Greetings all

[Brian McGowan]

My name is Brian.
I am into all this stuff. Been working hard on reducing the amount of energy I need and collecting as much as possible from the environment. If I can do this and keep my wife and neighbors happy then almost anyone can do it so I try to make everything I do fit with these parameters so others will be able to copy what I'm doing. Looking forward to discussing ways to do this with everyone here.
My website gives some idea of what I'm doing. It's not a great website and I'm not selling anything. It's just easier sometimes to point people at pictures of what I'm doing and that's basically what it's for.
http://home.comcast.net/~bigvid/
Brian

[Rob Beckers]

Hi Brian,

Welcome to Green Power Talk!
I've been looking over your projects. Great stuff! Please feel free to post more specifics on this forum, that's what it's meant for.

One of the items I've been interested in is the waste water heat recovery system, as you installed. I've been looking at manufacturer's sites. My problem is that with a septic system I don't have a vertical drop of more than about 10 inches anywhere near the water heater. Plenty of horizontal runs, but my understanding is that efficiency would plummet when those heat exchangers are used horizontally. They work because the liquid inside the pipe makes a film on the entire surface (if vertical). So, what I'm looking for is a great idea for a horizontal waste heat recovery system. Any ideas?! :nuts:

-RoB-

[Joe Blake]

Hi Brian,

And welcome. I had a wee bit of a chuckle. Your LED/Compact fluoro light set up is almost exactly the same as mine, except I used automotive LED globes.

http://www.greenpowertalk.org/showthread.php?t=1524

I'm currently renting my house so I can't get TOO deeply involved, so everything has to be "temporarily" attached, but looking forward to buying the house and then adding a few more bits.

Joe

[Ralph Day]

Hi Brian
It's great to see someone doing all the projects at once! Most of us just pick one, work on it, hopefully perfect it. You're doing this for multiple challenges.

One question or comment about your biodiesel project. 550 gallons of home heating oil...when i buy coloured diesel for my generator and tractor, that's the same product as furnace oil. Couldn't you use the same biodiesel you're producing for your lovely looking Mercedes for your furnace/heating system? That would make your house as nice smelling as your car (if the neighbours like onion rings:blink1:)

I'm at a disadvantage re:biodiesel. The temperatures here dip into the minus 30deg Farenheit range in the winter so waste cooking oils would become margerine...not going to run through filters and engines without major heating inputs. I just try to keep the demands to a minimum.

Good information, challenges the rest of us.

Ralph

[Brian McGowan]

Rob, and all,
Thanks for the welcome. I intend to post more when I have more to post. I typed this big long thing last night and it didn’t post so I will try again. I have been working on boring standard outdoor domestic maintenance projects around the house trying to complete them before the weather turns. On Saturday I did get to adjust the valves on my Mercedes. This is similar to a tune up in a gas engine vehicle. It is supposed to give more power and easier starting and better mileage. This was a new adventure for me. I had to take it for a long ride on Sunday to visit family and it survived that without blowing up or having anything fall off so I must not have done anything too wrong. Currently, I am still buying my biodiesel out of a pump. This ensures that I am not troubleshooting bad fuel problems until I get used to the diesel vehicle and also takes care of the road use tax issue.

The next project I want to finish is my new design solar air heater since the price of oil is so high. The current heater pictured on my website uses industrial strength double pane glass from the store down the street from work that they tore down, has a frame made out of 2x3 lumber and is sheathed in plywood. It has to weigh about 150lbs and has about 1 square meter of collection area. I have to roll it out there on 2’ pieces of 4” schedule40 PVC pipe like a surf boat. The new box will be made out of a 4’x8’ piece of plywood, 1.5” thick stiff black packing foam for the sides and a piece of 6mm double wall polycarbonate for the window. It should weigh about 50 lbs and be about 2.6 times bigger collection area than the old box. I use 1/8” black polyester felt for the collector material suspended on a frame of drop ceiling corner metal. I will post pictures of this build as I am getting it done.

