A little follow up

I thought I'd write a follow up to explain a few more of the things that I have planned for the greenhouse that I wrote about yesterday.

When I say it will be a solar greenhouse, I more correctly should have called it a passive solar greenhouse shouldn't I have? I mean really, aren't all greenhouses solar? The thing that makes it a passive solar greenhouse has a lot to do with a couple of the things that Eric and Rhonda both mentioned. Thermal Mass. If you look again at the drawing I did. The heavy square shapes on the left side of the picture are the thermal mass walls that I hope will serve as both insulators and solar collectors. In the final iteration of this plan, I want the north walls to be made of stuccoed straw bales. Straw is a great insulator, and the stucco should hold some heat. In addition, as Rhonda mentioned, the floor is already solid. I paved it with recycled urbanite (old concrete) when we first built it. I also plan to build a low wall along the south end of it from more stacked concrete to capture more heat as well.

The idea of the roof design, is so that the over hang of the top piece will effectively shade much of the inside of the greenhouse during the Summer months, while allowing and reflecting light back into the house in the winter months. That sun should warm the concrete flooring and radiate that heat back out overnight. Eric, I am aware actually of the paraffin powered pistons. They're on my list for sure.

As for the pergola structure that is already in place, most of it will be re-fitted to become the greenhouse. I don't know about the existing trellising, but I definitely want to have some kind of support inside so that I can grow year round.

I can't tell you how exited I am for this project. It's been a long time coming. If this unseasonably warm weather of ours keeps up, I may have to start working early!!

Stay tuned.
P~

Sleeping in a cave

Well alright, not really a cave, but pretty close. The last 4 nights my family and I have been sleeping in the basement. My wife and I have been sacking out on a futon in the theatre, and my boys have been sleeping Gilligans Island style in the hammocks that we got for them in Mexico in their playroom (which is really a 5'5" finished storage area in the basement.) We wanted to do this because we have been having unseasonable warm summer weather lately and we just can't make ourselves run the AC all night. In doing this little experiment we have found a couple of things that I wasn't expecting. Our basement stays just the right temperature all night with only a fan running on low. Our perfect temperature is something like the cool nights of fall or early spring when you can have a thin quilt on and not sweat, or be cold. We've also found that without the sun shining in our bedroom window, that we can sleep really really well. Too well infact, I was almost late for work today because I was sleeping so soundly.
I don't know if we'll keep this up all summer or not, but we will most likely do it until the weather cools a bit. It will be interesting to see how or if this will affect our electricity usage this month, but I has certainly been worth it.

fighting the heat fight

I live in a place that nature really wants to be a desert. It isn't one because of some pretty creative irrigation. Every year we have multiple weeks of 90º - 105º weather. And every year we try to keep our home cool and end up battling mother nature (who might I add puts up a hell of a fight!). We live in a new home with good insulation, good windows and such, and we try to bear with the highest comfortable temp that we can. Still, I know that our A/C ends up running a lot more that we would like. So this year I have installed a powered attic fan. This should help us keep the house cooler by assisting us in fighting the biggest heat load that we have; an attic the gets well into the 120º range. This load of heat sitting over our top floor (it's a two story home), combined with heats' natural tendancy to rise makes our second story a sauna. We have however learned a few really good lessons over the last couple of years from researching how to save $$ and reduce our energy consumption.

• Get a programmable digital thermostat first thing. They are far more accurate, and less susceptible to human error( i.e. forgetting to turn off/down at night). They can be programmed to run during the specific hours needed, or can stay off all day while your out, and turn on only an hour before you get back home so you return to a comfortable house, that hasn't been that way all day for no reason.

• If you have the option of "AUTO / ON" on your thermostat for the fan. Try leaving it "ON" whenever your in the house. the AUTO setting will only kick on the fan when the thermo. senses that the A/C needs to kick on to cool the house (this works for heaters in the winter also). The problem is that as I said before heat rises and cool air settles, we all know that, but our thermo. doesn't; it senses the air around it and that's all. Leaving the fan on all the time, will bring in air through vents cold air returns and will recirculate it through the vent registers. In a home like mine with a second story this has the effect of leveling the temperatures so that the colder air from below gets mixed with the hotter air from above and results in a more even and comfortable house and the A/C needs to kick in far less frequently. We noticed a significant drop in our heating and cooling costs the first year that we did this.

• If you can, work with Mother Nature, she really wants to and is quite helpful if you let her be. Every morning, the west side of our house is much cooler, because the sun is not beating down on it. However in the evening, and even to a greater extent, the opposite is true. We open the windows on the cool side of the house and circulate that colder air in the morning, and in the evening do the opposite; both while running the circulating fan as mentioned above. This allows us to really reduce the running time for our A/C since we don't need it until much later, and then can merely maintain the coolness rather than have to create it. As a side note to this, if you don't have the ability to run a circulating fan but do have a second story, or even a high window or fireplace chimney, open the windows on the highest level or the flue to allow hot air to naturally move up and out creating a vacume that will draw in the colder air from below. This is called creating a thermal chimney and can be a very low impact way of cooling.

There are a lot of other suggestions, but these are a couple that I have employed and can attest to. Hope this can help someone with their home cooling, and maybe save some energy and a little $ to boot.
P~