Mystery contraption on roof!

Originally posted by poet1b

Then again, maybe it was planned to be a boiler installation, the tubes are water condensers, the pots are expansion valves, but of a make I have never seen. That would be my best guess.

Thanks, I didn't now those were water condensers.

Originally posted by mattifikation
Is the blue thing at the base of the weather vane a capacitor or some kind of water pump?

I see a blue line going in at both ends of that thing and I guessed that the blue line was for electricity or coax. So I thought it was sort of a transitor.

Definately a meth lab.....

Originally posted by obilesk
reply to post by Pjotr

 

I was kind of on the same wavelength as letterreader, in the sense that if this is private property, and this is the builder-of-the-contraption's house/shed, then it would stand to reason that the right thing to do is to get his permission to take photos. But, if this is not private land, then no harm done. I guess the culture in the Netherlands either does not look down upon the infringement of privacy, or this is not a private house/shed/yard/etc. Then again, I have been known to infringe a bit myself, so no stones lest my house crack...

Anyway, if the device is causing alarm for the safety of the community, someone should definitely investigate, privately or with the help of authorities.

That being said, it appears to be an irrigation system or a collector of some kind.

These roofs are garage/shedtops of rental appartementblocks. So everybody around looks at this thing for a while now and nobody knows what it is. You are free to make photo's as they are regarded public space, off course you are not allowed to make photo's of interiors.

If a UFO lands in your backyard, can your neighbour take a picture of it?

Huge filter system for a grow-op? No idea.

The shoddy electrical connections would have me worried if I was a neighbor. The last thing I would want is a fire to spread to the rest of the neighborhood because of faulty wiring.

I would make a call to the Code Enforcement and ask them to see if any permits were pulled or if they are required. Who knows, you might be doing this guy a favor in the long run.

Black tubing connects to nothing. It has three outlets but no pump or connection to anything so it must represent something abandoned or not even completed.

I don't think the blue tubing is power. It is connected to two different things. There is a pair of blue tubes which come up the left side where that ladder looking thing is and travel along the roof to the small blue filter or accumulator and then goes back from where it came. That is one completely independent system from everything else.

There are three blue tubes which come up from the middle of the back of the roof and travel down one white conduit to the three mystery devices. The stainless steel mystery devices have a white anti-crimp extension that covers the blue tubs for about 2-3 feet. The presence of such long anti-crimp devices make me think that the tubes don't carry electricity (that would need more than inch or two of anti-crimp support.) Instead, I think the blue tubes carry water or compressed air or fibre optic cabling.

The gray tubes are interesting to me because they travel up the same back area and go left and right and form a giant loop. At each end of the loop, the gray tubes rise about 2 feet off the ground, propped up on a metal A-frame that is very seriously grounded. Did you notice that it is the only grounded thing on the roof? I think this could be an antennae of sort because it is very carefully isolated. Every place it it tied down to something there is insulation covering the gray tube.

Finally, did you see all the tubing and equipment just barely visible through the tree in his back yard? The whole thing screams of a work in progress so anything we guess are just shots in the dark.

Jon

Just my Two Cents on this, but it looks to me to be a high power antenna, possibly for HAM radio operations or for television broadcasting. It could even be a homemade radar system, doppler, or otherwise.

Where was the pic taken?

My first impression was to think someone watched too many episodes of the UK's TV show "Gardener's World" and wanted to recreate a rooftop garden, complete with it's own watering system.

Why else would all the equipment surround a perimeter of sorts and have nothing in the middle?

*shrugs*

I agree with several of the posts...

1. out in the open on the damm rooftop = public domain...

try going and knockin on the door.. a fellow hardware junky will
more than likely show you the inner workings of his machine...
(assuming its all above board)

3. call the county/city whatever.. see if permits were needed or even issued

4. It would worry me greatly seeing a homebuilt 'machine' with electric and water running side by side..

5. ok.. does this look like a badly designed particle accelerator to anyone else...

[edit on 6/25/2008 by KATSUO]

Originally posted by Pjotr

Originally posted by Mad_Hatter
[edit on 6/24/2008 by Mad_Hatter]

Strange isn't it! Location Amsterdam, the Netherlands.
[edit on 24-6-2008 by Pjotr]

Dude, if its in Amsterdam hes probably just growing a whole crap load of pot in his house, nothing to be worried about .

It does kind of look like a homebuilt particle accelerator


[edit on 25-6-2008 by SilentBob86]

When I first saw picture 2, I thought " That's a really teched up cloudbuster."
It's not really close to the original, but maybe this person is experimenting.

But what are the elephants for?

reply to post by Tomis_Nexis

thats exactly what i thounght it was

www.gdargaud.net...

External image of weather station for reference^


not sure how to add pics so If Im doing this worng please excuse my newb-ness.

I still say looks like a home made weather station to me

I was thinking what water would be used to detect, Could this be some type of sound detection system? (the water in the beakers vibrates to loud noise perhaps?) is it an "Aurora" detector? Or perhaps he wanted to condense water to find out how much pollution is in it? Maybe it's just an off the wall UFO detector, the water is negatively charged to react with the positive electro-gravic propulsion system of alien craft passing by.

Or maybe it's a new type of small animal watering system....but how boring would that be??????

with the prices of food soaring, more and more people are growing small (and in some cases large) indoor crops using collected and filtered rainwater and solar energy (sunlight converted to electricity) in order to at least make a DENT in their grocery bill sooner or later.

hydroponics is no longer "owned" by the illicit drug trade.

-

I work with automatic weather stations as its part of my job. It looks like the guy is trying to rig up his own one.

There are a couple of clues that are visible that give me the impression that this is what he is trying to build. The first one is obviously the weather vane setup at the far end (the thing with the rooster on top) and he also has what resembles a 203mm rain gauge (or 8 inch for you ameicans). I am thinking that the two pots are either encasing the dry and wet bulb thermometers or they are encasing a barometer of some sort, but its hard to say without a close up. There is also a metal dome on the cross beam that may also be something to do with barometric pressure.

I can say one thing though, the siting (if it is a home made weather station) will definently lack quality control due to the location being on the roof and the distance from the rain gauge to the trees is far too short

Hope this helps

Looks like a power cable running up from below the side of the building. Also there looks to be cat 5 cable running from the antennae on the left with shielded cabling running back to the 3 antennae array or lasers.

Its a series of devices.

The large kettles measure atmospheric / barometric pressure.

The water lines go to a triple purpose heatsink / thermal transfer / electrical ground.
Seems like he is distilling water and heating or cooling it depending on the barometric pressure. The Antennas look more like ionizers for the water that travels through it.

The guy is an environmental freak with an extreme interest in climate change and building a closed circuit water system that also heats or cools his living / workig area. The sprinkler is there strictly to let off pressure when needed in a harmless spurt. No high pressures here, just slightly above 1 atmosphere at times or so he expects.