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Grogster Admin Group Joined: 31/12/2012 Location: New ZealandPosts: 9306
Posted: 01:32am 24 Sep 2021
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@ Davo99: Very interesting info on the petrol. Thanks for the long post, was a good read and very informative. I have no idea if ethanol is added to our petrol, but it probably is, as EVERYONE who keeps fuel more then a year at the most, finds that whatever engine it is fueling, won't feakin' start anymore. Prime it with fresh fuel or drain/replace, and the engine starts right away as it should. I don't always drain it. For a car that has been sitting for a while and not driven, you can generally get away with a fresh-fuel prime(all my cars are old carby-based ones) to get it running, then simply drive to the petrol station and top up with fresh fuel. Depending on just how old the old fuel is. The engine lacks power on that old/new mix till it gets a tank of fresh fuel, but waste not want not....
Lawnmower and other single-cylinder engines especially HATE old fuel, and they never want to start on fuel left in the tank from last season, so I always drain and replace with fresh fuel so as not to be pulling on the starter cord all afternoon. Or simply make sure to drain the tank in the mower at the end of the last cut for the season.
Had that issue with a water-blaster engine that had not been used for a year or more, and pulling away all day on the damn cord trying to get it to start. Every now and again, it would cough, giving the impression it wanted to start, but never would. Drain/replace the fuel and one single pull of the cord - Vrooooom!!!!!Smoke makes things work. When the smoke gets out, it stops!
Davo99 Guru Joined: 03/06/2019 Location: AustraliaPosts: 1578
Posted: 02:58am 24 Sep 2021
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You have E10 and 91, 95 and 97 I think. I would be very sure that the E10 is the problem. Paying the bit more for 95 I think would solve the issues. Without knowing what fuel is being used it's hard to say but it sure sounds like the traits of E10.
One thing I like about diesel. Don't seem to matter how old the stuff gets. When cleaning the shed the other day I pulled out a little Yanmar China Clone. Put a Battery on it and the thing started 2nd if not first compression stroke. It's been Buried in there at least 3 years.
Pulled out the Lombardini that has a rope start. That thing has always been good even on straight Veg and true to form, fired up no problems. I KNOW that ones been sitting there 4 years because that's where it was put when I came here and hasn't been touched since. Might have been a year or 2 since I last fired it before moving but I could guarantee the fuel in the thing was MINIMUM 5 years old.
I had another Chynaah Diesel that I could fire up. the fuel smelt like paint thinner. That's almost guaranteed a Mix of Veg oil and diesel. They don't do well together long term. I'll see if I can push new fuel through it or if the injector pump is stuck. That happens a bit with Veg blended with diesel. Petrol is OK as is straight oil but veg and diesel don't work well long term.
It's not hard to pull the injection pump off these and disassemble them and give them a clean. Done it many times before.
There used to be a fair few Kiwis on the Veg oil forums. Not surprising with your fuel prices. There was one guy used to ring me a bit that ran a taxi/ tour bus service in Paihia. He had signage on his little bus that he was running on veg oil and it was a saving as well as a novelty that got his business in the media and gained clients.
While all the naysayers were crapping on about ruining engines etc, Geoff was racking up 1000Km a week or more and had been a few years last time I spoke to him.
Last time I was in NZ, petrol was $2.20L No wonder there are so many Hybrids and electrics there. I got an old POS Priarse rental from the dodgiest car rental mob in the world ( Told me I couldn't photograph the thing before I drove it off the lot and tried to stop me photographing it when I brought it back) and I have to admit, for what it was, the thing went well. We had it loaded to the Gunnels with luggage and crap and the thing blew up the hills with ease even though I may have " accidently" exceeded the speed limit here let alone there. The economy was bloody good I have to admit even though the thing was loaded up and driven like it had been stolen.
I was surprised at the amount of V8's I saw there. Thought they must have been owned by rich people but seemed that main owners were quite the opposite.
We also found one of our most favourite shops there, Pack and Save. Never before in my life had I seen 10Kg bricks of Butter for retail sale. Had a bit to do with the restaurant industry and never seen a single amount of butter that big for the trade either. I know you have a lot of sheep but cows must be scarce. Milk was 4x the price it is here but I was looking to see if they had that in 20L drums. :0)
Other ones were Hunting & Fishing and Gun City in Auckland. Oh be still my beating heart! NEVER seen Ammo stacked up in the middle of the shop like boxes of Coca cola here before and the toys they had there.... I wanted to Immigrate.
