I haven't posted in a long time partially because I've been frustrated at the lack of progress. I can now tell you that after this weekend there should be something to look at... and keep the snow off of our cars.
On Thursday a delivery is scheduled for the lumber for the walls and sheathing. The roof trusses should be coming Friday. Since it is a nice square building, I am going to attempt to build the four walls completely on the ground and then tip them up into position. Since I have the "new" work van (8'2" tall Dodge Sprinter) I am putting up 10' walls and squeezing in a 9' high door. I've done a little playing with the shadows on Sketchup and I don't think the added height will adversely affect the passive solar at all. The only real effect I see is that instead of the majority of the solar radiation concentrating on one side, it will be more toward the center of the slab. I should still be able to test my theories of spreading out the heat within the slab to increase the delta T... More on that after I actually have some windows collecting that energy. On to more important business:
Who wants to help with the construction? I could probably use a couple more bodies (prefer construction experience? heh.) The roofing part might be exciting; There is a chance of snow over the weekend. Bring the ol' toboggan. Seriously, let me know of anyone might want to help.
... so excited for some big progress!
Tuesday, December 7, 2010
Monday, July 26, 2010
Garage Back to the beginning
OK. John was my first "follower" and he requested some Sketchup renders so this post is for you. First, I must introduce those of you who don't know Sketchup... people meet Google's Sketchup; Sketchup, meet your new fans. If you have never played with it, Google's Sketchup is a free, fun, addictive, and USEFUL tool. It can do a wide variety of 3d modeling. Try it and send me your results!
This is a rough sketch of what I'm planning for the garage. The bank of windows faces south. You can see on the floor the shadows that Sketchup rendered according to late morning sun in late December. In the middle of the hot summer there is only a small sliver of direct sun that reaches the floor/slab. The southeast corner has a staircase that goes up to the room in the attic. I initially had many more complex ideas, but have been forced to simplify to maintain a reasonable budget.
Following are two different screen captures from an earlier unfinished version of this file. In it I was trying out different window placement and the affect that had on the solar exposure of the slab. The first pic shows a render of a mid-summer day and the second shows the same design/structure in the dead of winter.
This is a great example of how some new tools/technology can be of significant service to design and planning.
In the next post I think we'll talk a little about the temp sensors and the plan for that.
This is a rough sketch of what I'm planning for the garage. The bank of windows faces south. You can see on the floor the shadows that Sketchup rendered according to late morning sun in late December. In the middle of the hot summer there is only a small sliver of direct sun that reaches the floor/slab. The southeast corner has a staircase that goes up to the room in the attic. I initially had many more complex ideas, but have been forced to simplify to maintain a reasonable budget.
Following are two different screen captures from an earlier unfinished version of this file. In it I was trying out different window placement and the affect that had on the solar exposure of the slab. The first pic shows a render of a mid-summer day and the second shows the same design/structure in the dead of winter.
In the next post I think we'll talk a little about the temp sensors and the plan for that.
Tuesday, July 20, 2010
Garage - The Pour, Fist Pump
I am jazzed. I woke this morning to the sound of re-rod banging around in the yard. It really was going to be pour-day! I threw on whatever was laying around (now that I think about it, I'm fortunate it wasn't a night-gown!) and went out to see how they were doing. Last night I had finished putting the manifold on the pex loops.
Things were starting to take shape. I could picture some heat flowin' around this winter. You can see the manifold here. It is a Watts Flowmaster purchased from our local big box store. I could only find the stainless steel manifolds on the Watts Canada site... ? It seemed rather pricey when I bought it (the hardware shown here cost more than the 600 lin. ft. of tubing), but it worked like a charm, went together easily, and is Stainless Steel. Dad would be proud. Boy did he ever love stainless steel. After I finished plumbing it in I gave the system a test with pressure guage/Schroeder valve assembly. *Note - do not use a hand/foot bicycle pump. There is way too much volume in 600 feet of tubes. I should have gotten out my real air pump but...* I pumped it up to 10psi. I know that isn't very high for a pressure test, but it was getting late and my arms might have fallen off if I had kept pumping. The first thing I did this morning was to check the pressure. It was 11psi! I was surprised at the effect of the early morning sun on the pressurized system. (or did one of you come and pump it up to confuse me?)
The three-man crew had the pour done in no time, but spent the rest of the morning working the concrete to put a nice finish on it. I was impressed by the amount of time they spent carefully troweling around the anchor bolts and floor drain. It was a fine job. I didn't realize they were going to, but before they left they sprayed a waterproof coating on the surface to seal in/out? moisture and slow the cure.
Early this evening it rained the proverbial cats and dogs. The deluge rolled right down the drain where it belonged. I was especially interested to see if there be any low spots where water will collect and was impressed to find almost none! Good job, Doug! As soon as I got home from my job this evening I couldn't resist walking on the slab. Right away I noticed; it was HOT. I know that concrete curing is an exothermic reaction but I didn't expect it to be so warm. I could not resist the allure of the blue cat5e wire from the temperature sensors I had wired up sticking out of the slab. I HAD to plug it in!
