HEX2 construction: Days 4 and 5

Day 4 of the HEX2 installation started with the uncoiling and joining of the 600 feet of 2-inch tubing. Once completed, we were able to get water flowing down it as it lay along the channel. We waited until the next day to move it over to the heat exchanger site.

Alex also donned a pair of chest waders and plumbed the depths of the big 25C pool. It's deeper than we thought! Deeper than he could go anyway. That's good for us: plenty of volume is great for the heat exchangers.

Other activities on Day 4 included placing the spiral heat exchanger in the 50C hot pot and prepping the other two heat exchangers for deployment (or, more appropriately, LAUNCH).

Day 5 began with a slight delay, as the water in the 2-inch tubing had frozen (it has been unseasonably cold in Iceland this spring). Once flowing again, we moved the tubing over to the site. We had running water - a major milestone.

All that remained was to launch the straight heat exchangers and connect up the rest of the tubing and valves.

We turned the valve on the 2-inch feed and found we had hot and cold running water! It was time to celebrate with the customary can of Gull.

We ended the day by tweaking the valves to manipulate temperature in the five outflows. Before too long we had buckets at around 6C (ambient), 11C, 16C, 21C, and 25C. Not bad, but we can do better. In fact, we're headed up there now to play around with it some more. Everything downstream of our work (header tanks, channels) is being done by the Montana State crew (gulp...), who arrive soon. Watch this space as the whole channel set-up is completed and the experiment begins on June 1.