Start a blog, they said...it'll be easy, they said. Famous last words. (Early P.S. Once again, I'm not going to try too hard at listing dates with tasks, because I do too many things at once to clearly define the end of one thing and the beginning of another.)
Okay, my apologies once again. I admit, it really is much simpler to edit and add to a blog than to keep up a website, which was my original endeavor. It's also easy to breeze through the door of the gym 3 times a week, take out the garbage, do laundry, etc., etc., and we ALL know how those go. So yeah, there's my 'excuse', and I really should stop apologizing, because the 5 people who follow this blog haven't made any formal complaints.
The truth of the matter is that things are progressing, but not at lightning speeds. Some parts of the project, especially high-profile (easily viewed) tasks *seem* to move along faster than others, that may be far more important. In-floor heat, for example. That component of the home was embedded in the concrete slab in 2004, and even set up and filled with an anti-freeze solution that same year to test the pumping and manifold. However, if there's no house to heat, why bother with the heat, right? THEN, when there is a house to heat (13 years later), you start to think about it all over again. Wind power is yet another lofty goal of this project, that has finally come within a few small chores of being a reality - but took a lot of research, A LOT of prep work and more than a little money to get going. Good news though - both those things, as well as a couple others - are well under way, and I have some good pictures!
So, major accomplishments since last time I posted (pictures and explanations below):
- Soffit, fascia and gutters, 75% complete
- (Taj Mahal bathroom peak remains)
- T&G paneling is approx. 80% completed
- (all the way up that tall, vaulted ceiling)
- "Poor man's (geothermal) A/C" ductwork
- (95% installed, just finish work remains)
- Wind turbine/tower is up
- (turbine not yet running)
- Wood boiler for in-floor heat acquired
- (installation in progress)
- Every man's dream (outbuilding) is up!
- (dirt-moving work remains, but building is done)
Soffit, fascia and gutters:
I have wanted gutters for a long time now, both to catch rain water, and to direct the water flow off my ridiculously steep roof pitch. The water in the back flowed right through the earth berm to the buried block wall, partly because of the horrible job my concrete guy did with the drain tile back in 2004 - I'll be updating the draining soon, too. Well, before you can put up gutters, you have to fascia - and before fascia, you have to have soffits. As with most of these other construction tasks, I've never cut or installed soffits, fascia or gutters before, so I had to learn it all first. Luckily for me, none of those things are rocket science, but there are a couple rules of thumb I needed to learn (the hard way) to avoid it looking like someone stuffed a bunch of crushed pop cans into my eaves. I don't think it turned out too bad, and soon I hope to complete it so I never have to hear the whine of a saw against aluminum sheet ever again.
Worst fascia and gutter pictures ever, I know, but I couldn't find better ones at the moment. A couple notes about the gutters: They definitely keep the rain from seeping under my garage doors. I had them professionally installed, because I had tried it myself with cheapo gutters from Menards, and aside from the low quality, the installation didn't go all that well. One plus, however, is that with just one gutter running along the front of the house, I was able to collect 275 gallons of rainwater in just a few hours of steady (not heavy) rain. If I had more tanks, it would have been an easy 1000 gallon day, just from the front. I don't believe I'll have to dig a well on this property for domestic water.
T&G paneling continuation:
I posted pictures of a good bit of the completed paneling in an earlier entry, but once I finished the vaulted ceilings, it really started to look like a home, rather than a converted barn or something. It wasn't terribly complicated to "cirque du soleil" up to the peak, but it was definitely a process. A lot of ladder moving and bracing, and a lot of angle cutting for the herringbone effect. Speaking of which, that herringbone was a must-have, after looking for far too long at the horizontal walls of the loft rooms and the entry and kitchen walls. Something had to break up the monotony! The first picture is one of the naked walls that needed paneling, to remind you of the pitch and height.
Note: Areas remaining to be paneled are the lower areas in the loft rooms and on the main floor. I'm working on a design to make that lower section into cupboard-type storage and/or maybe just shelving for books or that sort of thing, depending on the room I'm finishing. More on that in another entry.
"Poor man's" geothermal A/C ductwork:
Quick refresher: geothermal heating and a/c are systems that source their heating or cooling from the earth. Just 6' underground, the temperature maintains a steady 55 degrees F. in Minnesota. The elaborate, professionally installed systems usually involve a network of tubing underground to circulate fluid up to your furnace/ac elements. This provides all or part of the heating or cooling necessary for your home without [as much] electricity or gas to perform that function.
My "poor man's" system is only intended to help cool the house, and it's far simpler than the description above. I read about this simplified system in a fun, rural magazine called "Farm Show". I just buried a 6" corrugated plastic hose about 10' down, and ran it for 100' into my garage. From there I attached a squirrel-cage fan to blow the air up to the peak of the house. Because the air passes through that 100' of lower-temp earth, it obviously cools down before reaching the house. In my setup, it cools down for another 25' in my earth-bermed garage before getting to the fan. All that was left to do was install ductwork to distribute the cooled air across the house. Cooled air naturally drops, and in the case of my house, it's assisted by the ceiling fans. As it sits now, I have the squirrel-cage fan plugged in to the house electricity like any other appliance. At some point I think it would be interesting to experiment with a temperature-controlled switch connected directly to its own solar panel. Anyway, all that's left to do is connected the finish work to these ducts to dissipate the cooled air a little, and I can't do that until I put up the ceiling panels.
