Building a Simple Electrical Heater

This is following on from my recent post on the greenhouse solar installation.

To use any excess panel energy available during the cooler months, I've built electrical heating elements to connect directly to the 'dump load' circuit from the charge controller.  There are no proprietary heating elements available for the power and voltage I require, and even if there were then they'd likely be prohibitively expensive.

The first job was to source some suitable resistance wire.  Lots of types available on eBay but not too many which are insulated, so I opted for enamelled 0.7 mm diameter Isotan wire (aka Konstantan) available from a seller in Norway.

The reason for buying insulated wire was that it could be formed either in or around metal pipe or ducting.   In the end, I opted for inserting it in small-bore copper tubing, a coil of which I had lying around the workshop.  

However, this wasn't the only choice for the design - I'd originally envisaged simply wrapping the insulated wire around the outside of a 22 mm diameter copper pipe, but I didn't have any to hand and B&Q wanted £17 for a 2 metre length....

I unrolled the small-bore copper tubing coil and measured its length at 7.2 m.   A few basic calculations were carried out to establish the heating power available from the lengths of tube and wire I had.   

Standalone Solar Installation....

We decided it would be good to have some electrical power in the greenhouse, primarily for growlights and at least one of our electric propagators during the winter months.

Taking power via a spur from the house mains is not so easy - there's nowhere to run a cable underground without cutting slots across at least one concrete pathway.  The best alternative solution would be overhead, from the house wall via a cable supported by a catenary wire.

However, the amount of power we're looking to draw is not huge, and so we've simply relocated three of the solar panels from our experimental array onto the greenhouse roof.

Is this how Financial Independence arrives - not with a bang but a whimper ?

My recent post about the company's finances made me think very seriously about the state of our personal finances, and what may be possible in '...retirement...' or at least for long periods without a regular earned income.

Using some of the 'float' we've established in the company, in the last few days I've set up a large monthly contribution from the company into my personal SIPP.   Making contributions to an employee's pension plan is also an allowable expense against corporation tax, so it's a tax-efficient way to withdraw money from the company.

Assuming the unlikely prospect of doing no further work at all in the period, these contributions would reduce the three years future 'earnings' we've banked to around two-and-a-half before the company runs out of reserves.  

Anyway, I've been beavering away at various spreadsheets for the last couple of days.  

Banking on working....

Many, many years ago, I was a fitter on a production line for a manufacturing company and I worked on 'piecework'.

For the unenlightened, basically this meant that I was paid for each measured portion of work that I completed.  Not being particularly greedy, I never booked all the 'achieved' hours each week that I had earned, and consequently 'banked' the remaining balance for future weeks.

  

The rates for each job were set on the basis of a skilled employee completing a specified task within a specified time, and to a specified level of quality.  

The quality was always verified by an Inspector, who had to countersign the yellow docket for satisfactory completion of the task before you could book it for payment.

Well, of course, some tasks were either easier or more difficult than others.  If it was the first time a task was ever measured, say for a job on a new product line or a product variation, and you happened to be the very first one to undertake it, then you effectively '...set the rate...' for all others to follow.  In these circumstances, it was essential not to complete the job too quickly and alienate your colleagues, or potentially screw yourself in the future !  Not exactly swinging the lead, because you were under observation, but certainly not putting yourself out in quite the same way as you'd do for a previously measured job.

Hedge Progress - Second Summer .....

It's been a while since my last new post, what with work, holidays, more work and yet another holiday coming up, although I have updated a few of my other gardening posts....

No major projects in progress - I've still got a problem with my neck and shoulder so digging and heavy lifting etc is out of the question for the rest of this year.

But it's time for an update on the hedge bounding our new garden extension to the west, which we planted bareroot in early 2013 and then mulched with polyprop and stones at the beginning of this year.

It seems to be doing reasonably well, although progress is mixed depending upon location and I'm not sure why this is the case.  

The extreme southerly end is perpetually shaded by the large conifers, but the rest sees a lot of sun.  We gave them all a good dressing with Growmore in the spring and they've been well watered during any dry spells.

If viewed obliquely, it's all looking quite good although it's much higher in the middle.

central and southern sections....

Our Previous House is Sold !

Yesterday we finally exchanged contracts on the sale of our previous home, after it being on-and-off the market for the last three years, so I suppose some sort of celebration is in order - or is it ?

The buyers first viewed the property on 22 February, so it will have been a fourteen-week long process from start to finish, i.e. at completion next Friday....

Even though the market has supposedly been rising recently, we eventually agreed to sell it for only 81% of what we paid at the top of the market in the summer of 2006 (you'll already have guessed that this house isn't in London if we're selling for a much lower price than eight years ago !).    We'd had previous offers, but they were generally very speculative and derisory and we weren't distressed sellers, we always had a positive equity-to-loan value even at the depths of the fall, and so were prepared to hold out until we could get what we thought was a reasonable price.

Solar Panel Performance - two years on

It's that time again...  

As of this evening, we now have exactly two full years' worth of data from our experimental 540 Wp solar array.  So, here are the graphs of the same parameters as previously reported - clicking on them shows larger images, and they can be compared with last year's figures here :-

Total AC energy production this year was 243 kWhr, i.e. just 2 more than last year !  At least the numbers are consistent.