SWH project part 16 - up and running

It's going! I'll be leaving behind a short list of outstanding finishing touches, and a couple of suggestions for future improvements, but in the meantime it's working: preheating the water for the laundry so the geyser doesn't have to work so hard, and thus saves fuel.

Solar Water Heater opening ceremony.  The first overcast day in ages, but was
actually just as warm and twice as humid.  Sweaty.

Some of my main helpers.

Re-fitting the heat exchangers (see here for why)

Lid back on after much intricate wielding of the hacksaw.

The brazing chap from Lahore was back doing some other work in the hospital,
so I got him to attend to a minor leak.

One last piece of colourful frazzled copper.

Snug as a bug in a rug about to chug a mug of... hot chocolate?  Glug!

SolarBot doing his thing.

Modest temperatures on a cloudy morning.  In the middle of a clear day the
panels hit 80°C, and the tank gets to 65-70°C.

Again, on a clear day the output beats 50°C.  This could be improved by
lengthening the heat exchanger coils, or by moving to a pressurised tank
with no heat exchanger.  The latter is almost certainly worth doing.  When
someone gets round to it...

Finished system.  For a given value of "finished".

Tank insulated and roofed.  Among the final touches I'm
leaving for the workshop guys to do at some point is to stop
the rainwater collecting on the platform and soaking into the
bottom couple of inches of insulation.  Preferably before the
monsoon starts in earnest.

Thermal expansion coupled with cycles of thunderstorms
followed by hot clear days has done for these strips we used
to hold down the glazing.  They'll replace them with some-
thing better and redo the seals...

(This one's an extreme example - the other nine seem to be fine!)

...which should hopefully stop this happening.  They'll also put some metal
sheeting along the top edge of the panels.

+/-

Looking forward to:

• Less than 30°C during the day.
• Sleeping without a fan at night.
• Internet that goes at a decent speed, works for more than 70% of the time, and for more than 45 consecutive minutes in any one go.
• Unrationed cheese.  Breakfast cereal.  Bread.  Pig!
• Smaller arachnids.  (No Gavin, that is not an invitation.)
• Seeing friends and family at home - and once again more or less understanding how social situations are supposed to work.
• A bit of a break.

Will miss:

• After a suitable break, the food.
• The exhilaration of no-rules driving.
• Interesting flowers and wildlife.
• Wearing these pyjama-equivalents all day.
• Painted trucks.
• Some great adventures in some fantastic scenery.
• Not having to look after all our own utility bills/paperwork.
• Friends we've made here, especially some wonderful people in the community doing similar work to ourselves.

Compound wildlife

A few pics from around the compound over the last month or two:

Interesting flowers.

Blue Tiger.

Tree Pie.

Yellow-billed Blue Magpie.  There were some of these nesting behind where the
SWH project is.  When a cat comes along they take it upon themselves to warn
the whole neighbourhood.  And then hound the beast out of the area by dive-
bombing it.

Looks like one of those glow-in-the-dark plastic beasties.

There are lots of young birds fresh from the nest at the moment.  This Indian
Myna hadn't quite worked out what its wings were for yet.  The other day we saw
a couple of adult Black Drongos encouraging their 3 sulky offspring to budge
off the wire they were determinedly clinging to and fly.  With little success.

One of our semi-resident bug catchers.

All that was left of a Common Peacock after some bird had had a large and
tasty snack.

And the underside.  I think I'd like a rug like this.

A beast of a bee.

Now this is a proper sized thistle!

Finally, a not completely blurred pic of a Paradise Flycatcher.
Its love of shady overgrown places combined with its hyper-
active nature do not make it an easy photography subject.
It's fairly amazing to watch hunting, with a fantastic hovering
ability, as you'll see in the 2nd half of the video below.  His
oddly unmatched mate is chestnut-y red and without the tail
streamers, but equally aerobatic.

Another beast of a bee.