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Solar Thermal From Scrap...AGAIN!


Onoff

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Sorry for the delay: Just back from a soul-destroying trip to Wickes and some sort of flooring emporium/shed.

 

They're each 770x1600 mm. I'll leave you to measure your load area!

 

Presumably, you'll want to stack them on top of each other, so I guess you'll need adequate soft packing between them, to protect the glass tubes.

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17 minutes ago, richi said:

Sorry for the delay: Just back from a soul-destroying trip to Wickes and some sort of flooring emporium/shed.

 

They're each 770x1600 mm. I'll leave you to measure your load area!

 

Presumably, you'll want to stack them on top of each other, so I guess you'll need adequate soft packing between them, to protect the glass tubes.

 

I'm going to yes please, I'll take them if you're sure?

 

They'll easily fit in the car with the seats down. I'm so glad I kept that roll of giant bubble wrap though i did use a bit for someone else on here the other day! 

 

Do you want to pm me a contact number?

 

Cheers

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OK, you're on. We don't need no stinkin' PM

Not tomorrow, please; but Monday should be OK

Edited by Nickfromwales
Mobile number removed. No personal details on open forum please! PM only ( for your own security ) ?
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  • 1 year later...

Well this has really fu**ed my Saturday morning up! :(

 

Apologies to @richi for a start.

 

@richi kindly donated 3 solar thermal panels to me the other year. I put them "safely" in the corner of the old ramshackle stable block that came with the house. Utter crap the way it was built. Adjacent to the stable a neighbours tree (ash?) has grown and was pushing against the wall. More than a few times I've suggested nicely it  (the tree) be taken down but haven't been overly fussed as the whole stable really needs to be demolished & rebuilt. 

 

Neighbour calls round this morning to tell me the wall has collapsed.

 

20181201_111237.thumb.jpg.6b1f7982e91efde84a36a72cf5981187.jpg

 

Two panels out of the 3 destroyed.

 

I'm really quite upset. Bad enough their fu**ing conifers are so high.

Edited by Onoff
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Chainsaw. 

My mates neighbour had a row of conifers between the houses and they basically kept growing out and blocking my mates path. He asked nicely, they got trimmed. He asked again, got ignored. He told the guy, cut or lose....your choice. 

48 hours later........ziiiiimmmm.ziiiim. Phut. 

Mates out there with his wife pleading for sanity, whilst he felled every last one of them. He then dragged them into the guys front garden and simply, and politely, states “the offer was there”. 

Said neigbour asks for ‘permission’ to put a dwarf wall up. Mate says that’s more sensible and agrees.

Mate comes home to find two brickies cleaning up and packing the van. Neighbour has built the wall, wait for it......completely on my mates path, reducing it to 3/4 of its width whilst neighbour enjoys a full width path. 

When asked he says it’s becsuse he paid to build it.........wrong answer. 

Mate then proceeds to pick each brick off and lob them into the guys front garden.

Guy knew not to come out until he was finished :D 

 

Ask for the cost of replacement used panels to be met. They’d ask you in a heartbeat.

“Do unto others as they would do a shat on to you”. No retreat, no surrender. 

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That's crap. My brother had issues with a similar neighbour who planted a row of leylandii between the 2 properties and trees caused subsidence to my brother's extension. Insurance company paid to address the damage and redo the kitchen and wrote to said neighbour asking them to remove the trees. They didn't and the subsidence happened again. Insurance company covered it again but this time the neighbours were left in no doubt that if they didn't remove the trees a court case would follow. Trees are gone now. They've put up a ramshackle fence instead :S

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Nothing like a bit of really powerful, commercial grade, stump killer, applied discreetly to the roots in the dead of night.  Far easier than raising your blood pressure by having pointless rows with a recalcitrant neighbour, and it has a high degree of plausible deniability as well...

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One plus out of all this and I'm really struggling to find any is the missus's attitude to the stable block has changed. Whenever she complains of my tools lying about I get "You've got a double garage, a shed and the stable!" I've been saying for years stable is unfit structurally imo to store/work in & needs to be demolished and rebuilt. Her most recent idea was to put all the kids toys and keepsakes in lidded plastic boxes and store in the stable. When I said the (bowed, asbestos) roof leaks so badly and there's running water on the floor she said we could put a tarp over it. I gently suggested yesterday that had she stored everything there this wall would have come down on it all!

 

As an aside she ventured into the bathroom the other day and remarked how quiet and draught free it was in comparison to the other rooms. I said "That's because I try and do it right!"

 

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13 minutes ago, Onoff said:

I gently suggested yesterday that had she stored everything there this wall would have come down on it all!

 

It could have been worse if your daughter had been into horses! You would have been contacting the local hunt to remove one dead pony ....!! 

 

14 minutes ago, Onoff said:

As an aside she ventured into the bathroom the other day and remarked how quiet and draught free it was in comparison to the other rooms. I said "That's because I try and do it right!"