I pulled up the little example Java applet that Maxim Semiconductor supplies on their site and plugged in the USB adapter to my notebook. It worked! This is where the fist pump and "woo hoo" comes in. (I'm probably making the neighbors nervous about living next to a guy who goes out just after a big rain, plugs his notebook computer into his new garage slab and then cheers crazily as he stares at the screen.) Remember I said it was hot? Well take a look...
Yes, that says 115.7 degrees F. This is at 8:26PM, after a hard rain, and with ambient temperatures in the upper 60's. Exothermic reaction indeed! Another interesting observation was that the pressure in the system had risen 25%! to 12.5psi.
That was a fun day.
I had barely strung out the pre-wired set of temp. sensors before I heard the rumble of the mixer truck. It sure was fun to see someone else working on my project for a change!
Early this evening it rained the proverbial cats and dogs. The deluge rolled right down the drain where it belonged. I was especially interested to see if there be any low spots where water will collect and was impressed to find almost none! Good job, Doug! As soon as I got home from my job this evening I couldn't resist walking on the slab. Right away I noticed; it was HOT. I know that concrete curing is an exothermic reaction but I didn't expect it to be so warm. I could not resist the allure of the blue cat5e wire from the temperature sensors I had wired up sticking out of the slab. I HAD to plug it in!
That was a fun day.
Friday, July 16, 2010
I talked to Doug
This morning I talked to Doug, the concrete guy. He excavated the site a WHILE back and we've been waiting and waiting for the weather and for me to get the insulation down and Pex tubes in place. Everyone is getting a little antsy and we've finally got a date locked in. This coming Monday AM *Cheers all around!* a big truck with a bunch of concrete is going to come and probably crush my poor thin asphalt driveway but the garage will have its slab!
I am sorry now that I didn't start this blog when I actually started the project. I will give a brief synopsis of where the project is at and then in some future posts I will go back over some of the details and decisions that have been made.
Right now there is an excavated and formed-up site waiting for concrete. We're doing slab-on-grade over frost-wall to save money, but we are insulating the slab and Doug had the bright idea of setting the forms 4" larger than the slab so I can just insulate the whole thing before the pour. (Sounds like a good idea but I'm not sure of the time savings over insulating after the forms come off.) So we have 2" of high-density polysyrene inside the forms. I did put a floor drain in also that will just drain some of the winter slop outside to the back yard. The only thing noteworthy about that is that I did put a P-trap below the drain. My thought was that I didn't want a 3" pipe wide open for the wind to blow it's gnarly self in to cool off our nice warm garage.
Stapled directly to the foam is just under 600 Lin.Ft. of 1/2" oxygen-barrier pex tubing in three separate loops. I'll definitely have a separate post about that seeing as that is one of the key components of the project. I'll be hooking up a pressure gauge before the pour to ensure the integrity of the loops during the pour. Doug will be installing re-rod in the "grade beam" around the edge and in a grid 4' on center throughout the slab. After he "rods" it I will zip-tie my sensors to the re-rod. (Obviously I have to have separate post/s about the sensors.) Let the pour then commence!
That's where we're at. More soon!
Buenos noches!
I am sorry now that I didn't start this blog when I actually started the project. I will give a brief synopsis of where the project is at and then in some future posts I will go back over some of the details and decisions that have been made.
Right now there is an excavated and formed-up site waiting for concrete. We're doing slab-on-grade over frost-wall to save money, but we are insulating the slab and Doug had the bright idea of setting the forms 4" larger than the slab so I can just insulate the whole thing before the pour. (Sounds like a good idea but I'm not sure of the time savings over insulating after the forms come off.) So we have 2" of high-density polysyrene inside the forms. I did put a floor drain in also that will just drain some of the winter slop outside to the back yard. The only thing noteworthy about that is that I did put a P-trap below the drain. My thought was that I didn't want a 3" pipe wide open for the wind to blow it's gnarly self in to cool off our nice warm garage.
Stapled directly to the foam is just under 600 Lin.Ft. of 1/2" oxygen-barrier pex tubing in three separate loops. I'll definitely have a separate post about that seeing as that is one of the key components of the project. I'll be hooking up a pressure gauge before the pour to ensure the integrity of the loops during the pour. Doug will be installing re-rod in the "grade beam" around the edge and in a grid 4' on center throughout the slab. After he "rods" it I will zip-tie my sensors to the re-rod. (Obviously I have to have separate post/s about the sensors.) Let the pour then commence!
That's where we're at. More soon!
Buenos noches!
Thursday, July 15, 2010
Hello, the Garage
Here is the first project. It also happens to be the impetus for my starting this blog.
I decided to build a garage. We would like a garage. We could get by without a garage and actually have done so successfully for about 8 years so far, however, I came up with enough reasons to justify the large capital investment (not to mention the innumerable labor hours I would invest). I thought about listing a few of the reasons, but good grief, we live in Wisconsin... we want a garage!
