Turquoise Energy News #160
covering
September
2021 (Posted October 4th 2021)
Lawnhill BC Canada - by Craig Carmichael
www.TurquoiseEnergy.com
= www.ElectricCaik.com
= www.ElectricHubcap.com
Month
In
"Brief"
(Project Summaries etc.)
- Handheld
Bandsaw Mill Kit - Cabin Wall - CNC Router Setup - Plastics &
Shredder - Other Things
In
Passing
(Miscellaneous topics, editorial comments & opinionated rants)
- Factors in the Climate - many Smol Thots - ESD
- Detailed
Project Reports
-
Electric
Transport - Electric Hubcap Motor Systems [no
reports]
Other "Green"
& Electric Equipment Projects
* Handheld Bandsaw Mill Kit progress
* CNC Router Setup
* Plastic & Plastic Shredder
* Greenhouse, Gardening
Electricity Generation
* My Solar Power System: - Daily/Monthly
Solar Production log et cetera - Monthly Summaries and
Estimates
Well, I didn't get TE News #159 finished and sent until
the 9th. With almost 1/3 of the month gone before starting on much of
anything else, and then very much wanting to finish the south wall of
my cabin before winter, as one might
imagine I didn't get a whole lot of energy project work done.
First of all here's a good picture of the last peltier
cooling tests I missed putting in last issue, actually from September
2nd. (If I remember I'll edit that issue and repost it - an advantage
of publishing on line!)
Handheld Bandsaw Mill Kit
I finally got the band guide wheels nicely lined up, then
made a safety cover for the band of very thin alium. sheet I happened
to have. At first I thought it was awfully thin - almost "tinfoil" -
but when folded into the desired shape and screwed onto the "backbone"
rails, it seemed stiff enough, and it added almost no weight to the
saw. I ripped a 2 by 6 into two 2 by 3s as a test cut. I haven't got
much done since except to better plan a couple of parts to make next. I
really must finish this up and get the kit happening!
Cabin Wall
[Unless you're interested in this just skip past the whole stack of
almost daily pictures of the progress below.]
[13th] Having
finally got back to this about the end of August by putting in the door
and [finally] extending the siding over and beyond the door, I set
about doing the
next 1/4 of the south wall. Surely I could at least finish the south
side exterior
before it gets too cold and damp, and the daylight too short, to do
much outside work? I can't do the West wall until I "evict" the travel
trailer and my friend's camper/mini-motorhome, but when 3 walls are
done
- next summer I trust - I might just get some wiring, insulation and
interior gyproc done in
and near the East end, just to reduce the stacks of "stuff" lying
around waiting to be installed. I could put some temporary cover over
the west end.
(Hmm... this picture from my new video camera makes the
roofline look like it sags in the middle. It is straight. And the
colors are different from the cellphone's.)
[14th] I stapled up tyvec
over the
exposed plywood (best to do in case it rains!) and got it all ready for
the window. It was sunny, if a bit breezy, the whole morning. I
finished about actual noon ["1:48 PM" on the clock]. I got a camera and
took a picture. Within a
minute it was pouring rain! Apparently I had weatherproofed the wall
and put the tools inside in the nick of time.
[15th to 20th] I put the window in and
got a couple of sections of
aluminum siding shell on. On the 19th I finished the framing to the
corner
with a 28 by 28 inch opening for a bathroom(?) window, put up the
plywood and when the rain dropped to a drizzle the next day I finally
finished the tyvec with scraps. (I used one roll of tyvec virtually
completely on the first two walls, and have one unopened roll left for
the other two.
I'm sure that without the tyvek the plywood on the first half of the
wall would have become trash over last winter!)
[26th] Day by day I get a few more
pieces of siding on, even if it's
only 1 or 2 or 3. On this evening, 3-1/2 columns left to go. The rain
is wet, but it keeps the bugs down and - so far - it's not too cold to
work. I'm trying to finish the wall before it is.
I bought the siding as a 'package deal' and had never
added up how much there was compared to how much was needed. I now
counted up my remaining sheets and figured there was enough to do the
long north wall, but not the west end. (Maybe doing the gable end and
the corners with the remaining scraps could make it sort-of match the
other walls?) However, the aluminum is already fully
employed covering my stacks of lumber and my utility trailer! I'll have
to figure something out for all that next summer. I can use up some
of the lumber. (If I do a wooden floor with 2 by 6 framing I might
not have much more than scraps left.)
The interior of the wall. Not
much to look at!
On the 29th the siding cover finally reached
the end of
the wall. The last piece needs cutting (to be determined...) and is
held on with a screw for now, and there is the small window and other
details to be done, but the essential shell is on over the tyvec to
protect the wood underneath and at last to keep most of the interior,
and the travel trailer, dry and out of the salty air sometimes blowing
up from the ocean. Good time! It started to rain
just as I finished, has been pouring rain a lot, and each day is
shorter and cooler than the last.
CNC Router Setup
I wanted the CNC router to work so I could work on at
least two other projects, including the unipolar "Electric Hubcap"
axial flux motor for EV conversions.
I tried to get the old computer set up to run
the CNC table. I
ended up mounting the Geckodrive G540 four axis stepper motor driver on
the back of the computer itself, eliminating a big box with a noisy
fan, but I had various problems. Finally I took the seemingly
unreliable
computer to a computer tech to repair - perhaps by replacing the
motherboard?
Plastics & Shredder
In the meantime I tried to order some 2 inch thick UHMW-PE
plastic to route into motor body part molds once it was working. But it
ended up looking like it was too heavy for the post office and with
freight it would be almost 900$!
