Life goes on - Winter 2022

Only issue with this John Deere is the steering dampers are shot so the most minute adjustment will send it flying.
It happened gradually so for mom it doesn’t matter, she’s used to it. When I get on it, it might as well be a mechanical bull.

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i love this swedish machine…

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Pionjär :smiley:, i like them too, often easier to start than the other Swedish rock drill: Atlas Copco “Cobra” wich i own some of (four :roll_eyes:)
I thought you maybe could like this one, Warsop, built under license by Swedish power rock drill company 1938.


Some of the old time strong-men liked these better, because this weight’s 85 kg, they didn’t have to lean as heavy on them :smile:
Observe the pernicious hand-crank starter, im working on this one right now, there are no flywheel key on these, almost impossible to be sure the timing is right, dont want this 200cc backfire and hit my wrist…

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I knew that a person who owns a large number of chainsaws would not have a “Cobra”, but I thought that the Pioneer with its 30 kg weight was… 85 kg!!! You Swedes have obviously made it the Swedish Man’s way.:grinning:

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The 30kg must be Swedish kg, like how a Swedish Mile is 10km as opposed to an English Mile being 1.6km :grin::joy:

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We might be finally getting some 21st Century Internet connection to the house. Spectrum is laying cable along the road, and mom set up an account with them. They’ll be surveying. I hope they’ll run it down the driveway.

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Hello all, I’ve been away probably at least 2-3 years. I’m loving catching up on what people are building and thinking! Life’s changed a lot for us since last I was active on site. Mostly we’ve been building out new house in a new location. It’s a full ICF build in central Ontario with triple pane windows, air to air heat pump, double insulated slabs and roughly 2000 sq ft of finished space. I find it big for the four of us and Its a high tech solution for sure but I build and these are the types of build people ask me about. It looks conventional but outperforms the norm significantly. I’m designing and selling energy systems as well so I decided to use the house as an example and monitor its energy use over the winter before sizing and installing the solar array. You can always just use the numbers off your energy bill but you cannot dive into the main users of power that way. So I purchased an emporia energy monitor and installed it in our panel. Not an easy process but you get great detail. Is there anyone else out there monitoring closely? I’d love to hear feedback what people think and monitoring solutions they are using. My own surprise was how much of our energy total was going to hot water. In hind site I might have invested in a heatpump driven hot water heater. The inverter system I’m planning can divert excess solar to house loads so ill be looking into that for sure. It all depends on What canada does for rebates.
Of note in the last week I turned off the heat pump and did a 24 hour cycle using only the resistance heater backup in the furnace. The reason is its much easier to figure out heat loss in a house using resistance heating than a heat pump since the heat pump’s efficiency changes with outside temperature. So! to the numbers! and I’ll try to give an honest accounting of them.

January 11th was a -15 degree celcius night going up to a cloudy -5 day and a -15 night again. This was the day I went fully electric resistance as a test. total furnace heat consumption minus the blower fan was 34.5kWhrs

January 14th was an almost identical day and was all heat pump consumption was 12.4kWhrs. So that gives us a heat pump efficiency gain of 2,78… at -15 to -5 celcius… To say I’m pleased is an understatement.

Conversion time!

all electric heat: 34.5kWhrs x 3.41 = 117645BTU per 24 hrs or 25.86 lbs of crummy wood in a 70 percent efficient stove
Heat pump heat: 12.4kWhrsx3.41 = 42284BTU per 24 hrs or 9.29 lbs of crummy wood in a 70 percent efficient stove…

I started this mostly to log heat consumption through the winter and figure out how efficient the heat pump was compared to resistance heating… or wood. We might add a wood based heat source down the road or solar thermal but I am very impressed with the heat pump so far. I would love to know if anyone else is logging energy usage at all and how. I’ll admit I like crunching numbers.




Cheers, David Baillie

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Kool pictures of your kids and your countryside , kids are hanging tough. famley pictures priceless.