Because I have had an interest in renewable energy since I was a little boy reading through old copies of Mother Earth News, and because I can't bear to "leave well-enough alone", the garage is going to be a test bed for passive and active solar climate control. Here at the beginning I'll state the goal. We will build a two car garage with workroom/storage on a second level and it will be heated only by the heat of the sun. For many years I have admired the simple elegance of using the sun's energy to passively heat a structure. I also admire well built and cleverly designed mechanical things. In this project I will attempt to balance the two approaches. The method will be to build with a very modest budget, using traditional building methods (we'll talk about why in a later post),with a hearty nod toward low maintenance and simple systems.
Another inescapable thought I had early in the planning/thinking stage was Quantification! It seems that much of the solar field is grounded on anecdotal, subjective information. I want to be able to point to numbers and say to a doubter, "The system performed exactly this well in these certain circumstances." I also think it would be a great benefit to be able to point to a certain feature or system component and be able to say exactly how much improvement was gained for what cost.
After hours of searching on the internet and asking multiple people in the solar industry I realized there is a conspicuous lack of systems for quantifying the information I'm looking for. I did find a vibrant but tiny community of hackers/developers in the niches of weather stations and home automation. Weather stations are really good at quantifying the same sort of data that I need to collect and the home automation people have the numbers of sensors that I want to incorporate. I tend to over-research things and since I am interested in having a garage to park the snow blower in and work on my vintage motorcycles during the winter months, I committed to a hardware platform and proceeded.
Maxim Semiconductor's 1-Wire line of products wooed me with their simple data bus, range of sensors available and the relatively low cost of the sensors. I found a curious range of users of the 1-Wire products: from enterprise class fulfillment corporations datalogging the temperature of a pallet of product to home-brew beer guys wanting to know exactly what temp the wort is before they pitch the yeast. For my purposes, the relatively low cost of a few dollars per sensor will let me embed a number of sensors in the concrete, include ambient air temps in and out of the structure and measure insolation ("quantity" of sunlight).
I could go on and on but I think I may have already put a little too much detail into my introduction. In future posts I will go into specific practical processes, unresolved problems, and future experimental goals. I am hoping to include some slick interactive technology in the near future but that for the moment is under the "unresolved problems" category. I look forward to communicating and interacting with you as the project unfolds. Thanks for joining me here.
~swd
I decided to build a garage. We would like a garage. We could get by without a garage and actually have done so successfully for about 8 years so far, however, I came up with enough reasons to justify the large capital investment (not to mention the innumerable labor hours I would invest). I thought about listing a few of the reasons, but good grief, we live in Wisconsin... we want a garage!
Because I have had an interest in renewable energy since I was a little boy reading through old copies of Mother Earth News, and because I can't bear to "leave well-enough alone", the garage is going to be a test bed for passive and active solar climate control. Here at the beginning I'll state the goal. We will build a two car garage with workroom/storage on a second level and it will be heated only by the heat of the sun. For many years I have admired the simple elegance of using the sun's energy to passively heat a structure. I also admire well built and cleverly designed mechanical things. In this project I will attempt to balance the two approaches. The method will be to build with a very modest budget, using traditional building methods (we'll talk about why in a later post),with a hearty nod toward low maintenance and simple systems.
Another inescapable thought I had early in the planning/thinking stage was Quantification! It seems that much of the solar field is grounded on anecdotal, subjective information. I want to be able to point to numbers and say to a doubter, "The system performed exactly this well in these certain circumstances." I also think it would be a great benefit to be able to point to a certain feature or system component and be able to say exactly how much improvement was gained for what cost.
After hours of searching on the internet and asking multiple people in the solar industry I realized there is a conspicuous lack of systems for quantifying the information I'm looking for. I did find a vibrant but tiny community of hackers/developers in the niches of weather stations and home automation. Weather stations are really good at quantifying the same sort of data that I need to collect and the home automation people have the numbers of sensors that I want to incorporate. I tend to over-research things and since I am interested in having a garage to park the snow blower in and work on my vintage motorcycles during the winter months, I committed to a hardware platform and proceeded.
Maxim Semiconductor's 1-Wire line of products wooed me with their simple data bus, range of sensors available and the relatively low cost of the sensors. I found a curious range of users of the 1-Wire products: from enterprise class fulfillment corporations datalogging the temperature of a pallet of product to home-brew beer guys wanting to know exactly what temp the wort is before they pitch the yeast. For my purposes, the relatively low cost of a few dollars per sensor will let me embed a number of sensors in the concrete, include ambient air temps in and out of the structure and measure insolation ("quantity" of sunlight).
I could go on and on but I think I may have already put a little too much detail into my introduction. In future posts I will go into specific practical processes, unresolved problems, and future experimental goals. I am hoping to include some slick interactive technology in the near future but that for the moment is under the "unresolved problems" category. I look forward to communicating and interacting with you as the project unfolds. Thanks for joining me here.
~swd
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)