Sunday, February 5, 2012

This ought to silence a few of my critics

Yes, it's a halogen heater with two bars - that's 800 watts - quite happily burning away this afternoon in my attic.

Considering that it's the middle of winter, receiving more than 200 amp-hours (that's over 2.5 kw) must be something of a record and with the batteries fully-charged by 10:00 I had to do something with the surplus energy. At first I ran it at 400 watts but at the peak time (between 13:00 and 14:00) I ran it at 800 watts and the system took it quite happily. I was quite impressed of course. My next step now is to find a small microwave oven, and to cook my tea in it. That will definitely keep one or two people quiet.

This morning the temperature in here was just 9°C - rather disappointing because last night was quite warm, just a mere -14.1°C. Too cold to go out of course and so I had the halogen heater on and read a book or two. The room slowly warmed up (and I mean slowly) but with halogen heat, it heats a person pretty quickly and I was quite comfortable here with that.

After lunch (durng which I encountered the likes of deep-frozen tomato) I carried on with the ceiling in the bedroom, seeing as there was no shopping to do. That kept me busy for a couple of hours until 18:00 and then I knocked off and lit the fire up here.

Tea at 21:00 was agony. Minus 8 in the verandah and everything was frozen to everything else. Outside we had -13°C and that was at 21:50 - I shudder to think what it might be now.

6 comments:

  1. I cannot fathom why you don't already have a microwave. Internally I gather most are 9 - 15 volts DC.

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  2. Well they make them to run in caravans from leisure batteries so there should be one that will work for you.

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  3. It's the current consumption that's the issue. I wanted to see if I could run something at 800 watts for a continuous 15-minute period on my system before I went out and invested in a microwave. But yes, Krys, they do indeed have 12-volt microwaves, and that was the point of the discussion I was having a few years ago, the discussion that attracted ... errr ... adverse criticism.

    But now I know that I can do it, next stop is to find a cheap basic microwave, an ASDA or Tesco type of thing at £30 or so. When the house is organised (whenever that might be) I'll be buying a big woodstove to cook on in the winter. For the summer I'll be using a slow cooker, an electric steamer and hopefully a microwave oven. I want to get away from the idea of bottled gas.

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  4. You could make your own gas... All it needs is for you to build a methane digester and you're there.

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  5. Here's another thought too... They devised for Africa where voltages and current may be very variable during the day, a novel gas generator. It needed a dumpy gas cylinder that was part-filled with water. Then electricity was passed through to crack the water. The oxygen was let out through a vent while the hydrogen was contained. That hydrogen though at low pressure was good for cooker fuel.

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