WinterRoot

Vision Tech for Counter Tech

Today we finally mounted this commerically manufactured panel outside. I was able to assemble this mounting strategy with minimal hardware from the store and some scrap lumber. The goal was to make it adjustable, so the front of the panel is mounted with hinges and the back uses threaded rod (see pics below). Unfortunately I didn’t realize that a 70 degree angle would be optimal for winter at this lattitude, so even at its maximum it only goes up to about 55 degrees - some shims will be necessary. In general though, I’m happy with the result - the hinges on the front still ensure it’s adustability. This is a 40 W panel, so even with an average of 4-5 hours of direct sunlight in Michingan winter, I’m hoping to be able to run all the lights (compact flourescent) in our loft off this one panel - we should be able to store over 160W/h a day on average, which is significant. The wires run inside through a hole in the wall to a charge controller, which charges a battery. Thanks again to Hong, who is the actual owner of this panel.

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At this month’s breakcore pancakes we decided to make a start on investigating DIY wind power. We are interested in these plans http://www.scoraigwind.com/pirate%20oldies/Brakedrum%20windmill%201998.pdf because they involve the use of a reused automobile part, something we surely have a LOT of in Detroit. I’m not expecting that we’ll be able to follow these plans exactly, but this is the right idea. Plus Hugh Piggott, the author, describes a lot of principles that are very valuable to understand when doing this sort of thing. He also has some books which look to be really good. We didn’t get particularly far, but advanced our ideas about winding coils. We tried to wind them with the winding machine configured laterally, but now we think that doing the vertical way (pictured) will work better after all. I also didn’t totally understand the shape of the outside wood pieces, but after trying it out I understand how they are supposed to work. I’ll post up pictures of the complete winding machine after the next try.

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It’s winter in Michigan and I’ve been keeping the heater between 60 and 65 degrees. My kombucha culture, on the other hand, prefers a temperature between 70 and 80 degrees, so the culure was growing VERY slowly. I’ve been very interested in energy reuse lately, so I started looking for something I could use to build an incubator without utilizing extra energy. The solution I found is the refridgerator. When the coolant is re-compressed it gives off a lot of heat, this is how it transfers the heat from inside the fridge to the outside. I used some cardboard and some reflective insulation:

To build a box on top of the fridge. Basically the heat moves up the back into the box where it is trapped. Colder air falls out of the incubator where the box goes beyond the edge of the fridge. This sets up a convection current and keeps most of the heat within the insulated box. Also the box had to be insulated against the fridge itself, which is cold on the outside.

(the coils on the back of the fridge are under the shiny insulation) This is actually very effective for rasing the tempeture, I’ve measured at times 10 degrees above the ambient room temperature. The kombucha culture now grows much faster.

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I wanted to set up a greywater system to reuse water from our sinks in the toilet tank. At first I just took off the the drain pipe and used the bucket method. This works, but it’s not really the best way to live. I’m not ready for a complex system yet, and storage of grey water is one of the ways to really get yourself in trouble with a system - untreated grey water needs to be used within 24 hours of collection. I decided to simply run a pipe from the sink to the toilet tank. To do so, I had to take the sink off the wall and raise it a foot or so.

Once the sink was raised, I attached the pipe. I had to get a new drain insert for the sink and saw it down to allow the sink to sit at an appropriate level and still drain into the toilet.

the final setup, simple but effective:

The end product of this experiment works pretty well. The volume of water used in the sink isn’t always enough to keep the toilet full tho, and often it’s necessary to run the sink for a bit to fill up the tank. Leaving the automatic tank filler connected isn’t an option since if pressure in the lines drops suddenly grey water can be pulled back into the plumbing system. The next step will be to connect another sink in the vicinity to the toilet to increase the amount of grey water. The other sink is a kitchen since so it will definately require some kind of trap to keep food particles (at least medium or large ones) out of the toilet tank.

I went to the GLREA (Great Lakes Renewable Energy Association) solar heating seminar this past weekend. I picked up some interesting information at the event, though nothing too revolutionary. Still it was good to get some grounding in where the current mainstream of renewable energy in Michigan is coming at things. I wasn’t really too familiar with everything that’s possible using hot water solar panels, and covering how radiant floor heating and solar air work out definately expands my thinking. It’s pretty important, for instance, to realize that solar water heating is far more efficient that photovoltaic panels.

Since my interest currently is more gear towards DIY applications that can be done at a fraction of the cost of true professional installations, some of this information will take a bit for me to apply. I think one of the most valuable pieces is learning how important it is in water systems to have both a storage tank and a hot water heater tank, which allows for the temperature of the supplied water to be regulated for whatever application it’s being used for. Solar systems seem deceptively simplistic until you start needing to worry about year round site specific usage of excess heat (in the summer) or freezing (in the winter).

I’m prett glad I went. I don’t have the money at the moment to afford the GLREA solar photovoltaic installation apprenticeship ($1000) so I’ll probably just wait until the next introduction seminar and try to pick up the wind energy course if I don’t build a wind turbine before then. Below is an example of the type of system we discussed at length..

I contructed what should be a diy gasifying wood stove, following a paper written at The Biomass Energy Foundation in Goler, CO. The pictures below are from our first attempt at replicating their results. The paper only gives very cursory instructions on how to build and operate such a stove from 2lb coffee cans. The point of this is that if it burns correctly, the stove will be burning wood but have very low emissions, so low in fact that burning wood inside does not require ventilation. Obviously that also means it’s very efficient. Our first attempt worked fairly well. Though we didn’t get a totally blue flame, we did see the smoke disappear, which means the fire was burning cleanly. We did see some blue flames deep in the fire and additionally noted that the fire smelled different than normal.

Getting the fire started, without it’s top (gas wick) on yet.

The stove from above:

The full stove from the side:

Next time we will be experimenting with changing the size of the gas wick and allowing more airflow into the burner.

My first batch of kombucha is finally done. It took a while for it really get going because it’s been so cold in the space until recently. Even after we got the heat turned on, 60 degrees is still 15-20 degrees below what’s optimum for the kombucha mushroom to grow. That problem was solved however by building an incubator which reuses my refridgerators waste heat, an raises the temperature of the kombucha culture to around 75 degrees. Once that was set up, the culture really picked up and just about a week later I have my first batch. It’s taste is slightly acidic, but all around I think it turned out pretty well. The original scoby has a lot of yeast on the bottom, and the baby is forming nicely, though I think I probably disturbed them quite a bit getting the old tea out and the new tea in.

This weekend at our breakcore pancakes event on Sunday I’m hoping to try out the idea of a technology workshop. Basically we’ll be soldering together chipped pieces of solar cells (which can be bought on the cheap) to make a complete 20+ volt solar panel. Here are the pieces I bought (about $20 for the whole set, actually not the cheapest deal I could have found.

and the first step in getting them working

even under compact flourescent light, the panel is still generating .05 volts.