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So I have been tinkering with my collection of "stuff that will come in handy one day" Anyone reading beyond this point has to make a promise not to laugh, at least not out load. So put together a test water wheel entirely from bits you have to hand: The business side, that will collect the water. Yes that is a bicycle wheel, and the trial set of "buckets" that will go around the outside to collect the water and so cause it to rotate, are indeed baked bean cans. Looking at the other side, that is the pulley and belt from a dead washing machine. It is driving a little DC servo motor as my trial generator candidate. Initially I tried the pulley from the washing machine motor, but that only gave a 9:1 ratio, I felt it wanted more, so I made a very much smaller pulley for the servo motor and I have got to about a 17:1 ratio. The whole lot is mounted to the end of a length of aerial pole. The shaft is a length of M12 threaded rod and the bearings are old idler bearings left over from a previous cam belt change on my car. They mount to the aerial pole with a heavy duty aerial pole clamp set. The proposal is to mount the aerial pole pivoted about it's mid position giving somewhere for a counter weight and easy height adjustment. And since the motor is right in the "splash zone" it will have a plastic cover to keep it a bit dry A similar one will will also be fitted over the bearings We need to eat some more baked beans before there are enough cans to give it a water trial.

hi i've got the luxpower 3.6 with pylontech batteries works fine i turned off the chinese internet port. and i just access it locally. so if solar prediction from the met office API is low, medium or high for my home's needs, it'll charge the batteries high, medium or low, on the off peak from Bulb ev tariff. the luxpower then during the day does everything it can to prevent importing from the grid. it's got a CT clamp on the CU tails, and knows when the grid is importing/feeding in and it tries to invert as much as it can from solar and/or battery to feed the loads instead of pulling from the grid. when the loads calm down, the inverter calsm down to. within a second or two. it's pretty good

Attached is a rather long description of the ground source heatpump that I built at the end of 2021. It's completely diy - two 2nd hand fridge compressors(one for vacuuming down, one for the HP itself), bits of bent copper pipe, etc. I've encapsulated it as a pdf so that it hangs together in one thread, and should be an easier read. Thanks buildhub for a big filesize limit! I started out knowing vaguely what I wanted to do, then watching every youtube on R290 compressor systems several times, googling it, reading stuff on "Ecorenovator" etc. The youtubes are especially useful, watching people do things right - or wrong! I've been quite nervous about the safety aspect of R290 (propane) as the working fluid, and anybody who tries anything like this should be too. Propane is a great working fluid - it's not an F-gas, it has a GBW of 3, while most F-gasses are 1000+. But it burns well, so must be treated with great respect - used outside and kept away from flames and electrics. It was quite a steep learning curve - I'm ok at soldering copper pipes for plumbing, and regular electrics, but there was a lot to learn to make it work. Which it does, and we are happy with it - Mrs RobL doesn't accept any low temperatures in this house! There have been minor niggles (a fuse blew, lots of weeping compression joints in the water circuit before I watched a youtube on how to do them right). All the issues have been easy to fix, and I'm comfortable with the idea that I can fix them rather than wait for somebody else. DIY-GSHP-RobL-June2022.pdf

What horse shit.... I designed something no architect was able to give me which is what I want and a way I want to build it. I brought it to an architect( award winning) who is a relative of a good friend to put into planning and BC drawings and to ensure I wasn't missing anything and he reckoned he wouldn't change a thing Where most Architects fail is they are more interested in what they like and disregard their client opinions as inferior... hence alot of self builders treat them with less than the respect good ones deserve... P.s I'm a big fan of good architects and if plot was different or I wasn't in the game and had such a clear vision I would definitely have used one.

I have my designs posted weekly actually. I think architects are trained to accept criticism quite well, but I’d say self builders ‘know what they want’ and are quite determined to do things that are unfortunate a lot of the time.

Flasher

If go with a slightly bigger ( 80-100L ) buffer tank, and a single stat. That’ll be simple and effective. The waste heat will be advantageous, so not a worry. Possibly install this in the airing cupboard?

Yes the weather was dreadful.

With studs at 600mm OC, deffo 11mm. Screws will turn out of 9mm if you fix anything with a cordless drill. I’m racking walls out on my current clients MBC TF and I’m using a mix of 11, 15 and 18mm depending on what’s known to be going where. On walls which need the 18, but I don’t want to lose space, I’m in-filling between the studs instead of going on top of them. 15 and down is generally just fixed on top fir ease / speed.

A circulating pump running all the time could use 200W, and that should be obvious by the small noise it makes.

All looks fairly straightforward! A pity I didn't see this before the bank holiday. It looks a perfect project for a long weekend.

Your slug. Reminds me of the quip about 50% of the population having legs.

Within reach.

That is technically a wee burn.