Davo99 Guru Joined: 03/06/2019 Location: AustraliaPosts: 1578
Posted: 03:19am 24 Sep 2021
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Just Google Bread maker Tony, they are as plentiful as toasters and kettles and every brand seems to have one.
They have paddles in them to do that. They also have different settings for Different types of bread and how thick and crunchy the crust is.
Must be about the only appliance we don't have come to think of it. Daughter works at an electronics/ appliance/ whitegoods place so there is always something new coming home.... which often gets used once, put back in the box and then ends up with the other things we don't need in the spare room.
/QUOTE] Two hours out in the shed torturing metal, or blowing up electronic parts is nothing. Two hours preparing and baking bread does not sound like nearly quite so much fun. But each to his own I suppose.
I hear you, don't worry.
Mrs makes her own Pizza Dough. Tried the pre made stuff and it is Rubbish. She mixes it and Kneads it then we put it in the bathroom under the heat lamps to help it rise. Break it off and roll it out and good to go. Not a lot of time involved but I don't know how different it is with bread.
Probably like the solar industry, got to keep people buying new to keep the money rolling in.
I usually check out gas bottles when I am at the Scrappy. They won't take them but some obviously slip through. I have been turned away from dropping them off at other places even when I cut them in half. I laughed in the guys face when he complained they were a pressure vessel. I said they would hold less pressure than your backside after an Indian takeaway right now so they are nothing but more scrap metal
I have read many times that hot water freezes faster than Cold. Never tried it because that seems like rubbish to me. How could increasing the amount of energy to be dissipated in a Medium make it change state faster than when there was far less energy to be dissipated by the same means and power?
Even if it did, only going to raise the temp in the freezer and increase power consumption. In this case, 4 hours sounds great. Might blow out a bit if you put in multiple bottles but still should be within the timeframe of available sunlight.
The bigger question might be how fast you can get it to thaw to give up that cold energy? I reckon 3x 3L bottles would keep a fridge good and cold though the night and probably into the next day. Day 2 Might only require the bottles to be partially re frozen I would suspect. Melting ice takes a LOT of energy.
Warpspeed Guru Joined: 09/08/2007 Location: AustraliaPosts: 4406
Posted: 04:21am 24 Sep 2021
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Six hours and its now completely solid except for the top inch which still feels a bit slushy. I think the freezer is at about -20C.
At sunset I will stick it in the refrigerator and see how It goes. I have a digital thermometer in there, and it normally runs at around +1.5C
It may take a lot more than three litres to work well enough, but it will be interesting to see how much of it has melted by sunrise.Cheers, Tony.
Davo99 Guru Joined: 03/06/2019 Location: AustraliaPosts: 1578
Posted: 10:32am 24 Sep 2021
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I would think you would want at least 3 bottles but interesting to see how it will go. Are you going to turn the fridge off and are you going to place the ice bottle at the top or bottom of the fridge?
I am a bit surprised it took that long to freeze especially when it seemed to be quite near early on. I wonder if 3 Bottles would put enough load on the freezer to take longer?
My back Fridge ( only) is full of drinks. I Might try the same test tomorrow just seeing how it holds temp without ice.
I got a bad feeling today. Mate of Mine from California messaged me and said there were a lot of strange things missing from the supermarket shelves. Said there were a lot of spaces in the Fridges and milk was very low which he hadn't seen before.
We have also been talking about water distillation as he is big on that but has had a number of plug in water distillers and says they are not cheap to run and don't last either. I had told him before about my solar power water heater that I have been making distilled water with and boiling the thing to use as weed killer.
He reckons used panels are hard to come by there and Exy as well. He is an artist that does a lot of metal casting and power's his furnace with Used veg normally but that for reasons unknown seems to have dried up. He's switched to WVO but does not like it. Neither do I really. Said he was going to try and stock up on that as other everyday things he uses keep running out and he can't figure why because everyone is back to work there well and truly.
He said he was getting a bad feeling and admitted it was just probably his nature but he said he went round and bought a lot of extra Dry Foods and things like baked beans and pasta and sauce.
I was a bit taken aback at the Irony of what we have been discussing here and him bringing this up out of the blue.
There is a guy selling some deep cycle batteries down the road. Not real cheap but maybe they might be wise to invest in a couple?
