I know it is hotter than a ducks breath in the shade, the ants are pounding on the window begging for water. It hasn’t rained here for 26 days so far, My water bill for the peach trees must be of biblical proportions ( and the squirrels raiding them appreciate this ).
However,
Winter will soon rear its ugly rear and Mother Nature will once again give us the cold shoulder of her affections.
I have not the ability ( I could render a version of my magnetic stirrer adventure , not for the faint of heart) to actually build one of these, but if someone could come up with a solar powered rain bucket heater, that would be peachy.
I know that Davis has and others have built using lamps and so forth an electrical unit, but to have something for those of us who have our units out there, where running electricity isn’t going to happen, we can either cover the unit or just endure the snow in the bucket.
Up to this point I have used the most excellent cover for my rain collecter that Chann Barnhart has generated ( http://home.mchsi.com/~dsmweather/stationinfo.htm just scroll down to the bottom of the page and you could see it on my former VP1 unit… It fits on the VP2 and there is a secret way of getting it on the unit with no problems, at least Mr. all thumbs Aardvark hasn’t had problems.) 8)
Hmmm, bad combination, wintertime + snow = low sunlight = not much available power, Davis heater = 24 watts = (relatively) a lot of power. So it’s possible, but you would need a pretty big solar panel/battery combo to be able to carry it through a few days. Cheaper to run some of that direct bury, low voltage, (yard lighting) wire from a power source.
You can put in the collector a cheep 12 v resistance for car back mirror (car accessories) which is like a sticker. Also to control the resistance you will need simple electronic. Thermostat for on and off and a photo cell which when covered with snow will drive on the resistance or not if it’s cold but light is there. For night time a little lamp or led diode can play the day time light which you can turn on and off simple with another photo cell or with the same for the resistance in a more sophisticated circuit. For power, because it’s 12v, directly or a battery with a solar panel. You will need adjustments to make it work how you like and one thing to be carefull is the high temp in the collector so he will not stew (plastic).
I’ve been tinkering with some high wattage power resistors (100 watt) mounted to an aluminum strip and had good results until I increased the voltage and didn’t have the resistors properly heat sinked. #-o :oops: I just received several more from Mouser and will let you guys know the results. I plan on using it with a Davis Vantage Pro.
At the moment I’m using mains transformer
I was going to look into a solar panel/ Power inverter
need to do some maths to see if it is possible or maybe I should try and find a new
heating block I was thinking also of experimenting with the material used on car bac I thought it would be fond k windscreen demisters
just for the fun of it, and the challenge I would like to try and develop a system that will run from a solar panel
At this location, it would be on almost continuously from late October until May.
It is more designed at a condensation inhibtor rather than a rain gauge frost remover/heater.
