energy bills

[huntingross]

The water cooling the engine goes through the primary circuit of the domestic water cylinder, it never mixes with the potable water....as the engine is outside, anti freeze would still be a good idea

If the 40 gallons of water is getting up to 100c then it would pass up the expansion pipe to the overflow just like a normal domestic gravity fed installation

[holy vehm]

If you are dedicated to doing this "mission"

Im dedicated to not shelling out 2 grand plus a year to the utility companies. Going through my list of priorities, sorting out this has risen near to the top.

I have just had a look on auto trader and there are a number of cars for sale that would be suitable. There is one for £99.
I have also seen a box trailer for £200.

What i need now is a machanic to do the above for me. I could have ago, i could even take out the engine, but past experiance tells me it wont work again. So its a case of pricing up the job, preferably a freeman. Whats left of the car can go for scrap which goes towards the machanics price. I will house it on a pallet which can be placed into the box trailer. The batteries can sit on shelves at the back with a solar panel on the roof of the box trailer.

I will then need an electrician to install a switch at the mains/control junction to switch between the mains and my own supply should mine fail. I will run all cables ect so it should only be a couple of hours charge.

The hot water, i will consult a plumber on that and see if he can do it. I dont fancy messing about with the current boiler system, but again, i will run all pipes and then all they need do is the connections.

Next to price up is the batteries and an inverter. Also a solar panel, either off the shelf or the bits to make one.

Add to that the cost of the cables and pipes to the house and this starts to look about the grand mark, which i think is ok given the alternative.

What i could do with is a timer system or something that moniters usage, so heavey usage is switched over to the engine automatically, the rest of the time its off the battery bank. What do i search that under?

[holy vehm]

Making the electricty seems easy enough, but the baffleing bit is watts and ampage
If the engine can make 240volts does it make it so it goes straight into the house and everything works as it does now?

[huntingross]

Placing it all within a box trailer sounds fine.....to save long runs of large bore water pipes running to your existing or replaced hot water tank, it would probably be better to keep your new tank in the box trailer too....the small bore hot feed can do the long run and be well insulated with proprietory pipe insulation (goor grade stuff, not B&Q)...the hot water would take a while to run through but hey ho.

There isn't a need for PV's and inverters if you wire your batteries to be 240V.....with old fork lift batteries there would probably be plenty of current in there.....the old school equation for calculation is Watts = Volts x Amps

A one bar fire is 1kW.....burn that fire for an hour and that is 1kW hour....

1000w = 240v x ? amps = 4 amps

The same calculation for a 12v system

1000w = 12v x 83 amps

This is why we dont use 12v DC, the wires heat up real quick and the power drop off is steep.

[kevin]

There isn't a need for PV's and inverters if you wire your batteries to be 240V...

Batteries are DC so an inverter converts that to AC as in your mains supply, you can connect the batteries together to get 240V but it's still DC.

catch you later tonight about this more ;)

[Life Vibration]

Hello HV,

There is a chap in Australia that has got a 'perpetual motion' generator. You start it off with a car battery and - because of a rig up of magnets which continuously spins the motor - it doesn't stop again until you stop it.

He sells (or was selling) them on the open market. May have had some interference from the ptb by now but I think you would still be able to obtain one from him.

They are not that expensive either......a few thousand?

Don't have more detail than that at the moment - just going out - but a Google search should find it for you.

I did not research this thoroughly......but am certain you will!

Let us know what you find.

[kevin]

.


News today Scotish power prices up 20% on gas and electric

Hello HV,

There is a chap in Australia that has got a 'perpetual motion' generator. .

I'd have to see that with my own eyes before I sent £ to oz land.


heating water:
Ok, if you were going to heat your hot water from the engine you'd need an indirect water cylinder like this http://www.tradingdepot.co.uk/DEF/product/!!CYLLBSI10535F!!/ the chances are yours isn't, it'll be direct, unless of course you've got a boiler...which you said you did so that fooks that, anyway ..you need to plumb in an indirect water cylinder and header tank, and bypass your boiler, the water from your engine passes through a coil in the tank heating the water you use. as the back boiler behind an open fire used to in the old days. (I still have this setup at mine)
There would be problems with over heating, so you'd still need a radiator controlled by a thermostatic valve so when your water reaches the engines running temperature the valve opens and then the engine uses the radiator to keep cool.

Engines:

diesel engines don't like ticking over for long periods really, they soot up but they'll do it for a while, car engines are probably the quietest you'll get using a standard cars exhaust shortened down a bit. if your using a car engine you might as well fit a generator to it and make 240v ac then you wont need batteries at all. I still think it'll be cost prohibitive, imagine running your car for 12 hrs a day?

It's possible to do something like this but really not the best way, you're looking to spend a couple of grand on a system that's going to cost loads to run and I believe maintenance will be high too. I believe solar is your best bet personally, once fitted it should last a good 15 yrs costing virtually nothing to run once installed

[treeman]

Hello HV,

There is a chap in Australia that has got a 'perpetual motion' generator. You start it off with a car battery and - because of a rig up of magnets which continuously spins the motor - it doesn't stop again until you stop it.

He sells (or was selling) them on the open market. May have had some interference from the ptb by now but I think you would still be able to obtain one from him.

They are not that expensive either......a few thousand?

Don't have more detail than that at the moment - just going out - but a Google search should find it for you.

I did not research this thoroughly......but am certain you will!

Let us know what you find.

Any chance of a link LV, i am all researched out, and cant find it.

[huntingross]

Talking about boiling water....pipe it through one of these babies and you're generating more electricity than you can shake a stick at

http://www.prestonservices.co.uk/generators.htm

Steam engines can work on a single power stroke or on a double power stroke, the recirculative residual heat from the first thrust is used to power the second thrust.

Steam engines can be sealed systems (like a fridge is a sealed system) so the same water is heated and cooled.

Typically a car engine (for example) at tick over will be driving an alternator and a flywheel, producing heat via water and exhaust, and generally heat from the block....if you harness all of this energy, you turn a highly inefficient method of powering a car into an extremely efficient energy source. You could spin 12vdc off the as fitted alternator, fit a 240vac generator off the fly shaft, run power off a steam generator and provide hot water off a heat exchanger on the exhaust.

If you wrapped 10mm microbore copper around the exhaust I would guess at a good supply of hot water very quickly. You would have approx 12.5m of pipe coiled around 1m of exhaust pipe which is almost a litre of water per metre....pipe insulation over all of that and plenty to do something useful with.

I can't speak for diesel engines having never owned one, but I knew someone who inadvertantly left their car running all night and couldn't even tell if the fuel guage had gone down.

Cars use alot of fuel because the have to overcome the combined resistances of :
1. Air pressure
2. Drag
3. Rolling resistance
4. Gravity (going up hill)
5. Bearings
6. Differentials
7. Gears
8. Pushing a ton and a half of metal along etc

A static engine is not encumbered by all these

[Life Vibration]

Hello treeman,

I have been doing some searching and am not satisfied that what I have found is what I originally saw. I seem to remember the thing I saw could power a house and was being sold through an existing company. I have a figure of 2,500 in mind.

But, I found this Sky News Australia link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nbr9ZMp5nE4

That sounds something like what I was saying......but not quite right.

I have mentioned this to several people over the years. Maybe it's a mixture of wishful thinking and confusing things in my befuddled memory?

Anyway, I'll just shrink back into the background again in an embarrassed silence. That'll teach me not to fire off a quick post whilst I am on my way out the door!