The drain water heat exchanger works very well. It saves me about 1/3 of the power I was using to heat water. There is only my wife and me here so we don’t use a lot of hot water. I was using 150kWh/month to heat water before this so I am saving about 50kWh/month. This was noticeable on my meter reading. That amounts to almost 2kWh/day and was one of the things that helped me get from 25-26kWh/day when I moved in here 6 years ago to last month’s reading of 9.4kWh/day. It probably will go up a little from there but I am hoping it stays under 11kWh/day. If you have more than 2 people using hot water in your house this will save you more than me. If you have kids that take long hot showers you stand to really save. It has no moving parts, requires no maintenance and uses no power to operate. It just sits there and recovers heat. I recommend this item. The manufacturer says if you don’t have the vertical drop in your drain line due to no basement or being on a slab it is still very worth it energy wise to install a pump as is used in a basement bathroom to pump the warm drain water up to the top of the exchanger to extract the heat.

Joe,
The 24LED fixtures I use are great but I wouldn’t read using them for too long and that is why I made the lamp with a 12 volt CF also. That way I can switch between the two depending on what I’m doing. I have 4 more of the 24LED units in strategic locations around the house for emergency lighting when the grid goes down. I actually took the 12volt CF and a 24LED into work and checked them with a light meter. I have the results somewhere but the short of it is, the 24LED produced 1/3 the light for 1/9 the power of the CF. So far nothing I have done is permanent and it can all be removed. I ran a 12 volt wire the length of the basement and tapped off it and ran wires up through existing holes into the living space. I did also run an AC line the length of the basement with 2 four outlet boxes and ran it out into the garage where my inverter is so I can get AC from my little solar power setup to run appliances around the house if needed in emergencies.

Ralph,
Yes multiple projects. I lived through waiting in line for my ration of gas on my day in NY city in the very early 80’s and have watched as the US toddled off in the wrong direction ever since that time. When the attack of 9/11 happened I finally became furious and decided that if the US wasn’t going to get off of oil at least I would so as not to be personally contributing to the problem. I realized that for the most part that attack was all about what we do to other countries in order to get oil which we shouldn’t be using, in my opinion, anyway. They don’t hate us because of our freedom, they hate us because we are tromping all over their holy land and exploiting their oil. As far as I’m concerned on 9/12/01 we should have pulled out of that entire region altogether and ceased doing business completely with them until such time as we did not need the oil anymore and they invited us back. I was on the Coast Guard during my time in NYC and saw firsthand what oil can do to the environment. I still have friends that are in including one friend who is one of the administrators of the “Super Fund” (you may have heard the term “super fund site”) and gets sent to evaluate things like the Valdeez spill and so forth. I am willing to share what I learn for free with anyone who wants to know in my effort to eliminate the use of oil. Eliminating the use of any other nonrenewable energy source for the sake of the environment is also high on the agenda. I try to keep politics out of it since I have come to the conclusion politicians are oblivious to the problem and the danger associated with it. I hope this wasn’t already too much and will not mention it again.

4 years ago I replaced the oil heater that was installed in the house when it was built 50 years ago with a new efficient oil heater. There really was no other choice as we do not have natural gas and electricity was not an option for me. I also thought that if I have an oil burner and I can eliminate using it or burn “clean” fuel in it I would be doing more to help reduce the overall use of oil. Burning biodiesel in the heater was one of the big thoughts in keeping oil type heat. I am working on it as fast as I can. The company where I buy my biodiesel sells bio heating oil. It is B20 but I want to go to B100 when I can. Currently I have a contract with a regular oil company that serviced this house for the whole time the previous owner was here and they also did the heater installation so I am locked in again for this year and the heater is still under warranty and I would void that by burning anything besides #2 fuel oil from them. I think it’s a 5 year warranty. Between getting the new efficient heater and more than doubling the insulation in the attic I have cut my use from about 750 gallons/yr to about 550 gallons/yr and I’m not stopping until it’s down to zero. Another thing I am looking into is creating my own micro CHP (combined heat and power) unit that burns biodiesel instead of natural gas. Efficiencies are in the order of 95% or better I think. In short, yes, I intend to burn biodiesel in my oil heater as soon as I can manage it. I am a member of a yahoo group where they modify oil burners to burn all kinds of things including straight/waste vegetable oil. I could discuss more of what I have learned if you are interested.

