Simple hot water system

After significant testing I have come to the conclusion that the solar hot water panel I built is not going to work for our purposes. So, to get hot water from the sun while I test and build something better we've opted to go ahead and use the simple garden hose technique. We bought some inexpensive hose fittings for the outside of the trailer and looped a 100 foot black hose back into the hot water heater bypass. That gives us 2-2.5 gallons of hot water every hour or so without using any propane or electricity... Not elegant or pretty, but it works to give us hot water at the sinks and shower. We're going to add another 100 feet to give us almost 5 gallons of hot water so we can both shower.

I did another chainsaw carving today. AJ walked me step by step through the process of making my first bear. It was tricky, but I think I really made some headway today. I am feeling more confident and my cuts are getting more accurate as I carve more. I never realized how much you can do with a chainsaw. There's just nothing that compares to it in terms of speed and versatility. I am looking at the possibility of working with an electric saw that I can run off our solar charged battery bank. That would give me another possible income as we're traveling.

Keeping up

Tuesday we all went and played mini-golf at the Pirates Cove. Erika won a free game of golf by getting a hole in one (the only one of the game) on the mystery hole. The entire golf course was pirate themed and we saw one of AJ's chainsaw carvings (an alligator) in a cave. The whole place made me want to work on my Halloween projects again this year. It's hard traveling and having no place to work or store big projects for the future... Our day out ended with a visit with some friends that we met down in Brownsville Texas at the RV park. We found out while down in Texas that they live only minutes from where AJ's shop is located, so we made plans to hook up again here... It was nice to hang out and catch up.

There's a big event here in Minnesota coming up next month that involves some camping. We were all sitting around burning one of the tiki poles and someone came up with the idea to try to sell them at the event... Long story short, I sort of got nominated to help make the tiki poles, so I spent the day making a template (so they would all be fairly similar) and carving a few. I managed to get 5 of them carved up. I am sore this morning from holding the chainsaw for so many hours... We're shooting for at least 30 or so by the end of the month. I should be able to manage that if I take a day or two each week and carve them up. I get a bit faster with each one that I carve, so I should be able to get more done next time.

AJ has a bunch more projects that he wants to get done, so I have been putting some of my own projects on hold for now. Hopefully I will get some time to work on my solar hot water project again. The panel that I built works with a pump, but I need one that thermosiphons so I don't have to rely on a motor that requires maintenance and electricity. The goal is "free" hot water, so another panel design will need to be built.

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!

Geting into more hot water

It took quite a few hours to get the old hot water heater parts removed and our new hot water heater installed. The old water heater was too old and damaged to salvage anything other than the door from, so I had to buy basically everything as if I had nothing. The new heater had the gas line coming in at a different location, so I had to do some creative bending to get everything lined up and connected. All together the project cost $350.00 and took 3-4 hours (at a leisurely pace of course).

I bought a new bypass kit for the water heater thinking that I could bypass through the solar hot water panel, but I didn't realize that the bypass actually "bypasses" the hot water tank all together (duh) and won't work as a shutoff for the panel. The other slight problem is that the bypass adds 2 inches of depth to the back of the water tank, so there's not enough room to add a "T" fitting and valve assembly to tap into the tank and still close the interior door... So, I need to think about the best way to attach the panel to the tank in a way that lets me remove and re-install it with little hassle and no leaks.

We at least have hot running water in the RV again. Showering this morning in our own shower was very nice.

I have a few other projects going on that I need to finish up and then I can go back to work on the solar hot water panel. I'm not very excited about the design, but I feel like I need to finish it at least so I can test the final product before I start designing something else from scratch.

It's all about hot water

If you have ever been camping for an extended amount of time there are few things more pleasing than a hot shower. It also makes cleaning up dishes and general washing so much easier...

AJ has made our stay here very pleasant. We've had access to his shop shower ever since our arrival, but we have not had hot running water in the trailer since the hot water heater decided to spring a leak. Last week I took a grinder to the old hot water heater so I could leave the door in place on the RV and still have unrestricted access to the hot water heater compartment. Since that time I have been on the lookout for a replacement water storage tank that I could use for storing hot water heated from a solar hot water panel. So far my search has come up with some possibilities, but nothing that is just right for the job. The easiest thing to do is put another hot water heater in and plumb the solar hot water panel into it so I can make use of the tank, insulation and blow off valve built in. That would also give us the option to have hot water early in the morning or when the sun is not shining. Unfortunately, that is also the expensive option and right now I can't afford to buy a new hot water heater.