I decided I would have to divert into
getting some of my plastic recycling equipment working so I could shred
up HD-PE food packages and plastic buckets, or whatever, to press into
the blocks I needed. I wanted to get the recycling machines ready to
work anyway, and making such blocks for making molds was one of the
things I wanted to be able to do. Of course the last thing I need is a
diversion into yet another project before I can start on the motor, but
900$ savings is a considerable incentive to change the priorities. And
it would improve production to make the mold parts thicker than 2
inches - maybe 3 or more - if only to make it easier to stuff in the
PP-epoxy composite material, evenly, before clamping it down.
On October 2nd I went to the refuse station and found a
big basket full of empty HDPE engine oil containers. Those should shred
down nicely if I got the plastic shredder all assembled. They also had
a 45 gallon drum of very thick HDPE (like, ~10mm thick!). I didn't
think the shredder would handle that. But later I thought that I could
just cut the sides of the barrel into about 17 by 17 inch squares and
stack them up. Then clamp them together with a top and a bottom metal
plate, and flatten them and melt them together in the kitchen oven.
Presto, there's my "225 $" pieces free for the cutting, from plastic
waste!
Other Things
On the 18th I finally thought to put away the beehive.
Unlikely as it was that I'd catch a swarm in August, there was
certainly no chance now until spring. Why have it sitting out in the
weather all winter? Woodbugs had already started a considerable colony
inside. I could put it back out in March. In the meantime, the lid is
rather undersize for the hive with the thick insulated walls and I
should make a bigger one, and maybe a few other minor improvements and
adjustments.
Having spent considerable time in the early summer on
giving the Sprint
a "96% efficient" drive train and getting it running with the 36 volt
forklift motor (hopefully to be replaced with the unipolar Electric
Hubcap motor), and then making a much needed firewood shed, finishing
the cabin's south wall took priority before colder weather made working
outside miserable. I was already working in light rain a couple of
times to keep the construction moving. Other projects were inevitably
getting shuffled and for the time being, lost.
I wanted to get the third and last 36 volt, 120 amp-hour
lithium-ion battery stack assembled so I would have two sets for the 72
volt Miles EV mini cargo truck as well as have one remaining in the EV
Chevy Sprint. But I didn't get there.
And I wanted to 3D print some more 12 volt plug and socket
shells and wall plates, but didn't get to them.
And somehow I didn't get to rewiring the batteries in the
ground effect craft and moving them farther aft for a more balanced
weight distribution flight test, either.
In
Passing
(Miscellaneous topics, editorial comments & opinionated rants)
Factors
in
the
Climate
I have written previously about how I'm pretty sure the
persisting jet trails in the stratosphere are disrupting the global
wind circulations. There are factors both natural and
man-made that are changing the weather more rapidly than is explained
by orbital cycles such as precession of Earth's axial spin that occur
over tens of thousands of years:
1. Changes in the sun's output
2. Changes in the Earth's magnetic field affecting the Earth's
reception of the suns rays
3. Changes in the magma circuits inside the Earth
4. Global warming due to production of carbon dioxide, both human and
volcanic
5. Disturbances to the global wind patterns owing to the persisting
stratospheric jet trails.
1. I once heard the sun's output varies by about 1%. More recently I've
heard hints of somewhat larger figures. (It probably varied far more in
the
distant past before there was life in the solar system - or before the
solar system formed.) At times of maximum sunspot cycles its output is
greatest, while no sunspots corresponds with a "quiet" and cooler star.
And the sunspot cycle from one minimum to the next is 10.7 Earth years.
If we said that Earth's average temperature is around
295°K (22°C), then I should think a 1% increase would bring it
up to 298° (25°C), or else a 1% decrease would take it down to
292° (19°C). Not insubstantial. Of course all is seasonal and
dependent on latitude, but it probably makes more difference than most
factors.
2. So far I don't know much of anything about this except to understand
it's a factor, and that changes in the sun's magnetic field greatly
affect the Earth's field. (So I'll say no more. "It is better to keep
one's mouth closed and be thought
a fool than to open it and prove the point." -- some philosopher of
old.)
3. A decade and more ago magma circuits deep inside the Earth rose
nearer to the crust under the Pacific ocean, and the warmer ocean
temperatures thus attained changed air circulation patterns and brought
a lot of "el niño" weather to
the Americas. Today (as I understand it) there is now more of the
shallower
magma under Antarctica and under the Antarctic peninsula, also denoted
as
"underground volcanic activity", and this is a major factor in the
increasingly rapid melting of glaciers there from beneath, such as the
dreaded Thwaites "doomsday" glacier, which by some recent estimates
could
apparently be responsible for up to 3 meters of sea level rise by mid
century.
Globally we have probably had around 10000 years of
relatively stable sea levels, and it is hardly within our collective
memories that things have ever been any different except in local areas
that have sunk or risen. Yet during the ice ages,
there was a lot more land than there is now including more and larger
pacific islands, and an extended North American west coast shoreline,
which areas are now under the oceans by perhaps 10 to 20 meters or
more. Haida Gwaii BC where I am, now 65Km between the nearest points to
another island near the mainland, was connected to it. Most
of the islands of Indonesia were part of the Asian mainland, with
the narrow Bali-Lombok strait dividing Asiatic life from Australian
life.
4. Atmospheric CO2 increase causing global warming has been "the" topic
of political climate discussion to the exclusion of every other factor
for many years now. It seems all climatic anomalies are being blamed on
it.
It seems to me that while not insignificant, and while long term
burning fossil carbon is a threat, certainly not desirable or
sustainable, it's pretty small peanuts compared to other factors. Water
vapor is a more effective greenhouse gas.
Perhaps of interest: Some have said volcanoes put out far
more CO2 than all human causes. Others say this isn't true, that
volcanoes put out much less than has been claimed. Is blaming volcanoes
just a way to mentally excuse petroleum combustion?
