Colloidal Silver updates - using the phone line

I have experimented making colloidal silver / ionic silver for awhile now. I've learned several things:

• more silver electrode surface area is better. I use Canadian maple leaf coins that I pounded with a sledge hammer to make them oblong. Based on how much of the coins are exposed to the water, I would need 12 gauge silver wire looped down 6 inches and back up 6 inches just to equal the surface area. And never mind the thinner gauges like 16 or 18 gauge. What happens is a certain amount of current is flowing, but with less surface area, current density is too high and makes too much silver per given area.  Even though all the particles are the same size when they come off into solution, too much in a given area means they will clump together and make larger particles.
• some form of stirring is necessary. Either manually stirring every few minutes, or having an electric motor to do the work is fine. The easiest is a hot plate like this.This isn't that hot, it is meant to keep coffee warm. You don't want too much heat, it could shatter your glass container.

• There should be a way to monitor current flow. I make sure that I never get over 4 mA. It is interesting. When the current gets to 2 or 3 mA, then I would manually stir for about 5 to 10 seconds and the current would drop again. What is happening is that the silver ions are mostly between the two electrodes and the more silver , the more conductive. By spreading them out by stirring, there is less concentration between the electrodes and the current drops. If I use the heat pad, then stirring doesn't do anything. This proves that the heat is stirring the water enough! 
• The more voltage you have, the faster the process starts. But anything over 50 volts can be dangerous. The phone line is nice because it is about 50 volts and limited to 30 mA. With this simple circuit below, I limit the absolute maximum current to about 19 mA (I don't let it get above 4mA though). If I accidentally touch the probes together the red and green leds both light up brightly. Typically, I plug in phone line and when the silver probes are put in the water, the red led will light up to show there is a connection and electrons are flowing. The meter stays all the way down and the green led is off. If the probes aren't touching and the green led comes on and the meter pegs high, that means you don't have pure distilled water(I've accidentally used spring water and this happened). The container of water should be on a hot plate and after awhile( about 1.5 hours per quart) the meter will get up to the high side and the green light will be lit. No stirring needed because of the hot plate.

I placed the circuit in a small tin box:

I used about 25 ohms instead of the 100 ohm potentiometer for my meter shunt. But you have to adjust it so that it reads about 3/4 full scale when your silver is ready. You can use any old meter you find.  This one came out of an old microwave detector I found for a dollar in the thrift store.

• Another thing I learned is to not overcook it. I can get about 12 to 15 ppm and it is still perfectly clear. If I go over that, it will start to turn amber color over the next few days.
• Also, you may have a 90% ionic and 10% colloidal solution when you first make it. But after a few days, it seems to settle into about a 70% ionic and 30% colloidal solution. At this point, the ppm meter reading goes down, but the laser tyndel effect goes up from the initial tests.

Cheap Air Conditioning - Part 2

This is a follow up on my last post about cheap air conditioning.  I started looking for a whole house fan but the ones I found looked fairly expensive.  About $200 to $900 depending on what I was looking for.  I didn't want to cut a hole in the ceiling and most of them wouldn't fit in my back window.  I started looking at regular fans and finally box fans.  A typical 20 inch box fan has about 2,000 cubic feet per minute (cfm) of air flow.  A typical 16 inch fan has about 1000 cfm.  So, I decided to pick up a couple of $24 box fans from Canadian Tire.  The same fan in the states at Target has been seen for $12 or so.

I cut some plywood to fit the back window and cut holes in it to accommodate the fans.  I took the front faces off the fans and used the grill as a template to mark the size and screw holes.

I cut the hole about 1 inch smaller all around than the grill.  I used zip ties to hold the fan to the plywood by using the front face screw holes.

Here they are in the back window. The top one is upside down so it is easier to turn off and on. You have to have both running at the same time or it does no good.  If just one is on, then the air just goes in a small circle. Both these fans blow out and that causes air to come into the house through the windows.

It is really nice.  I turned them on and every window I opened had a really good breeze blowing.  It completely refreshed our house air in about 2 minutes at a whopping 4,000 cfm.  As soon as the sun set we actually started to get cold and had to shut it down.

The above picture is from a website for whole house fans.  You can see what kind of savings can be accomplished based on where you live.  I checked the wattage with my trusty kill-a-watt meter.  It showed 142 watts for low, 153 watts on medium, and 164 watts on high.  And that is both fans together.  A window mount AC (that would only cool one or two rooms) uses about 1000 to 1500 watts.  A full house AC can use 10 times that.