There are many companies making solar hot water panels for the home market, but not many (that I could find anyway) that make them for the RV market. I am not looking for something large enough to do laundry and long showers for 4 people. I just need something that will replace the 5 gallon hot water heater that we had. A small 2x4 panel would be ideal, but nobody makes something that small since the major market is the large home owner and they tend to want huge amounts of hot water.

Yesterday I decided to try tackling the solar hot water panel. I did some searching on the Internet for various do it yourself designs that I thought that I could scale down. AJ had a garage full of windows that he let me pick from. I found a 2x4 window that looked like a good start. The window has a wide frame that I think will be deep enough so I don't have to construct a frame for the hot water panel. That saves me some construction and money. The glass is double pane which provides good insulation, but may prove to filter out too much. It's hard to be picky when you're on a serious budget. I removed all of the decorative framing from the window until I was left with basically a box & window. I split off a piece of the frame in the process, so I had to clamp and glue it back together.

While the glue for the window was drying I started constructing a jig for hammering my heat collector. I chose a design that uses little copper and instead uses aluminum for the collector with copper pipe zig-zagged through grooves hammered in the aluminum. I riped some 8" wide 1"x8"x8' wood to make roughly 1"x6"x2' pieces and then screwed them to a table with gaps about the same size as my copper pipe.

I clamped the aluminum at one end and hammered metal rods into the aluminum to force it into the grooves... This proved to be a bit trickier than I had expected, but after a few tries I managed to find a technique that got the job done. There's probably an easier way to do the job...

After hammering in all of the grooves I set the aluminum aside and moved on to bending the copper tubing to match the grooves. I used the same jig that I built for hammering the aluminum. By rounding every board on alternating ends I made a continuous serpentine slot for the copper pipe to follow. I wish that I had made the jig the same size as the panel...

The next step was to bond the aluminum to the copper pipe. I had read that roofing tar might do the job somewhat, so I coated the slots in the aluminum with roofing tar and hammered the copper pipe into them. Experimenting with odd materials and home brewed ideas usually leads to some disappointment. In this case I had a bad feeling about the roofing tar. The pipes kept working their way back out of the slots in the aluminum. I screwed some end boards over the pipe to keep them in place and then coated the pipe/slot joints with a heavy coat of roofing tar. I figured that I'd leave the assembly to dry for a few days to see if it would stick together before trying to move and finish the other half on the jig.

With 1/2 the copper pipe "glued" to the aluminum I set everything in the sun to dry. I couldn't help but wonder how hot the metal was getting, so I went ahead and set up a little experiment... I placed my window frame over the 1/2 constructed panel and ran tubing from a Styrofoam cooler full of water to the panel. With a very small pond pump (approximately 0.25 GPM) I ran water through the panel and monitored the water temperature. We started with 65 degree water and within 15 minutes had 75 degree water. I left it running for a few hours and checked in on it every 15 minutes. There was quite a bit of wind and I didn't seal around the edges of the window frame, so the temperature varied a bit with how much wind there was. The highest temperature we reached was 102 degrees. As a side note - the 100 foot garden hose on the ground produced 109-112 degree water of the same volume in 1/2 the time. Not too encouraging, but I figure that the hose was on the ground protected from the cool breeze and getting a bit of help from the hot gravel driveway.

I am not very impressed so far with the design that I found on the Internet. I will most likely start from scratch and see if I can come up with a better (lighter, more efficient and portable) design. This design weighs a lot and doesn't appear to be that well thought out... I am going to go ahead and finish the panel I started, but most likely it will end up being used on a project where weight is not a concern.

Dome construction

This weekend was tough. Lots of concrete mixing, moving and experimental methods of applying it to the dome form.

AJ and I did some testing with the concrete pump. It turns out that it does not work well with the relatively rocky mix of concrete that we put together. In fact, we managed to plug the hose and had to sacrifice the entire batch of concrete to get it unplugged before it set up. Not everything goes as planned I guess.

We set an appointment for Saturday to try to cover the dome with cement. With the pump out of the picture because of the rocks, we had to apply it by hand. We figured on a few hours to get the dome covered... Turns out that it took us most of the day just to get about 1/2 of the dome covered. The cement was not cooperating and ended up sliding off the dome and onto the ground all around the base. I wanted to give up and try something else, but despite the large amount of concrete piling up around the base of the dome on the ground, we did manage to get most of it on the form.