5. I've mentioned jet trails in previous issues of TE News (#109,
#129...): the persisting
stratospheric clouds, up where clouds are usually rare, would
seem by themselves to neatly explain many of the weather anomalies and
cataclyms of recent years. The microcrystalline salt (aluminum
sulfate?) or salts
that many suspect may be being used as nucleation seed to form these
clouds aren't themselves the real problem.
I
won't go
over it too far again, except to stress a couple of
points I may or may not have made very clear: Normally the warmer
air at the ground rises into the
cooler air above, especially around the equator and at the jet stream
latitude, causing (along with Earth's rotation) all the other global
wind circulation patterns. With the high altitude blanketing clouds,
the warmer
air extends into the stratosphere in uneven patches in broad areas
where
many jets have been. This disrupts the whole of the circulations
including the jet streams. Warm air flows into the usually more
isolated arctic and
consequent arctic outflows go as far south as the Tropic of Cancer.
The
very tall warmer air column also holds more moisture way up into the
stratosphere, causing both "rivers from the sky" floods (& giant
hail & blizzards) and "epic" droughts such as most of the western
USA, especially this year with unprecedented destruction of our food
supply. If the air doesn't get cooler as clouds rise up into and over
mountains, will they not just pass over them instead of raining on the
slopes? Are droughts then not inevitable in the places that rain
usually falls, while atmospheric moisture builds up to extreme levels
to cause the unprecedented floods elsewhere?
(I wish we could get some of that dry weather here this
fall: just TWO nice sunny days this September!)
Smol
Thots
* Ever get
exasperated with glued-on labels, where if you try to peel quickly they
rip, and to pull them off cleanly takes a coon's age? If you're not in
a hurry, here's a way to peel them off, working very slowly, but
automaticly! Clamp a pair of vise-grips to a loose corner and put the
item between two chairs or something. The pull will eventually peel the
label off. (What was that sudden "clunk" in the middle of the night?!?
Maybe put some packaging foam or a blanket on the floor underneath?)
* If you like to wash your dishes right after using them, I
commend a bottle for dishsoap that has a squirt trigger on the top,
often available with liquid hand soap in them. You can put the
dishcloth or a plate under it and punch a dollop of dishsoap right onto
it,
without having to pick up the bottle, invert it and squeeze, and
getting your hand slimy with the concentrated leftover soap that always
oozes
down the outside of the bottle.
(The other thing that really aids washing of a few
dishes immediately after using them is to have hot water
without a long delay and wasted hot water, ie, not running from a
tank somewhere way across the house. Unfortunately this is often
problematic. I will certainly try hard to provide for rapid hot water
in the kitchen when I'm setting up the cabin utilities.)
* [12th-13th] I had an odd dream in which I went through an empty store
to get to another store in the corner of a mall - a Radio Shack or
something. I looked at the shelves which I had thought to be full of
merchandise and suddenly noticed they were empty. Oh, the store must be
reorganizing.
Then I realized the whole store was empty: gone, "For Rent"! So were
the two adjacent ones on the other side of the corner including a
former muffin or coffee place.
There was a real estate agent there, desperately trying to
rent out the stores. I said to her "It's the real retail apocalypse!"
Of course a closed electronics store(s) could be an
allegory for
closure of on line businesses such as AliExpress, BangGood, DealExtreme
who sell electronics (and maybe even Amazon and eBay?) leaving us all
unable to order from the "Chinese mall". With the
deteriorating shipping situation, and Xi Jinping busily shutting down
the Chinese economy through Covid and over-regulation/micro-management,
this
would be no surprise. (In fact when I awoke, the things in the
dream didn't really surprise me. ...Except, why did I have to walk
through one store to get to another?)
The moral of the story is perhaps to order everything I
think I'll want now. I already do that.
At the end of the month power failures in China were in
the news. They were either insignificant "scheduled power outages" or
"devastating disruptions to the Chinese economy", depending who you
listen to. (Fuel shortages seem to be spreading in China - and
globally. From the sounds of things it may already be almost too
late to expect orders to be delivered?)
* I keep hearing that the virus is killing zillions of people, always
somewhere else. Then I heard "Northern BC" and I don't personally know
anyone here
who's even had it, although there were two very small, short outbreaks
in 2020. Tourists have been freely coming and going all summer, many of
whom must have driven all through Northern BC for days or weeks to get
here. Covid can hit the elderly hard, while young adults and
especially children seem to have little more to fear from it than a
mild flu-like illness.
* The whole economy has been adversely and seriously affected by the
measures taken since early 2020 to combat the virus outbreak. It looks
like we'll soon be facing increasing
food shortages and even famine while our attention is still focused on
covid!, Covid!, COVID! and a statisticly few deaths here and there. And
now many who were working hard before have no desire - or ability - to
go back to the rat race eking out a bare living and barely keeping a
roof over their heads, and as the prices of everything go up and up
without wages keeping pace.
And now as we enter fall, it is starting to be reported
there is expected to be a global shortage of fuels this winter as
well: coal, petroleum products and "natural gas" (methane). Such
shortages can become immediately life threatening if or when the
weather turns cold and heating demand exceeds capacity or supply.
Will we starve - and freeze - en masse because of
leadership
which has had only covid on their minds to the virtual exclusion of
every other consideration? Every sign is
pointing to a massive death toll ahead in the coming years, and
most actions by governments are abetting that result. Farmers are not
only being flooded out and droughted out and going out of business in
droves (with Bill Gates and other ultra-rich buying up their
foreclosed(?) lands), but the government
is paying others more to leave their land fallow than they could earn
for a good crop. Maybe, as some assert, it's a growing, insidious "mass
hysteria" mindset?
