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Old 01-24-11, 08:13 PM   #31
AC_Hacker
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Jan 20 - round 2 with the city inspector about solar hotwater. Basically found out I was right and single wall heat exchanger is fine. It has to be stainless steel however... So I spent a big chunk of time trying to track down a small 10-20 gallon tank with a stainless heat exchanger online. I'll go talk to someone around here about building one next week.

Jan 21 - Built that cabinet for the jars I've been mean to.
Have you tried ebay for heat exchangers?

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Old 01-24-11, 09:18 PM   #32
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Most of the ones I see on ebay are flat plate so I'm going to need 2 pumps as well for that route. 1 to take the fluid from inside the hotwater tank and circulate it and 1 to take the water from the solar tank and circulate it.

Also I lose that instant preheated water going into the tank option that I'd get from having a preheat tank hotter then the hotwater tank is set to.

Flat plate may be my cheapest option but it's still brutal. On that subject
Jan 23 - sorting and databasing the contents of the pantry continued... still more to go.

Jan 24 - Spent some more time looking at commercial options for heat exchangers. The stainless heat exchanger option puts them at over $2500 so far. I can find $1800 double wall units built into a tank but it's a copper exchanger brazed to a glass lined steel tank so it will rust away eventually like a regular very expensive hotwater tank.

The semi-local manufacturer of the original stainless tank with stainless exchanger that I was/am hoping is ok budget wise just said call our wholesalers when I wanted pricing. I hate companies that don't want to sell directly to the customer and put agreements in to force you through wholesalers. The local wholesaler closed 1 minute after I got there so I decided not to keep them late. Maybe tomorrow.
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Old 01-25-11, 06:32 PM   #33
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Jan 25 - I got a temporary full time job offer that I wasn't looking for, don't need and didn't overly want but it would be stupid not to take due to how great it looks on the resume. Tomorrow is the meet the boss to make sure I'm not a personality head case and then it's a done deal. Thats going to really screw up my 1 project a day plan. Today was mostly spent finding my interview clothes and getting cleaned up a bit ( being self employed working 100% remotely I've been happy with my jeans and old T-shirts and shaving monthly) . If I get a bit of time I want to get 6 more temp sensors wired up and installed in 2 bedrooms, the workshop, 2 in the pantry and 1 in the garage We'll see.
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Old 01-26-11, 06:41 PM   #34
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jan 26 - I cut wire for the temperature sensors to the workshop and the 2 bedrooms and drilled necessary holes. The pantry and garage holes are already drilled so tonight I can solder everything up and tomorrow install everything and get it hooked up. I need to drill holes for the sensors in the trim for the closet doors. My plan on hiding the sensors is to install the wire inside the closet running it up the wall in there where it's out of sight and somewhat protected. At the top I'll drill a hole through the wall and trim and stick the sensor out to very close to the surface. A bit of white caulking will hold it in place and hide it. If I can get the caulking thin enough it shouldn't affect the reading very much.

I also went and got some pricing on the solar hotwater setup. This is seriously pissing me off at this point. Details in my solar hotwater build thread.
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Old 01-28-11, 12:59 AM   #35
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Jan 27 - I did the math on my heating requirements for a doublewall heat exchanger for the solar setup. 1.5 sqft of surface area doing 4 loops of an 85 gallon tank at 2.1 gallons per minute would with 140 degree water on the heating side would take the tank from 50F to 129F in a little over 2 hours. thats a worst case scenario. it's also livable since the electric required to do that is less then a penny. Total costs of this should hopefully be about $600 roughly or $400 more then the originally planned 300' coil of 3/4" pex
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Old 01-30-11, 03:18 AM   #36
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Jan 28 - easy day I bought supplies to build new shelves in the pantry and to trim out the windows in the basement.

Jan 29 - I gutted the old pantry shelves, cleaned it right out and then installed some new adjustable ones. It's just those clip in bracket things and plywood but it sure helped. I finished the evening getting my spreadsheet of ds18b20 sensors completely filled out and all of them logged. Next I wired up 2 more to get the kids rooms at least going. Lots of fighting there. Check the datalogger thread for details.
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Old 01-30-11, 08:23 AM   #37
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Congratulations on the job. If it's anything like my job, you'll have more than one project a day. It's just that you don't get to choose the projects.

The best thing about work is that there are other like-minded people to constantly bounce ideas off of.
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Tomorrow is the meet the boss to make sure I'm not a personality head case and then it's a done deal.
A certain level of eccentricity is generally tolerated in engineers and creative types. As long as you don't wear a hockey mask to the interview, I'd say you're in. That is, assuming they're not looking for a salesman or manager.
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Old 01-31-11, 02:16 AM   #38
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Yeah the job was a done deal. Just need to pass the security check which is not a problem unless someone else out there with a similar name and birthdate is flagged then it goes to fingerprints which takes around 9 months these days. Since the job is only for a couple of months or so then I'd be out...

It turns out my new boss is a peak oil doomer like me. She's looking to get her job relocated and move or she'll just up and quit and move to a farm somewhere near here. We spent some time talking about gardens, fruit trees, my solar hotwater project.... We'll get along just fine.

Jan 30 - I bought a new soldering iron, finished the sensor group going to my kids bedrooms and the workshop and temporarily strung it across the roof.

The sensors in the kids rooms got tucked up through the holes I drilled previously and are sitting on the floor of their closets most likely. I'm hoping that's where they are because although I knew their rooms were cool at night right now the sensors read 17.31C and 16.5C when the rest of the house sensors read 19-21C.

Outside it's currently 0.5C in the front yard and -2.65C in the backyard. I'm going to relocate the front yard sensor to right beside the backyard one and test to see how close they actually are. I think the front really is close to that much warmer partially due to heat absorbed from the sun and partially due to heat escaping the window right below it. I think I can see a pattern emerging where the recroom temp climbs due to the woodstove and the outside front climbs with it but lagged by about an hour. It's subtle though so staring at a graph isn't going to cut it for determining if it's actually there. Math will be necessary.

That window is 2'x6' and just has some of those metal venitian blinds on it.

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Old 01-31-11, 03:28 AM   #39
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jan -31 it's a productive day already I just finished my 5th drawing for the solar hot water system to provide to the inspector. it can be seen here

https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/_w...lating%20b.jpg
if the prices come back reasonable on the hotwater tank and the heat exchanger then I'll drop this off along with documents on the xchanger to the inspector hopefully to be done finally...
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Old 02-04-11, 12:31 PM   #40
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feb 1st - to be honest I don't remember what I did way back then. things are kind of busy now.

feb 2nd - Went and got the final no from the inspector on my solar hotwater setup. Everything has to be a certified product including the Collectors or he will say no. Guerrilla it is from here on out.

feb 3rd - I pulled apart the window casings in my wifes sewing room and spray foamed it up. It was horribly sealed. Should be much better now

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