Видео

I used the height pumped above the surface of the water, divided by the depth under the surface where I injected the air.

If you are gentle, a Mattock works ok too. About a decade ago, they started to make brick hammers "softer". I think old brick hammer heads will still work for this type of thing but I make no guarantees. The "gun metal" handle, I also got for free. It was a fun project, I still have it and I still use it. I got a couple of months of wood fires from pallets this spring and most of my solar cooking experiments and greenhouse beds are built with wood that I took apart with this thing. A very useful thing!

It's very hard to get an air leak going at the exact right speed and then to keep an air leak going at the same speed, it slows down when the pressure goes down so you can't get exact tracking. Mine is on equatorial mount, tracking is very accurate.

One end of the collector has a weight, the other end the piston. Mine works

Thank you. I do feel that this can point to a low tech "way forward" for some people who cannot afford extra solar panels or simply don't have any more space. In that case, if you have welding skills, or carpentry skills, you can make something like this and increase your electricity production by at least 35% to 45% in summer, probably more. (The summer boost is better the further north you go). I also see this as something that might work well for pole mounted systems. You would have the water tanks welded to the pole, and you could still have air lift pumps moving the water or perhaps little low voltage dc pumps moving it. Or maybe dc motors could direct drive the rotation of the panels. So as long as installing and maintaining your tracker costs a good amount less than adding more panels, you are winning. Especially if it is mostly "sweat equity".

Thank you. It'll be better, more a finished product and hopefully a clearer explanation and more options in the next video. Cloudy weather here, so I have to wait for the sun to peep out so I can calibrate things.

Hi Peter, the original pump ran for at least 15 years but after that, they extended concrete in the yard and I believe that it got covered over. (I am not 100% certain) They now use a well to provide for the sheep and cattle. Anyway, the pulser pump is a combined trompe to provide compressed air, and airlift pump that uses compressed air to pump water. I showed the idea to a water pollution researcher in Belgium, and he might use a small trompe this summer to "renovate" a small river there. This will probably be quite small, maybe 15 cm diameter pipes, and only going 1 meter deep. the idea is to have gaseous exchange so that smelly gasses can be removed, strongly oxygenate the water (some organic stuff will be oxidized), plus, it'll give fish and insect larvae a little haven where the water is full of oxygen. I don't know any more about their experiment but it looks very likely to happen.

Thank you for update and I'm sorry to learn it is no longer operational. Probably was covered over by the time I learned of it back in December 2010. Take care, Sir! 😎

@@f1rst_pancake There's probably a smaller one, (further upstream) and they only use it in March and April and the 6 inch diameter one is probably still able to pump.

Oh, thank you! That's good to know. Did you try the mirror test? Is it nearly as specular as a mirror? If so, I would like to know the brand! Brian

@@Brians-Easy-Low-Tech-Solutions It's much more diffuse and the reflection has no sharp borders like a mirror, but it's definitely better than kitchen aluminium foil.

@@Brians-Easy-Low-Tech-Solutions After 3 months I have to add something: The tape I used so far is great, but it's a no name brand and I don't know where it came from. When I ran out of it I bought tapes from Benson and 3M and both of them don't reflect as good as the no name tape I had before, actually they're really bad. Obviously there are also huge differences with these aluminium tapes.

@@SolarCookingGermany Oh, thank you very much. I suspected something like that, some materials are good and some are bad and brands matter too. We should be steps to identify the good and bad ones. If you use a bad one unknowingly, it will ruin your experiment and possibly make you (and others) stop doing solar cooking. I feel bad for people who need to solar cook every day but who are given poor advice.

My purely mechanical system is functional now for solar panels, it only needs one air pump and one really slow motor to remotely run 10 or 20 solar panels. I still don't know if it is cost effective. Currently I use a 50 gallon drum of water to turn it to follow the sun. It's overkill but the drum cost me only 30 dollars. I'm not currently testing it, we just have cloudy weather here till usually mid February. Long term, I want to use it to make my "poor man's alternative" to Scheffler solar kitchens. So I will solar cook soil to sterilize it and I'll do solar hot water too.

Nobody has done the electromechanical system I am doing, and it is far simpler than most, so, I will try to develop it and prove that it works. The only other pneumatic system I know about is called "sunfolding" that provide tracking for huge solar panel installations with single axis tracking and they have just "folded"! Apparently they have lots of projects to finish up but something went wrong on the financial end of things. They have patents so maybe these will be sold off and the technology will continue to be used. The hygroscopic system you describe is not accurate enough for tracking solar cookers so I won't be trying it. My system uses a tiny amount of energy to move the panels and solar cookers, less than the hygroscopic things.

