Warmth, power and needing a bigger shed.

Welcome back.

I've been busy. Busy at home. Busy at work. 

In fact, I came home Tuesday to realise that I need a bigger shed. 

Out of no where, I rather large shed frame has appeared in their yard.. it certainly dwarves my actual garden shed.. and the new shed. The XYL has however decided to object to any further reaction as a result of my clear inadequacy issues. 

The upside is that it's another thing that might help break up some of the wind coming from the south. Impressive shed size for a yard that has no rear vehicle access!

The diesel heater came. It's OK. 

I learned quickly that I needed to keep it elevated due to the bottom mount exhaust and air intake. 

The contraption it's sitting on was actually a dodgy stand I threw together for my drill press - during the period last year where it was effectively impossible to buy any useful timber and I resorted to using cypress pickets. 

This is a better use given the lightweight nature of it. 

This gives me plenty of air space under it for the exhaust that you can't see is venting out the back through the wall. 

Some learnings were to be had from this cheap Chinese diesel heater purchase:

- The fuel pumps are noisy. Possibly I can replace if I dismantle it. Not sure it bothers me much yet.

- The exhaust is loud outside at night. Doing research on mufflers indicates that cheap Chinese mufflers lack baffles. More expensive models aimed at the European heaters do. 

- The power consumption in during the warm up phase is around 100w. I learned a valuable lesson in voltage drop with this. On the wall opposite is where the "solar wall" is. I ran a cable across to connect the power (rated to 11A apparently), and kept getting an error that translated to "overvoltage" when starting it. Previously I'd been using an old 7AH battery from a UPS to test it.

Interesting - at the time the battery was down to about 12.4v with the lights and other things running. I reset it and watched the power meter on the board and noticed the load go up. Then I did it again and watched the voltage meter on the heater, and briefly saw it read around 8v before it failed. Then it dawned on me. Voltage drop. 

I had a cable setup with Anderson plugs for my portable radio rig. I pulled the power cable out - it uses a thick gauge wire (actually speaker wire), so I gave that a go. Sure enough, it worked.

Given that I now need to install one of these in the building that was formerly the kids cubby house that the XYL has taken over, I know that I need to raise the heater up, I need to find some cement sheet to cover the wall where I put the exhaust through.. and that I need to do some solar work to get adequate battery to drive it. 

My old deep cycle should do the job for this one. My shed now has a pair of 170AH batteries as my old 100AH is getting a bit past it. For her though, it'll probably be OK for a while. I've grabbed a 160w Renogy panel to install on the roof - that should be more than adequate to keep the battery charged enough to drive the heater... and charge her phone. A bit of a distraction from getting this whole shed thing finished off - but I need the XYL to see that she's getting something out of it. 

In other news, I'd brought a cheapish PTZ camera to run on the smoker area beside the shed. Worked great in the house when I set it up. Took outside, connected it up and didn't work. Refund job, and spent slightly more to buy a better brand from a better retailer. It just won't be PTZ, so I'll wind up with 2 cameras doing the job of one. 

Radio? Haven't had time. I do though have a PC in the shed running off the discone that has had some success in receiving SSTV on 40m. Actually better than I expected. As soon as I can afford enough coax, I'll get the vertical down there and move the G90. I do however need a lot of gravel, more paint and some other things to tidy up the projects in action. Right now we're got patchy gravel paths around the shed/smoker area, it's half painted and generally looks half done so my focus is really on getting that finished off, preparing an area for the little garden shed in the above photo to move to and getting it moved (and painted).

That PC is running off 12v directly. At idle, the load on the 12v is about 5w. If I connect to it remotely and fire up the SDR, it might jump up to 10w. I really can't complain about that kind of efficiency. 

It's an Intel Atom based CPU and uses SSD for storage, so the lack of moving parts and gutless CPU help keep the load so low. Won't win any speed tests, but it's functional and low enough power that it doesn't hurt staying on. 

I connect to it via RDP from the house. In the shed I have an old monitor, but once I fire up the inverter it's adding around 40-50w load, so it's normally only on when I need it. 

Hopefully in the coming weeks I can make some progress on getting the vertical connected down there and get on with it.