart arse Intelligent mate comes along and innocently says, OK, but I would have just done this and I'm standing there thinking that was so damn obvious and logical how could I be so stupid not to see it straight off?
Like the Co gen idea atm. Will the little setup be adequate or should I go the bigger engine/ Motor? Don't want to find that I do the little setup and it's inadequate and I don't want to do the big one and find the little one would have done what I wanted and been easier to use. A smart man would know these things and not have to procrastinate and second guess all the time.
I can relate to that with the vids I have done very well. I don't build any finished products really, I'm more about showing people the workings so they can adapt the principals to their own needs. That and I don't want 50 things sitting around that I'll never use. I re use pretty much everything for different vids. I have been amazed at what people have come up with that would have never occurred to me. There is a guy in Argentina that used the concept for Drying grain. Didn't even know that was a thing! Few other like that as well. one guy uses one for Pyrolysis Tyres to make oil.
By the same token, you then get so many people asking for plans on what amounts to nailing 2 bits of wood together. I tell them, you are watching the plans. If a Dumb arse like me can figure it out and build it from scratch, surely you can by looking at it. If they can't, then it's just as well they don't lest they hurt themselves or someone else if they are so inept. Should send them to the washing machine site where they will be right at home with the majority of the participants.
That's ideal for a heater really. What does everyone do when they are Cold ( or Hot)? They crank up whatever they have to overdrive in the hope that the thing will heat the place in 17 seconds flat. Most heating or Cooling starts slow and ramps up. This does the opposite which is really what one wants. This setup can give that initial burst of heat which should be very satisfying. Should take that initial chill off the place and then taper off as the room warms up a Bit. It's not a lot of heat overall but, for that Critical initial on time, it's perfect.
If you find that you have excess heat, the next project will be making a HE out of some tubes that you can fill with water or maybe sand and blow the air though during the day to store for Night use. Would work well I think to actually Cool the air though the day when you don't need the heat but then be able to utilise when the sun has gone down. 30O temp differential on 200L of water is about 7Kwh so not useless at all.
And No Shading and longer exposure hours. Can't see how it would not give a marked improvement in output.
When I came here I had delusions of Grandeur of growing excess produce and selling it to a restaurant or 2. The reality of the climate soon set in though. There is a Huge Market garden just down the road and I wondered how they did it but have worked it out. They back onto the river and water in summer almost non stop. I think despite where they are there is little winter frost as well although it might just be good crop selection. I don't know what they fertilise with but they sure seem to turn the crops fast. My favourite Fertiliser come from the Equine centre down the road. Go to the Do do pile which is a mix of Meadow cakes, straw and sawdust. Bring it home and put it through the wood chipper, Blends it all into a nicely mixed powder which is Dynamite. We also have the septic system pump out which is also brilliant although I tend not to use that on the Veggies direct but water the ground with it before and after planting to replenish the soil. Given what I can grow in about 70% clay, has to be doing something good.
Wow! I'd LOVE a decent proper Greenhouse! Tomatoes are so easy to grow, even an idiot like me can literally grow them 10Ft tall and full of Fruit. I can't think of anything easier. I had the little greenhouse at almost 50O a couple of years back with Humidity running down the walls and they loved it. Can't have it hot and dry but hot and wet they Flourished. Take out the shoots from between the leaves and that's about it. For the first plants of the season I let those Runners Grow a Bit then cut and plant them and I have a 2 Month start on the next lot. If you get bad Fruit, squash them in a put to spread the seeds, cover with 10mm of Dirt, water and keep moist and in a fortnight you'll have 20-50 new plants coming up.
I'm going to put in the first lot of seeds shortly as I want to get a good early start on this years crop. year before last was the best. 50 plants I put in and was pulling literally a couple of Kilo of Fruit a day for months.
The trick to really cash in on your greenhouse's would be to grow out of season Crops, summer produce in winter. A guy I helped in the states does this. Before he used Propaaaaane to keep the greenhouses from freezing in the winter. Now using excess oil he gets from his brothers truck service centre, he heats the GH to summer temps and grows crops unavailable and uneconomical for anyone else to grow. You can Imagine how profitable that is and the premium he can Charge. Last time I spoke to him he was going into exotic and tropical fruits which was doing well and even
I use the old oven we pulled out the Kitchen I just wired in out the back for my drying which is in summer when I have loads of excess power to burn anyway. If you were half serious about this, I think it would do really well from the Green " No emissions, 100% renewable enviro Friendly drying " angle. In marketing they say " who tells, sells" which means sell the story not the product. Tesla is the master of this. No owner will ever tell you about just the car without relating the Hype they give them to repeat and affirm their purchasing decision.