@@Brians-Easy-Low-Tech-Solutions Other option could be a mix of what you do and air pressure caused by black empty tanks mooving water also...

And have you checked this difficulte to beat simple electromechanical system seen for instance in this video ? <<Simple Solar Tracker With Auto Return To East>> There is also the same type done replacing pannels by ligh captors.. @@Brians-Easy-Low-Tech-Solutions

And also the purely mechanical HelioDrive from Sulas Industries is very nice, actuates many pannels at time, can be diy, and used for other stuffs like openig a window to let solar hot air enter in winter and go out in summer....@@Brians-Easy-Low-Tech-Solutions

Thank you, never heard of him before. His stuff is interesting and he is getting the word out, so well done to him. My long term goal is to make a working model to prove that my "poor mans alternative" to Scheffler solar kitchens can really do the job. I made the first working model over a decade ago, but the center of gravity moved as you did seasonal adjustment and also, it had foil as the reflector, because people told me aluminum foil was good. (But people were relaying false information).

BTW before i installed photovoltaics on roof i was "heating" my house with 6 m² of mirrors reflecting light into my unused room thru window. I just glued mylar blanket onto 2 inch thick insulation board and put wood clear PU lacquer on top to prevent oxidation. it was not perfect mirror surface but was reflecting enough to make difference.

Yes, thank you. But people also go to them and to solarcookers dottt org for info and some of those guys are also in charge of info at that website. I also want my simple tests to develop into something universal so people can find the right reflectors in their countries and therefore get past the marketing bs. There are tests of "specular reflection" that metal companies do in a laboratory but we are not there yet. The solar cooking world network would have to be involved and I fear that they are mostly promoting US based companies.

Sounds good, you have to be careful with mylar though, because if there are creases or warps in the wood, you can get concentration of light and potentially burn or singe something in the room.

Hi Ryan. Stop the video about 20 seconds in. At the top left, there is a kind of "stopper" that you can raise or lower that lets air into the vertical down pipe even when the water level above the dam is quite high. Raise the stopper to let more water in, or lower it to let less in. There is an optimum range of water speeds, so you can just raise or lower it a bit as needed. There is no backflow into the river because the user water level is lower than the can attached to the stake. (top middle). There is more detailed stuff probably still in my google pictures and on other websites it you search pulser pump.

Thank you. We should email a bit and maybe I can help you choose something. I use various different irrigation systems based on the situation and the time of year. I used dripper irrigation last year but I didn't use dripper irrigation this year. The climate here is practically desert in summer now so I abandon the "in the ground" vegetables in summer, and grow stuff in the greenhouses and in containers. I have the airlift pumps combined with boar scares for them, and I collect and reuse the water. I'm gaiatechnician at gmail dot com

I like the music! I made this video because people are refusing to admit that aluminum foil and aluminum sheet have this seriously bad property. They want to carry on pretending that it is a good reflector. But this is the physical truth.

Well desmonstrated !! @@Brians-Easy-Low-Tech-Solutions

It isn't really centuries old. The Europeans used to have fruit walls facing south and perhaps a bit later, half glass greenhouses but then the industrial revolution happened, and cheap fuel and cheap glass and cheap refrigeration, and cheap transportation, seduced them away from those type of low energy input designs. I grew up in Ireland in the 1970's, plastic greenhouses were barely thought of then. We never could compete at that time. Meanwhile Holland had something like 12 ft of great soil under every field, and massive gas fields to heat their greenhouses, and a huge wealthy population within a day's travel of their greenhouses. It was hard to fail at greenhouses in that situation! So it suppressed everything else . A guy who I went to school with started Castleruddery Organic Farm in 1989 and made a great success of it. But they didn't use the Chinese greenhouse style (probably because they didn't know about it) and also because they are further north where there is less light in Winter. China was different, they had a huge urban population to feed, they didn't have much money to heat greenhouses, and they had to try to stop people leaving the farms and crowding the cities or there would be a revolution! So, unheated greenhouses providing food through the winter was a great option! Plus those greenhouses (even though the climate is very cold in winter) are a bit further south than holland or Ireland (meaning they get higher sun in winter). Fast forward to today, and they are supplying the world with special trusses to make special long span greenhouses. And even though their population is huge, they export fruit and veg to places like Canada early in the season.

