Waeco mon cul... ingenuity saves the day

We've had a long period of hot, dry weather late summer/early autumn, and it was getting decidedly warm in my wine cellar: around 24C, perhaps .5C more...

So, I reflected on past plans that had me buy a Waeco Cu-96 compressor cool machine and the appropriate VD-14 cooling unit - and expense, 10+ years ago, that has Bianca question my judgement even today.

Nuff said: I decided on the spur of the moment to install the gear, seeing it was too hot (31+ C outside) to work outside...

So yesterday I made the preliminary moves, drilling holes into the soft Hebel aeroclaved concrete blocks for fixing the compressor, as well as a 3.5 cm diameter hole through the wall to route the copper coils from the absorber to the compressor.

This simple-sounding exercise required considerable ingenuity on my part, seeing that the carbide cutting circle went in only about 4 cm before I had to manually chip out the centre of the block and, putting the cutter on to an old drill brace which would allow me to push the whole caboodle into the hole - you get the idea. Of course I had to complete the work by repeating the exercise from the inside of the wine cellar, but I got there in the end.

That was yesterday. Today I started working out ways to fix the absorber unit to the wall, high up in the cellar - and saw at once that Waeco deserved to go out of business pronto on account of the stupid way the absorber was put together: you could not simply unscrew the back plate and fix that to the wall, then complete the job by attaching the unit back to the rear plate.

So, I first used red road-marking spray to coat the rear grommets on the back plate, then press the entire unit to the wall in the desired position, then drill holes so marked on the wall, then use plastic dowels in the holes, then saw the heads off four stainless steel bolts of a suitable diameter by hand, then screw these into the dowels and affix the entire absorber to the protruding bolts so it remains in position.

Tomorrow I only need to: push the copper coils from the absober through the wall hole to connect them up to the compressor unit, and then complete the electrical installation by connecting thecombo's control unit two my twin sealed batteries that are fed from two 250W solar panels on the carport annexe. ATM the set-up provides DC to a couple of brilliant Sundaya lights in the wine cellar and over a degustation table in the shed itself, both separately fed from the two batteries and separately switched.

Piece of cake, considering the contortions I've had to go through to get there! Thanks for nothing Waeco. Mend your ways...