And yet we are way overpopulated. At some point, life
starts to become cheap. A Rwandan who lived through the mass genocide
there said that life had become too hard. There were so many people
that most were barely eking out a bare living from small patches of
marginal
ground. At some point some subconscious "mass hysteria" decision was
made to start
murdering each other in mobs to reduce the population. Then the lucky
ones could have larger fields, make a decent living. Even where there
were no "other" ethnic groups to scapegoat (was it the Hutus and
Tsutsies, or the Hootsies and Tutus? ...anyway...), mob violence
murdered
indiscriminately. (per the book Collapse: how nations choose to
fail or succeed by Jared Diamond. [I may not have the exact title
words... oops, was it "Collapse" or "Upheaval"?)
Diamond points to many similarities between collapsing
societies of the past and the almost global situation today.
* After hearing of the volcano going off on La Palma I
went to the Canary Islands with Google Earth. I got the wrong island,
Gran Canarias,
which had a town called "Las Palmas" on it. There I stumbled
across and ended
up "visiting" a local museum, Museo de Guayadeque, built into the side
of
a ravine by the same name (Barranco Guayadeque), partly within a dug
out
cave. People who had been there had posted hundreds of photos and a
couple of videos, and there were [photos of] artifacts and of the
museum's signs explaining about the formation of the ravine and about
the earlier settlers who had made caves in its side for houses.
(Spanish, English and German.)
I was already in awe of maps like Google's with their maps and
satellite images and ability to zoom in to see houses or out to see a
city, a region or even the whole world. "Streetviews" allowed me even
to peruse
cities like Reykjavik and Nuuk in the far north. (I had wondered
about trees. Small ones in Iceland; none in Greenland!) User posted
places and photos add yet another dimension. Of course I will never
visit this museum in person. It's utterly amazing how the internet and
some creative software, along with data and images acquired elsewhere,
have opened up the whole world to the armchair traveler!
I later found a small museum in the Azores. There were
little garden plots with stones around them (retain moisture? protect
from wind?), but there were no signs (or at least no pictures of signs)
saying what anything was or was for. Then there was a "white sturgeon"
hatchery or preserve in Vanderhoof, BC. (Wow, a huge fish!)
Maybe I'll try for something more
upscale next time. The Louvre? There were a couple of Fabulous British
museums in London we went to when I was a kid - I wonder what's in
those
now?
ESD
(Eccentric Silliness Department)
City names game
Example: Where the cat wipes its feet. (BC Town) -- Kitimat.
[Answers below]
1. Sproutsville (national capital)
2. Charlatan! (Canada provincial capital)
3. Play the violin yourself (Vancouver Island BC small town)
4. "Canada's Hot Spot" set Canadian record high (49°C) then lit
on fire July 2021 (former BC small town)
5. Town is a bit "gimpy" (Queensland)
6. Pharmaceutical Cap (Alberta town)
7. Is that a light colored male cow? (European Asian city)
8. An overgrown ox (national capital)
9. White House (Western Africa city)
10. A huge load of Dirty Laundry (national capital)
Answers
1. Brussels
2. Charlottetown
3. Youbou
4. Lytton
5. Gympie
6. Medicine Hat
7. Istanbul?
8. Moscow
9. Casablanca
10. Washington
"in depth reports" for
each project are below. I hope they may be useful to anyone who wants
to get into a similar project, to glean ideas for how something
might be done, as well as things that might have been tried, or just
thought
of and not tried... and even of how not to do something - why
it didn't
work or proved impractical. Sometimes they set out inventive thoughts
almost as they occur - and are the actual organization and elaboration
in writing of those thoughts. They are thus partly a diary and are not
extensively proof-read for literary perfection, consistency,
completeness and elimination of duplications before
publication. I hope they may add to the body of wisdom for other
researchers and developers to help them find more productive paths and
avoid potential pitfalls and dead ends.
[No
Reports]
Other "Green" & Electric Equipment Projects
CNC Router Setup
In fits and starts, at long
last I started getting set up to run the CNC router table. I had at
least two projects which I couldn't start on without it: the improved
and somewhat larger unipolar "Electric Hubcap" motor, and the rotary
air compressor/decompressor for the Open Loop Air Heat Pumping for
highly economical building heating. In addition it might be the best
way to make UHMW wheels for the bandsaw mill.
The computer running the CNC system has to have a special
"real time operating system". The stepper motors have to be driven with
signals that come in a timed sequence, not whenever the OS gets around
to it. I had an old computer that I thought should be adequate for the
relatively simple job of machine control. A friend had sent me DVDs to
install "Linux CNC" before I had adequate internet to download them,
but I had never got around to trying them. Now that I finally did, I
discovered that the computer only had a CD drive, not a DVD drive. It
was also so old it wouldn't boot off a USB memory stick even if it was
a
bootable one, so the DVD seemed to be the only option.
I found a computer tech who had a couple of old EISA DVD
drives and bought them from him. (He wasn't positive they'd work, so I
got both rather than having to drive all the way back into town if the
one I got didn't.) I changed out the CD drive for the DVD.
Then I tried to boot the Linux CNC desktop disk. It got to
a menu and froze. I was pretty sure the system on the disk (2019) must
be for a 64 bit CPU, and that this old one was 32 bits.
I went back into town the next day and bought blank DVDs.
At linuxcnc.org I found a page of archives of old version disk images.
I picked one from 2012. (It was small enough to fit on a CD! I hadn't
needed any DVD stuff except to find out that I didn't need it.) But my
system wouldn't burn the DVD. After an hour or so of trying to figure
out where the "Burn" button was, I went to the web and found a DVD
burner program. Its documentation mentioned that recent releases of
Ubuntu had dropped the built in DVD burner. You'd think the Ubuntu user
guide might have mentioned that little detail where it was saying "just
click the [non-existent] "Burn" button, you lamebrain!"