Thanks for the interest guys. I will try to break these projects out into the correct categories in the future as I progress on my projects.
Brian

[John Canivan]

There are a lot of good ideas on "Green Power Talk". I noticed that Brian is into recycling and pneumatic solar heating. It's understandable why people get involved with low cost easy solar air heating systems BUT practical systems require a very large surface area for harvesting the suns heat. Heat storage is another important aspect of solar thermal applications. Transferring heat from air into the thermal mass of a house is not the best method of storing and retrieving heat.
Water is an ideal medium for storing heat. Ten 55 gallon plastic drums of water raised 10 degrees F can store 450,000 BTUs of heat. This is enough energy to heat most well insulated houses in the dead of winter with a radiant floor heating system.
Photo voltaic technology is still expensive but DIY solar heating systems can pay for themselves in less than 3 years if you are good at recycling.
John http://www.jc-solarhomes.com/MTD/MTD%20Data/mtd_data.htm

:cheesy:

[Brian McGowan]

John,
This looks very interesting. I don't know if I have enough roof space to get all my heat from this. I would also have to work to figure out where I might store 10 55gal drums. The basement would probably be the best place since any heat I lose to the surrounding air would still have to rise through the house to get out.
I admit my solar air heater stuff will not heat the house all day and night but if it can heat the house for 4-6 hours a day I would save about 1 gallon of heating oil a day. That would amount to about 100 gallons over the course of a season which is almost 1/5 of my total usage.
If I understand your collector correctly, you sandwich felt between 2 layers of black plastic sheet and dribble the water down between the two so it filters through the felt to slow it down so it picks up heat. Over that you use the clear corrugated polycarbonate roofing material. As I was checking it out the thought came into my head that you might consider making the top plastic sheet be clear plastic sheet. This would allow the sunlight to penetrate the clear plastic and be absorbed directly by the felt which the water dribbles through and then picks up the heat instead of heating the top black plastic sheet and transfering from the sheet to the water forcing the heat to essentially flow in a downward direction. This might give you a performance and efficiency increase. Is my theory correct?
Yes this is very cool and now I am thinking about that.
I was born in Freeport and spent summers in Bellmore. I was also in the Coast Guard stationed with Group Rockaway which handled everything from Coney Island light house and radio calibration beacon to Fire Island plus Ambrose Light station. Where are you located?
Brian

[Stellar Gellar]

are there really such things as "eco-friendly" paints? i find it unbelievable.:unsure:

[Brian McGowan]

Stellar Gellar,

A coworker used this. She is very happy with it.
http://www.bioshieldpaint.com/

Here is another one.
http://www.greenplanetpaints.com/

Most are made out of clay. There are many others.

Make your own.
http://www.ehow.com/how_2109243_natural-clay-paint.html?ref=fuel&utm_source=yahoo&utm_medium=ssp&utm_campaign=yssp_art


Brian

[Stellar Gellar]

Stellar Gellar,

A coworker used this. She is very happy with it.
http://www.bioshieldpaint.com/

Here is another one.
http://www.greenplanetpaints.com/

Most are made out of clay. There are many others.

Make your own.
http://www.ehow.com/how_2109243_natural-clay-paint.html?ref=fuel&utm_source=yahoo&utm_medium=ssp&utm_campaign=yssp_art


Brian

thanks for the links!:bigsmile: