and yes I was standing in the Straits to take this image of Plas Newydd

Been a busy few days with PV but the marine source heat pump is still on the radar. Because of it potentially being one of the first large-scale closed loop systems in the UK means as the old Welsh adage goes ‘measure a hundred times cut only once’ Working with pipe suppliers, engineers and the Seacams project team from Bangor University we are all fully into the research aspect. We had a meeting yesterday on site to scope the marine collector. From the first calculations it looks like we need quite a few kilometers of marine collector. But how to configure the collector, whats are the risks and how do we build it?

It was a good low tide. we will probably follow this pipe down from the boiler house for any potential collector pipe

do we

lay a long length of pipe up and down a shelf near the main navigable channel in the Straits, or a 100 to 500m coils on metal sleds. Coils in pipes, coils on flexible concrete mats.

We need to test each system. The University are undertaking pipe test in the next few weeks to see what if anything will grow on the inert pipe and to see if this will affect both its efficiency but also its long-term serviceability

the land bit looks fairly straight forward but we need to research the marine aspect quite a bit more. The University team were out today taking penetrative sonar readings of the sea bed near the mansion to see what we are dealing with in detail. They are also waiting for the water to clear up a bit to video survey the bed.

p.s. it was a gorgeous day. One of those “I am glad I do the work I do!”

The sea wall is listed as well as well as the mansion - you can see why!. Being maintained at the moment