Midwinter calling, day 39

It's alive! Alive!

Once again it's time for inspection and maintenance. I want to complain, but very stupid to complain about and even worse to not do that maintenance. The steam boiler basically operate 24/7 so I want it to be in good condition, and it might be dangerous if something really bad happens, so I check valves and safety features, and that the water doesn't seem to be a problem with scales, blockages or unusually low level, which are signs of water accumulating somewhere in the system or a leak we don't see. We do occasionally fill up the level, but the steam system probably leaks a tiny bit somewhere, and it's not a large amount. We keep track of the amount over time and will hopefully notice increasing water consumption. When the steam main lines have cooled, I take the opportunity to run some extra copper wire for power and signal lines for service or alarms down to the basement, as some lines are already needed to the official basement vault, and I need a few for the greenhouse.

The steam engine in my workshop receives a thorough inspection, cleaning and lubrication. I am honestly surprised how well it has worked. Sure, I've done some maintenance on it before, but this is way beyond my expectations. I take the opportunity to install the small generator, although the electrical connection will happen later. Currently there isn't much need for power in the mansion as the radio does just a tiny bit even when it is in use, and the LED lights draw relatively little current. The soldering iron is rarely used, and mobiles, tablets or batteries are not charged that often, although Jane often charges her iPhone and Iselin probably charges my MP3 player every other day. She really loves to use it. Future machines with electric motors or Alfheimr made lightbulbs are what will draw a lot of power, but I thought of installing a more powerful, larger alternating current wind turbine for that and make a higher voltage power grid. I expect that wind turbine to be more efficient and it's surface area should mean that it will provide 4 times more energy, and with improved electromagnets it will perhaps be up to 8 times more. If I only had enough good diodes I could do the wind turbine three-phase.

When the sun has risen we inspect the wind turbine, and all my sambos and Asta are here to learn how to do wind turbine maintenance. The ship will probably have a similar one, and the guest mansion will definitely have it. We literally have two wind turbines standing in storage, but doing maintenance on something installed is another thing. I really need to teach someone else to do mechanical and electrical maintenance jobs, especially if I'm going to set up the same system in other places, like the future mansion in Skiringsalr.

Everyone likes that we use safety harnesses to go on the roof, and that I had the foresight to add work platforms on the roofs where needed or may be needed, and attachment points. It honestly annoys me that I haven't done for construction worker safety. The wind turbine seems to be doing surprisingly well, but I make sure to remove a small branch and check that the sliding surfaces are clean and lubricated. The improved wind turbine provides smoother power, but I install a small shielding cover over its contacts and add a small capacitor over the output. Another advantage of AC output wind turbines is that I can avoid moving poles, and thus remove the electrical interference, if I solve a semiconductor rectifier. But since magnets here suck and I'll need an electromagnet rotating in the middle, I'll still need that, although it might mean less electrical noise. Or I just have to shield the whole generator part. The wind turbine is very close to the antenna.

The electric motors work fine, and the two smaller ones draw about 10-60W with the same home-made fan blade as load, and will work well for lighter duty where high power isn't the goal, such as table fans or ventilation fans after the output have been geared down a bit. The larger and more powerful motors draws a heck of a lot of current, because they are more 200-350W but I simply can't determine strength yet because it is not peak loaded. But it is strong.

Just turning on and off such a high current is unpleasant, and the drop in battery voltage is noticeable with the most powerful motor, not to mention how hot the copper cable get. A few capacitors between the poles and to earth can probably help a little with sparks etc, but the rest is difficult to do anything about. The good thing is that I can build powerful electric motors, and the batteries could handle the load. The bad thing is as expected the low voltage, but I can re-solder the winding or re-wind them to higher voltage if I install a high voltage mains system. Unfortunately I can't make a too high voltage system because I don't have thin enough copper wire for light duty work. Plus all that problem with handmade copper wire, and I really should make my own production line to produce copper wire in three or more sizes, and I especially need the finest and hardest to make. It would be nice to build a multi-stage drawing line with some kind of motor at each stage, but hard to get the speeds right, so maybe better with just one stage that repeats back and forth through smaller and smaller drawing dies onto a roll at the end. I'll probably be happy with a 10% reduction per draw, and honestly I don't really care, because in the long run it's just more manufacturing time, and that can be compensated for with building another machine.

It should be possible to rewire or resolder the electric motors for approx. 40V, so maybe I'll make a 40V power grid or so with its own more powerful wind turbine. I need to test what I can modify to. I have so many battery cells connected in a 6x4 grid that I can keep a 12V system and create a 36V battery for testing. Heck, I can make a huge switch that disconnect 18 and reconnect in different configurations. I can start at a lower voltage and try what I get in terms of current, power and heat or other problems. A slightly higher voltage is better for my planned usage, and if I can go up to 48V, that would be better. I also need to test the most effective balance between the current through the electromagnet vs the rotor, and series or parallel connection. Perhaps with an extra winding to be able to provide a stronger magnetic field at start-up or when there is a load on the motor. So much measuring just to get data and optimize.

My tests have gathered all sambos and Jane. Especially the big ones make a racket and there is a bit of sparks on the commutators and switches, plus the fan blades wind and noise. Several have recoiled in horror and Ida curiously looking in from outside the door disappeared like a shot, which gave Alith and Iselin a good laugh. Most seemed really impressed with the motors, but they don't come closer. The steam engine is fairly quiet and elegant in operation, while these are not.

