Newsletter Archive

Solar Cooking

Speaking of spring, Peter baked some bread last week using our dish cooker and a camp oven. The temperature reached 300°C ! He has also written a new solar cooking article using Thermal Cookware.

To celebrate our 100th edition, we are offering a 15% discount off our retail price of our solar cookers for the month of September!

Solar Pumping

With a dry el nino spring in the air, there is growing interest in solar pumping. See our range of solar pumps.

101 Uses for a Sundaya Solar Lighting Kit

We started this article last newsletter - Ben Golebiowski has sent us a couple more suggestions regarding a LAN/Wireless internet base station and also a power-out back-up for red vision lighting, electronic door locks and other security equipment.

LED Lighting

We still believe the 3W Sundaya compact fluoro (CFL) (SUN-LT 303) is the most efficient low wattage 12V light available, however due to popular request we have restocked our LED in a Dichroic MR 16 fitting (LED-004). In a couple of months we will also stock a Sundaya LED light in an ES17 fitting.

24V Fluoros

In a few days we will receive some 24 Volt CFL´s in 15, 23 and 30W sizes. These lights will have a BC fitting and are a cool 6400K temperature. In a couple months we will have 6 & 9W warm colour lights from Sundaya in an ES17 fitting.

RPC Favicon

If you bookmark our website, you should now get a rainbow coloured icon to help identify it. Internet Explorer loses its Favicon if you clear your internet cache history. The new Internet Explorer V7 will refresh it if you revisit the site. The best way to recover your Favicons is to use a small free program called AM - Dead links, it recovers all the Favicons in one quick hit, or use Firefox for your Internet browser.

Incubating Chicken Eggs

We have recently asked about a 12V egg incubator. We have sourced one which will do 18 hen, 27 pheasant, 12 duck/turkey, 9 geese or 60 quail eggs. The incubator has a clear Perspex cover which makes it great for students wanting to observe the events inside! However to retain the heat and save power, particularly at night, it is suggested that the top can be covered with a blanket or towel. The eggs would need turning by hand twice daily. The incubator costs AUD $250. It has a 50W element which is controlled by a thermostat. At 25 - 30C ambient the daily cycle would be about 50%. This would add up to about 600 watt hours per 24 hour period. As a ball park figure, you would need about two 85 watt panels to run the incubator continually around an area such a Brisbane.