Tony, how did you get on with your Lipos that failed? Did you replace them or go to another chemistry or??
noneyabussiness Guru Joined: 31/07/2017 Location: AustraliaPosts: 512
Posted: 09:47pm 24 Sep 2021
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morning all, just to add 2c .. I have a bread maker I got from the dump, George Forman brand, for 20 bucks and works like a charm from start to finish... kneeds it and all, you just need to add the ingredients in correct order at the start , so wet ones first then dry with yeast last... beautiful bread and hot ...
the other idea about storing water to keep thermal mass, if you are not planning on drinking said bottles of water add a heap of salt to em before putting in freezer / fridge , decreases their freezing point and increases thermal mass apparently... tested it out myself( but not " scientifically "), face value it seemed to help and stay frozen for longer...I think it works !!
Warpspeed Guru Joined: 09/08/2007 Location: AustraliaPosts: 4406
Posted: 10:43pm 24 Sep 2021
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I had no idea that bread makers even existed, but they are out there and readily available. So I will definitely order one from fleabay today. That to my way of thinking, along with a big sack of flour is an absolute must have in a SHTF total lock down situation.
I put the 3 litre ice block on the top shelf of the fridge and switched off the power at 5pm which is when solar effectively ends here this time of year. At 6pm the temperature in the fridge had risen from 1.0C to 5.4C, and that is about as high as you would want it to ever get to store meat/milk for more than a couple of days.
So after an hour I switched the power back on, and sat the ice block out in open air to see how long it would take to melt.
It took about six hours to freeze charged with tap water (at 15C ?) and placed in the freezer at around -20C. Sitting at room temperature of about 20C around 70% of the ice had melted after three hours. I think the last of it might have melted after about five hours at a guess. If the fridge could be kept at no more than five degrees, it should have lasted perhaps four times longer, say 20 hours.
So the conclusion is, ice works. (we all knew that).
But to be useful in an unpowered refrigerator you need an awful lot of it to provide enough exposed surface area to cool the surroundings. Dave's hunch of about nine to twelve litres might be around a workable minimum. But that is going to take up a lot of food space.
One possibility I have heard discussed previously, is to buy a classic chest freezer, one that has the door at the top. These are designed to run at very low temperatures and have excellent insulation. The trick is to set the thermostat very high at around +1.5C and just use it as a normal refrigerator to store milk and non frozen meat, drinks, etc...
That should stay cold a lot longer without power, and if it was packed with ice at sunset may be the answer. A second solar powered chest freezer could then be used to refreeze the ice during the day. A decent chest freezer may not even need the help of added ice, except perhaps in the worst mid summer heat.
The best solution of all of course, is to get another damned battery.
Not at all happy with the lithiums, they cost 3.5K for 5Kwh storage and I have had 10% of cells fail over three years. That has been pretty expensive night time power.
Plan to get one 48v fork lift battery to start with, probably 30Kwh (8 hour discharge) possibly more like 45Kwh (8 day discharge) storage for around 4K, much better value, and reliability should be much better. If a few cells do crap out there is warranty, they are much cheaper to replace anyway. Even if the capacity slowly goes away, I can afford to lose an awful lot of capacity before the whole battery becomes unusable.
If that works as well as I think it will, I will buy a second fork lift battery and be back to running my inverter at 100v. Edited 2021-09-25 09:08 by WarpspeedCheers, Tony.
Murphy's friend Guru Joined: 04/10/2019 Location: AustraliaPosts: 648
Posted: 06:13am 25 Sep 2021
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Tony, baking bread in a machine is *very* easy, I have been doing it for years. Before that I often made it by hand kneading.
Do your research regarding bread making machines. They make either square base loafs or rectangular short ones. I use the latter - it makes a bigger loaf. You need an accurate kitchen scale and a good water measuring container as that is important for a good dough mixture. Your engineering background will serve you well when measuring accurate quantities .
I like rye bread (have been brought up on that) and the good rye loaf that was for sale here years ago can no longer be bought at the supermarkets. They just sell mass produced loaves that taste like card board IMO, when compared to home baked bread. With a machine its also easy to experiment until you have perfected your preferred bread type.
I dry mix the flour (rye & whole meal) and other ingredients in a bowl. My machine instructions say to NOT mix the dry ingredients & water first before putting them into the bread machine bowl. But that is all very well explained in the instructions. Anyway, preparation takes less then 5 minutes and I can then leave the machine alone until its finished 4 hours or so later. It will then keep the bread warm for some time.
A bread machine runs very well on solar power if you do your baking during the day. The element is only 600W so its not very power hungry.
Warpspeed Guru Joined: 09/08/2007 Location: AustraliaPosts: 4406
Posted: 08:02am 25 Sep 2021
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Quite right Klaus.
I am like someone that has been washing clothes by hand in the creek all my life, and someone says, "why not get yourself a washing machine".
I say, WTF is a washing machine? never heard of such a thing.
