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Forum Index : Solar : Deciding if I should build this solar heater
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| Davo99 Guru  Joined: 03/06/2019 Location: AustraliaPosts: 1578 |
I hope you enjoyed the kind of day we did here today Roger. Made 58 KW hours on the solar PV. Could have cracked 60 But I was a bit slow on the inverter up the back which needs a manual boot up due to an isolation problem I can't find. Probably the crappy old panels up the back which are what I started with and the inverter isn't exactly top shelf either. Only have about 14Kw of Panels up ATM so pretty pleased with that this early after Solstice. It was still a bit on the chilly side. I think it was max 18 but the wind makes it feel like a 3rd of that. Tomorrow another sunny day predicted but after that the next week is some rain and then cloudy. With your greater efficiency in the tubes, a day like this should give you all the heat you want and more. Don't turn the heater off even if you get to 30 in the house. Save it up for the night time. It soon Dissipates. I looked at the meters yesterday. Bit of a fright. Even with the Diesel ( which I haven't been using a lot lately) I'm still 1200 Kwh behind. Got about 5 weeks to make it up. Might be able to get some more panels up in the meantime. I have burnt about 350L of Diesel over the winter which is about 2800 KWH delivered. Man it takes some energy to heat this place and wasn't exactly trying to keep it at 30c either! If you can average even 2Kwh, 6 Hours day, 90 days.... nearly 1100 Kwh. 3 Kw would be 1600+ kwh. That's worthwhile! Add to that the solar you will have.... Much less wood, plenty of free heat and much lower power bills. |
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| rogerdw Guru Joined: 22/10/2019 Location: AustraliaPosts: 852 |
Nah, it was a pretty ordinary day here ... cloudy and drizzly and with only a couple bursts of sun this afternoon. Not super cold, just no sun. In fact the fan didn't start for the first time until 9:22 ... and it usually fires up around 8 - 8:30. It's probably been the longest run of poor weather since I started. Haha ... only about 14Kw!!! That's only about 14Kw more than me. I think I'll have to wait for the big beastie to be up there before we see temperatures like that ... but I'm sure I'll be able to improve on 22 soon enough. That's a substantial amount of power ... at least you've got enough notice to try and address it. If we get that far behind, we can't do anything about it. Yes, it seems heating is a major drain, whether it's from mains power, diesel or gas. I have been a bit disappointed over the last week, but from the results I'd had previously, I know it still will be worthwhile once I have the new unit on the roof. Early on we had days where we possibly averaged 1.5kWh for 5 or 6 hours ... so no reason why we couldn't get to 3 or 4kWh, maybe more for longer periods. The majority of the time I haven't lit the fire during the day ... usually only on cold days when my wife will be home ... so we definitely have saved a heap of wood. Having said that, we're off in the morning to collect more wood ... not that I mind ... but I'd rather be working on the heater.  Cheers, Roger |
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| rogerdw Guru Joined: 22/10/2019 Location: AustraliaPosts: 852 |
I picked up the duct work for the heater from the sheet metal guy today. Looks nice and heavy ... we may have over spec'd it ... but better than the other way around. The top cover I ordered in brushed stainless ... but the inside of it is like a mirror. The outer has a plastic protection film on it, so I can't wait to see if that's as shiny. Todays results were a bit ordinary again, with cloud and drizzle and virtually no sun. I looked at the temps at around 4:45pm thinking it was all over ... and was amazed to see the tube temp was within a degree of turning on again. The sun was behind a cloud and was already behind the trees across the road ... and it came back on for another 12 minutes. So it doesn't rely on direct sunlight ... it works quite well from just light. I was so surprised I went out and took a photo.   Cheers, Roger |
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| Davo99 Guru Joined: 03/06/2019 Location: AustraliaPosts: 1578 |
Well I hope that is soon Fixed. Coming into summer which is where you could make the leaps and bounds. With the warp inverter, how will you set that up Roger? Will you feed solar into it and back to the household wiring or will it be coupled to batteries and a separate independent Circuit or?? Thats what I was thinking along with an average of the good and bad days. Even averaging that out, I think it will provide substantial heating power. Given what you have found such as you account today and previously that you seem to get heat even when there is no direct sunlight, I'd be surprised not in the least should this surpass our collective expectations by a considerable margin. The 14 Kw I have up now is about half what I planned to have up for the winter but the best laid of Mice and men as they say. It also illustrates my compulsion to have so much generation installed. It's not about a wizzing contest, it's just about trying to cover ones arse with the drop off in generation and the huge power demands this poorly thought out and constructed glass house requires in order not to resemble an ice chest in winter. Last