Weekend Sundries: 8 - 9 October 2022

Fishing72

Nest of mating diamond pythons in our shed. The resident female plays host to half a dozen smaller males. The males don’t compete for her affections, they just take turns. Everyone is happy…except the local rat population.

Three snakes in the first photo- one on the wall, one on the rafter above it and the female cozied up in the rain gutter in the background.

Desmodromic

Some MB members asked about the performance of Solahart Powerstore https://www.solahart.com.au/products/battery-storage/solahart-powerstore/

Our motive for installing this unit was a drastic reduction in the PV feed-in tariff and the desire to retain as much of our power on site for our use without going to the expense of a battery. Our PV system is 7.92 kW and cost $6800 after SA rebate ($4500) and the 315 litre Powerstore cost $3440 after SA rebate (~$1400).

The unit has now been operating for about 6 weeks. In looking at the data, we were away for 6 days from the 23^rd September and had house guests for the remainder of the month. The weather for the period has been cool and wet and we’ve had to run heating most mornings. Days of full sun have been scarce and solar generation very low on several days. Nonetheless, we have used very little power from the grid for hot water despite the extra demand.

Overall, very happy with the performance. Once I have more comparison data I’ll report again but we appear to have almost halved our costs compared to just having solar PV with off-peak hot water.

Gliding in the K13, near Aylesbury Buckinghamshire

Anton

Piglets, Georgia

Geoff McVeigh

Steaming tree near Deep Creek Track at Eurobodalla Regional Botanic Gardens

Spider Web near Deep Creek Track at Eurobodalla Regional Botanic Gardens

Green Grass Dart Butterfly in Arboretum at Eurobodalla Regional Botanic Gardens

Fishing Spider on Lake at Eurobodalla Regional Botanic Gardens

Pelican landing at Batemans Bay

Pelican on light Batemans Bay

Log washed up at Broulee

Blue Wren at Broulee

Sunrise at North Broulee

Sunset on Moruya River

Ritualised Forms

Sunrise Queenscliff South Pier, Early October 2022

Eucalypt Stand, Riddell’s Creek

Ermington Plumbing

After clearing a granny flat blockage I Put my drain camera through that inspection opening in the concrete path and then put my arm down the clay pipe boundary trap inspection riser (backfilled in picture) only 1200mm down stream of the PVC IO and took a this picture of the broken junction with my push camera in it.

This junction picks up the 60 year old old front rental as well as the new granny flat. How lazy of the Granny flat builders/Plumbers to not just replace the clay pipe Boundary trap when they built the granny flat and had a machine on site.

As soon as we get to Parra lake for a walk it started raining.

Gavin

13b engine teardown from FD Rx7

Some photos of my rotary engine teardown. The failure point was the inner coolant seal channel broke away from rust / electrolysis. I’m not sure as to the exact reason that leads to them failing here, but I suspect it’s partially due to lack of use (in last few years), but also because the metal is quite thin here. It’s collapse caused the coolant seal to no longer hold coolant outside the combustion chamber.

You can see the rust on the rotor itself from sitting with coolant in it. Which meant removing all the seals was a challenge as they fuses themselves into the rotor.

Unfortunately there is no fix for the front iron where the coolant channel has corroded other than to replace the whole plate. Found another second hand one in Sydney for a reasonable price which will be sent down to me soon.

In the interim I’ll be cleaning all the components and measuring / checking they are within tolerance and specification. A brand new crate motor from Mazda runs close to $13k these days. So the more stuff I can reuse the more money I can save.

Despite the mess and engine failure I actually enjoy working on these unique powerplants and find their design fascinating and simple at the same time.

I just hope after all this work and it’s back together it works well for another 25 odd years. The common meme with these is that they break apex seals and fail. But in my case it was the iron that failed and all the seals were still good.

call me Artie

Dartmouth Dam near Mitta Mitta in NE Vic spills – a very rare event. It’s…words fail
me…big. The vegetation at the top of screen are full grown gum trees

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Weekend Sundries: 8 – 9 October 2022