While this blog post is not technically directly related to beekeeping we intend to keep it here for "our reference", in our defence however the heating and or cooling out of those experiments and applications may be used to either help cool down or heat up hives in winter and we will ensure to keep you updated on the beekeeping application side for sure too.
This is a post about a few experiments we are running in Gingin Western Australia.
We are generating our own data surrounding the storage of heat in black IBC and other means, in order to potentially utilize the heating and or cooling effect of some of the experiments conducted and or combining some ideas. All data is attached to the blog post, so it can be used for the wider "scientific" audience. It seems its hard to get real life data online these days, hence we are uploading our data freely available here for people to use and study.
The temperature probe we had been using for all experiments is the following found at JayCar: USB Temperature/Humidity Datalogger with LCD | Jaycar Electronics
We basically stuck it into the IBC and made it float by attaching it to a rock and having it float about within the middle of the IBC submerged by about 30-40cm worth of water while the IBC is filled up to the top. The IBC had been painted black or at least of the paint that remained on the IBC after a few month, this side of the picture probably being the worst chipping of the paint from the IBC overall.
Sensor being placed in a little bottle, and tied to the stone pulling it to the ground and making it float about half way in the IBC submerged by water.
Temp Data Graph:
The rise and fall of thermal energy within an IBC on a fairly warm day (16.10.2023):