summer when I was running about 25 kw of panels I had more than half switched off and even then I frequently switched off the remaining ones for periods of time. I Run the AC a LOT in summer but the power is there and the nights are my friend with the much lower ( normal) temps rather than what I am really fighting against. As I have said and am now more sure than ever, If I can take the heat load off with a Veg heater, I'll be OK on the power side. That said, Solar is about the only thing reliable right now. The veg heater won't take long once I get the bits I need and I'm pretty much past waiting and obeying these ridiculous regulations right now. That said, even with the heater finished, For the first time in coming up to 21 Years, I have some reservations about my fuel supply. Summer is definitely the time for getting out and about and I'm wondering how many restaurants are going to be left and if these restrictions go till the time I am fearing more every day, then it diminishes the Time and availability of my beloved Resource. Normally I'd laugh and say I can get what I need in a month of casually doing the rounds without putting a great deal of effort into the exercise. Now, I don't know what to expect. I reckon 1000L would do me which would normally be a walk in the park so I'd grab 2000 for good measure. Now, that is far from the certainty it once was. If things go back to normal, no problem but I don't think that's going to be the case. Seems sunshine is about the only think they haven't yet thought of a way to restrict us on. Maybe when I get the 30 Or so Kw up I might be wise to hold onto another 5-10 Kw for the Temp winter ground mounts as I have done every year so far. I would like to try and procure more Old/ mixed Fuel for the diesel heater for next winter. My chances of that I now have no idea of either. I think my solution is a combination of solar and liquid fuels. I could I suppose also try to procure some waste engine oil. My Burner will consumer anything flammable and Liquid enough to pump into it. I have been Meaning to give some Auto Trans Fluid the teaspoon test to see if that's suitable for the Diesel heater as well. I recall we were in wonderment about the run of especially good weather in the late Autumn, early winter. I think this is not a situation to be looked at daily or even weekly but seasonally. I think we both also established early on that our respective methods were not necessarily a single solution but rather an offset to other regular heating methodology's. Something I think we both loose sight of in our excitement for the alternative methods. :0) None the less, we are both keen for our pet preferences to do as much and maybe more than they can. Why not? We all enjoy the fruits of our ideas and being different and independent. Quite and as I opined, I would not be the least surprised to find the guesstimates are well exceeded. You have realised this worthwhile Benefit already with the small test system and learned a lot to maximise the efficiency of the big one. Mean while, I have spent at LEAST 3 hours out of 6-8 Phone calls this week trying to convince my father he does NOT need to go and buy a fuel Injected Chainsaw ( Yeah, they make one) and FFS leave everything bar the little Battery saw to me. I'm really regretting showing him how to look things up on the net and YT. It's like leaving a Kid in a toy store with your Credit card and the PIN. Teaching him how to use the stump grinder on the little tractor may not have been such a hot idea either from what I'm hearing. Collect wood? Have I ever shown you what I have to " Collect" for my father?  That one weighed in at a touch over 900Kg.   You know your alive when you drop something this big and it hits the ground... or you may not be alive for very long if something does not go as planned. He's very helpful in brining it up to the wood shed for me to cut and split.  Showed this shot to the guy at the local Bunnings. He asked could he have a copy to show people what these battery saws can do. Next time we went in there we saw another guy who remembered us and said how many of the battery saws they had been selling since they started showing people those Pics. It did cut it up but it is faster to use the 92 CC with the 24" bar on that stuff. Plenty more where they came from. He wants a couple more this size or larger dropped when I go back up. Great!    I bought him the biggest splitter I could find. I should have waited and found something bigger. Those rounds alone are around 120 Kg. the big ones I have done went 34". Madness! I will say though, this Chyneese Knock off splitter has NEVER failed to split whatever was put in it and it's rarely run above a fast Idle. Will even go through knotted stuff. If it don't split it it just pulverises it. It's amazed a lot of people with what it will do, easily. Sometimes the hard, dry timber explodes especially if it's got knots but we have learnt to stand aside now after the Crown jewels have had a few brushes with excruciating agony narrowly avoided. The end plate on this thing is 1.5 " thick and getting quite the curve in it now. You can see what the thing is put though and it's been doing it about 7 years. I remember changing the oil once, might have to try and remember to give it another birthday. New air filter may not hurt either. The effort required to turn this ironbark and other hardwood this size into little pieces is ridiculous whether you have all the toys or not. It's what's there and what he wants so....  This is something Dad says isn't worth the time to cut up. What normal people would use and go after of course or what they could lift onto a splitter! Only need to split that in half but he'd go though that in a day if it lasted that long. |