I managed to get the disk to boot the computer, and had it
reformat and install itself onto the hard drive.
I
had
a big box that had the old stepper motor drivers in
it, but there were only two axes and I couldn't find the specs for
them. So I bought a modern little "Geckodrive G540 Multiaxis Step
Drive" 4 axis
board, quite a while ago now. I had stuck it on the back of the big
case with no other
function than the power supply and a "panic button" to stop everything.
Why wouldn't I just put it on the back of the computer case instead,
and ditch the extra boat anchor?
I cut off a blank part of the back cover (just enough
room!) and mounted the Geckodrive in it. Then I went back to the
Geckodrive info and discovered it was supposed to have 18 to 36 volts.
The computer had 12 volts. I used a T12 plug and socket to hook up its
power, since I had none of the usual computer internal connectors. The
board indicators flashed on and the "power" one stayed on. If the
stepper motors won't work reliably, I'll have to add a higher voltage
power
adapter to power it. But it seems to me they only need a volt or two.
[29th] The computer would work sometimes and not other times. When I
put a new battery in for the clock and "bios" settings, at first it had
no video or anything. I think I just wiggled the wires and the next
boot it had a display again. Finally on one boot it acknowledged that
it had a keyboard and went into "setup", but it crashed while I was
setting the date.
That was about the last straw. This day I finally took it
in to a technician, hoping he could either get it all going reliably as
it is, or (probably better) put a new motherboard into it. (and to
think I used to repair computers!)
Plastic &
Plastic Shredder
[30th] Another piece to the puzzle was to get some UHMW-PE plastic to
route the motor molds into once the CNC router was working. Here I ran
into a problem: the price and shipping cost for it. Inasmuch as the
suppliers seem to only want to deal in whole square feet, and I needed
1.5 by 1.5 foot pieces, I was going to get a piece 3 feet by 3 feet: 9
square feet. I had anticipated 40 $/sq.ft. for 2 inch UHMW (360$), but
it was 50: 450$ for the piece. Then, the weight of that size piece
would have been a little over the 30 Kg maximum that the post office
would handle - and seemingly, the couriers too. The cost for freight
shipping was going to be 350$. Add in almost 100$ in taxes and it made
almost 900$!
I scrounged around my storages, and in some stores, but I didn't
come up with anything like enough, or large enough pieces. HDPE would
work. I might have
been able to get a friend to pick me up 9 extra large kitchen cutting
boards (plus I have one now) and I could pin them together in two
stacks of
five to make two molds. (Actually some pieces of the stacks would be
the same... I think... so I could use those in both molds and reduce
the total.) But at this point,
I think I'd be better off to get my plastic recycling equipment
running, and chip up a whole pile of HDPE food packages to melt down
and compress into the blocks I need. Well, that was after all one of
the things I wanted to be able to do with the plastic recycling
equipment.
[Oct. 2nd] I'm going to try sawing a 45 gallon (200 liter),
thick-walled HDPE drum into ~17 by ~17 inch squares, clamp them
together with a metal plate top and bottom with C-clamps, and press
them flat and melt them together in the kitchen oven. They only need to
be softened sufficiently to bend and retain their new (flat) shape and
stick together. No special equipment needed! Free material!
But I had already looked at the plastic shredder and I
found I had two heavy 12 inch pulleys from older Sprint transmission
experiments, a single and a double. One of those might provide good
inertia to keep the shredder turning when it came to a hard bit, and
thus reduce the power required. (Based on hearing of a plastic shredder
in Masset, I want to drive it with a belt so if something jams it will
slip, instead of bending the cutting blades.) Now I'm thinking of how
to put it together.
Now if I only had an AC motor somewhere between a 1/4 HP
washing machine motor and the 7-1/2 HP 3600 RPM one on my old sawmill,
I could set it up. (I suppose if I used the worm gear to drop the speed
way down along with pulleys fr the slip, a small motor would probably
work -- but not very fast.
Handheld Bandsaw Mill Kit
I showed the bandmill to an old logger. "But does how much
have you cut?" I showed him the roof and walls of the carport, 2 by 6s
and 2 by 4s, and said also the cabin walls and there's still a big pile
of lumber (I forgot to mention the firewood shed). When he saw that the
carport was spruce with knots, he was really impressed, saying that
would have been hard to mill. (And he talked about winning the world
wars with tough Haida Gwaii spruce aircraft, especially mentioning the
De
Haviland Mosquito, an outstanding wooden fighter-bomber of world war
two that could outrun the German fighters.) He
asked how long each board took and I said "a couple of minutes". (As I
think about it, 6 feet per minute in spruce is about the best with the
sharpest band. It goes up from there.) Again he was impressed, saying
that was faster
than an Alaska mill. I myself had thought it was roughly on a par, but
he might be right too.
[16th] I made another attempt to silver solder a saw band together. I
did everything I could as well as I could, with about 5-6mm tapered
ends. Unsatisfied the first try, I added a bunch more flux powder and
heated it again. This time it worked. It wasn't quite straight (ugg!)
but it ran and it didn't break. I adjusted the tension and spun it
around a bit. (Not as tight as usual - I really didn't want the solder
joint to break!)
Then I put the saw together, tensioned the band, mounted
the skillsaw and put on the V-belt. Nothing bad happened when I flicked
the trigger. I set the cutting depth bars to 3 inches. I set up a
couple of blocks to hold a 2 by 6 and made it into two 2 by 3s. The cut
was a bit wavy, probably because of the loose band tension, but it
worked. So far so good!
Later I checked my e-mails and found someone inquiring
about the saw after reading the December 2017 article I had written
about the idea for the saw in Haida Gwaii Trader! I pointed him to TE
News and the "Carmichael Mill Update" video on youtube, and said I was
making it into a kit. He seemed interested in making one himself rather
than buying a kit. Still, it shows there's people out there who get the
same idea and then check to see what might already be available.
