Sunday 8th Feb 2009.
This week we have had 3 days of sunshine and glorious blue sky, and other days snow showers.
The media refer to this past week as the big freeze in the UK.
Southern counties have had more snow than usual that is true. But Tuesday, Wednesday and Saturday were beautiful days.
I made myself a nuisance on Tues, & Wed calling home to ask my wife to turn the fan speed up on the Solarventi controller. Saturday was such a lovely crisp bright day. I had a driveway to clear of snow, again.
Of course, such days are dry, and should be "tailor made" for the solarventi solar panel that is stuck on the side of the house. The dry air, and bright sunshine (the outside temperature rose to about 3 degrees C) caused the unit's fan to kick into action from 9am onwards, even though the sun was still low in the sky.
I monitored the humidity in the bathroom, it fell to 34%, (from a house norm of 55-60%) and the temperature in there held above 22 degrees C. (I should point out that the central heating is set at 20.) I guess that means the room was being dried effectively. Certainly all windows upstairs lost their usual inside surface moisture.
The solarventi panel and fan was working at full blast as far as I could tell. The controller was set to full fan speed. Whilst the sunshine was bright, so the unit worked, until 3pm, where the sun is too low this time of year.
The wall is South South-East facing, i.e. slightly east of due south, so it will do better in the morning, as the days get longer.
One point I should make is that the unit has produced an vague odour since installation (3 weeks ago now), but it's now diminishing. My wife describes it as smelly socks. I guess it is like a new car smell. It wears off eventually.