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Revlac Guru Joined: 31/12/2016 Location: AustraliaPosts: 1024 |
Yeah, that's how its done,  I do about the same, smaller logs here mostly ironbark, use 3Ton forklift on the front of the tractor or excavator whatever is handy.We built our own block splitter (on loan ATM) over 20hp car engine. I might post a bit more in the (other stuff) forum one day. Cheers Aaron Off The Grid |
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| Davo99 Guru Joined: 03/06/2019 Location: AustraliaPosts: 1578 |
I'd like to see that! |
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| rogerdw Guru Joined: 22/10/2019 Location: AustraliaPosts: 852 |
Ill have to put up a heap of panels and I'd like to get a forklift battery as soon as I get the Warpverter going ... and run a seperate circuit for the workshop until I'm confident things are working properly. Second step ... We have an unused line up to the house from the meter box at the sheds that used to be used for the hot water service (now gas) ... so then I'd like to use that to run a bit of stuff at the house ... and eventually, just run everything off the Warpverter. I won't be feeding back into the grid ... I'll just use the grid as backup in case we run out of power or something fails. So I won't be able to use your technique of reversing the meters ... ours are not the spinning type anyway ... they are an electronic type already. Once I have the house connected to it, I might change energy suppliers so they don't start asking questions about why our useage has suddenly dropped to nearly zero ... though after your stories and shenanigans, I'm not really concerned about that. When I grow up, I wanna be like this guy I've heard of up in/near Sydney who has 20 or 30kW of panels on his roof ... and be able to use as much power as I'd like, whenever I like. Yeah, I'm quietly hoping for that too ... but I don't want to get too cocky ... that's when I end up with egg on my face. I've spent a lot of money already, so I have a massive incentive to finish it and make it work to justify that ... or again, I look silly for miscalculating it all. It does make it hard having such an excess in summer but still insufficient for winter ... though I won't have to worry about balancing meters ... and hopefully my winter heating will be a lot less than normal. Yes, I've been watching more of your videos ... and I see you've finally released a new one ... and man, you've got a lot of fans ... you're a real celebrity! Anyway, I don't know why I'm messing about with my piddly system ... I shoulda gone for oil burning instead. Yes, quite true ... maybe I can heat with my evac tubes during the day (when it's available) ... and then convert my wood heater to one of your veg oil burners once you've perfected it. I sort of wonder if the reason you haven't used an oil burner for heating your home yet is because of managing the fire risk inside. All ok out in the yard because you can shut it down and when the smoke clears, no harm done ... but inside the house, there's such a lot more risk ... plus things to be answered for. Already having a fire containment system in the form of a wood heater and associated flue etc would make it a lot safer to experiment Haha, I had no idea that either of them were available ... and yeah, I have to agree, there's a time when some of that stuff needs to be left to the young bucks. Haha, you've created a monster. Far out!!! If we had access to that sort of wood and that type of equipment ... I wouldn't be wasting my time with piddly little tube heaters ... I'd be burning more wood. You're right, still all hard work. We only collected about a ton, if that ... but it'll keep us going for a month at least ... and more as the weather improves and we need less. Yep, I'd take that stuff all day long ... would be perfect for us. Cheers, Roger |
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| rogerdw Guru Joined: 22/10/2019 Location: AustraliaPosts: 852 |
Here's todays chart. I reduced the Hd from 15 degrees down to 12, so it turns back on sooner after shutting off. Chart looks nice and 'clean'. Bit hard to understand how the temperature coming out the outlet is warmer than the temp in the tubes ... but it is consistent.  Cheers, Roger |
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| Warpspeed Guru Joined: 09/08/2007 Location: AustraliaPosts: 4406 |
Still looks like pretty awful weather there Roger, its probably about the same here in Melbourne. Gaining anything at all is a bit of a miracle. Cheers, Tony. |
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| rogerdw Guru Joined: 22/10/2019 Location: AustraliaPosts: 852 |
