Been There, Done That, Stayed 3 nights and got the Hangover! - Full report Here
The site has only been up since Monday 25th September 2000 but is now starting to take shape.
Having just moved into a new house and tried to get my possessions sorted, it occurred to me that I have a lot of information, photos, articles and data which could do with the same level of organisation.
This site tries to group my various interests onto separate pages and gives a neat way of storing information.
The back office in the house is full of boxes of papers and photos, taking up about 50 feet of shelf space. I realised that now was the time to try and get some of this material onto a website, so at least I would be able to access it from anywhere I can get on a PC.
An unseasonal spell of hot weather over the August Bank Holiday, found me working outside in the garden.
After several weekends away, the garden was really starting to show signs of neglect, so after a quick trim of the grass, and removal of weeds form the vegetable beds, it was starting to look a little better.
Most of the vegetables have reached their prime, and are ready for picking. Currently available are potatoes, onions, cherry tomatoes, Swiss chard, and marrows. Only the carrots did badly as a result of too stony soil (sand is best) and a late attack of Carrot Fly.
On the hedge row at the bottom of the garden we have blackberries, elder berries and our tree is laden with apples. Sadly we missed this harvest last year, as we had just moved into the property, but this year we intend to make the most of it.
In addition to the garden, progress is being made on the temporary drive, now dug out and ready for a base of hardcore, before laying reclaimed bricks on a layer of sand. This has been time consuming as a result of having to shift the topsoli from the front to specially prepared beds in the back garden, breaking up the hardcore, and a rather erratic supply of suitable reclaimed bricks (well that's the excuse I tell Elaine when she asks ;-)
Saturday 25th August was the hottest day on record, and really not a good day for digging drives and pounding hardcore.
A trip to the Oxted and Edenbridge agricultural show, put me in contact with a local firm selling affordable solar water heating systems. Click Here for details:
Solar Heating
August being traditionally a holiday month found Elaine and I taking two weeks in the Greek Island of Zakynthos.
We stayed in the small town of Katastari on the north coast of the island, close to the seaside resort of Alykes.
Our accommodation was on a traditional olive farm in a two storey appartment converted from one of the old barns.
The appartments are a familly run business, offering a lot more than the average modern studio. As well as a good sized pool, poolside bar and views overlooking Alykes bay, Stephan and Mary Voutos made you feel most welcome in their home. For more details clink on this link:
Archontiko Appartments
Energy is important to us all, and recent events in the UK, have brought to mind, how much we rely on petroleum fuel for our everyday lives, and should the supply of fuel be interrupted, all chaos breaks out.
In 1990 I became involved with a close friend Rob Fowler in a project to build an energy efficient electric car. Well, it took us nearly 5 years to build the first one but we certainly learnt a lot in the process. This project was never really properly documented so one of the aims of this site is to illustrate the process of building an electric car - and some of the joys of driving one.
I have been interested in electronics ever since my dad made a crystal set receiver for me at about the age of six. A degree in electronic engineering allowed me to progress into a career in electronics and I have worked in the broadcast industry as a Research Engineer, an instrumentation engineer and now as a designer of telecommunications equipment. Check out my Microelectronics page for some of the stuff I am currently interested in.
Poor weather over the weekend forced us to resort to indoor activities including the Finch Foundry in Sticklepath, at 19th century water powered forge specialising in making agricultural and mining tools to support the local industry. I also visited Dingle's Steam Village, a unique collection of steam traction rollers, Showman's engines and fair memorabillia. Also a fine collection of vintage vehicles and agricultural machinery - most of which is steam driven. A great day out for the engine enthusiast - and because it's all under cover - you don't need to worry about the weather.
The garden is now beginning to produce vegetables and Elaine and I have been feasting on new potatoes, courgettes, marrows, broad beans, radish, Swiss chard, carrots and onions.
We are very keen to use as much of it as we can before going away to Greece for our annual holiday.
The summer weekends have been fairly full and I have been demonstrating Stirling engines at Guildford and Merstham model engineering shows. The tin-can displacer unit and U-tube manometer proved a great success in allowing people to understand the engines principles.
I have also experimented with wood gasification building a small stove from tin cans, just to prove the point, prior to converting an old oil bolier into a full size gasifier unit.
The hot dry summer brings thoughts of automatic watering systems for the garden, making full use of a solar powered electric pump to irrigate the vegetable and flower beds, plus a much larger tank at the bottom of the garden, to catch more of the rainwater from the occasional downpour.
July has been much wetter than June and the grass has had a chance to recover from the drought. The vegetables are growing at full speed and the rain has been a welcome release from having to water the plants by hand every evening.
