Tower Of Power
It was all my fault for not properly tightening the coolant cap in my van. Some evaporated coolant later, and the excess heat resulted in a warped head. It didn't make much sense to spend a lot of money to fix the issue when the van was worth maybe a grand. So the van was donated to a non-profit.
Prior to saying goodbye to the van, the secondary power system was removed. Since I didn't want to let the hardware collect dust, I decided to set up the hardware as a solar charged system that could run power tools in my shop. Although the system originally had a 400 watt inverter, by the time it was removed from the van, the inverter had been updated to a 1000 watt model.
After the sweet joy of the dog house, making another pyramid thingy was certainly on my mind, and I had a spare insulation panel sitting in the shop.
And thus was born the Tower of Power
4'x8' panel of rigid insulation
chop chop chop some pieces
The tower assembled
Mounting bracket for the inverter
hole for the mounting bracket and inverter
Woo wee, look at that sweet cutting tool. Years ago, my brother gave me the knife as a gift. I smashed off the plastic handle and
made a new handle with a piece of black locust wood.
Mounting bracket in place
Inverter mounted to the bracket
A second smaller mount was created for a 12 volt adapter.
The charging and storage
The tower containing the inverter and 12 volt port will sit over this pile of stuff.
Tower in place, and powered up
Tower of power can run the shop lights
Soldering a lamp for the 12 volt port
yea, it's a Hella brand light. It is a hella Hella.
Yup, that's bright
Sadly, Tower of Power can not run my little coffee maker :(
Oh, there is some snow on the tower
... but it can run the band saw
Making some buttons
Paint it green-ish
After painting the tower greenish, I started to notice that the tower was getting peeled apart by something ...
If it is green, the sheep will nibble on it
It has been some time since these pics were taken. In that time, the solar panel has been replaced with a 100 watt panel… and the tower has been removed. As much as I loved the Tower of Power, there was a problem with portability. There were simply too many pieces to disassemble and reassemble when I wanted to move the power location to somewhere more convenient.
cheers,
jezra