Wednesday, December 5, 2012

Recycling Bike parts


I saw this picture on-line, and I thought I would like to try and make it. So I found a bike wheel, a few extra axles, and I was given two pieces of rectangular tubing with flattened  ends, pre-drilled bar tabs attached. They were superfluous to one of the traveling Broadway shows I work with, so they left the pieces in the bushes for me.
  So I planned it out, cut it up and welded it at Ben's Bikes, on W. Broad Street, where I rent shop time.




I have been brainstorming what kind of tubing I can use to line the gutter channels I built that can be plumbed to collect and divert rain water for use. I decided to try using re-cycled bicycle inner tubes. This is just a test patch, but it works. I can cut the tubes and clean them out real good and then use some epoxy to glue them into the aluminum of the gutters, and use the same kind of rubber cement I use fixing flat tires to join the sections of tube to one another.
 
I have left this out in the weather for a while to see if it will stand up to the elements. I don't doubt that the sun will eventually corrode the tubing, but at least I can rest assured there will most likely always be more used bike inner tubes I can use to make any needed repairs.

These are stainless steel parts from the inside of brake assemblies. I have started collecting them to use as hanging clips to run the mc cable wiring through, under the floor joints.



Sunday, December 2, 2012

Installing the Chimney

I got this great little solar panel to charge my new phone. I just put it in the sun for a little while and it builds up a charge, and then I connect it to the phone and it gets charged!
This is a picture from The Wood Stove Handbook, which I checked out from the local public library, which I used as a guide for the design and parts requirements for the hearth, stove and chimney system.and seeings as a friend asked via Facebok, here is a drawings of the baffle system designed in the stove itself.

 So, why did I build this hearth?   To put the wood stove on and connect it to the chimney!


 Monkey slept through all of this.

 First I cut a hole in the roof and re-arranged the steel framing that was there to make room for the support box I built
 Then I built the frame and installed the heat shield. I bought all these chimney parts fromwww. northlineexpress.com and the brand is Duravent. To be honest the through the roof snap lock junction box was a lot heavier and more expensive than buying this attic insulation shield, so i bought it instead, and am running the pipe straight up through it and out the roof..
 Then Monkey and I took a break from work and joined with the Georgia Climate Change Coalition and the Sierra Club Student group on the UGA Campus. There is a coal fired power plant right in the middle of the campus that chugs out hundreds of thousands of tons of pollution into the skies around the city every year. The BEYOND COAL campaign is trying to get the plant shut down, and seeing as it's permit is up for re-newal this year this is the perfect time to push the effort. Please, call the school administration and tel them that a safer world is out right and the dirty energy of coal and fossil fuel burning needs to be a thing of the past.   The President's Office | The Administration Building | University of Georgia | Athens, GA 30602 | Phone: (706) 542-1214 | Fax: (706) 542-0995
 
 
and this is the inside flange of the double wall stove pipe that connects to it. They don't make a 5" diameter stove flue connector, so I packed the groove between the inside and outside wall of the stove pipe with furnace cement and smushed it down over the flue collar on the stove. It was a tight fit before, but now it is cemented in place.
Kind-a hard to see, but you get the idea, right?

I inserted the top piece of stove pipe in through the roof and it didn't quite fit up with the bottom piece attached to the stove.

kind-a wonky...
So I set about to install a brace that pulled the pipe towards the middle of the trailer. I used some butyl on the feet of the brace arms to keep the steel of the tubing from reacting with the aluminum of the frame, and also to keep water out of the screw holes.
Here is the brace installed and holding the pipe in a straight and up right position.
Here is the pipe all fit together. They nest over one anther quite snuggly, but they have to be turned to lock them together, and I am not strong enough to hold the bottom section still and turn the top one, so I will need some help to finish this off properly.


yeah, this happensClimb up and twist on the rain cap and install the final brace, and it's done!