Yeah, though I didn't think it was all that bad yesterday ... not super cold, and a bit of sun from time to time. Just need the cloud to go away. I've been looking at those backward curved blade fans still ... and finally found a catalogue which shows the datasheets in the one document. It's quite surprising the differences between them all ... you can aim for volume or pressure ... and surprisingly, bigger is not always better. Here's the link ... The other thing I've discovered is that the fans, both DC and AC can be speed controlled ... in fact they have the speed control built in ... all you need to do is connect your supply (AC or DC) ... then use either 0-10V dc to adjust the speed ... or apply a pwm signal to do the same thing. This page shows the options for speed control ... They look quite useful ... but really need to work out if I need more pressure or greater volume. I've seen prices all over the place ... even as low as $50 ... but freight from $68 up to a couple hundred!! Cheers, Roger |
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| Warpspeed Guru Joined: 09/08/2007 Location: AustraliaPosts: 4406 |
The two really go hand in hand. Whatever you are trying to blow the air through, the greater the flow volume required, the greater the pressure drop, and it will increase square law as flow increases. Your first experiments using two axial fans in series looked pretty much like you might require about one inch of pressure across your tubes to achieve enough airflow (per tube) to pull a reasonable amount of heat out of each tube, perhaps about one inch of developed pressure as a practical minimum. Those axial fans were struggling to achieve even that one inch of pressure, and with a lot more tubes we would require at least the same one inch of minimum pressure, but at a much higher required airflow. It simply was not going to happen with any single axial fan. Backward curved centrifugal is the next step up, but its a pretty big step up in pressure capability from any axial fan. These are what you will usually find in the majority of heating and air conditioning systems, especially where there is some kind of finned heat exchanger in the air path that offers some flow resistance. You get plenty of flow at low pressure, but flow does fall off rather rapidly with any obstruction. Forward curved centrifugal along with high tip speed is more for generating sheer pressure, maybe something like a sand blasting cabinet where you might need 1psi+ (28 inches+). Something like a vacuum cleaner can easily generate 4Psi+ (>120 inches !) A dust extractor blower, or a jumping castle blower usually falls into the 4 inches of pressure (blocked flow) range, and will run very happily at 2 inches of pressure or less which should be ideal range for us. These usually have straight vanes in the rotor, and fall mid way between a high flow centrifugal, and a high pressure centrifugal. I might suggest you first test your big system with the orange monster, and get some figures for pressure, airflow, and tube temperatures on a nice clear sunny day, and see how that all works out. If something needs to be changed, the measured figures will give you a very good basis from which to determine the next step forward, but I feel it may turn out being pretty close with the orange monster. Edited 2021-08-08 10:45 by Warpspeed Cheers, Tony. |
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| Davo99 Guru Joined: 03/06/2019 Location: AustraliaPosts: 1578 |
Sounds brilliant. The independence would be worth it alone. Do you have a Generator? If you had one you could go totally off grid. I know a bloke that could tell you everything you needed to know and bore you to tears with a lot more about running a Diesel engine long term reliably off Veg oil you can get for nothing to power a genny. I am nuts and Bolts away from Completing my 10 Kw to get it operational at least. Still have to do the sound deadening and the exhaust . I think I am gong to start " Exercising" at Bunnys and the exhaust shop or this thing will be sitting round till next freaking year and it WON'T be my fault or Procrastination for once. Did some more work on the IMAG yesterday and hurt my back just trying to line up the motor and engine but a bit of wiring and it's a runner as well. That too needs a Muffler/ Exhaust. I tried packing the one on it with stainless scourers but it seemed to do next to nothing. Looking at the design of the thing I can see why. Pathetic cheap setup more for show than function. You could probably use the output from an IMAG with the Warpinverter for power supply or battery charging. That would make for a Cheap and reliable backup. No, I wouldn't be at all concerned but at that point you'd probably do well to see if you could find whom had the lowest daily Ripoff,,,,, errr, Supply charge if you want the grid as back up. Especially with everything going on now, I would Highly doubt even more they would question anything. Take one of my neighbours for instance. They have fled to their house in the country a month ago to avoid lock-ups and will be there another month at least. Were 5 People in the house now there is none. I'm sure others have had consumption go through the roof working from home and the normal usage patterns the power co's have with Businesses being shut down have gone out the window. You would not have the disruption we have but I'm sure right now the power mongerals have better things to do than worry about drops in usage in domestic settings. The revenue they make from business all over the main states has probably dropped like a stone. Last thing you want in the world is to be like that Nut case!! I wouldn't want to be like him if I remotely had the choice. Shouldn't be hard to get a panel setup like his though. If an idiot like him can do it anyone can. That said, I was looking on Dumbtree and marketface yesterday and the amount of panels for sale round here has really fallen off. Don't