 

Your missus actually sounds pretty reasonable TBH. My response would have been something like 'F me have you still not finished in here yet!' ;)

 

Time to start saving those pallets for stable replacement project 2019 - 2030? :)

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6 minutes ago, ProDave said:

How big is this stale?

 

I foresee a major garden building project looming.......

 

But finish the bathroom first.

 

6x6m. You can see it was a low backed structure at one time and has had the walls raised with whatever brick/block was available. Roof has some iron / steel tubes in a bit bigger than scaffold poles that have bowed. Floor slopes dramatically back to front. There's a dividing wall down the centre that wobbles when you push it! All I've done is clad the front in a bit of feather edge to make it less unsightly.

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OK...in the cold light of day I just ventured into the stable and cleared the blocks off of the ST panels.

 

1 panel is intact. On the two damaged panels 9 out of the 24 tubes are totalled. The rest look to be in good order.

 

Are these replaceable easily (soldering job?) I'm seeing spare evacuated tubes on eBay etc.

 

 

Edited by Onoff
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8 minutes ago, Onoff said:

OK...in the cold light of day I just ventured into the stable and cleared the blocks off of the ST panels.

 

1 panel is intact. On the two damaged panels 9 out of the 24 tubes are totalled. The rest look to be in good order.

 

Are these replaceable easily (soldering job?) I'm seeing spare evacuated tubes on eBay etc.

 

 

 

They are usually just a push fit into the manifold, often with a bit of thermal grease around the end of the heat pipe. 

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1 hour ago, Onoff said:

Are these replaceable easily (soldering job?) I'm seeing spare evacuated tubes on eBay etc.

 

How many are just the tube broken and how many is it the heat pipe as well? Heat pipe just pulls out the top. £15 for just the tube, £25 for tube and heat pipe on the Navitron site at the moment (for 47 mm tubes that yours look like, but I'm not sure).

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9 minutes ago, Ed Davies said:

 

How many are just the tube broken and how many is it the heat pipe as well? Heat pipe just pulls out the top. £15 for just the tube, £25 for tube and heat pipe on the Navitron site at the moment (for 47 mm tubes that yours look like, but I'm not sure).

 

Ta. Didn't realise there were two separate bits. Will have a better look tomorrow.

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  • 9 months later...

One for @scottishjohn maybe.....

 

Filling up the hot tub at the weekend and I thought I'd try and jury rig my one remaining, intact solar thermal panel to thermosyphon from the hot tub and back in. 

 

20170501_175300

 

A failure all in all. I think I need the "intake" lower than the out pipe so the orientation of the panels is wrong with both in & out at the top. A small solar powered pump might have worked. 

 

I even tried priming the panels with water from the hose to fill them (yes I know they're meant to be filled with glycol not water). Here's what I don't get...

 

Filled the panel with water from the hose and stuck one end of another short hose connected to the panel top right, in the hot tub hoping it would thermosyphon, sucking water up from the tub and pushing it out hot the other side. Nothing happened.

 

If I took the hose out of the tub and raised it above the top of the panel then "gravity" appeared to push the water through and it came out steaming on the top left.

 

As an aside the panel elevation wasn't optimum and half the panel was shaded by next door's tall conifers! :(

 

1) Are these panels biased to a particular flow direction? As in must they be connected so flow is right to left?

 

2) Replacement tubes? I think Navitron do them. How easy are they to fit?

 

Cheers

 

 

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just needs a pump  -will not work without a pump

only thermo syhpon system i have seen was in kenya 

 it was a 1000litre corrugated tank with a transit van radiator on top  in a cold frame on a slant 

it worked by thermo syphon  no probs --but that was on the equator and sun all day long 

 

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22 minutes ago, scottishjohn said:

just needs a pump  -will not work without a pump

only thermo syhpon system i have seen was in kenya 

 it was a 1000litre corrugated tank with a transit van radiator on top  in a cold frame on a slant 

it worked by thermo syphon  no probs --but that was on the equator and sun all day long 

 

 

Ta. My small, home made one worked an absolute treat by thermosyphoning a couple of years back.

 

P4180272_zpsb57f4281

 

Cold in bottom left, out top right. It DIDN'T initially work in the pic below trying to suck up from the washing up bowl:

 

P4190275_zps7dcdfb6f

 

It DID work as a closed loop below. You can just see the panel bottom right.

 

2017-04-30_03-44-46

 

SAM_6142_zps5b7a424f

 

Cold out from the original tap now on the "bottom" of the tank (by the brick pillar) to the bottom left of the panel:

 

SAM_6132_zpsb292c9d5

 

To say it worked is a bit of an understatement tbh and that's about 50degC above ambient in the UK:

 

SAM_6122_zps488cad1c

 

Meant to scale it up but got bored...

Edited by Onoff
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