openspaceman

I doubt anyone other than the Environmental Health or Building Control of the local authority can condem anything. Download Part J of the Building Regulations and compare the distances from your stove or flue to the nearest combustible surfaces and then think about what mitigation is necessary.

That sorts that one out then

I guess you would need to work out the run time and power requirements of the machines, is the current inverter a single phase input and a 3ph output? We used these a lot on the biomass boilers I worked with for the feed augers when there was no 3ph available but they tended to be only 3/4 hp motors and only one per boiler, the rest being constant speed induction motors. I think they are only readily available up to 2kW but they get around the demand for a large start up inrush current to some extent by having a soft start at lower frequency initially. How do big wind turbines produce 50Hz? do they use inverters? If you must have a large 3ph diesel generator to run the workshop then consider putting a plate heat exchanger in the coolant and running it into your buffer tank, many diesels used for stationary use will likely have been used in boats and a water cooled exhaust manifold may be available. It comes back to my earlier point that if you must satisfy the peak power then you will not run optimised for much of the time. When I first looked into off grid power in the 70s one could get hold of little (probably weighed two tonne) triple expansion steam engines that ran ships electrics from coasters and trawlers which were being scrapped and I always fancied one of them gently swooshing away , later on a visit to Kew Steam Museum I saw the 5kW (IIRC) mini turbine that used to steal steam from the main boiler and keep the lights running, made about 1905 I think. I wonder about using a flash boiler in the combustion chamber of a biomass boiler and converting a turbocharger to an impulse turbine and doing something similar using a 400Hz alternator from and aircraft to avoid having to step down the gearing too much. Yes TEG seems to be too far off mainstream to be cost effective. Caterpillar had a 5kW TEG running off the exhaust of a big rig in America, it eliminated the alternator but I cannot find any reference to it now.

@donnk you haven't been paying attention go to the naughty step.

Yes I think this is a reasonable ball park for where the heat goes, bigger diesels will be about 40% conversion to rotary motion. You will have a good idea of the actual cost of electricity produced by your set up and my point was that during winter it is a shame to waste that exhaust and coolant heat if you are heating a building. The further point is it can be better to run a generator at its efficiency sweet spot for a reasonable time, say at least an hour, and satisfy your load plus charge a battery even though there are inherent losses in charging a battery because optimising running the genset can make up for these losses. Obviously for 3/4 of the year I'm optimistic my solar PV will supply all my needs now it is backed up with the battery but would like a renewable source of non grid electricity at this time of year. A bit of a warning of what might become a long term issue when the weather doesn't keep the windmills turning is that the wholesale price for electricity is now 3 times what I am paying on my fixed deal and also more than the cap for those on variable tariffs. Of course this is unsustainable for the electricity retailers .

I've started back at the beginning as yours is a different case from those people without a grid connection at all. Also you are looking to run a 3ph generator to do tasks your current electricity supply will not manage. Apart from the generator bit you are similar to me in wishing to reduce costs. I don't know what your standing charges are but mine are about £100 for gas and £100 for electricity per year, this is low enough for it not to be worth doing without a connection, even at 3% ROI that would only justify investing £7k in an alternative and you're not going to get much for that. I cannot comment on the powerguard system as I haven't dealt with generators for 30 years apart from small ones for power tools and welding, which are petrol powered and only used occasionally and briefly where the fuel cost isn't worth considering. @Justme gave a figure of 0.6litre of diesel per kWh of electricity produced IIRC, as a litre of gasoil contains 10kWh so a conversion of 6kWh of heat to 1kWh of electricity doesn't seem so good. No one other than I has admitted to trying to make use of some of the waste heat. What I do have experience of is the inefficiency of running a generator all the time electricity is required and this tends to be inefficient because the generator is seldom loaded to its optimum. This is where inverters and battery systems make more sense. Yes run the generator when there is a load but bring that load up to the optimum for the generator by charging a battery. I hope @Canal Navvy can give us some real world experience especially about Victron and open source because I am a bit disappointed in the proprietary system running my inverter-charge and 6kWh battery (BTW the PV output has bombed since 6 December when the solar PV output fell below my consumption from the grid and since then has averaged only about 15% of my usage). Small scale generation tends not to have a good rate of conversion to electricity but if my demand were more than 6kWh/day, such as charging an EV, and given I have a gas connection, I would be looking at running a little 3cylinder SI engine on gas, recovering the heat for the house and charging car and house battery at optimum load, and this should use about 270grams of gas per kWh, so just over half the energy of the example above. Yes a thermal store would be needed and the genset may need to run a couple of times a day. In terms of efficiency I feel this would be more economic than running my little diesel car but capital cost of an EV means I'll stick. Also the capital cost of replacing the generator engine every few years would be less than depreciation and O&M cost of a conventional car. At present I am interested in just reducing my electricity imports a bit more, especially for these few months when the solar PV is not enough. I could invest in more PV panels but want to investigate a better winter production. This is why I liked some of the ideas in the link @Stere cited. The drawback of TEGs is they don't convert a lot of the heat passing through them into electricity but there is a decent match with home heating and potentially from wood. The high (ish) temperature TEGs from the example operate up to 300C (cheaper ones seem similar devices but the solder fusion temperature lowers their top temperature to below 200C and hence lowers the conversion rate). As wood burns at up to 1600C but typical firebox temperatures are around 800C some though needs to be given for exposing the devices to over high temperatures, this will tend to make a woodstove running at 4kW (e.g. the size I use) considerably larger. This big problem is to get the required delta Temperature will mean a coolant will have to extract all that 4kW at around 30C. To use heat at 30C for house heating means you are almost bound to have underfloor heating. In practice I expect I would like to see my fire and enjoy the radiant heat coming through the glass so 2kW passing through the TEG may be more realistic, it means only 100W of electricity would be available at best and the cost for the TEG alone would be £750 before the stove manufacture costs were added in. However 100W for 16 hours is 1.6kWh although only a fifth of what I need to be independent of electricity imports at this time of year and I wonder how much the water pump would use.

