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Messages - mikenash

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721
Other Slow Speed Diesels / Re: TANGYE - not a barn find, a field find
« on: January 03, 2018, 07:50:20 AM »
I think it's internal combustion.  Certainly has a right-angle drive to a "camshaft" kinda arrangement ("sideshaft) but valves etc are mostly gone.  I don't know if it was a diesel or a petrol

The serial number will mean something to some train-spotter or rivet-counter in the ranks :)

722
Other Slow Speed Diesels / Re: TANGYE - not a barn find, a field find
« on: January 03, 2018, 03:49:05 AM »
Just saw it in a paddock

Think I have at least a half-dozen too many unfinished projects already

723
Other Slow Speed Diesels / TANGYE - not a barn find, a field find
« on: January 02, 2018, 09:16:09 PM »
Can't call it a barn find - maybe a "paddock find" lol

724
Everything else / Re: Blasphemy..... Solar power.
« on: December 22, 2017, 03:48:55 AM »
About noon this week is great for checking out where ole sol is finding South and how far the sun travels.

I take a 4" piece of ABS pipe and get centered on the suns rays so the walls don't show in the shadow.  I throw a dial protractor on it and there's the magic number.  I then look for an obvious sight point well beyond the solar collector station and it's done.  I like intellectualism but sometimes a bit of grit under the nails is a whole lot more reliable.

Yep.  I'm with you there

We have a website here belonging to NIWA (National Institute of Water & Atmospheric or some such?) and they publish sun angles for latitudes etc - my lazy self just cribbed it off of that :)

725
Everything else / Re: Blasphemy..... Solar power.
« on: December 18, 2017, 12:23:45 AM »
 

A red wire on a black post!  What the hell is going on?

Aloha,
[/quote]

Casey, I have spent decades playing with motorcycles for a living and for fun - I sorta know what I'm doing, more or less (or at least imagine I do)

A while back I had a Honda ST1300 as a test-bike to write about for one of the local mags.  It had a good seat and a big tank and I said (stupidly) to myself "I bet I can do 400Ks in four hours on a tank of gas . . ."  So I came home from work on Friday afternoon, showered, emptied my bladder - since it's often the deciding factor in the "range" of a motorcycle - changed into leathers and headed north.  401 ks and 3 hours 50 later I watched my tired self on the forecourt of the Ngaruawahia gas station putting diesel into the tank of the bloody thing.  Got to meet the nice man from Honda etc etc and am sill reminded of this by colleagues from time to time . . .

So, yes, I understand

726
Everything else / Re: Blasphemy..... Solar power.
« on: December 17, 2017, 06:40:17 AM »
Yeah, well, I'm 60 - wouldn't surprise me if I am "younger" than the mean - though I'm not sure "young" is the right word

Where I live and work, of the people who are able to combine both skills and experience - say, for example, guys that can rebuild a high-performance motorcycle engine AND who know all the pitfalls after 30 years of seeing the insides of them, or guys who can machine the barrel of your CS, press in a cast sleeve AND know from bitter experience what the piston/bore clearance should be, what materials the rings should be to suit the bore and what the right gap is for those rings in that application - guys like that all seem to be at least my age.

I have a colleague here who casts and machines engine bits from 1920s/30s American engines that people send him from the US to do because they can't get them done locally, and another who restores expensive cars like old Rollers and Jags to better-than-concourse for customers in Europe and Asia who presumably can't get them done there

None of these guys are younger than '60s . . .

727
Everything else / Re: Blasphemy..... Solar power.
« on: December 16, 2017, 11:06:36 PM »
It's fascinating the solutions folks have found - especially those without much money.

All those years of experience and learn-by-mistake

I wonder what the mean age of folks on this forum would be?

Cheers

728
Everything else / Re: Blasphemy..... Solar power.
« on: December 15, 2017, 08:02:27 PM »
Actually, Casey, I got sidetracked during the typing of that reply by a call from a client who had torn off a hydrant riser from his irrigation system.  The sun is shining, the irrigator has stopped and his sense of urgency translates into an early-hours Saturday call to me . . .

What I was going to say is you can't beat the ROI on good planning . . .

Especially when, like me, you don't have any investment funds and your labour is your investment and your future leisure is your return

Cheers

729
Everything else / Re: Blasphemy..... Solar power.
« on: December 15, 2017, 07:51:42 PM »
I think Tom's excess storage method is why PV is often recommended over direct hot water generation.  Once everything is warmed up then the water collector is through for the day.  PV continues to provide storage or grid credits.  Of course it's tough to beat the ROI of a coil of HDPE on the roof.