Richard

Cheap air conditioning

Cooling off this summer is becoming a priority for most. Not so much for me because I live on Vancouver Island. A heat wave is 85F and it only lasts about one week every year. Most people don't have air conditioners here but the new house we are renting looks like it might get a little warm this summer, so I'm thinking of options. In the past, I've talked about using solar to cool the house. But I can't do that here because I rent. There are a few cheap options though:

1) Whole House Fan - A whole house fan is a powerful fan that is designed for ceiling mount and it sucks air from the house and pushes it into the attic. That, in turn, causes the attic air to be pushed out. So, if the windows in the house are open, then fresh air is sucked into the house and goes out through the attic. This has a cooling effect on the house.

But, being a renter, I can't cut a hole in the ceiling. Another option is to take a piece of plywood and cut a hole in it to mount the whole house fan in. I can size the plywood to fit in a window at one end of the house. Then with windows in other rooms open, the house will cool down. And I can take the fan with me when and if we move.

2) Swamp Cooler - A swamp cooler is designed for places that aren't humid. In fact, they only work in 60% or less humidity. Vancouver Island is very humid most of the year. But I checked some weather data and it turns out that during the summer, almost every day, the humidity drops to about 30 to 50% during the hottest time.

So, I could build a swamp cooler, many people do. All it is is a water reservoir with a wicking material and a fan that blows air across the wick. As the water evaporates it cools the air. But the other day I saw a humidifier in a thrift store and it was a only $8. I don't think I could build one for that cheap. It was the kind with a big cylindrical wick. (it has to be that kind, not just any humidifier) I'm guessing that it would easily cool down a medium size room. I'll do some tests over the next few weeks and blog about it.

One thing to think about it mold growing on the wicking material. So people have to clean them constantly or put a little bleach in the water. The bleach sounds a little harsh. A better idea is to add some homemade colloidal silver to the water reservoir. This will keep the water nice and clean. Although, the water will have to be added everyday, the silver doesn't need to be added every time. Just once a week is probably fine.

Richard

Poor Man's Lightning Arrestor

If you live in a place where lightning is a problem, then protecting your equipment is a must. You would also need a lightning rod at the highest point near your house.  Maybe this is your house or it could be a windmill or some other structure.  But either way, you would need a metal pipe or rod at the highest point and pretty big wire going straight to a ground pipe.  But even with a lightning rod, if lighting strikes on your property, then a huge static charge would still be in the local area.  This could travel through your shortwave antena wire or power cable from your windmill and fry your expensive circuits.

The trick with lightning is that it hates to change directions.  If it is traveling along a conductor to ground and the conductor changes direction, then lightning will want to jump to the next nearest conductor to ground.  In the below picture, the copper power wire (it is insulated) from a windmill is wrapped around a metal pipe that is driven into the ground.  The wire is wrapped several times and then loops up and back down again before continuing to the charge controller.  It is just clamped to the pipe with a zip tie. Lightning will jump through the power wire's insulator and to the copper/steel pipe and go straight to ground.

Richard

Homemade Beck Magnetic Pulser

Magnetic Pulsing







I've been looking more into the Beck Protocol since learning to make colloidal/ionic silver. I will be talking more about these technologies in the near future. It is important for a few reasons. First, I believe in independence. I don't want to rely on big pharma to get drugs that will probably do more damage than good anyway. Secondly, an economic downturn is happening and this technology makes treating yourself and loved ones very easy and economical. Thirdly, I just don't trust big pharma.

Today I will be talking about the magnetic pulser. In theory it is used for treatment of pain and also to kill off pathogens that are in lymph nodes and not in the blood. In other words, this is to be in conjunction with blood electrification. In fact, the pulser causes blood electrification during the 2.5 ms pulse. Actually, you get four jolts of microamps in the tissue for each pulse.

As the first pulse is rising, current flows. Then on the downsize back to zero volts at the coil causes a reverse current in the tissue. Then the back emf from the collapsing field generates a current in the tissue but at the opposite polarity as the initial pulse. Then a reverse of that when that field subsides. It happens each time the magnetic field changes or moves.

The trick with the strobe light is to turn it to the lowest setting that it will still pulse at. This takes longer between each pulse, but they are waaaayyyy stronger. So, do that for deep penetration. For more shallow treatments, use a higher or faster setting.


All you do is find a strobe or a camera flash. Take it apart and use a resistor to short out the capacitor.

BE CAREFUL WITH THIS CAPACITOR. IT CAN HAVE 300 VOLTS STORED AND CAN STOP YOUR HEART. If you are unsure, ask someone qualified in electronics such as a TV repairman or an electrician to help.

Once you discharge the capacitor, then you can cut the line to one side of the strobe light and connect the two wires going to the coil.
To make the coil, get some coated copper wire, called magnet wire. Try to use 15 or 16 gauge. I used 15. Make a jig like in the picture below and hand wind or you can stick a bolt through it and use a hand drill. I used electrical tape on it before I took the one wood plate off to remove the coil. You need to secure it somehow, because it will try to unwind slightly.