[17th] I checked in with Wayne and looking at the saw we came up with a
few ideas for potential improvements. One of them was to make the two
end pieces for the band tension and alignment adjustment into a single
piece crossing across one end. I cut the piece and then realized that
if the end was covered, it wouldn't be possible to change the cutting
band without disassembling and removing the mechanism. Back to the
previous!
[25th] Hmm, I seem to be getting sidetracked. We had also talked about
hinging the top band guard along with the motor mounting to reduce the
number of screws to remove to change the band. Finally I decided that
was needless complexity. Instead, the guard and right hand handle could
all be held on with three screws. A fourth screw would have to make a
slit in the motor mount. These could be thumbscrews to
eliminate the need for a screwdriver if desired. Then the only "extra"
would be removing one flathead bolt from the left end stop and
loosening the other. I hadn't found any way around that unless the end
stop was to only be fastened to one post instead of both. In the
prototype there was only one post on the left and the end stop was
pretty short so the issue hadn't cropped up, but on that I had had a
pretty strange and clumsy cutting depth adjustment setup. The new one
is more robust.
Still, there had only been one depth adjustment at each
end to move both rails instead of one at each corner. Was there some
way to get that bit of "easier" back without losing the "rugged
simplicity"?
North
Coast
Gardening
&
Greenhouse
[13th] I went down to the garden for the first time in a few days. The
squash plant was growing wildly with more and more stems over an ever
larger area. I found one tiny squash starting, but mostly just flowers.
I picked a little container of peas and beans, and a big beet. I looked
at the few remaining carrots. The leaves seemed to have finally grown
some and I plucked one. To my almost astonishment it was a juicy "full
size" white carrot, 5 inches long and over an inch in diameter. There
were a few more to be had, but not many. If only it was a bed
full of them! The double row of carrots in the greenhouse were still
tiny. But maybe they're growing better now with the roof letting some
decent light through?
I
plucked
a tiny cob of corn and opened it. There were a
few little half grown kernels, but not many. I had rubbed the tassels
onto the silks and had at least hoped there'd be lots of kernels, even
if they weren't ripe. Did that mean corn wouldn't work well in the
greenhouse next year, either?
Another day I found a tiny cob with full, well developed
kernels. That was better! There were a couple of those.
It wasn't much for all the work I put in from early spring
until September, but I think everything is set to grow some good corn
next year.
In mid month as the weather got cooler I harvested the
quinoa. It was hardly red yet, but it looked more like it would rot
than bloom, and seeds were already formed. I dried it near the
woodstove and peeled the flower/seed parts easily off the stems. They
only come off easily after they're dry.
Toward the end of the month I finally started getting some
good size tomatoes instead of just little cherry tomatoes. ...and then
a flood of them! They don't keep long, so I gave some away. Then they
started going mouldy and rotting on the vine, so I pulled it out. This
is so typical of west coast tomato gardening, even on Vancouver Island
at the southern end of BC - nothing, nothing, nothing then all at once
in late September just as cold weather starts cutting them down. (My
mom had a recipie for "green tomato chutney" - what to do with all
those unripe tomatoes that will rot if left any longer on the vine.)
I had put one plant with relatively small
tomatoes in a pot, and I finally brought it in for the winter LED
indoor garden in the corner of the dining area, along with a "hot
cherry" red pepper that had already overwintered there last winter. I
revised the whole corner, lowering the full spectrum lights (wider
front to back) to light the tall plants at floor level. (I think I may
have put them a bit too high up. The outdoor light switch was in the
way.)
I intend to put the narrower red-blue lights above to grow
winter lettuce and whatever - spinach?
I repotted the coffee plants in bigger pots with some
fresh, enriched soil around them. There are some dying leaves, but also
some healthy new ones sprouting out. The person who gave them to me
said that in the Phillippines such small plants do flower. Maybe the
fresh soil and larger pots will do it?
Bef
[30th] The polyethylene sheets I had done the triangular
top openings in my window greenhouse with had finally degraded and
ripped, letting the wind and rain blow through. I was wondering what to
do, then it occurred to me I had saved a bunch of transparent
rectangular pizza container tops from co-op "you cook" deli pizzas over
the last year or so [PETE?]. They seemed a bit brittle, but I cut them
and stapled them up on both sides. How long they'll last is to be
determined.
Having got zero strawberries for two years from prolific,
healthy looking plants with great flowers, spreading all over the
garden bed by the house, I finally went to a nursery and bought three
new strawberry plants. They had flowers and berries on them when I
bought them, and they gave a second crop before it got cold. (even a
berry October 1st! Obviously an "everbearing" variety.) They had
runners going out wildly from the pots by mid September. I did my very
best to eliminate all the unproductive plants from a section of the
garden, and I put in two of the new ones, planting all the runners too.
(The third is in front of the LED garden above, complete with grass in
the pot and runners.) Every year I expect good strawberries and don't
get them. I have high hopes again for next year!
The grass and weeds have definitely got the better of my
large lower garden. They grew up under the peas when I couldn't get in
there... and many other places. I think of a concrete stub wall to keep
out the grass, weeds and slugs, but it will still be a huge chore to
eliminate the grass again before I can grow anything there next year.
Unless I get more peas and big, tall things started to where they can
outpace the weeds?
Electricity
Generation
My Solar Power System
Daily/Monthly/Yearly Log of Solar
Power Generated [and grid power consumed]
(All times are in PST: clock 48 minutes ahead of sun, not PDT which
is an hour and 48 minutes ahead. (DC) battery system power output
readings are reset to zero
daily (often just for LED lights, occasionally used with other loads:
Electric car, inverters in power outages or other 36V loads), while the
grid tied readings are cumulative.)