We let the concrete set up for a couple of hours over lunch and then went back to work trying to add more. It was pretty frustrating. Some of the concrete seemed to crumble away as we tried to add more to it. Part of the problem was that we tried mixing up some thicker mixes to see if it would stick better which ended up just making the mix thicker and harder to spread.

By the end of Saturday afternoon we had 99% of the dome covered with at least some concrete. The idea was to come back in the morning and try shooting it on in a thin layer.

Sunday morning we started off by sifting the rock through a screen to remove everything smaller than 1/4 inch. That helped to make a mix that went on smoother and easier than the Saturday. Within 3 hours we had a pretty good coat of cement over the entire dome. There were still some patches that were too thin, but the dome looked more uniform and the rough texture of the sprayed concrete actually covered up a lot of the rough work from the day before.

After lunch, AJ deflated the form and we removed it from the inside. I thought that we were done for the day, but AJ decided that we should do a coat of cement on the inside too. So, we went back to work. It took a couple of hours to coat the inside of the dome. It's a bit rough both inside and out, but it feels surprisingly cozy and roomy inside. From the outside it looks rather small, but from the inside it seems larger. I don't have any pictures of the inside after the coat of cement. I'll get some later tonight or tomorrow if the weather holds out...

A new computer

You forget how fragile all of this technology is until something goes wrong...

I had to completely rebuild our lifetime of documents from backups on a new computer today because our relatively new laptop decided to go on a blue screen/reboot frenzy that made it impossible to get into windows even in safe mode. I finally chased the problem down to a 1GB memory stick that is "guaranteed for life". So, I have the old laptop running at the minimum memory required just for windows to boot and I'm doing my best to get things transferred over to the new computer so we can run our business as usual tomorrow.

I bought the new computer when after 4 hours of troubleshooting I couldn't get our laptop to boot. We had 2 weeks worth of orders waiting to be processed and everything was only available in backup form. To make things worse, all of our software is designed for (and incidently only works with) XP and to "upgrade" all of them to Vista compatible would have run us around $800.00. So, I bought a laptop on-line that came installed with XP and had it shipped overnight...

Long story short - I have 2 laptops now that are working. The business is back on solid ground for the moment... Technology is both a blessing and a curse.

A day of fishing

This morning I was a bit depressed and feeling kind of trapped, so I decided to go fishing. Once the girls found out what I was planning, they wanted to go too.

We headed for a park near a dam that I had been fishing at a few days ago. Emily had never caught her own fish before, so I wanted to pick a spot where she was pretty much sure to catch at least some bluegill. Within about 5 minutes both girls had caught a fish and were excited. Becky and I did our best to re-bait hooks and release fish that were too small to keep as the girls pulled one after another out of the river. I think between the two of them they hooked at least 15 fish (some of them more than once).

We stayed for a couple of hours and basically let the girls fish. Toward the end they were baiting their own hooks and Emily was getting to the point where she was just about ready to start releasing her own fish. The girls played on the nearby playground for 20 minutes or so while I tried my hand at catching something a bit more substantial near the base of the dam. I tried 4-5 of my most successful lures (at least ones that had worked in many rivers in Oregon year round). The mosquitoes finally drove me to pack it up and head out, so I ended up not catching anything at all, but the girls had fun and it was almost as relaxing to watch them fish as it was to fish myself, so I was re-energized by the outing.

AJ worked on the dome while we were off fishing and managed to get some window frames constructed. I think the plan is to finish up the rebar tomorrow so that we can get started applying the cement. The dome is beginning to look a bit more substantial now that you can see the door and window frames in place. This dome is the "practice" dome where AJ's testing out several different ideas to see how they turn out before moving on to a dome that will be a bit more permanent on the farm.

After our little fishing trip we went into town and picked up 3 racks of ribs for the evening. We ended up sitting outside well into the evening eating ribs, drinking beer and burning tiki poles. Only the mosquitoes drove us into the trailer well after dark.

This area is beautiful this time of year. It's been getting hotter during the days and yet still gets cool and crisp in the evenings. It's a nice change from the heat and humidity of Southern Texas.

We're not sure how long we're going to stay here. Probably through the Summer... Chances are we'll move on before it starts getting cold again in the fall. We're not sure where we're headed after this, but so far it seems that we'll be heading back West at some point.

