listers

For practical reasons it was decided to put all of my renewable energy equipment into a purpose built, fully
insulated workshop, located about 10 metres behind the house. Internally, the 6m x 3m shed was partitioned into
two halves, the workshop and the engine shed.

This workshop includes the solar water heating panel on its roof, the battery bank, inverter and the Lister
generator sets and a small thermal water store. All of the plumbing and wiring and equipment was therefore
conveniently housed in the shed, with just two insulated heating pipes and the power cables running back to the
house to be connected up to the domestic systems.

This picture shows the flared off gas from my wood gasifier. It is intended to run
the Lister engines on a mixture of woodgas and waste vegetable oil. The gasifier
will produce a useful source of heat in its own right, which will contribute to the
household heating.

By putting all these experimental systems under the one roof in the Renewable
Energy Workshop allows them to be perfected without upsetting the normal
operation of the heating systems in the house. It also keeps the wife happier too!

Earlier in the year I had
obtained a large batch of
second hand lead acid storage
batteries. These were used as
telecom back-up batteries and
although some were over 15
years old there was still plenty
of life left in them.

The batteries are Hawker SBS
40 sealed lead acid gel
batteries rated at 38Ah. As my
inverter needed a nominal
108V dc input, the batteries
were arranged as four parallel
strings of 9 batteries.

The batteries are charged
directly from the dc generator
to a maximum voltage of 125V,
which is their ideal float
voltage.

Early discharge tests proved
that the battery bank could run
a 500W ac load from the
inverter for excess of 12 hours.
This was more than enough to
run the house through the
night.

The batteries were placed
underneath the main work
bench, a very stout timber
frame bench made from
recycled roof timbers from a
near neighbour's skip when
they were having a loft
conversion.

One of the first tasks was to
move the Lister gen-set from
its original position on what
had been the old shed base to
the new engine mount in the
engine shed.

A 1200mm wide panel was
removed between the engine
shed and the workshop to allow
the engine to be craned through
the gap.

Here my nephew has been
roped into helping. Having an
extra 70kg on the back of the
crane makes a useful
counterbalance.

Here is a front view of the
workshop showing the solar
water heating panel.

It faces approximately south
west and so gets most of the
afternoon sunshine.

The tubes are angled at 47
degrees, but ideally for this
latitude they should be about
51 degrees.

A new decked area was laid in
August giving somewhere to
sit out on warmer evenings. A
wood fired chimnea provides
a bit of extra warmth, and
easily kept stocked up with
wood salvaged from local
skips.

Here are the ready prepared
concrete bases to accept the two
Lister engines side by side. This
area is about 2100mm wide by
1500mm deep. A salvaged sheet
of plasterboard backed Kingspan,
helps insulate the area from the
outside workshop wall.

On the right hand base, the
concrete is 450mm deep and is
reinforced with some substantial
metal bars welded into a
rectangular framework.

These two areas are isolated
from the rest of the shed floor by
50mm timbers which can be
removed to improve the isolation.

Using the engine crane to take the weight and some
heavy duty piping as rollers we managed to lift the
gen-set up the step from the workshop area into the
engine shed.

Also visible in this shot are the two 2.5kW output
inverters in the tall beige cabinet on the left. This
was originally an emergency lighting system which
automatically switches over from mains power when
it fails to battery power to maintain the emergency
lights. It was salvaged from a Bingo hall in south
Wales. It contains its own battery charger - the
large transformer on the top shelf of the cabinet.
This can be connected to the grid and will allow me
too recharge from either the grid or the generators
as required.

Whilst big and bulky, it is certainly bombproof and
can keep the house power off the battery bank for
about a day.

By the window is my combined late/mill and under
the bench is the battery bank. The original 110Ah
wet lead acid batteries can be seen under the bench
in front of the lathe.

This picture shows the engine
and generators on a steel roller
having been lifted up the step.
This whole rig weighs about
550kg so it was essential to take
care to avoid accidents.

Here you can also see the
permanent magnet dc starter
generator alongside the 3kW ac
alternator.

The dc generator is used for
starting the engine and also
charging the battery bank
directly at up to 125V and 25A.