The stuff I have is all very lightweight pressed metal. I don't think it has much load bearing capabilities other than holding sheets of Gyprock up from falling over. When I pulled it out, mate and I were laughing that you could never be locked in a room made of this stuff. An angry 10 Yo could go right though it. No Idea if they make it in heavier gauge. Maybe for larger/ taller walls but maybe not.
Yes, I have seen these on many YT channels. Couple I look at, guys are building their own Mini AWD trucks and different Vehicles and they want a bracket or something and just go and throw a sheet on the Plasma table and 5 Min later they have something looking as professional as all get out and in the most obscure shape that fits their application perfectly. Would be brilliant to be able to make up precision Motor mounts and adapter plates... If I were smart enough to be able to work out the measurements in the first place.
The thing that occurs to me is they make it look too easy. I'm pretty sure I'd be tearing my hair out with the programming and I would never be able to get the thing to do what I wanted or it would be to size. I imagine that would be a pretty steep learning curve and I'm pretty sure this old dog is past learning new tricks of that level. I feel like I'm having less brain function every day and remembering what I have known for years is getting more of a struggle. For people with normal Intelligence and an ability for DIY and fabrication, what an incredible tool something like this would be.
If I get back into the vids I would like to invest in a Pipe bender. ATM I'm either scrounging dumpsters for pipe with the right bends and hanging round exhaust places or getting pipe bent at exhaust shops which charge enough even when they are cheaper than the rest to make the ROI on a bender worthwhile not to mention the convinence and added fabrication ability.
rogerdw Guru Joined: 22/10/2019 Location: AustraliaPosts: 852
Posted: 04:11am 14 Jul 2021
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Okay, thanks ... looks like more youtube to start with.
I understood TIG was more like oxy welding, that's why I got a machine that would do both, because I always got on well doing fusion welding with an oxy ... but my initial TIG attempts were really bad.
And somehow I can't get 'Tony' and 'beginner' to compute in my head. Cheers, Roger
rogerdw Guru Joined: 22/10/2019 Location: AustraliaPosts: 852
Posted: 04:55am 14 Jul 2021
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Now I know why they looked at me funny when I bought them.
Always good to feel like we're making progress, even if is 2 steps forward and 1 step backwards. Gotta be better than going down the pub and killing off brain cells at an ever accelerating rate.
Yeah agreed, though I'm always concious of the cost factor. Must be some Scottish in my blood.
Haha, very funny. I'm sure she'd love to help.
Funny the stuff we pick up ... and we wonder why we're all so different.
Exactly right. I have a friend who always bags the net and technology, yet he always has stuff he needs fixed ... and I couldn't do it without the net most times.
I remember in my early thirties when video stores were thriving ... I wanted to find documentaries about how stuff was built and made etc etc ... but couldn't ... forget movies ... and now youtube can supply that without end, if you can sift out the garbage and stick with the good stuff.
Yep, 100% the same. I have to have it all worked out before I lift a finger.
And it's certainly the beauty of sites like this because we can bounce ideas off each other and have some of those alternative ideas suggested and can speed up the process.
Tony's suggestion of how to simplify the hot and cold manifold for my first heater saved me a lot of time and without it ... the whole device may still have just been an idea in my head.
And now you suggest using the device to dry tomatoes etc and the light bulb has connected in my head.
I hadn't thought of it that way, that's exactly right.
Haha, yep. I had forgotten those two.
Glad to hear that. It's time we gave it a try. I do have a friend who's been experimenting in there, but without much success so far ... but he's going to try some more traditional methods with this next lot.
Makes a lot of sense if the figures add up ... and with much cheaper or free heat ... could be really worthwhile.
Is that a fan forced oven for drying or just plain heat?Cheers, Roger
Murphy's friend Guru Joined: 04/10/2019 Location: AustraliaPosts: 648
Posted: 05:22am 14 Jul 2021
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You are not the only one with that initial TIG experience.
When I bought my big do everything welder it came with a TIG handpiece and gas attachment. I bought a smallish, non refillable, argon bottle to practice some stainless TIG welding. Ha, its ever sooo easy to get the tungsten rod welded to the work . I gave up making SS parts for the sailboat I had back then since I knew an expert at this welding business who did not charge the earth for his work.
Oddly enough, I used to be good at Oxy welding when I was an apprentice and TIG was still unknown back then (in the sixties).
I have not yet seen argon gas refills at Bunnings, have to check that out next time. Alu welding sounds like a bit of a challenge since it melts so easily. Does one need a special welding helmet or can an auto darkening type cope with the very bright light of burning aluminium?