The design is entirely Chinese and yet there are those who will try to argue that white Europeans did it first. Entirely untrue. This design is completely different from anything any European ever built, and miles ahead in efficiency. Here in Canada folks still insist gardening in a wintery climate isn't possible, yet we're doing it! A greenhouse based on these innovative Chinese ideas is next on the wish list here on the farm.

Yes, I got some complaints about the audio, Maybe I will just upload it with volume higher? I haven't seen the designs with a composting trough, but I like the idea. Where can I see them? (If I reupload, I might as well add a bit to the video). I actually put a lot of 3/4 way composted material under my beds so it is almost the same thing. In my original 4 seasons greenhouse design, I have a blue barrel for compost on the north side, half in the greenhouse and insulated on the outside. I was just afraid of getting flies in the greenhouse and I never implemented it. (Plus, the opening I originally made for this, I made a little small. My greenhouse in general is a bit small too. To conform to the bylaws here in Victoria. I do have a 5 gallon bucket in the greenhouse now, I fill full of green material, that I drip water through to keep a top shelf of herbs and lettuce fertilized. Only started this in September so I don't know how well it works yet.

@@Brians-Easy-Low-Tech-Solutions Alas, I'm not able to find the source. I am pretty sure it was on RUclips - some video about this style of greenhouse - but it's been years and years since I saw it.

@@Brians-Easy-Low-Tech-Solutions Ah-HA! I found the article. It's the lowtechmagazine article on Chinese passive greenhouses titled "Reiventing the Greenhouse". Just google "lowtechmagazine" and the title. You can find the section by searching the article for "Compost Heated Greenhouses", which is the section title for the relevant parts of the article.

Oh, thank you! I stopped doing hydroponics. It was problematical if there was a power cut, etc. If the water stops for half a day, your plants really start to suffer! And I sometimes worked a week away from home. I got a call from my tenants a few times when something went wrong and the air stopped. Luckily I was able to explain that a breaker had tripped or an animal (or tenant) had pulled out an airline while picking tomatoes. So yes, it gave good production but it was not for me. Another thing is that the plants are slow to take off in the spring. The water gets a bit colder because of the air bubbling through it and taking heat away. (Perhaps that is good in the hottest weather but not in spring). I do "soiloponics" now. I just drip water through soil in planters in my greenhouses. It is more forgiving. Sometimes I don't check my greenhouse for 4 or 5 days. This year, my big mistake was to grow a lot of volunteer tomatoes. Most of these plants were of the marble variety too tiny for a good mouthful and with poor production too. Other than that, it was a good year. The plants that I bought at the stores had much bigger tomatoes and more substantial crops.

I've been obsessed with the idea of growing watercress in canada, indoors mostly as it gets incredibly snowy in newfoundland. As much I love the idea of a constant agitator (air pump or water pump to mimic the river stream (watercres loves moving water), I feel like any amount of canadian winter can ruin any electric parts, wheter you use solar pumps or any small off-grid technology. I will be exploring more of soiloponics because it sounds like its exactly what watercres enjoys. I rent so that's why I have to be conscious of electrical cost and space. One day i'll have a sweet greenhouse! The taste of watercres is too strong for me to give up :) Everything I've looked up points to watercres clippings that regrow in water (changed every 2-3 days), or maintained by airpumps/water pumps, whether in a container with holes and dirt or just a container with holes. sometimes i wonder if a magnetic stirer will just do, hahaha :) @@Brians-Easy-Low-Tech-Solutions

@@JOJOJOJOJOJOJOJOanne Yes, I am in Victoria BC. Watercress here dies back in October. I think there are several types of it. It loves lots of nutrients. The air pumps don't care about the cold but yes, it is too dark and cold to grow much outdoors here in winter too. I don't really like the taste of watercress so I never tried to grow it. They offered it in the "windowfarms" experimental hydroponics so it can definitely be grown indoors in a bright window or under grow lights.

window farms sound dope! soiloponics sound cooler! :)@@Brians-Easy-Low-Tech-Solutions

Thank you. It's because one of these "timers" and one air pump can spin 10 or 20 or 30 panels at the same time. I don't know the cost of 10 higher torque motors or the maintenance on this compared to higher torque motors on every tracker, but hopefully this will be cheaper. Also, if the float is a fairly good fit into the cylindrical containers, you get a "damping" effect for wind gusts, because the wind energy gets transferred to the water around the float. I think this will mean these things (if they ever go mainstream) will last longer and if anything goes wrong, you can fix it without ordering a bunch of parts from the manufacturer.

