In even more hot water

It's another day of working on the solar hot water project. Although I dislike the design that I found on the internet, the main components are there and should lead us to at least something better than a garden hose. I did my best to insulate the copper and aluminum before mounting the whole assembly inside the window frame.

Today was not the greatest day for testing. For starters, it took me until 3:30 just to get the panel put together and ready for testing. It's was also a bit overcast and even more windy than the previous test day. Despite the poor conditions, I decided to run the test anyway. The goal of course is to get hot water (110+ or about the same as our propane hot water heater) for free. The time it takes to heat the water is less of a concern for us since we only need one batch of hot water per day to do our dishes and take showers.

The test data came out as follows:

3:30 PM 65 degrees
3:45 PM 75 degrees
4:00 PM 85 degrees
4:15 PM 92 degrees
4:30 PM 99 degrees
4:45 PM 101 degrees
5:00 PM 105 degrees
5:15 PM 107 degrees
5:30 PM 110 degrees

There are some problems with the design that keep it from being able to thermo-siphon, so I will have to build another panel to work with the RV. Still, the current panel is better than nothing...

On a totally unrelated subject - I finished my 5th ever chainsaw carving. It's not too bad considering... I think I would do better with less organic subject material. I'm good at patterns and non-organic objects, but body forms are a pain in the butt.

It's supposed to be a traveling gnome... I'll let you decide what it looks like for yourself.

AJ helped a lot to demonstrate how to carve and gave me tons of pointers that helped me to avoid the really major mistakes. He also found the cool little natural walking stick that fit perfectly with my little gnome carving.


Thanks AJ!