But the scales of total ignorance have now been lifted from my eyes, and I have just ordered one of these new fangled high tech bread makin contraptions.Cheers, Tony.
Davo99 Guru Joined: 03/06/2019 Location: AustraliaPosts: 1578
Posted: 09:34am 25 Sep 2021
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Haha! you're welcome!
Don't forget plenty of yeast and I think you need salt as well. 20 Kg bag of salt wouldn't be the worst thing to have around in meltdown either Nor would sugar. Something you could trade with if nothing else.
The temp rise surprises me it went up that quick. I am guessing there wasn't a lot in the fridge. If not That's why it helps to take up any available space with with water bottles. Even if not ice, it's still thermal mass that takes ( unwanted) energy To warm up and therefore keeps things more stable.
Sitting at room temperature of about 20C around 70% of the ice had melted after three hours.
Call me surprised again. I would have thought the melt rate would have been slower.
Dave's hunch of about nine to twelve litres might be around a workable minimum. But that is going to take up a lot of food space.
We go through a lot of milk ( yes, I am still a big baby) so having 9 L of milk in the fridge is nothing unusual for us. having another 6L of Milk in the back fridge is typical after mrs has been shopping. If thinks get tough, I will REALLY miss my Milk. Often said, if I got shipwrecked with a 40Ft container full of beer, I'd be making a solar still to turn it back to water. Hate the stuff! Now if it were ( good) scotch or Bourbon or wine, happy days.
Spose it depends on your fridge size but I would think it would be possible to put 3x3L bottles laid down on the top shelf pretty easy. If not, then putting ice anywhere should be a help. I do think the surface area is more important than the actual qty in this case and as I said, the ability of the ice to phase change and give up it's cold into the fridge. Maybe a Little computer fan circulating the air would help also?
I have read many off gridders like these for fridges because of the better insulation and because when you open them, All the cold air does not fall out so the efficency is better that way too.
People also simply drill a hole through the side and put in a simple thermostat probe and use that to over ride the freezers own thermo by pluging it into the external thermo and let that switch the motor on and off.
After the old Upright Freezer caught fire a couple of years back which I was lucky enough to be standing next to at the time and saw what happened, I took it up the back and was using it for seed raising for a while. I put a 25L drum of water in the bottom with a mains water element just on 2 panels. I'd go up in the morning before the sun had got near the panels and open the door and it was 30-40o easy and the night temps were never above 5 and below that at the time. I am very convinced Freezers have superior insulation to Fridges.
By the same token, If the fridge is in the shed as a backup, nothing to stop one helping it by covering it in extra foam sheeting on the outside.
Many won't go that high but it would be easy to turn the inbuilt one up and see what it would hold ad and if too low, use an external setup. Then again smart people like you could probably figure out how to add a resistor to the thermistor or something and get the kick in point where you wanted.
If Tubs of water were situated in the bottom and the food on top of them, depending on where the evaporator coils were located, might be possible to get the water to freeze before the food on top did especially if the tubs were a close Fit. Alternately maybe some foam on top would also allow the water to freeze at the bottom before the cold got up to the top. If one could make that happen, Laughing well and truly!
Had a couple of chest freezers and I remember the coils being easy to see with the frost lines and they were down pretty low on those. Spose one could also put some foam over the coils to limit the thermal conductivity higher up. There is generally a step in the bottom too in order to accommodate the motor underneath. If one could get a 20 or 40L Tub in there and get it to freeze, I think the unit would be very self sufficient. The bigger the better I guess because the more room you had for ice and food. use the tub to make an even base, put the foam ( I'm thinking Gym mat type) and then you have an even base to stand bottles and things on and one would not be backside up to Jesus bending over so far to get things out.
I looked for some chest freezers last night. Sent some messages on market place but only one reply to say sold last week.... To which I replied take the bloody ad down then.... It's still there this afternoon.
And allows you to run the bread maker and other things as well!
Can you sell the remaining packs Tony to try and get some of your money back?
All the DIY solar/ Battery forums I have seen are completely brain washed with the things. They won't even hear of them not lasting 10-15 years and most think it's more like 20. I'll take your real world experience over those that are more obsessed with an ideal than real world fact. I would guarantee some of them have also been disappointed but would never admit they were wrong. Even if they Did, the few I have seen are usually told it's their fault in doing something wrong or they just got some fluke bad cell. Can't go against ANY narrative these days regardless of the truth.
You can't even mention Lead acid without being ridiculed on most of these places. I had suspicions about the Lipo longevity from the start although I didn't think they would be that short lived. I have never had any appliance with them that lasted over 4 years but so many proponents seem to think these larger cells have some built in magic that will make them last virtually forever.