I don't think you can buy one. Its just a video for people at the planning stage who might find this useful for some of their greenhouses, so maybe they will have some of them lined up east to west for doing early starts, or early green veg when the prices are best.

@@Brians-Easy-Low-Tech-Solutions Dong Jiany seems pretty friendly and has responded to several people wanting to get in touch with the manufacturer of his greenhouses. he posted his email address in the comments on his youtube channel www.youtube.com/@dongjianyi2492 My impression is that those manufacturers would probably want specific dimensions to have your greenhouse customized, however, it is probably commercial level greenhouses, costing 100,000$ plus labor, probably excluding time for planning etc.

Hi, Matt, my system evolved, I don't use the trickle down thing in the greenhouse anymore. We can agree to disagree on Economics. I'm happy that a few Nobel laurates (in economics) are in my corner.

No. But it is less likely to fall over. How strong do you need it? What's behind it and is it well drained? I've been on a crew building a wall that was 14 ft wide at the base.. That's pretty strong. It's a horses for courses thing.

I have been called Rube Goldberg too, so I don't know whether to laugh or to cry. I just asked Naomi Wu to design a better or simpler "pressure increaser" for it. (Poor girl is dealing with Chinese censorship and western defunding at the moment, so I might be waiting a while). Anyway, look at the bigger picture, Imagine, the same system with one central pressure controller, (costing about $80 at my first attempt), running say 20 "zombie" solar trackers, with solar panels on them all pushed along, on their journey tracking the sun, by floats in containers. I looked on Amazon for the price of actuators for solar panels, and I found one for $130. I bet that once this system is made properly and optimized, it will be competitive.

Oh, I guess you could, but be careful, when you run the compost water through the soil, it may change the PH, make it too high, or have too high BOD (biological oxygen demand) when it is under the soil. Nobody is trying this yet so we don't actually know. I do have airlift pumps (nearly the same system as I show here, just on a bigger scale), in my greenhouses to pump water around the garden beds but I don't have any of those composting buckets. I would have to think about where is a good spot to put one.

Good point about the heat! That's got me thinking.

@@Finding_Funny In this piece, I have probably put 5 or 6 buckets worth of kitchen waste and tomato leaf clippings into the bucket over the summer. (It rots down really quickly when the water is dripping on it) Actually since that previous comment, I have a 5 gallon bucket of green leafy stuff and lawn mowing clippings in my system to keep the "top shelf" in my greenhouse fertilized a bit. It's about 5C to 10C warmer in the greenhouse than outside, so it probably rots a lot quicker especially in winter. I might have a little update video that shows it.

Gearbox is just to slow the motion down to close to the right speed. Then I will fine tune the speed with a timer that will shut off the motor 5 or 6 times per hour. (because I am not an engineer). The timer came late yesterday.

On every solar panel? I also realize that I can use the low pressure air as an analogue "timing circuit" to automatically switch on and off things in my greenhouse (that doesn't have electricity). So, it might be able to close and open thermal blinds at night and in the morning and maybe automate other chores in the greenhouse too. all it needs to do is have another set of containers and a cam that rises and switches on and off various valves as it rises. I currently water everything there on the same schedule (dictated by my electrical timer) but not all plants need the same amount of water, so this analogue timing system would probably help with the watering too.

@@Brians-Easy-Low-Tech-SolutionsUnless you can drive them all from the same motor? Which low pressure air do you mean?

@@Brians-Easy-Low-Tech-Solutions For the venting there are passive solar pistons working with air or wax (like in the cooling fluid system of the cars), expanding with heat.. Can be used to open windows, to moove the pannel in the right direction...

I'll probably do it like a 24 hour clock. Any tiny leaks in the system will let the air out over a few hours, return the water to the lower tank and reset the thing to the morning values.

Ok ! @@Brians-Easy-Low-Tech-Solutions

Air heating thin metal flat black painted cans, with skins (looking like 2 small tambors) a board in between, so when one of the cans is heated, the other one is shadowed. The inflating skin is mooving an arm that mooves the system. When it is dark, the system come automaticly in the middle, and then when the sun comes in the morning, it does it again...