JWK's Garden Destruction

Where are the solar panels going then John, Eh?!!

 

" horrible cheap different coloured bricks behind"

Ah, I see them now, what a nuisance. We had some bricks that looked awful replaced at a previous house, the builder referred to them as Queens, I think - basically bricks that were half-brick-width, and they dug out a bit, and put the half-bricks in their place. All looked normal when they were done. Dunno about "strength" though, as ours was a wall retaining a terrace, rather than holding a house up!

You could mount the panels off the wall, rather than on the roof (in case that helps / you didn't know of that), but I imagine off the roof would be easiest. Free hot water, in these troubled times ... got to be the thing to do, I reckon.

I've been (and still am) playing with getting AJAX into my Web "engine". But I've planted my Broad Beans, must do my Sweet Peas, and am hoping, against hope, that we will have a few days of dry to put some grass seed in, and I need to finalise an order for some hedging plants - I'm going to rip out the ghastly Leylandii hedge at the front, and put a copper beech in, with some Yew topiary at the front. Its about 25M long, and will look forlorn for a year or two, so going to give it a kick-start with some 6' plants - if I can find enough in the bottom of the piggy bank :(

 

A murals not a bad idea a lady that lives in Swanage does some fanastic murals here's one:

http://www.ninacamplin.co.uk/murals/dogwndw.htm

She does murals of missing dogs in different places and quite a few have been found because of her

 

"I think they need to be raised off the flat roof anyway"

Well, if you can angle them for more Spring/Autumn gain, and point them South, that would help.

"The optimum place for them would be on the main roof, but as I want to DIY them and I'm non too confident working at height off ladders I will start with a couple at this lower level"

Shorter pipe runs to the hot water tank would help - dunno if that suggests Main Roof or Extension?

"I'm lurking on the navitron forum getting ideas (trouble is there are too many)"

Yeah ... minefield. That's the trouble with emerging technology. I think the Navitron gear is the right way to go - especially for DIY.

You need a Thermal Store (big tank), but trouble is that is quite a bit of money and you need quite a big space - and then there is more plumbing etc etc.

An alternative, "easy start", is to replace, or add to, the immersion coil in your existing hot water tank with a solar coil - looks like, and same size as, an immersion coil, but is actually finned all over so the heat transfer is good. So you can just plumb it into your hot water tank.

But either way, you need to be able to "dump" the heat if it gets too hot - the water in the panels turning to steam will stress them etc., even if that is allowed for in their design. And whatever you do for that needs to work when you are away, and there is a powercut - so a large storage tank / thermal store will help - allows storing heat from good days to cover for cloudy days, and gives you some spare capacity when you are away - but you could still do with a radiator that comes on when the thermal store temperature gets too high.

Opportunity for some monitoring gear too - a bit of programming, pretty graphs, home automation .... no telling where it might end!

 

A decent mural of some solar panels would impress your mates - without all that plumbing hassle!

 

"having an extra rad dedicated for this purpose seems a waste"

Its extra cost ... but at the point it is needed your Thermal Store is will be full, and you will still be getting "free" solar heat, just nowhere to store it, so it is costing nothing to "dump" (well, pennies for the pump's electricity, but ...). If you were very ambitious you could be planning to store the excess from the Summer until the Winter ... but by my reckoning that's a project-too-far :(

"chance to practise my process control software skills"

You and me both, I'm strictly a business-systems programmer, and anything to control stuff is new to me .... I'm rather taken with the 1-wire concept for networking the sensors; elegantly simple, only downside is for anything remote which needs to talk by "wireless" means - which gets expensive.

But no doubt you've already run in numerous lengths of CAT-5 into your extension, eh?

I want logging like this guy's:
http://www.navitron.org.uk/forum/index.php/topic,4633.0.html
(you'll need to follow the links from that thread)

 

"I would just like something a bit simpler"

Where's the fun in that? You need huge volumes of sensor data so you can "fiddle". Its an alternative to retiring to the garden shed for some peace and quiet ...

 

Re the bad brickwork, the best solution would be to render this wall section. Looks wise, IMO it would fit in fine as you are looking end on and it would not look odd.

Replacing brick by brick will be costly and time consusming.

You can get a tct grinding prong that goes onto a 115mm angle grinder (conected to dust extraction).... I use a stubby version to grind out paving joints and it excells..... they do a long one for brick removal, never used it though only the short one.

 

Hows the project coming along?