Solar: House, Trailer, (DC@house) => total KWH [grid power
meter reading(s)@time] Sky conditions
Km = electric car drove distance, then car was charged.
August
31st 2212.84, 980.50,(.39) => 5.52 [95Km; 86478@20:00]
Sunny & warm! Power was off for best 3(?) hours of the day, or
there would have been twice(?) as much solar energy.
September
01st 2219.70, 984.36,(.68) => 11.11 [86488@20:30; 35Km] Another
sunny, warm day... August 32nd!
2nd 2220.86, 985.11,(.36) => 2.27 [86505@19:00]
Rain, wind, cold, snivel. Autumn has struck!
03rd 2225.00, 987.55,(.51) => 7.54 [85Km; 86528@21:00]
Bit o' sun, some rain.
04th 2228.24, 989.43,(.00) => 5.12 [55Km; 86547@19:30]
About the same.
05th 2230.14, 990.52,(.19) => 3.18 [86557@20:00] Rain
and misery. Unless it improves very soon I don't think the corn and
quinoa are going to ripen. (The corn is in the greenhouse. -- I brought
the quinoa inside before it goes mouldy. I'll see if there's any seed
worth saving - it seems likely it was about ready, even if it was just
starting to turn red. Sun came out for a while after tree shadows
covered the greenhouse. Not much help!)
06th 2232.17, 991.59,(.00) => 3.10 [86579@20:00] Rain.
07th 2237.82, 994.72,(.00) => 8.78 [86590@19:30] mix
clouds & some sun.
08th 2241.50, 996.68,(.16) => 5.80 [55Km; 86617@21:00]
scattered clouds then overcast then some rain.
09th 2248.89,1000.92,(.00) => 11.63 [86626@20:00] Wow, a sunny day!
10th 2253.14,1003.32,(.16) => 6.81 [85Km; 86653@19:30]
Rain AM; sunny PM
11th 2256.74,1005.29,(.14) => 5.71 [55Km; 86672@19:30]
rain,
sun, clouds
12th 2260.84,1007.54,(.00) => 6.35 [55Km; 86695@19:00]
More fall weather
13th 2263.22,1008.84,(.20) => 3.88 [86707@18:30] mostly
cloudy
14th 2267.73,1011.17,(.00) => 6.84 [86720@21:00] AM Sunny. PM
Rain/Sun (I was robbed, I tell you! I worked on the cabin all morning
and just when I was finished, went in the house to pour a coffee, ready
to take my shirt off and relax in the sun - Pow; Downpour! But later
there was sun again.)
15th 2273.04,1013.87,(.14) => 8.15 [86742@19:30] Some
Good Sun!
16th 2274.10,1014.35,(.00) => 1.54 [55Km; 86769] Wind,
rain
17th 2275.60,1015.10,(.00) => 2.25 [Accidently reset
monthly trip meter at 531Km; 90Km; 86800@20:30] Wind, rain
18th 2279.01,1017.01,(.00) => 5.32 [55Km; 86816@19:30]
wind, rain, scarce moments of sun
19th ~2282.40,~1018.70,0 => 5.08 [(no drive;
forgot meter read] drizzle
20th 2283.81,1019.49,(.16) => 2.36 [86849@21:00] The man
who got booed and shouted out of every neighborhood he entered won the
election?!? Are our elections fair? (Well, it should certainly be
harder to rig our elections than US elections.)
21st 2286.71, 1021.17, .00 => 4.58 [50Km; 86871@23:25]
22nd2289.85, 1022.86, .00 => 4.83 [40Km; 86898@21:00]
23rd 2291.01, 1023.55, .16 => 2.01 [55Km; 86924@21:30]
clouds and rain - pretty dull.
24th 2292.65, 1023.77, .00 => 1.86 [100Km; 86957@19:00]
Cabin power production was off much of the day (ground fault breaker
tripped in rain)
25th 2296.58, 1026.06, .00 => 6.22 [86969@19:00] Some
sun! Cabin was off (unplugged) for a while.
26th 2297.77, 1026.61, .14 => 1.88 [86989@22:30] Dreary
& rain again
27th 2299.93, 1027.81, .00 => 3.36 [87003@19:00] and
again
28th 2302.52, 1029.34, .00 => 4.12 [87027@20:30] A bit of
brightness here and there
29th 2304.33, 1030.27, .21 => 2.95 [55Km; 87050@19:00]
Sunny early morning, then worse and worse
30th 2307.19, 1031.84, .09 => 4.52 [30Km; 87068@18:30] A bit
of sun in afternoon (continued raining anyway).
October
01st 2308.05, 1032.37, .00 => 1.39 [87088@21:30] Just
rain.
02nd2311.00, 1034.19, .00 => 4.77 [55Km;87105@20:00]
Sun, deluge, on, off, on, off, on, off
03rd 2313.97, 1035.73, .25 => 4.76 [87132@18:30] More of the
same.
04th 2315.62, 1036.44, .00 => 2.36 [87147@18:30] yet mor.
I have recorded 2-1/2 years of daily solar collection
data. Unless somebody says they care, I don't think I'll bother
logging every day any more. I will still note, at least, monthly totals.
Daily KWH from solar panels. (Compare September 2021
with August 2021 & with September 2020.)