The metal baseplate is a
fabricated steel base salvaged
from an old Lister Startomatic
genset.

The 1951 gen-set was moved over so that it occupied the right hand engine bay and bolted down into the concrete using
16mm anchor bolts. A 120 litre copper cylinder was used as the local cooling tank. The engine directly thermosyphons
its coolant into this tank and the heat is removed via a separate circuit running in the indirect coil. This keeps the
engine coolant (rusty water) away from the household heating circuits. The tank will shortly be lagged to retain heat
better, and at night it will reverse thermosyphon into the engine keeping the block warm and frost free.

This picture shows some of the additional plumbing
needed to connect the solar panel and house circuits
up to the Lister coolant tank. Some of the 19mm
foam insulation had yet to be fitted.

The pipework passes through the wall from the
workshop side at ceiling height. Four pipes pass
through, a flow and return to the solar panel and a
flow and return to the house.

All of the plumbing is in 22mm PEX plastic
pipework, which will handle temperatures of 90 C
at 6 bar pressure.

Flexible pipework was used for simplicity and its
ability to withstand engine vibration.

The pipe runs can easily be modified when the 2nd
Lister genset and the wood burning boiler are added.

Just visible is the plasterboard backed Kingspan
which was used to insulate the engine shed ceiling.

Whilst the plaster board surface was a little rough
for indoors use it is fine for the shed.

The raggedy looking stuff hanging off the end of the
heat exchanger is the remains of the fibreglass
insulation, which suffered in bad weather and will
have to be redone.

A wider shot showing the heat
exchanger and its associated
plumbing.

Warmed water from the solar
heating panel enters the cold end
of the exhaust heat exchanger on
the extreme left. It emerges
about 30 degrees hotter at the
outlet (picture centre). This
water then enters the bottom
connection of th indirect
cylinder heating coil and is used
to heat the tank. The tank helps
to moderate the water
temperature acting as a heat
store and buffer. The heated
water emerges from the op of the
coil emerges at the upper
connection on the right hand side
of the tank and makes its way
through the insulated pipework
back to the house.

The Startomatic generator set
sitting on a transportation
trolley awaiting installation in
the engine shed. Behind it is the
brown coloured wood burning
boiler which will provide an
additional source of renewable
heating.

These two additional heatsources
will both thermosyphon into the
local thermal store, allowing
gravity fed operation without the
use of additional pumps. It is
essential that the wood boiler
can discharge its heat into an
adequate volume of water
without the use of a pump.

A small header tank will be used
to maintain a gravity feed to the
thermal store.

Despite of a lot of progress earlier in the Spring, the Lister gen set project had not recently had a lot of work
done - and now with the winter months approaching it was time to make some significant headway.

Building the timber-framed insulated workshop and installing the renewable energy equipment had become a
full time hobby, taking up most of my spare time in 2007.

Tim Dawson Stanley came over again from Ireland for a week in early August and between us we completed the
shed, built a 4.8m square decking area and moved some of the large equipment into position in the new
workshop.

The Lister gen set had to be re-positioned into the new engine shed and have all its plumbing attached. At the
same time the solar water heating panel was re-angled for better sunshine and connected with 22mm insulated
pipework.

Three weeks into September the engine was running in its new shed, charging the batteries and contributing heat
to my domestic hot water system so as to supplement the solar panel throughout the Autumn.

The inverter and battery system will soon be contributing power to some salvaged electric storage heaters
located in my office and the living room. This will accumulate heat energy during the day whilst the Lister is
running and release it slowly during the evening when it is most needed.

With waste vegetable oil available as a low cost fuel it makes financial sense to use the Lister generated
electricity for the localised heating of the occupied rooms. This will help offset the gas that would otherwise be
used for the central heating, and also helps to keep the Lister engine and inverter running at full load where they
are most efficient. Expected veg oil consumption in this mode will be about 10 litres per day, with the engine
running for 5 or 6 hours in the morning.

The final task will be to alter the house heating system so that the heat from the Lister can make a contribution
to the central heating and underfloor heating loops.