Also, when running, the flash tube gets hot after about 15 minutes. Take a break and let it cool down. As it gets hot, it offers more resistance to the coil. I put electrical tape on the front to block some of the light. But I kept the cooling vents on the top and bottom alone.

I also added two capacitors in parallel to the existing capacitor. Just make sure positive to positive and negative to negative and that the voltage rating is good. I used capacitors from two more camera flashes, so the voltage rating was about 300 volts. I have 450 MicroFarads now instead of just the 8 MFDs that are standard with this strobe light.

Richard

DIY Solar Intensity Meter - Pyranometer

A pyranometer or solar irradiance meter is used for measuring sunlight intensity at a given location. It reads in watts per square meter or W/m^2. This DIY project isn't technically a pyranometer because it doesn't use heat in any way to measure light intensity. Instead, it uses a solar panel. This could be any small solar panel, like the ones in old calculators. Normally, a pyranometer and even a lux meter will do a cosine correction. What this means is that the meter collects light coming from all angles and measures it. It usually does this with a hemisphere shaped diffuser. But if you are testing for solar intensity for solar applications, then you don't need it. In fact, it is more useful without the cosine correction.

For instance, if a solar panel is perpendicular to the sun, then that is its max power. It's angle would be zero degrees and the cosine of zero is 1. If you turn it to 90 degrees off axis to the sun then you would get no power because the cosine of 90 is 0. (Well, you actually get some power because of reflected light hitting the solar panel)

Let's say you are testing a spot for solar and you use one of the expensive pyranometers. You place it on your roof and get 800 watts per square meter. Then you use the homemade version using a small solar cell. It shows 800 w/m^2 as well, but only if you hold it perpendicular to the sun. If you lay it flat on the roof like you plan on mounting the solar panels it shows only 480 w/m^2. So, in a way the homemade is better because it shows you which angle is the best for the most power.

You can't just measure voltage because it isn't linear on a solar cell. You have to apply a set resistance and then as the light goes up, the current goes up and the voltage goes up, but linear in this case because of the set resistance.

I start off by using an old volume control (potentiometer) and hook it up between the two solar cell wires. I then set my meter to milivolts. I want 1 milivolt to equal1 watt per square meter.

I then find a site that shows local weather statistics. I found this one that shows the data from a school very close to me. http://www.victoriaweather.ca/station.php?id=109&type=day&size=large You are looking for the Insolation value.

You should wait for a sunny day with no clouds. Let's say that it says 600 W/m2 on the site. Go outside and aim the small solar cell at the sun. You must be outside, a window cuts down the numbers quite a bit. Now turn the volume control up or down until the meter reads 600 mV or 0.6 volts. Milivolts is easier to read though.

You can leave it like this or you can make it have a finer adjustment if you have a lower value potentiometer. You can carefully disconnect the potentiometer and measure the resistance across the two leads you were using. Let's say it is 100 ohms. Then use a resistor that is under that like a 47 ohm for instance. Then if you have a 100 ohm potentiometer it would be great. I happened to have a precision 100 ohm pot. It can be turned about 25 times around or so. Makes for a super fine adjustment. But I think just a regular pot is fine for most things.
This device is really great for estimating energy. Just remember you have to know your surface area and efficiency. For instance, if I read 500 w/m2 at a certain angle and I mount my solar panels at that angle and they are 2 meters square total, then that would be 1000 watts times my 15% efficiency, or 150 watts.

Or you could solve for efficiency in a real world example. You could also use it for solar hot air or water. You can see what difference glazing or double layer glazing makes...all before you build it.

Richard

Harness Hydro Power

Hi, everybody. Sorry that I havn't written for awhile. I started a new job and have been busy.

A friend showed me this article today and I thought I'd share with you.

http://www.motherearthnews.com/Renewable-Energy/1977-07-01/Harness-Hydro-Power-with-a-Trompe.aspx

I was thinking this could be made on a small scale as well. Like using 2 pvc pipes (12 inches in diam and 18 feet long standing straight up or partially buried). This would give about 200 gallons of air columns. The pressure would depend on the head of the incoming water. The water would be a stream and piped just like you are running micro hydro. In fact, you could run micro hydro just before the inlet. It would go into an eductor that sucks in air as water flows through it and into the piping. The water outlet could be elevated with another pipe or a automatically throttling valve could be set on the output. You could then use the water for irrigation, drinking, or direct back to the stream.

A schedule 40 pipe 12 inches in diameter can handle 79 psi and a schedule 80 can handle 137 psi.

http://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/pvc-cpvc-pipes-pressures-d_796.html

Every 32 feet of water drop should give roughly 15 psi. So, typical property wouldn't see more than 30 to 45 psi. But if you bury the pipes you could add a little to that.