Days of
__ KWH
|
September 2021 (12 panels)
|
August 2021 (12 panels)
|
Sept. 2020 (12 Panels)
|
0.xx
|
|
|
1
|
1.xx
|
4
|
|
2
|
2.xx
|
5
|
1
|
3
|
3.xx
|
4
|
|
6
|
4.xx
|
4
|
|
2
|
5.xx
|
5
|
5
|
5
|
6.xx
|
4
|
5
|
2
|
7.xx
|
1
|
1
|
1
|
8.xx
|
1
|
2
|
|
9.xx
|
|
6
|
2
|
10.xx
|
|
3
|
1
|
11.xx
|
2
|
2
|
5
|
12.xx
|
|
1
|
|
13.xx
|
|
|
|
14.xx
|
|
3
|
|
15.xx
|
|
2
|
|
16.xx
|
|
|
|
17.xx
|
|
|
|
18.xx
|
|
|
|
Total KWH
|
152.29
|
284.47
|
175.77
|
Km Driven
on Electricity
|
1072 Km (531+541)
(~155 KWH)
|
1187 (Leaf)
(around ~165 KWH)
|
|
Monthly Summaries: Solar Generated KWH [& Power used from
grid KWH]
2019
March 1-31: 116.19 + ------ + 105.93 = 222.12 KWH - solar [786 KWH
used from
grid]
April - 1-30: 136.87 + ------ + 121.97 = 258.84 KWH [608 KWH]
May - 1-31: 156.23 + ------ + 147.47 = 303.70 KWH [543 KWH] (11th
solar panel connected on lawn on 26th)
June - 1-30: 146.63 + 15.65 + 115.26 = 277.54 KWH [374 KWH] (36V, 250W
Hot Water Heater installed on 7th)
July - 1-31: 134.06 + 19.06 + 120.86 = 273.98 KWH [342 KWH]
August 1-31:127.47 + 11.44+91.82+(8/10)*96.29 = 307.76 KWH [334 KWH]
(12th panel connected on lawn Aug. 1)
Sept.- 1-30: 110.72 + 15.30 + 84.91 = 210.93 KWH [408 KWH]
(solar includes 2/10 of 96.29)
Oct. - 1-31: 55.67 + 13.03 + 51.82 = 120.52 KWH, solar
[635 KWH used from grid]
Nov. - 1-30: 36.51 + 6.31 + 26.29 = 69.11
KWH, solar [653 KWH used from grid]
Dec. - 1-23: 18.98 + .84* + 11.70 =
31.52
KWH, solar + wind [711 KWH + 414 (while away) = 1125 from grid]
2020
Jan. - 6-31: 17.52 + ------* + 10.61 = 28.13 KWH,
solar+
wind [1111 KWH from grid]
Feb. - 1-29: 56.83 + ------* + 35.17 = 92.00 KWH,
solar + wind [963 KWH from grid]
* The solar DC system was running the kitchen hot water
tank. Now it's only running a couple of
lights - not worth reporting. So there's just the 2 grid tie systems:
house and "roof over travel trailer".
One year of solar!
March - 1-31: 111.31 + 87.05 = 198.37 KWH solar total
[934 KWH from grid]
April - 1-30: 156.09 + 115.12 = 271.21 [784 KWH
from grid]
May - 1-31: 181.97 + 131.21 = 313.18 KWH
Solar [723 KWH from grid]
June - 1-30: 164.04 + 119.81 = 283.82 KWH Solar [455 KWH
from grid]
July - 1-31: 190.13 + 110.05 = 300.18 KWH Solar [340
KWH from grid]
August- 1-31: 121.81 + 83.62 = 205.43 KWH Solar [385KWH
from Grid]
Sept. - 1-30: 110.68 + 65.09 = 175.77 KWH Solar [564
KWH used from grid]
Oct. - 1-31: 67.28 + 42.55 = 109.83
KWH Solar [1360 KWH from grid -- Renters!]
Nov. - 1-30: 35.70 + 20.79 = 56.49
KWH of Solar [1301 KWH from grid]
Dec. - 1-31: 19.78 + 11.31 = 31.09
KWH Solar [1078 KWH used from grid]
2021
Jan. - 1-31: 25.47 + 18.58 = 44.05
KWH Solar [1185 KWH used from grid]
Feb. - 1-28: 47.18 + 33.22 = 80.40
KWH Solar [1121 KWH used from grid]
Two years of solar!
March - 1-31: 81.73 + 55.22 + 2.2 (DC) = 139.15 KWH
Solar
[1039 KWH grid]
April - 1-30: 161.83 + 112.35 + .44(DC) = 274.62 KWH
Solar
[680 KWH from grid]
May - 1-31: 156.25 + 97.22 + 1.29(DC) = 254.76
KWH
Solar [678 KWH from grid]
June - 1-30: 197.84 + 112.07 + 2.21(DC) = 312.12 KWH Solar
[& 448 KWH from grid]
July - 1-31: 204.35 + 121.21 + 4.06(DC) = 329.62 KWH
Solar [426 KWH from grid; 150(?) KWH used by Nissan Leaf]
August- 1-31: 176.19 + 102.91 + 5.37(DC) = 284.47 KWH Solar [477 KWH
from grid; 165 KWH (est) used by car]
Sept. - 1-30: 94.35 + 51.34 + 3.30(DC) =
152.29 KWH Solar [590 KWH from grid; 155 KWH (est) used by car]
Things Noted - September 2021
* Those 1000W solar grid ties from China really don't perform well when
the sky is variable. When a cloud comes, they drop back to 0, and take
a minute and more to creep back up to full output. By then another
cloud has come along and killed it again.
* 2 really nice, sunny days this September compared to 8 in September
2020!
Annual
March 2019-Feb. 2020: 2196.15 KWH Solar [used 7927 KWH from
grid]
March 2020-Feb. 2021: 2069.82 KWH Solar [used 11294 KWH from grid]
(See TE News #156 for the two year writeup... which technicly should
have been two months earlier.)
https://www.TurquoiseEnergy.com
https://TurquoiseEnergy.neocities.com
Haida Gwaii, BC Canada