know if the installers are allowed still to operate, From what my AC mate was saying the other day I think maybe not. I was going to list some and see how they fly. PLENTY up there I want to get rid. Of. Have to ring my mate and see if he has sorted out his multiple issues with his truck and Business that he was running between Vic and here. Had some stuff here I have wanted taken down for over a year now. If he is back to it and you can't get any panels, may be able to work something out. I Imagine they should be pretty available in The Green power obsessed state although from memory you guys don't get any FIT any more? Having the most exy power in the world would be an incentive but I seem to recall reading that installs were extremely limited there as well. Have to be all green and environmental but can't have Big biz loosing any revenue and that comes before all else. Isn't that panel Recycling place is Adelaide? I doubt they would sell you any as they are up to their armpits with the corrupt solar industry but, worth a Phone call. Tell them you are off Grid on the land and want them for pumps and battery backup for machinery located around the property. You never know. The winter generation is what it is and the panels more than pay for them selves in reduced power costs, I'm well into making some pocket money buying and selling the things with the contacts I made just looking for my initial lot So it's all paid off in more ways than one. The meter balancing I could avoid but am both lazy and enjoy having some hands on to play with. Like your situation, If I have a supplementary heating input I will be fine in winter and I'm working on a couple to give me some choice with that. I have been utterly astounded and deeply Humbled by the extremely kind and generous well wishes people have made. It was not expected in any way, quite the opposite really. I'm not exactly a soft guy but I have been shown a lot of good in people and the world that I had forgotten or become dismissive of. It's really been humbling and an eye opener. I don't know about a celebrity, more a prize idiot but I consider myself very undeserving and fortunate to encounter the people I have there and in real life. I would never in a Million years thought anyone would be so interested in my stupidity but it seems it has helped a lot of people out more than even I knew so that is a very good upside. Was not a good time recently but geez, the vid comments and messages and what people I know said and did for us sure was incredible. I consider my self extremely fortunate to have found such incredible kindness and good will in people and never cease to be astounded and completely humbled by it. Made me have a rethink on a lot of things especially my own outlook and attitude. I will try to better live up to the good other people have shown me. Only thing is now I'm a bit frustrated I haven't been able to get another vid done. The weather, particularly the wind just hasn't allowed for it. Was hopeful to do one today but with the drizzling rain, that's not likely. I thought I'll have a crack at doing something with the wood cutting when I go north. See if I can make something entertaining out of that. I know well it's not as much the Oil burning people watch for, it's a pelican making an idiot of themselves so The subject matter is probably a bit irrelevant. Was funny, when I did that last one, both the wife and daughter were working from Home that day. They were doing that video conferencing thing on their computers and both got asked multiple times where they near an airport or what was the jet engine roar and people yelling? My daughters explanation of " Sorry, just Dad mucking round up the yard" Lead to a 10 Minute diversion in the training session thing she was doing with 11 other people all asking questions, the main one being her boss. She was not at all happy with me for having to go though the whole explanation of what I do with veg oil and burners and how I run my car on it. She is very pedantic on what others think and how she appears to people. I have got more expressions of "displeasure" of how many people have asked her about it now she has gone back to work. Given the people she works with whom are mainly computer type geeks, that's very surprising. May not have been the best day to do full power runs with the thing at full noise though. Well it is available 24/7 but certainly infinitely more hands on and non automatic than your system will be when it's done. Oil is easier than wood though that's for sure and like I said, they haven't worked out how to restrict or Tax sunlight ... yet. I have looked at that burner setup you linked me to. That has a lot of potential for a very easy setup. Wonder how I'd go about Bangood sending me one for evaluation on my channel? The fire risk is a big consideration. Being a nutter, I have absolutely zero fear of things that scare most people with regards to fire but my paranoia of having my house burn down is exactly that. I'm only just smart enough to realise there is a lot of Considerations in what actually makes something safe to have a fire in your house and there is everything I do not know about that. No second chances with ignorance or mistakes. For me, the way to do it is put the thing outside. The real difficulty in doing a home heater to me is a heat exchanger. That way I can employ my safety standard of "Put the bastard where it can have a total meltdown and it's in a place where it