I wonder if the Lipos have got any better since you got yours? From what I read they are changing them very regularly in one way or another and every time they do, current reliability history resets and you are back to square one again.
That is good capacity but have a shop around Tony. Here in Sydney they have dropped the prices Substantially on fork packs I take it because demand has also fallen so you might get a better deal now than before. I also see the scrap price of lead has fallen so that may be a factor somehow as well.
I can afford to lose an awful lot of capacity before the whole battery becomes unusable. If that works as well as I think it will, I will buy a second fork lift battery and be back to running my inverter at 100v.
And then you will REALLY have some capacity! Week of wet weather won't worry you in the slightest! Battery's will probably be lucky to see 10% DOD most of the time and last forever!
Warpspeed Guru Joined: 09/08/2007 Location: AustraliaPosts: 4406
Posted: 10:09am 25 Sep 2021
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That was another problem with the lithiums. They worked fine for one nights power. But if the following day was cloudy and I could not get them fully charged again, I was back on grid power the following night.
At least in "tropical" Melbourne, we can often get several grey horrible non solar days in a row, and several days battery capacity is what would be required to be completely grid free.
The 4K cost is for a fully reconditioned and guaranteed battery with a five year pro rata warranty. Its not for some scrap battery, of questionable unknown parentage.Cheers, Tony.
InPhase Senior Member Joined: 15/12/2020 Location: United StatesPosts: 178
Posted: 12:13pm 25 Sep 2021
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Off grid mechanical refrigeration is a "make hay while the sun shines" type of activity. Very little time is spent cooling, so consequently the rest of the time is spent heating back up. Which means that efficiency is important. An upright refrigerator would be the worst to use. All the cold air falls out every time the doors are opened. It would be better to use a chest freezer whose door opens upward, keeping the dense, cold air settled at the bottom.
Imagine two chest freezers side by side and connected with maybe two 4" pipes. One freezer runs hard while the sun is shining, freezing jugs of water as well as the frozen foods. The other freezer is the refrigerator space for non-frozen foods, a thermostatically controlled fan would circulate air between them as needed. You could even put a smaller door on the refrigerator-side lid to get cold drinks without having to open the whole space. Edited 2021-09-25 22:17 by InPhase
Davo99 Guru Joined: 03/06/2019 Location: AustraliaPosts: 1578
Posted: 01:27pm 25 Sep 2021
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Would be the same here. Get a full week of overcast, dull days several times a year. For any sort of independency one would want 3-4 days capacity at least. With what we use, even without AC or heating, That would not be practical. Thats why I want backup Generators.
This is why for me, seeing the Huge variances in solar production and the limited storage capacity of even billion dollar storage projects not even able to power a complete city for 24 hours, the whole Renewable grid idea at this point and for the foreseeable time is rather quite Comical.
Did you finish your generator Tony? Would that be suitable for Charging your battery pack if the grid was down and there was insufficient solar?
2 Packs, $8K amortised over 10 years, $200 quarter. Quite reasonable on that plus there is the independence factor if things go wrong... which I believe in power supply at least is a certainty I'm putting money on. If you get 15 years, then the cost is very cheap. From everyone I have read of or spoken to, 15 Years would be a more accurate expectation than 10.
At the end of the battery life, at current low prices, you would get back 20% of the purchase cost as scrap. When I calculated this 18 Months or so back it was around 33%.
Reduces cost even more.
Warpspeed Guru Joined: 09/08/2007 Location: AustraliaPosts: 4406
Posted: 10:40pm 25 Sep 2021
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In Phase, Quite a few things are possible, but the priority here is to get another battery so I have power 24 hours. Later on, a chest freezer of some kind definitely looks like a useful thing to have.
It certainly runs and charges at 1Kw which is more than enough, and its acceptably quiet. With zero sun that would replace 24 Hrs worth of mid winter power in about 5 hours. So although 1Kw does not sound like very much, its really heaps.
At the moment it only runs from gravity fed petrol, I need to buy a natural gas carburetor for it, and arrange for automatic starting and stopping according to battery voltage. Then I can just forget about it and just check the oil level occasionally. With natural gas, no need to buy and store fuel, and it can never run short. Less fire risk too.
Its not much use without a battery though, that needs to come first. While it would run the fridge continuously, there is zero chance of it having enough grunt to supply the startup surge required by the fridge compressor which is about 19 amps (4.5Kw).Cheers, Tony.
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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.
Can't go against ANY narrative these days regardless of the truth. 
