The Centre For Alternative Technology run several ecological "green" engineering courses. I enrolled for their Solar Heating Course in June 1999. Several comments from friends, attendees, and lecturers triggered me to create these pages:
Whatever you are fiddling with, in whatever state, there will be a small minority of people interested in what you're doing. So this web page will be "RAW" and "AS IS". This is not a corporate venture!
The intention behind this site is to publish an economical controller design. This will use the readily available components from a electronics hobbyist shop. Estimated cost of parts £15 (Maplin).
Air locks happen. Gradual failures are common. So how much solar heat energy did we get today? How much money did we save? How much gas did we save?
Logging the temperature at various points in the heating system is a good starting point. A glance at the "display" application shows the power received for that day.
The Temperature Logger project is now stable having gone through one major revision.
The solar heated water controller is now complete. Building up the logger will get you 95% of the way to having a controller.