can't do any damage and therefore I don't care". Couldn't be bothered trying to figure out every detail to stop it burning itself to all hell, much easier to put it where I don't have to worry if it does. I don't need anything else to keep me away at night. Remote location requires transferring and moving the heat and that's the bit that's far more difficult for me to do in a cheap and economical way. I have come back to water because then I can put the burner anywhere I want and there is no passage for flames to travel into the house. Also if it does go into meltdown It's more likely to self extinguish. Efficiency is on very secondary consideration. I have wanted and been looking for an old wood burner to convert for YEARS and still to find one at a reasonable price that wasn't 500KM away. The prices people want even for Burnt out, rusted and otherwise useless bits of scrap is astonishing. Add to that a lot of places are banning them and mandating for them to be removed and people still want fortunes for them. A wood heater would be very easy to convert and there are plenty of examples on the net of others doing just that. I would of course go a bit different way to the majority I have seen but the containment and inherent safety that goes with that is the important thing. I'd love to convert and test one so I could modify my fathers wood burner. It would be SO much easier to get him 1000L of oil a year, much if not all of which I could probably source locally, than carry on with all that drama as shown above. Was looking at those pics again last night and noticed there are 3 Trees in those Pics he wants me to drop which comparing in the pics and thinking of them, are probably bigger than the ones in those shots. That said, being so big and straight, He can probably sell them to the mill down the road. At least one is probably worth about a grand atm. He's getting the tree guy in to quote on taking down a Couple of 150 Ft'ers I'm not game to do close to the back of the shed and point out the ones that would be worth something. If the tree guy puts them on the ground I'll do the rest. The AEG in the pic is a battery saw. It's a ball tearer. Will do anything a similar size Petrol saw will do and more. Dad has a couple in his collection so I can compare. I would say the battery lasts about double the run time of a tank of fuel on a comparable size saw. We have 3 battery's and for what I do, time the second one is flat you have dropped so many trees or cut so many rounds for fire wood, You need to clean up what youo have dine anyway. In the case of cutting rounds, you are tripping over it everywhere so need to get on the splitter. The 1st battery because it will be hot from being run will take a bit longer to charge than the second battery will last but that's never been a problem and have the 3rd battery anyway. Dad also has a little 18V battery saw which he has ordered a replacement. The thing is making some Noise, I think it's worn sprocket and was trying to get him to diagnose it but I got the excuses of couldn't be bothered stuffing round ( Umm, Take the chain off dad and run it and see if the noise is still there) but he was obviously hell bent on buying another new toy. He pointed out in the kit with the batteries and the charger and the chain that came with it all, the saw itself was only costing less than $100. I pointed out that he already has 9 Batteries and about 4 New unused chargers in the cupboard but we all know the effectiveness or complete absence there of when we want a new toy. I got the feeling I'll be inheriting the old saw, a new charger and a couple of suspect batteries to repack. I have a 24" petrol saw which is a monster and I also bought a little 12" Battery saw for trimming round here as the big one has already gone though everything suitably sized. Mine is a Ryobi and I am amazed with the thing. I have cut stuff with it way beyond it's pay grade and it did it without complaint. For what I want it for Trimming trees and hedges, it's fantastic! The Fuel Injected one is too big for Dad to handle which I have pointed out several times and I'm still not that sure of the reason for the FI anyway? It may just be the environmental concerns? Dad thinks it may be easier starting. I don't have any trouble starting the petrol saws although he has bought and sold some good ones because he can't start them. Keep telling him that's a sign but of course that does not register. The fact the FI saw has been out some years now and not been copied I think is a tell tale in itself. If it was so much better they would have all gone that way. It's pretty exy for it's size so that may have something to do with it. I'm also not sure how " Fuel Injected" it is? I have a feeling it may be more a play on words than anything and in any case it's probably a rudimentary system anyway. I have lost a lot of weight recently and a Hell of a lot of strength and Muscle and I'm feeling it. I'm going to feel it a whole lot more when I get up there and get back into that. They made men so much Manlier in the old days. I could not imagine cutting and splitting wood by hand in Qty. I cut and split a Couple of Cubic meters in a day with every toy imaginable and that's an effort that has the sweat pouring off me. Getting it onto the splitter and stacking it is enough let alone everything else before that. Couple of Cubes lasts no time. Cutting wood day after day because you relied on it would be a chore I could not