Too late I realise that is was a bad idea to go all ham and make a proper mad laugh and shout 'It's alive! Alive!' as most Elves interpret the motor as sejd and something that is partly alive, because it moves without anyone touching it, and they think I have trapped some spirit inside or is animate something dead. Which in a way I am. It was just never alive to being with. That doesn't make it better. So I clearly stat that I did not just create life, and it is not trying to escape its mount, and we don't have to worry about the motors making small baby motors or spreading like rats. They have begun to understand the steam engine, and they don't really see the servant system that ticks forward as movement in this way, although those are sejdish too. Powerful electric motors with power that are fed via two copper wire and twitch? Scary as hell.

Well, Iselin loves them and is so impressed and excited. Kari 'knows' they are not alive but she doesn't like it and took some quick steps backwards towards the door and have stayed there. Caecilia hid behind Iselin who celebrated by throwing her hands in the air and happily hugged and kissed Caecilia before I became available, while Ciara just smiled and said it is impressive and nice, because she knows I looked forward to these. Jane just congratulated me and high five'd Iselin, well aware of the things an electric motor can do and not in the least afraid of them, but suggest I should do something about the noise.

I have plenty of onlookers as I install the 25W electric motor in the boiler room, where a wooden channel draws hot air from the steam boiler and leads it out into the greenhouse. Out in the greenhouse, we install one of our simple bimetallic thermostat prototype switches that have been built during the electrical training. Manufacturing a bimetallic switch turned out to be quite easy, either by hammering together thin strips of iron and brass, but it is also possible to just join the metal strips with rivets. A screw adjusted lever changes the distance that the bimetallic switch needs to move across, and thus at what temperature the switch is activated. In this case, we connect the switch to activate when cold, and at the moment the scale on all of the switches is only roughly calibrated with what we had readily available, ie between 0 degrees Celsius to 35 Celsius. From ice to on top of on of the kitchen fireplaces. Sufficient range for the purpose, but we will slowly need to mark a better scale at the end using a thermometer. I'm hoping that the current through the bimetallic strip and sparking as it close or disconnect won't be a big problem, and we also can't let the motor use too much power because we just don't have that much storage and input, so the bimetallic thermostat is set pretty low. There are already unused wires pulled up along with the steam pipes, so we install a main switch inside my workshop. At one end the fan is off, the middle position is temperature controlled and at the other end is on all the time. This switch setup also makes it possible to install an indicator here to check how much the fan is running.

Oh, another project to add to my growing list: some kind of clockwork driven paper writing logger where a moving coil mounted pen writes to paper that is slowly pulled forward onto a roll. It would be damned handy for a lot of future use. Especially to collect data from electric sensors over 24 hours or weeks, and beside electrical stuff I could log temperature, rainfall, wind and wind direction to paper to store for the future. The clock part is the tricky bit, but I could just take a timing signal from a pendulum clock and use that to drive many loggers. The servant systems rotation ticking could be used to pull paper forward, so a pulse every 5 second or minute would work well enough.

I have plenty of projects but I prioritize to help Iselin finish her telescope. The glass has been impressively good, and she has spent a lot of time polishing, and it has not been easy to get it the lenses as precise as she can. But Iselin is impatient to see how good this actually is, so we try the lenses for find the best objective and ocular lenses, and choose the set that gives the sharpest image when we look through the house. Another use for my paper with scales and lines. Iselin measures the distance, and taking infinity focus into consideration we adapt the ocular tube a bit before we attach the objective lens. The inside of the very long wooden tube have been covered in black fabric to help to cut down on side lights, and so have the ocular tube. The telescope will have very good magnification, but with only slightly more than a 5 cm objective lens, the light collection is limited, but there will be more problems with colour diffraction the larger the lens are unless the optical path is very long. This is absolutely good for being something Iselin did by herself. We attach the ocular lens with its focus screw, and adjust the simple sight on top that will be used to roughly aim the telescope.

The weather is clear enough, and the first tripod mount has also been completed, so we carry it all out and assemble it on the courtyard. The first target is the moon, and even in the dim light from the red glassed lantern I can see her lovely smile grow wide. The others are allowed a careful look through her telescope and it's exclamations and smiles, and Jane takes photos to document the moment, including through the telescope. But the courtyard limits the field of vision and Iselin quickly decided the cliffs just south of the mansion is a far better spot, and since this might be a fairly long evening, I have the staff fetch better clothes. It doesn't take long before it's clear that Iselin will start making more lenses, because she wants to try different eyepiece lenses and see if yellow glass might allow sharper more monochromatic image, and also try to combine several lenses in the eyepiece. She also wants to upgrade the mount to be a equatorial mount with accurate vernier scales for angle etc, and there will probably be an internal flip-up post to make accurate readings. Asta will definitely get help in creating the celestrial sphere. And it's not like I complain that there certainly will be a lot of lenses that might be useful for other things, such as handheld telescopic telescopes, and more will want their own telescope to look at the stars and moon. And it's only a matter of time until Ackerek have a proper observatory with a large telescope. I probably won't be built this winter, but most likely over summer so everything is ready for next years winter.