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Well things are finally slower and I thought I would give a little update on this project. The garage door opener didn't work. The motor is not rated for continuous use and would quickly overheat if I ran the motor constantly. I then bought an old electric motor from the local antique dealer, and attached that to the gearbox of the garage door opener. This worked well for a while, but the plastic gears from the garage door opener eventually gave out, and I was once again in need of a new fix. I went back to the same antique dealer as before I had eyed up what looked like a worm gear. I once again remade the mounting brackets for the motor/gearbox, covered it all with a bucket and it worked beautifully, this fall we washed a several thousand pounds of carrots, beets, parsnips, potatoes, turnips and rutabagas. I have a bunch of pics I will use to document this build as time permits.
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Hey Joel, thanks for your interest in this, you have to remember that 08/21/13 is a busy time for farmers in the north, I was hoping for some feedback on the design before I started cutting and welding. Something like the gears on a garage door opener will never hold up or garage door openers aren't suitable for continuous use (see post below).
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Ok, I am not sure which part you hope will be simple, lets focus on the toaster oven because that will take the most electricity. You have to know how much power you are going to need. An average toaster oven uses 750-1100 watts. So you will need an inverter that can handle that large of a load, lets call it 1000 watts. Next is the battery, an average car battery doesn't like to be drained and recharged all the time. You need to look to a deep cycle or marine battery. A good deep cycle battery is rated for about 100 amp-hours (that means it can do 1 amp for 100 hours or 100 amps for one hour). We also know that Watts=volts x amps, so 100 amp-hours at 12 volts is going to give you 1200 watts-hours. So a good battery will only run that toaster oven for about an hour. So you need to know how many minutes to toast the cheese crisp and how many you want to sell in a day. So what if it is also hooked to a solar panel? well the solar panel will be rated in watts, and you need something to charge the batter equal to the amount of watts you are using. This is likely going to be a big panel, or take a lot of lot of time. Finally, I would recommend a fossil fuel. Propane, is the most efficient...find a way to make the cheese crisps with propane and just run lights (LEDs) and music with the battery and solar panel. I hope this helps. I am not an expert, but my dad is and a bit has rubbed off on me. Jenna
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Ok, so if anyone is following this I finally got it all hooked up and tested today and it works!!! I tested it out by filling a 20L bucket at one spray station with and without the pump, and the filling 2 buckets simultaneously at 2 spray stations. See attached graphic. I was able to fill one bucket 35% faster with the pumping setup than before and 2 buckets 45% faster. I was even able to fill 2 buckets with the pump faster than 1 bucket without the pump. I did, however, go a bit over my budget. $230 - 3/4hp Shallow Well Jet Pump $140 - 250 gallon water tank $30 - electric float switch $145 - all the plumbing filltings I hope this helps someone. I have a third spray station roughed in, but haven't set it up yet. If anyone is curious you can see some pics of the building of the wash station on our facebook page https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.458199554207665.117200.393205067373781&type=3 Jenna