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Looking good David.
You are happy with the performance of the heatpump? Mine did the same for another purpose, hot water for shower during summer. I choose to relight the boiler during summer. Woodslave, again.
Monitoring we do with Domoticz and Iungo, but most people choose HomeAssist (I think). I have that running too, but cant get much connected (and not really needed).

Domoticz does the job for reading the buffer and as a bonus I connected the smartmeter. Only monitoring, I dont thrust any controls with this system.



This graph shows how the buffer is filled today. The sawtooth is the temp going to the house.



EV is charging now. It is restricted to 12A. Charger is behind a three phase Victron system with 10 kWh LFP diy battery. It can charge up to 16A but this way it saves the battery.
Pictures below is the usage over the month/year. You can see clearly when the generator is needed so the blue can turn in green :grinning: We also need a bigger battery if we want to go off grid. The Victron system is build for peakshaving. The plan was to to from 50A connection to 25A connection. It saves €1000 a year. Payed back in five years then. The green is from almost 25 kWp solarpanels. We got our usage/connection payed and an aditional €1000. Easy money :grinning:

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very, very nice! I want to make it to that level of monitoring eventually. Ontario does not do peak shaving and cancelled new contracts for micro fit. We do have net metering but only an exchange of credits no financial remuneration. These days we are thinking just a standalone non feedback system.

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Well, the peakshaving is in my system. Just experimenting at the moment. With the Victron you adjust the current from the street and if you need more, the batteries help. I only need a few peaks sometime. Max connection to the grid can go down to save money.

We have an arrangement that the grid functions as a battery. Once a year there is the bill, what you used and what you fed in the grid, the diference you have to pay or get payed. I looked for the most expersive contract and try to feed in as much as possible :grinning: Really no need to go off grid, only for fun, because it is possible.

Try Home Assistent. The most new clever systems I see are build around that. This guy did. I have a similar system.

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It almost never snows overhere. But the day there is a truckload of pellets it is snowing. 2 inches. To much to go up with a forklift :frowning: Imagine two feet​:grinning::grinning:. We just wait a little… maybe it melts.

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Haha. All season tires didnt do the job. For once in my life think before you act. Opened the door, tried to get up, almost there and not. The van would have crashed the door. :grinning::grinning: never a dull moment

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Joep, where does the water go when it rains?

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Our brains must be similarly wired Don. :crazy_face:

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Pedal to the metal. River is rising fast. :grinning: need to get argon for the gasifier. That one day there is a little spare time is lost now :frowning:

This is where it goes, most of the time😀. This week there were leafs on it. I saw the level rising and they were removed jit.

This my new method in snow removal. Never did it this way and only possible because the ground is not frozen.

Edit: we dug in a pipe 250 mm / 10 inch to the nearest ditch. From there it goes through the dike and into the river. At this moment that way is closed due to high water and it goes via the pumphouse into the river.

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So i brought the Polaris Sportsman four wheeler to a mechanic friend of mine to rebuild the engine because its been used a lot and is 20 years old. I want to use it for charcoal. The thought just came to me if wood gas will be harmful to an aluminum engine? The guy rebuilding the engine doesn’t want me to use it with wood gas if he’s going to put that work into it. Im curious if it oxides the aluminum or do i run it on gasoline when i shut it down for the day. I want to use this for making syrup this season.

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in my opinion i would say it is fine. my toyota has a aluminum intake manifold from weiend and after 12000 miles of woodgas use it has no defects at all. i recently found out that the holley carbs i use are actually not aluminum body anymore, but some form of zinc/aluminum and that is the only thing i have found in the system that is having any form of corrosion that could be detrimental

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Im worried about the pistons and cylinders

I think it works just fine, especially with charcoal-gas, no acidic condensation in that.
In the old-time gasifiers charcoal gasifiers had a lot of parts made out of aluminum, for wood gasifiers it can corrode some, but probably related to wood species used?
Un-necesary information: i have saved a ww2 charcoal gasifier where cyclone, cooler, filter housing and mixer are made from aluminum, no signs of corrosion on that.
As for piston and cylinder, only risk could be after long-time stand, but can probably be avoided with a short run on gasoline, or a “shot” of wd40 before parking.

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