Wind Turbine!
Okay, this was a process. As you may have read before, I had to wait a year and a half to get a permit for this project. The reason for the long wait is that I had to get the permit requirements updated in my county, because they had a very elaborate, expensive set of requirements. Their requirements were based on those huge, wind farm turbines that you usually see out in the country. I scheduled a slot in the agenda at a county board meeting, and brought along my (first) turbine, which I could carry in by hand. They all agreed with me that the changes were appropriate, and even asked for my opinion on the new requirements. Those new requirements allowed for a larger capacity turbine than the first one I bought (450w), so I decided to maximize my generating capacity for the house and buy another one (1000w). I'll kept the 450w unit to use for a smaller solar/wind system I intended to put in my outbuilding, once it was built.
But that's not all of the process. You need a tower. That tower needs a concrete footing and guy wires. Those guy wires need their own footings. All the footings need holes dug or augered for the concrete. There are electrical wires to route, a crane to hire to lift the tower up, and then the real fun starts...
So, as it turns out, a tower intended for a ham radio or TV antenna might not be entirely suited for a 1 kilowatt wind generator with a 6' blade path. Adding a 2" galvanized pipe for the main turbine support would seem to be enough, but again, you don't necessarily know that until you experience the wind speeds 60' in the air. The first thing I did was to design, and install the support structure pictured below for
the 4' of 2" pipe, which seemed to be flexing in the wind, and getting
the entire tower to do a hula dance. If I'd left it alone, it may have
shaken the tower apart eventually.
My buddy and partner on many design/build projects, Dan Post (Precision Machine and Mfg, Princeton, MN) fabricated this system from my design. It was designed to clamshell over the existing 2" pipe, so I wouldn't have to lower and dismantle the entire tower - which would have been VERY expensive and VERY time consuming. The feet at the bottom rest on the top of the 3 legs of the tower to mitigate any flex left in the pole. The adjusting screws at the top are an extra support bracing of the tower hub itself. This can be better seen in the excellent 60' high selfie!
Even with my excellent rocket-looking support brace, the setup wasn't 100% suited for the wind this high up. I have the turbine tied off right now, with the intention of fabricating a support around the top of the tower (where the feet are resting), because they stamped sheet metal top is too weak to handle the sway. I'll either make a solid triangle plate that slips around the pipe and up into the position that the sheet metal currently occupies, or I'll make 3 angle iron brace bars that 'surround' the triangle, securing the legs as needed. Who knows, I may make both, just to be thorough. Oh, and for all those faint of heart...I do take some precautions when climbing that precarious tower. In the 60' selfie, I had on a hunting safety harness, but decided this construction type would make me (and others) feel a little better.
Below you see the lengths I had to go to for the poured cement footings. It was too muddy for a Knife River truck to come deliver the concrete, as well as expensive with the 'minimum load charge', so I just took my beast of a truck and picked up a couple barrels. VOILA!
Wood Boiler:
I decided on an indoor wood boiler, rather than the very popular outdoor ones people seem to like so much. My logic is 2-fold: First, you're capturing heat from the wood burning that would otherwise just go up into the air. Second, the installation of my indoor boiler is going to be significantly simpler and less expensive than the outdoor boilers, where you have to dig a big trench for the fluid tubing, and insulate it very well to keep the ground temp from cooling it down. At this time I have all the necessary chimney equipment I need, and approval from the inspector on the location and setup. I even have the hole hammered through the block wall in the back of my garage - I just haven't finished the installation yet. Of course, now it's summer, and the only reason it remains on my mind is because it's a mess, and I have to pass that mess every time I go upstairs. We'll call that motivation, so I'll get to that after some important 'outdoor weather' things I need to finish up. The setup is pretty simple: You burn wood in the specially designed boiler, which has water jackets all around the heat chamber. The heated water gets pumped into a holding tank and distributed into the floor from the tanks with another circulating pump. You can also send the heated fluid straight into the floor from the stove, but that limits your possibilities for heating domestic water or routing heated fluid to other areas of the house to heat them, too.
Last, but not least, for this entry...the TOYBOX!
To backtrack, I should have built this building first. I could have parked my RV (which I no longer have) inside it for better foul-weather comfort while building, for one. The rest of my 20-20 hindsight vision isn't productive to continue discussing, so I'll lay in the bed I made for myself, and continue to thank God for the blessings of time, resources and good health to keep going with this monstrosity of a project. *Laugh*
I decided on (settled for) a 36' x 64' building, with 12'w x 10'h overhead doors. If money were no object...well, nevermind, because money is always an object. Space really isn't a factor, but the more space you take, the more trees you cut, so this building will be fine. I had it professional built, because frankly, I've decided that I've experienced (and continue to experience) enough "learning". I commend Northland Buildings (Little Falls, MN branch) for a good job, and for putting this baby up in January! Since half of the house garage is set up for workshop stuff (and will be heated), this shed will be mostly for cold storage. As mentioned earlier, I do plan on setting up a small wind/solar electricity system in it, mostly for lights and maybe vent fans, but who ever knows what the future will bring?