In that case I'll probably have problems too if I ever recover my A55s. I have a clutch to do and have this bookmarked: Brake & Clutch Materials - Auto & Industrial Friction Services WWW.AUTOANDINDUSTRIAL.CO.UK Brake and clutch relining service for Automotive and Industrial, Classic and Vintage brake and clutch linings, Drum...

I think Tom only mills western red cedar on a regular basis, have you worked there?

I understand a bit about electricity and electronics but couldn't actually design a system, hence I went for an off the peg solution but see below You are so right, the system I have is not well integrated because the grid is needed to energise the system and itself can vary in Hz and voltage, the PV panels depend on the sunlight and the inverter-battery system cannot communicate with the grid or directly with the panels, so it senses current on the various inputs and there is a delay which on poor days results in anomalies where the grid charges the battery or the PV exports to grid. Overall it should deliver 80% of my electricity needs and I suspect if you could still get the installation below £10k it would give a return without any feed in tariff, especially if electricity reaches 30p/kWh. I have a gripe with Growatt in that it is web based and apparently hosted in China plus the App is highly intrusive and I will not have it on my phone. Also there is some oriental fuzzy logic going on and I, for now, cannot prevent it charging the battery from the grid, this would be a good thing if I had an off peak electricity tariff but I don't. I guess the 300Wh it charges itself will reduces to 2400Wh when I get it back. I think one could save £2k by building the battery and management system with LiPo cells and only have to integrate PV and battery.

I think it's the Highway Authority and that is often delegated to the Local Authority This depends on what you mean by "tolerated", the thing is if the entity who was in a position to give permission, or their successors in title, since 1905 has acquiesced in allowing the practise then a prescriptive right may be gained in time "by fiction of lost grant"IIRC. In this case no such chance exists.

and why not?

I'm still hoping for some input from those truly off grid and having generators to pop by with some experiences and costs on that thread, I'll be thinking of @Baldbloke's 20kW and 50 MWh annual production to compare with my £10k panels and battery when I revisit some of @agg221's points

"Section 34(1) of the Road Traffic Act 1988 (RTA 1988) provides that anyone driving a mechanically propelled vehicle, for example a motor car, on a road that is a footpath, bridleway or restricted byway is guilty of an offence unless it can be shown that there is a private right in place for people to use the accessway to gain vehicular access to their property."

It wouldn't be an easement but a prescriptive right. A prescriptive right cannot be gained by a criminal act, see Hanning v Topdeck, except by a limited special case. This chap has just bought the house and the previous occupant seems only to have enjoyed a pedestrian access.

I was just musing that the wear course could be reinforced such that the lower layers need not be disturbed and then the risk would be to the vehicle bumping up the kerb but the LA or HA would have to sanction the access, which seems unlikely. I was aware of that hence the caveat that it would have to be approved.

Can the council give permission to cross the footway without a dropped kerb?

Looks like @MDMTREE came to post query then went without seeing replies

This thread dates from before I joined, @bobh did an excellent photo step by step explanation of removing and refitting the IPTO clutch. Some contributions from past members at least one of whom is no longer alive.

Would you give a ball park figure for installed capacity and production?

not PUWER compliant but you would only need to fix the plates in the IPTO clutch pack together but it may be just that the clutch pack isn't being energised. The linkage pump has a small gear pump in tandem with it, this small pump activates the IPTO clutch when the PTO lever is moved, it simply blocks the dump to tank with a ball bearing, so all the flow goes to squeezing the plates together.

Whereas if you take the heat pump subsidy you cannot have a gas supply.

It doesn't surprise me as his are niche high added value projects and your 100 tonnes gets you into the realms of industrial wood.

Strangely he doesn't mention the Interpretation Bill "in which ministers will strike out findings from judicial reviews the government did not agree with" nor the bits of the police bill that make trespass criminal acts which will inhibit the right to divert around an obstruction on a PRoW. I think he's got it right about the PM not being a bumbling idiot but taking us for a ride, we can see that from the cronyism that has run unchecked. The ghost of Pastor Martin Niemöller should show us that it is not impossible for this to happen in our cosy little world.

Maybe the van delivered the chipper and then fetched the trailer to a convenient spot. It worked.

I understand that and bye-laws may be different elsewhere but in my street with only houses on one side many of the parking laws are ignored, such as not facing the correct way at night and parking opposite the splay of a joining road, all without penatly AFAIK, and yes visitors to my house do park at my dropped kerb if no other spaces available.