The starter battery in my '94 Peugeot diesel failed whilst I was attending the Guildford show, and a replacement had to be purchased. I looked at the date stamp on the old battery only to see that it was the original battery from 1994! Well done Delco for such a durable product. The old battery has now been put out to stud (no more engine starting duties for you old-chap) but spend the rest of your days getting a gentle trickle charge from the combined solar pump and greenhouse lighting unit.
June 2001
June was hot and dry, and I spent most of the weekends away from Monson Road. A trip to a wedding in Barnstaple, included an afternoon spent with my Appropriate Technology friend Nick, who now has most of his low impact, straw bale, turf roof bungalow built.
Not far from Barnstaple I called in at a pottery and discussed various refactory materials with the proprietor. These materials will be of great importance in insulating the new gasifier design. Also in the area was a small sawmills, and I had the opportunity to ask about the different waste materials produced by the sawmill and how they were currently disposed of.
From this I gleaned some idea of the economics of wood waste disposal and this further strengthened my case for a small scale wood gasifier running on sawmill by-products.
I also had a weekend at my Cousin's in Norfolk, where I visited another family run sawmill business and a sheet metal fabricators workshop. Slowly but surely the resources required for gasifier construction are coming together.
Spare time in September was spent putting up plasterboard on the back sitting room ceiling ready for the plasterer to re-skim the walls and ceiling. This will return the walls to a flat surface ready for redecoration.
Upstairs in the loft, it was found that 100 tears of dust had accumulated between the joists and this had to be laboriously vacuumed up before the fibreglass insulation could be placed down. It soon became clear that the very fine sooty dust was just too much for our rather expensive Dyson vacuum cleaner, and just clogged the filters within minutes. A call to Dyson sevice department informed me that Dyson cleaners are for use on domestic dust only and not fine dust commonly found when decorating etc.
Fortunately I still had a 15 year old VAX, wet and dry cleaner, and having made a filter from an old pillow case, the Vax was quite happy finishing off the arduous job.
Once the loft insulation was laid, the flooring boards could be placed over the joists. These are 2' x 8' panels of flooring grade chipboard which slot together with a tongue and groove on their edges.
A total of 225 square feet has been laid to allow storage of boxes (ie junk) and to provide a useful workspace for me to pursue my hobbies during the winter. The roof has yet to be insulated, and it is expected that a couple of roof lights will be fitted next year to allow some daylight into the space. 150 sq. ft of additional space has been reclaimed from the loft space in this manner.
Although no longer editing the newsletter, I still contribute, and I hope to use this site as a billboard for posting articles of interest to Stirling engine enthusuiasts.
The Stirling Engine Page has information, photos and links to other interesting Stirling sites.
As well as Stirlings, I have an interest in any other forms of heat-engine and recently my interest in Flash Steam as part of a hybrid electric vehicle project has been rekindled.
The external combustion engine whether it be Stirling or Steam, is just one way in which we can become less reliant on high grade refined petroleum fuels for our transportation and domestic energy.
Recent work in the Netherlands has shown a desire to use the Stirling engine as part of a micro combined heat and power system. With deregulation of the energy sector across many parts of Europe, having distributed energy generation has an attractive business appeal. British Gas Technology have recently run a project to investigate Stirling engines specifically for micro-CHP.
Micro CHP will be one of the emerging technologies of the next decade and I will follow its progress with interest.
This has been a busy month getting the back sitting room ready for replastering.
This is now done and the room is now all set for painting - a task we will begin on November 4th as Elaine has a week off school for half term.
The next big tasks are to get the Council to lower the kerbs so that we can commence work on our driveway. The front lawn has got very muddy after all this rain.
Also this Autumn we need to seek planning permission to extend the kitchen at the back of the house. If this goes to plan we will stary building in the Spring - when its warm again - and there is some daylight!
I have spent quite some time getting my shed organised into a usable workshop and this will be completed this weekend when I re-install the lathe.
The website is starting to come together and I am giving some though on the best way to arrange the information for easy access. Colour coded links and corresponding pages seems an obvious choice.
As well as the ongoing developments on the house, the main areas of update will be the Stirling engine pages.
I have numerous article which need to be posted up for any interested parties.
Elaine and I moved into Monson Road on August 18th, after 15 months of renting a house from a friend.
The inside of the house was very much in need of cleaning and redecoration so we very quickly got busy repainting the kitchen in a nice bright yellow colour and fitting some pine shelves and plate racks.
As well as painting the kitchen, the front hall and stairwell were given a fresh coat of white emulsion and a new carpet laid in the hall.
In the garden it was just a case of keeping the grass down to a reasonable level - assisted by Elaine's dad and his trusty lawnmower.
A compost bin built from some old pallets was assembled and lines with the narrow strip of carpet salvaged from the hallway. All the compostable food waste and garden waste was added to this on a fortnightly basis.
