Building stuff

Hi enerybody im new here. Im wondering if anyone has any plans to construct something that is pretty interesting, but can be built using easily available parts. Thanks

Hi, how about a "free energy" water heater?

Off to bed now but will give details if you are interested!

See here for similar made by clever chinaman....

Free hot water

Will report back soon

How about a simple stirling "heat" engine.

www.physics.sfasu.edu...

thankyou both for your suggestions. I would definatley like to here more about this free energy water heater

Hi, first of all, check out the link for the thread I put above. This will give you an example made by a rather clever Chinaman, and also the basic principle of the one I built here.

Things to remember:

Thick black plastic hose will absorb heat well. Here in France, the water pressure can be quite high (anywhere between 4 to 8 bar, higher at night when they pump the "towers" full using "off-peak" electricity). Mains pipe is made of the thick black stuff!
There must be some kind of expansion chamber. Something like the diaphram type fitted to most central heating systems.
The pump only needs to be low-flow.
Glass bottles will refract better than plastic ones and give better thermal quality.

Try to imagine this as a central heating system but in reverse with the piping acting as the radiators.

Here's what I maybe plan to do with my future set up:

Cold water mains..to..
pressure reducing one-way valve (3 bar approx)..to..
"T" junction..to..
length of black pipe..to..
network of black pipe threaded through glass bottles in continuous "S" shape on my shed roof (2 x 8 metres and slopes to the south)..to..
length of black pipe..to..
pump..to..
expansion chamber (not sure about this yet?)..to..
another one-way valve..
to..2 - 3Kw electric hot water cylinder with thermostat..returning to..
"T" junction and completing the circuit.
Hot water outlet junctions will probably be located just after the cylinder.

A timer for the hot water cylinder would be set to operate early evening and/or early morning to "boost" the water to the desired temperature.

The black piping between the house and shed would get buried in insulated pipe (gutter downpiping) and very strong joints used throughout.

I imagine I could maybe reduce hot water costs by at least half over a year with the cylinder only switching on every now and then. As long as the cost of running the pump was covered, it saves money. It will also be very low maintenance. I might also put a filter in the line somewhere to eliminate any "calcium" build up in the system.

Lots of trial and error though. Not sure when I'll get round to it, but let me know if you do any experiments and how they go.

Have fun!

[edit on 13/6/2007 by nerbot]