Beating inflation at a local level...

How much do macro-economic statistics actually matter to you ?

Take, for instance, the oft-quoted official rates of inflation.  They're maybe important if you've pension income or other similar indexed returns dependent upon them, but are these rates of price increase in any way rooted in the reality of your own particular existence ?

At the time of writing, the official rate of UK inflation is around 3.0%.  However, most of the money we spend on a regular basis goes on food items, for which the annual inflation rate on the items we buy is always many times higher than any 'official' rate.  We can see this just by pushing a supermarket trolley around – we don't need bodies of self-professed 'economists' to tell us.

DIY landscaping of the extended garden....

The latest major project has been to clean up the garden, particularly the extension to the land we bought last November.   We decided to have a big push over the last few weeks to get this landscaping work finished quite quickly, so afterwards we can just relax and enjoy the garden for the rest of the summer (or start further projects, which is more likely...).

at the start of the works - digger levelling and clearing....

work in progress at the south end

Although I titled this post 'DIY', there was a lot of digging works to be done and I'm not getting any younger, so there was just a little too much spadework initially.   Therefore, we hired a guy with a mini-digger to first clear the south end - he also removed the five tree stumps that we'd cut down to ground level last year.  When he'd finished at this end, we lifted the old metal shed off its flagstone base and relocated the flags next to the other shed at the south, and then re-erected the shed in its new position.  This opened up the whole garden back to the house wall.

Planting Grapevines in the Greenhouse...

A month or so ago we bought two young grapevines from our local nursery.  They were quite expensive at £15 each, but hopefully we'll be able to harvest fruit from them for many years to come.

One vine is a Chardonnay, which needs no introduction, and the other a Perlan which apparently is another name for the Chasselas variety, very commonly grown throughout Europe.

We decided to use the 'rod' method of training, allowing just a single branch to grow the full length of the greenhouse.

The plants already had some fresh growth when we bought them, and we selected a good shoot on each and then snipped off all the other greenery (note that it's not advisable to cut any old wood at all during the growing season, since the plants have a tendency to 'bleed').  At this stage, we just left the plants in their pots standing inside the greenhouse.

Solar Panel Performance - one year on

We now have one full year's worth of operational data from our five-panel experimental array, rated at 540 Watt-peak (Wp) in total.

So, without further ado, here's the cumulative AC energy graph for the array from 04-May-12 to 03-May-13.  Click on the figures to make them larger and easier to read ...

and here's the output on a month-by month basis.

and on a 'unitised' basis, i.e. per installed Watt-peak of capacity.

Our forecast in my post from 04-Nov-12, on the economics of the array, predicted an annual output of 254 kWhr of usable AC electrical energy, but we actually only achieved 241 kWhr in the period. 

Homemade Axial Flux Generator - Part 2 - The Coils

Following on from our earlier post, quite a while back now, I managed to get around to constructing a stator coil a month or so ago.   This particular project has had a very low priority due to work commitments and the many other projects I'm also on with, especially in the garden.

Firstly, I made a mould to cast the coils from an old piece of timber, using the CNC machine to generate the internal disc profile.  Using the CNC wasn't strictly necessary, a simpler but equally effective mould could have made up from plastic strips or similar.

on the CNC machine....

Greenhouse Irrigation / Watering System.....

Apologies if the title makes this sound rather more than grand than it actually is – it's just a very simple piping system to capture the rainwater falling on the roof and then re-direct it inside the greenhouse.

I started with three 3 metre lengths of 20 mm plastic conduit that I'd bought a year ago for the solar panel installation, before I discovered that I couldn't fit two pairs of cables inside each pipe and therefore ending up buying 25 mm instead for that application.  

Two lengths of the conduit I had were white and one black.  I had a few fittings already to hand, but topped up the shortfall with a few more from eBay.   The inspection covers on the PVC elbows and tee were sealed up using 'Evostik' Pipe Weld adhesive, and then pressure tested by holding my hand over the open end(s) and blowing into the other.

The long lengths of irrigation pipe were drilled every 150 mm or so – I started with 3 mm holes near the feed end and increased to 4 mm and then 5 mm as I progressed further along the pipes, the idea being to encourage water flow along the whole length of each pipe.  The open ends are temporarily sealed with blu-tack until I get around to making some proper plugs.

Building a greenhouse.....

This unplanned major project all started because I was looking for glass panels to build a simple cold frame to start-off vegetable plants under glass.  

However, one listing on eBay was for a shower panel (singular), but it was very poorly listed and described.  After a couple of emails to the seller I established that there were actually 18 panels for sale in the lot, all of the same height but in batches of three different widths, and all of them brand new !

I put in a bid and was lucky enough to get all the panels for the starting price of £20.  It meant a 160 mile round trip to collect them, but we hooked-up the trailer and set off.  When we saw the panels, they were very much more substantial than I'd initially thought – all 6 mm toughened glass within a polished aluminium frame.  They must have weighed around 400 kg or so, but with half in the trailer and half in the back of the car, we got them home OK.

glass panels in the foreground....

So, after measuring up, we decided we could build a new 12'x6' greenhouse using fourteen of them.