Casey, when I built the shed/house/workshop outside which the coil of HDPE lurks I put in a lot of time in the planning stages - going out  to the site in winter and driving pegs into the ground to see what the sunshine did in relation to trees and hills etc, and I looked up the govt stats on sun elevation at the lowest midwinter point and the highest midsummer point and drew up some side elevations, then when building I put a big overhang porch on the building, but set up about four metres high - so the low summer sun come in underneath it and shines all the way in through all of the glass in the front and the high summer sun is shaded by the overhang etc etc

I reckon commonsense stuff like that gives you a big head-start on low energy requirements

Just my $0.02  Cheers

730
Everything else / Re: more blasphemous solar . . .
« on: December 14, 2017, 10:24:49 PM »
Actually, Starfire, I just plumb the hot water into the inside shower cubicle which has several sets of taps - depending on which hot water supply is in use

The first year up there I was "camping" with the outside shower and longdrop toilet behind an old blue Warehouse tarp - always dodgy on a windy day - NOBODY needs to see a 60-year old person nude IMHO

And, yes, up here we always "toot" when visiting lol

i was down your way last week - we detoured to the West Coast and had a night at Blackball on the way to the Mike Pero racing at Levels.  Not as good as the Hampton downs stuff because he doesn't do a BEARS class and that's where you get all the good David-v-Goliath stuff

Catchya

731
Everything else / Re: more blasphemous solar . . .
« on: December 14, 2017, 04:07:19 AM »


Okey-dokey

let me refer to a previously-discussed water-heating device.  see pics?

In the one with the pipes you are looking at the stubs of the wetback plumbing, the 40mm BSP galv bends, the copper pipe and the "starkie" unions attached to the wetback.  I designed and built the wetback myself, making it out of 10mm 316 stainless.  It is specifically sized to heat the contents of a (standard) 180-litre hot-water cylinder over what I think might be the average evening "burn" for a fire like this, five hours.  it's the product of the evolution of three previous wetbacks I have used over 30-odd years and the experience gained in running them.  I figure 180L of water at about 90 degrees is an optimum result - the cylinder is in no danger of boiling and I don't have to run hot water to waste.

In the one with the ugly circular register, the funny-looking copper-coloured hinge pis and the odd latch, what you are looking at is the firebox door (in its functional-but-unfinished stages).  the components of the latch are essentially the 14mm threaded stub off am Hitachi angle grinder and its disc-retaining nut.  I have used these items for all sorts of applications where the conditions are a bit harsh and have found that - whatever alloy they are made from - it's durable and never rusts, seizes up, gets burred over time or anything like that.  plus I enjoy recycling them as they come from dead grinders

There is a lot of years of experience behind the placement of the register at the point it is situated in the door in relation to the height of the grate etc etc, and there's a whole 'nother story around the hinges and pins and their material - as there is in the whole stove and the selection of 10mm, 12mm and 16mm mild and corten steel in the build of its many parts

but we'd be here all day . . .

The point I am making is I am quite capable of making a "better" hot water heater . . .

BUT I derive a lot of enjoyment from my "free" shower from something I knocked up one afternoon in the workshop when the boss was away, which cost almost nothing, has no moving parts and works really well

As you say, each to his own :)

732
Everything else / Re: more blasphemous solar . . .
« on: December 14, 2017, 02:35:58 AM »
Mate, I don't want to annoy Ade - but I have to say I kinda just skimmed past most of this

I guess that's why I'm just a poor engineer who has to heat his shower water in some old plastic piping . . .

Cheers

733
Everything else / Re: more blasphemous solar . . .
« on: December 13, 2017, 05:13:26 PM »
I do remember a mid-summer visit to Windsor Castle - the photographs show us layered in scarves and raincoats with umbrellas turned inside out by the wind and the hood of my jacket filling up with rainwater.  My English companion commented "There's not enough sunshine in England to harm a child . . . "

734
Everything else / Re: more blasphemous solar . . .
« on: December 13, 2017, 08:17:34 AM »
I dunno, Mike.  I doubt it would hit 70 degrees but who knows? 

I have had a similar system before and left it "charged" all the time at maybe three or four bar?  But that was in a less sunny area.

As I'm only up there from time to time I turn off the water "main" when I leave.  I'll be there for a week or ten days over Xmas and will see what it does then

I wouldn't build one from copper, I'd just buy a second-hand copper collector - they are on TradeMe all the time

I wasn't offering this as a serious alternative to a proper system of any kind - more as an observation on a simple, cheap-and-dirty exploitation of all that solar energy.  The whole thing cost bugger-all and took about two hours to build, see?

Cheers

735
Everything else / Re: more blasphemous solar . . .
« on: December 13, 2017, 06:40:13 AM »
We may be missing the point that "simple" is both the objective and the enjoyment here, Glort

I'm sceptical that showering under warm water from a plastic pipe once or twice a week is gonna jeapordise my health

Bacon and eggs too often will threaten my health, as will too much coffee, too much Diet Coke, too many pepper steak pies . . . not to mention liquorice allsorts . . . but warm water will not be the end of me :)

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