At the bottom of the garden, two beds were dug in the rich soil, ready for potatoes to be planted in the spring.
May saw me in attendance at the Merstam model engineering show which is held in a school about a mile from my house.
I took a small collection of Stirling engines and demonstrated them to the public over the course of the weekend.
Of notable interest was the single cylinder generator engine borrowed from Norris Bomford, and the very hikgh speed twin opposing displacer engine built by Brian Thomas about 25 years ago.
After a weekend trip to Cornwall, where we visited the Eden Project we have now finally got down to painting the back sitting room. This is normally a very dark room - as it lies on the shady side of the house, so we have chosen light colours of paint to try to improve the illumination.
The walls are in pale green and the ceiling is a warm creamy colour. Further jobs to do are the replacement of the skirting boards and relaying the floor covering.
If all goes according to plan the room should be ready for occupation well in advance of Christmas.
Whilst in Devon/Cornwall we found a superb supplier of pine furniture
Tracindon Pine Warehouse in Bude
01288 353353 - ask for George.
For anyone living in the South East of England looking for high quality pine furniture - it will pay you to buy from Tracindon and hire a van to cart it back to London.
We bought 2 chests, 2 wardrobes, a 5' Welsh dresser and a mirror for �2000, with transport costs at less than 10%.
Much of March was spent in the shed and down at Roy Darlington's workshop in Worthing, building the new Manson Transferator Engine in time for an exhibition at the Kew bridge Steam Museum on April 8th.
Unfortunately the engine was not completed in time, but I took it along to show work in progress.
Also this month, I have been trying out the new charcoal burner/gasifier unit See the latest pictures on the Wastewatts "Charcoal" site.
In addition to the AT projects, the weather is now starting to warm up and it is time to start some serios planting in the vegetable garden. The potatoes went in on Good Friday, and will shortly be followed by peas, beans, carrots etc. See these on the Wastewatts Garden Page.
The greenhouse is being used as temporary storage until I get a bigger shed, but there is still some room for getting the seedlings and tomatoes started.
Elaine is vegetarian, and so I am hoping that the garden will be able to provide at least some of our dietary requirements- even if its just potatoes!
In early April, I took a call from Reading University to say that they had some surplus Stirling engines in their Engineering department, and would the Stirling Engine Society be interested in finding a good home for them.
Needless to say I was along to Reading like a shot, and that all the engines are now happy living with new owners. More details on the Stirling Page shortly.
Also in April, over the Easter weekend was the mammoth construction project of a 6' diameter wind turbine, for use in generating power for my greenhouse lighting. All the details can be found here:
Windmill Site.
The third weekend in April was spent at my Cousin's in Norwich, which is about 150 miles from where we live.
An early morning car-boot sale yielded lots of new goodies including tools and equipment for the workshop, some vinyl albums which were popular when I was at college 15 years ago and some stainless steel containers for making more Stirling/Manson engines.
Later on Sunday, I went to a Model Engineering exhibition and purchased a pair of part completed model boat hulls, one complete with a 5.75cc glowplug engine. There is a very good chance that this may become the next project and be converted to flash steam!
November has been a busy month redecorating the back sitting room and buying furniture. One of the large wardrobes had to be taken apart to get it up the stairs but all are now safely installed and full of clothes.
Despite a grand clearout of old clothes, Elaine has ended up with 7' of hanging rail compared to all my stuff on a 32" pole - but I guess that's female superiority for you!
The back sitting room was re-carpeted and the furniture moved in two weeks ago. There was a mad rush last Saturday to reconnect the electrics, fix curtain pole and curtains, hang pictures and get all the ornaments and plates back into the Welsh dresser. However the result was worth it and we now have a comfortable warm, homely sittting room for entertaining and spending evenings by the fire.
Work has been especially busy this month with short trips to Budapest, Prague and Belfast. When flying to Belfast, I had the great opportunity to fly over my home town Redhill, and get a good aerial view of the centre of London.
Budapest was bright and sunny but Prague was just above freezing, cold and grey. I hear from a friend that the temperature in Prague has dropped to -18 celsius this week. Sadly these visits were all to short to take in much of the cities, and their stunning architechture.
Hopefully the pace of work will settle down a little in the run up towards Christmas, as we begin the Christmas Party Season.
Christmas this year, will be spent at home with friends, in a stress free environment punctuated by good food and fine wine.
The main task for Christmas is to decide on the options for the new extension to the kitchen an make an application for planning permission.
The kitchen and bathroom are somewhat isolated from the rest of the living space, and the intention is to bring them more into the core of the house, to improve the warmth and comfort, and make better use of the central heating system. As well as a new extended kitchen, there is the opportunity to provide a new bathroom upstairs which would be a major benefit to the overall comfort of the house.