Chainsaws and shelters

This morning I tried my hand at chainsaw carving. I figured I'd start with something that was fairly easy and that wouldn't waste any wood, so I opted to carve the next fire tiki pole. I figured that if it turned out really bad the evidence would be burned and nobody would have to look at it.

Well, the first side was really rough. I had a heck of a time trying to make eyes that were round instead of square. That and learning how to hold the saw and make cuts at all different angles was pretty tough.

The second side turned out a bit better I think. I'll have lots of time to practice as the weeks roll on here... I am pretty sore from just the short time I was carving. It takes a lot of muscle to hold the saw and keep the fine control as you make your cuts.

With the big storms on the way we turned our attention to the shelter. AJ had buried a 6+ foot diameter tank under ground and made an entrance and door for it. It just needed to have the door trimmed a bit and some benches added inside to make it more comfortable.

It took us about an hour or so to fix the door and make some benches inside. Right about the time we were finishing up a big wind gust toppled the BBQ and table at the back of the house. I felt better knowing that I have a safe place to escape to if I am feeling nervous about the storms.

It sounds like we'll be turning our attention to making a cement dome structure as soon as the weather cooperates. AJ has already done a lot of work on one and hopefully with my help we'll get it finished in the very near future. More on that later...

Yet another storm

Well, we're under the gun again. Big storms headed our way once again. Guess where we are? Yup, right in the middle of it all. Last night I was up for part of the evening watching the tornado watches move across the plains. It all went North of us for the most part. Today we seem to be right in the path of some of it. It's been blowing pretty hard this afternoon.

Seems like everywhere we go we end up surrounded by tornado watches and warnings. At least here we have a house and shelter we can move into if the storms get too nasty for the trailer.

I am very afraid of wind storms. I had a few very close calls in Arkansas about 15 years ago - one where I watched the roof of a hotel peel back and take flight right up the road from where I was driving my car. Needless to say I am VERY aware of how dangerous high winds can be, so I get a bit over fearful when under a tornado watch or severe thunderstorm warning is issued... So far it looks like we'll slip between the worst of it once again. We'll see...

We've arrived

We made it to Brainerd Minnesota a couple of days ago now. There's a lot happening with relatives visiting and evening BBQ's and camp fires. It's a big change from the quiet and somewhat lonely 2 months in Brownsville Texas.

Yesterday I got to go fishing at the local river. The fishing was fairly good despite the large number of people that were already there and had taken the prime spots... We caught more bluegill than we wanted (most of them small) and spent some time talking and just hanging out. Turns out that the bluegill like to eat the silk worms that were basically falling on us from the tree branches overhead. Nature provided the bait and you really didn't need anything other than a hook, bobber and any kind of fishing line.

We returned from fishing to a feast of hamburgers, salad and beer. AJ and family made a hallow log into a tiki pole and lit a fire in the center that burned for several hours during the feast. It would have been a perfect setting had it not been for the mosquitoes that descended on the event as the sun set. The locals don't seem to be as tasty to the little blood suckers - Our family on the other hand got bitten several times last night despite the many layers of repellant...

Storm chasing

It's about 6:00 PM and I'm really tired... This morning started at 3:45 AM when I woke up to a severe thunderstorm. We had no Internet access, no cable TV and my weather radio wasn't picking up crap. The storm looked bad, so I wired up our TV to the battery bank and cranked up our power TV antenna. Sure enough the entire area surrounding us was under a severe thunderstorm warning with high wind gusts (up to 70 MPH) and the possibility of large hail. The storm split and went both North and South of us, so we were just treated to lightning, thunder, some minor wind and rain. Still, being a Pacific Coast boy - I was freaked out. Becky (being a Mid West girl) just looked at me like I was an idiot...

We managed to outrun the next wave of the storms headed our way. Notice the black couds in the rear-view mirror... We took some back roads and bypassed the big cities. We thought we were being slick skipping all of the big cities and heading straight north, but our main interstate turned out to be detoured (in the wrong direction) and we spent an extra 75 or so miles trying to find a way around the detour... Bottom line, we could have made the same distance on the main highways in much less time and ended up exactly where we're staying tonight. We took the VERY scenic route.

We have high speed internet access tonight, and from the looks of the weather websites - we're in for another noisy, windy and rainy night...