Davo99 Guru Joined: 03/06/2019 Location: AustraliaPosts: 1578
Posted: 06:07am 14 Jul 2021
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Shouldn't make any difference if you clean it up where you need to weld. There may be a flux that can help as well from memory.
One problem with ally is it wicks away the heat so fast. The second problem is the welding temp and the melting temp are about 2 oC different.
I had to Braze a bunch of 10" Copper pipes when Helping a mate put in a boiler at a Swim centre. I had this huge tip on the oxy and the thing cranked to sound like a jet engine to keep enough heat in it to get the yellow tip to wet properly. Was going through bottles like they were going out of fashion. After the first Day mate rang the local BOC and said give me a dozen bottles of each. They were fine and said they will be sealed so any you don't use we'll take back. I think there were a couple left so he just held onto them for other parts he had to finish. Burnt though the rest in 3 days. Geez that was a big, hot job.
The only drawback I see with that is not the temperature, it's the power. Comes back to if you can put in enough heat to compensate for what the ally will wick away. They don't make radiators out of it JUST because it's cheap and light. :0)
Better than my repeated attempts. Mine had globs as well but they were all the molten remains of the material I was trying to join that fell on my boots then rolled onto the shed floor. Concrete was the the only thing that any ally did get stuck to.
I was doing something I really needed to weld once when I was Using Oxy and ran out of rods. Late saturday afternoon of course and needed it next day. Had to get it done so I thought why not use coat hangers? It was a pretty substantial bit of material I had to do under a fair bit of stress and I was hoping it would last one use. Years later having forgot all about it I pulled that part out to get to something else and remembered how I did it. Could not have worked any better.
BOC have pulled their greedy heads in a bit now and have a deal where you pay a flat fee and get the rental and 2 refills. I forget now if it's a yearly deal, have an idea it might be but if you do a medium amount of welding, it's not bad.
The other thing is if you do that you are also supposed to change the Liner in the torch hose and Ideally the feed motor wheels. The steel leftover from std wire is said to contaminate the ally wire as it feeds though. Spool guns are pretty cheap now anyway.
One thing I love about my new machine is it's so easy to load another roll of wire. No difference to the way it works to the old one but it's a no brainer now where the other one was something I used to dread. Could waste 15 Min trying to do that on the old one even after years and tens of rolls of practice.
I bought a MIG/ TIG/ Stick thinking it would be handy. So far only used the MIG. Bought some MMA rods with the machine and haven't touched them. They are pretty pricey now compared to what they were when I bought my first little arc welder. They were so cheap then the cost wasn't anything you even thought about. Not so now!
Yeah, that's the same reaction I have got including when I asked a certified guy that did aerospace work as his bread and butter about ally welding with Gas. His reply was he wouldn't even attempt it. This is a guy that TIG welds Coke cans together In the middle and fills them with water to make sure they don't leak just for Chits and Giggles. I would have bet a lot of money that was not possible had I not see him do it more than once.
I took him a Die cast window mechanism that had broke and he stitched that up without batting an eye.
Warpspeed Guru Joined: 09/08/2007 Location: AustraliaPosts: 4406
Posted: 06:39am 14 Jul 2021
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Check out their website, they have oxygen, acetylene and argon. Not every Bunnings store stock it, but there should be several stores around Perth that will have it.
You pay an outrageous fee up front as a deposit on the initial cylinder, then its just refills you pay for after that. When you eventually return your cylinder you get your original deposit back.
It will not be displayed inside Bunnings store, but kept around the back somewhere, with all the acids, poisons, and the other dangerous stuff are kept.
Auto darkening helmet will work fine. The problem with aluminium it does not get red hot and change colour like steel, there is just a wet puddle that can grow on you and collapse into a big hole if you give it too much heat. Like any other practical skill, it just takes practice and a bit of helpful advise.Cheers, Tony.
Davo99 Guru Joined: 03/06/2019 Location: AustraliaPosts: 1578
Posted: 06:44am 14 Jul 2021
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We MUST be brothers! I got all that old diesel free and was still trying to be conservative with it in the heater. Just thought this is all well and good but where is the next lot coming from?
Thats a reason I want to go Veg., I have an unlimited free supply of that. Thought of 1000L a season just doesn't phase me in the slightest because I know I can get it without a worry.
Notice. New forum software under development. It's going to miss a few functions and look a bit ugly for a while, but I'm working on it full time now as the old forum was too unstable. Couple days, all good. If you notice any issues, please contact me.
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. I gave up making SS parts for the sailboat I had back then since I knew an expert at this welding business who did not charge the earth for his work.