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hotter than the unpainted metal
Thursday, September 15 2005
I did some more soldering on the solar panel today, trying to do something about all the places where the pipe doesn't quite touch the corrugated sheet metal. Ideally, I'd flow solder into all such gaps, but it takes a lot of solder. Also, I keep having to drain the panel before soldering it, but inevitably there are puddles of water here and there in those pipes thwarting my soldering attempts.
When I finally ran out of solder after blowing through two whole coils, I decided I'd done enough, so I thoroughly scrubbed the panel down and hosed it off, dried it, and then spray painted some of it black. During the twenty minutes of sunlight remaining, I was delighted to find that the parts of the panel I'd painted were much hotter than the unpainted metal.
The sunlight ended due to a downpour. I retreated indoors and spent much of the rest of the afternoon and evening working on things that will allow my laboratory to pass an electrical inspection. I'd installed some dubious electrical things back when I assumed it would never be inspected, but now The Man has found me. Still, it's something of a "fact on the ground" and there's a limit to how many changes can be demanded; we could always claim such changes are too onerous and we're "abandoning" it. The only change I'm really worried about at this point is one demanding wall outlets every six feet, which, if they applied to the pitched wall-ceilings of its longest walls, would be an absurdity. But based on my experience with this nonsense so far, I'm expecting absurdity at every juncture until our relationship with clipboard toters finally comes to a merciful end.
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