cope with. Then again, They wouldn't be stupid enough to even consider doing by hand the stuff I do. I have ordered a little hand held Mill I'm going to give a go. I want some slabs to use here so see how that does. I'm thinking Dad is interested too. Wouldn't surprise me if the next thing he starts talking about buying is a proper Mill.Made the mistake of pointing out the people whom made the stump Grinder also make proper Mills. He found what that raw edge timber is worth and I think he can see some investment $$. I can feel aches and pains because I know who'd going to have to do it. The big problem with timber is the low heat value. You think a fire is giving off loads of heat which they certainly can, but when you look at the actual heat value of timber compared to Liquid fuels, like everything else it's pretty poor. Ton of wood is roughly 3000Kwh of energy. You can get that in 300L, 240 Kg of oil or diesel. Looking at the meter on the fan heater here in my cave, I have used 337 Kwh of power to heat in here so far this winter. Sure I leave the door open so it's heating other parts of the house as well but that's still a ton of wood on it's own. And, the fan is 100% efficient, wood stove is 70-80% at very best. I'm sure if your tubes save even 1 ton of wood next winter it will be worth while and lets face it, we aren't getting any younger or more capable of this work.... although I am having great difficulty trying to explain that to my father whom refuses to take it into account. It is what any sensible people would look for that could be handled without killing oneself in the effort to turn it to toothpicks to Burn. I have been informed he's marked about 50 of those saplings for me to take down.... like I have argued with him for how long I don't know. There is still so much of the big stuff I have dropped that's sitting there drying that I need to get rid of though. I bought him a Big Chipper a few months back. I have been wondering how it would go to spread a load of the chips out to dry them and how they would go thrown into the fire like Coal? I have my reservations due to the lack of air around them but in an air controlled environment? Going to have plenty so might be more useful than throwing them back on the garden to rot. |
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| Davo99 Guru Joined: 03/06/2019 Location: AustraliaPosts: 1578 |
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| Davo99 Guru Joined: 03/06/2019 Location: AustraliaPosts: 1578 |
Roger, are you running the blower at half speed with a PWM or VFD or just restricting it? |
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| Warpspeed Guru Joined: 09/08/2007 Location: AustraliaPosts: 4406 |
Here is a link to Lighthouse Vacuum cleaner motors some of us use in or airflow benches. There are single stage and two stage motors, the two stage ones can generate much higher pressures. There are flow and pressure curves for each motor. https://www.centralvacuummotor.com/flowbench.htm The largest two stage motor LH 2093 can generate 140 inches blocked flow or 5psi static air pressure. At 4psi (112 inches) it can flow 18 CFM. Might work as a combustion blower in one of your flame throwers Dave. Cheers, Tony. |
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| rogerdw Guru Joined: 22/10/2019 Location: AustraliaPosts: 852 |
I'm cheating, I'm using a variac and just winding the big knob backwards or forwards. In fact I used a monster one I have to reduce the speed of my drill press when I cut those big holes ... the drillpress wouldn't go low enough to match the recommended speed, so I cheated there too. It's nice and sunny here today at last and I've wound the blower back up to full speed ... and it's maintaining around a 30 degree output. Cheers, Roger |
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| Warpspeed Guru Joined: 09/08/2007 Location: AustraliaPosts: 4406 |
This is something I put together many years ago. So long ago, I cannot now remember what it was originally made for. It converts a vacuum cleaner motor into an air blower with some PVC pipe fittings.   Cheers, Tony. |
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| Davo99 Guru Joined: 03/06/2019 Location: AustraliaPosts: 1578 |
Yeah, I was thinking something for a spray type burner. I don't like compressed air types. Far too much energy, noise and complication but I believe a few PSI would work just fine. |
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| rogerdw Guru Joined: 22/10/2019 Location: AustraliaPosts: 852 |
I thought today was going to be pretty good when it started off well ... but overall gains were ok, but not spectacular.  Cheers, Roger |
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| rogerdw Guru Joined: 22/10/2019 Location: AustraliaPosts: 852 |
Thanks Tony, I really struggle to put all this together in my head ... pressure and airflow measurements and requirements are all new to me. Yes, I can see that now. I was really surprised at the different characteristics of the different types of fans. I figured a fan was a fan!! Okay, sounds like a plan. I was thinking I'd have to order something from China and it would take months to get here ... so I wanted to get the ball rolling. The other issue is designing the ducts to potentially accomodate different types of fans ... but I'll just have to wing it till we can test the whole unit for a while. Cheers, Roger |
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