Karman de Lange

you know you just quoted a aircon seller?....... I will forward you article I have. Air to Air heat pumps are not very efficient, but seems to be better than electric heater if very well installed and used properly. I guess one need to calculate how much aircon captical cost is, vs maintance , and then see if its cheaper in long term than electric coil

Curtains much cheaper ... That thin white curtain thing you put up for privacy when main curtains are open is amazing to keep room cold/warm. (for life me cannot remember technical name of it) We loose most heat through the walls now. have 150mm insulation in roof, 50mm below ~20% of floors (solid wood floors with cavity filled) and just curtains/blinds on all windows. edit: Have to add .... Make sure your windows are airtight .. we installed alu with that fluffy seals, made big difference to stop air movement.

Ja, dunno ... busy reading again how these stuffs works..

o, our 18000 btu inverter aircon only uses ~1.8kw at max power. I think its chinese BTU's

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belay that. Does not werk if already valid member...

If you renew:

Ja, seen that page a few times, the problem with that page is that it was written when PV panels was still expensive. There nothing dangerous about brick stack. The voltage is 12-60V depending on how you configure it. Of course you run normal fuses/breakers for dead shorts. Add safety thermostat and its less dangerous than chineese oil heater. There is no high voltage involved, no electronics (maybe on/off switch). its fairly passive system actually. Other thing with PV is, if you need more, you just go to local shop, and buy another panel. If don't work, you sell it again on gumtree. The only other viable option for us is those tin can solar heating.. but we don't have enough wall space for enough surface area and also don't have enough space for massive thermal mass inside... With solar heating you need large mass storing low temperatures. with PV heating system you can go very high heat, so low mass is fine.... guess its all a trade off at end of the day...

The black pipe idea is nice, but don't get hot enough if you have wind, or cold winter day. It has to be inside a glass box. If you go work out what the glass , pipe, wood etc cost and add the pump, and replacement costs of pipe after few years, you simply go buy a PV panel and wire it to a heating coil...... If you want to go the geyser idea, you can run geyser element direct from solar as well. no inverters needed. think the 3KW has right resistance for 1.5kw solar in series .. need to go find the calculators again.

hehe Use the bricks to make a table or something. Stick it under the bed. lots of options if its electric powered You can even grab bag of clay and make sculpture.

Ja .... solar water heating is a option .. but its simply not hot enough for room heating (radiation heat) after hours... You have to keep the temperature below boiling so you either need to heat a MASSIVE amount of "bricks" but then you also sit that that heat keeps house warm when you don't need it (during the day and after you go to bed). So now you need to somehow insulate the bricks when not needed not to wast the energy. Adds complexity With the heating element in the brick, you heat the center of the stack to >400 , then by the time heat moved to the outside of the stack its night time and keeps room warm when needed. By the time you go to bed the stack should be cold again so that all the energy you put in during the day gets used in small amount of time at night when needed. The solar water on the roof also have big issue that wind cools it down alot. Solar PV don't have that problem. Well that is the theory .........

I've been "planning" this for 3 years.. just actually have to try it one day. I thought of water etc, but that is messy if leaks and boiling water is not my thing... The bricks with the holes in them might also work if you need less time for radiation to start. Paver bricks also thinner. Lots of options. I also thought to use few 100-200w elements, and you can switch them on / off to match the amount of excess solar. Should be easy if you able to read current inverter stats using few Sonoff basic's and berry.

I'm pondering actually to add another 1kw of solar dedicated to run a heating system for winter. Basicly get element and run direct from solar. Heat up a stack of bricks and let it radiated during the night. In theory brick takes about 4 hrs to transfer heat from one side to the other, so if you heat the stack of bricks from center, by evening it should be hot outside... Wood is now so @#$# expensive here that solar might be cheaper . ....

Ja, sorry I pulled lifetime report and very simular I normally only focus on winter as its our biggest power problem. summer we always have way to much.... I wish I focused/angled mine more on winter than summer

ignore

Is this build in function of the Axpert/kodak/mecer? (sorry, Only know victron stuff ).

you dont' want to see mine then .. function above beauty ..

You get a ~1.5kw element for geyers , normally in the 100/50l geyers, they generic so fit into big ones.. We use it, geyser takes about 2 hrs to warm up, not 30 minutes .. so not big issue.

So after living with stupid load shedding early morning again while fast asleep ... Try and get your house main load on a very low amp circuit breaker (below inverter rating) and put your critical things(servers/pc's etc) on another circuit so that when you overload inverter hopefully the trip will go and keep critical things on. Its rather irritating when you forgot you load shedding and you put all appliances on in kitchen and everything trips and, then inverter restarts itself, trips again ,and repeat until you remember to switch off everything. not so good for pc's etc. Maybe a n/c contactor on high load circuit that your inverter will open on overload is better idea, jsut not sure all inverters have outputs for this.

for mere mortals http://weather.lcao.co.za/index.php/Special_CurrentWeather and history http://www.weather.lcao.co.za/index.php/Special_WeatherStatsRainfall edit: seems to be bit "agter" .. we had about 30 mm since rain started yesterday

Have to add to this .. you might be able to swing the bucket if you roll side to side, but you will still always have a "pull" on the bucket which keeps the "top" at the "top". (like pendulum). You can of course pendulum it to much if you really try , but this is out of normal operation (i'm also happy to be corrected, but this is my basic understanding)

its like the water in bucket you spin around. the pulling force is always above the water, (rope/hook) so will always "see positive G in single direction". unless you cut the rope or fly into a mountain. Normal heli cannot do negative G without major @#$@ happening, so you always have tension on the line. sorry, not able to explain properly... might have to go google something

Heli's can only do "positive G" (unless you stuff up ) .. so water don't slosh as only see "gravity" in same direction. so either centrifugal force in a turn or gravity from earth ok, now that is a really *** explination , but in summary water might slosh at pickup, but after that it should all go to the bottom and stay there. (I think,)

They already asking for volunteers for this thursday.

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