Just Siding Away

It has been a while since I have given any updates on the progress of the house. So I thought I would share a few of the changes that have occurred since my last post.

For the most part, it has been nothing but installing siding. The whole north face of the house is now sided as well as the entire west side of the house. The largest area remaining is the south side which is also nearing completion. After it is complete, all that remains is the front of the great room which is about 1/3 done and the south bedroom dormer.

Fortunately, the month of January worked in our favor, and we have very little snow left to speak of and the temperatures have been in the upper 40's and low 50's for just about the entire month!!

We did have a problem creep up right after Christmas, and a good lesson learned from it. We had a cold snap shortly after Christmas some of the coldest temperatures this winter. Just for the heck of it I checked the solar read out in the mechanical room about 10:00 AM and noticed that the collector was reading 205 degrees. This was not good!!! The heat dump had kicked in obviously and panic set in. I knew that the line must have frozen and the glycol could not circulate through the header on the collector. I called Radiant Floor Company for some advice on it. At the same time, our pressure was building in the line due to the rising temperature out at the problem. Soon after speaking with Radiant Floor Company I heard a loud bang outside. Needless to say, I was sick at what I might find.

Well lady luck was on our side. The collector header was extremley hot and my first step was to get a tarp over the evacuated tubes. Once this was completed it immediatley started to drop the temperature on the collector. The bang I heard was a compression fitting that had blown out from the rising pressure. It was about a 45 minute fix and we were back up and running.

But now the questions started flying. Why did we freeze up. The temperatuere was cold (about -5 degrees) but we had a 33% glycol mixture per Radiant Floor Company's instructions. Well, after some research, we found out we had been told wrong by Radiant Floor. We were only good to about +10 degrees. So we added 4 more gallons of glycol which now give us a 67% mixture takeing us to -15 degrees. Fortunately, we were not at a burst temperature with the 33% mixture...only a freeze up occurred.

With winter starting to wind down here, I will go out on a limb and say our heating bill for this season will be near $0.00. We have ocasionally started up the electric boiler for showers or to wash dishes in the early morning or later evening but have not used it directly for the sole purpose of heating the house. The solar collector and fireplace have kept the house at an average temperature of about 70 to 72 degrees all winter.

I have been doing a great deal of research on wood gasification boilers. This would all but eliminate the need for an electric boiler. The amount of space left in the mechanical room is a concern for a unit like this but it has not been ruled out. Also, on the wish list is to get some solar electric started to at least power the radiant floor and solar collector pumps in case of power failure. At this point in time this is probably more of a priority due to the need to circulate glycol through the solar collector. I do have a 4000 watt back up generator for now in case a loss of power would occur which would handle all of the pumps easily.

I also ran accross a video on another web site that I frequent and have linked here on the blog. This looks to be the ultimate in self sufficiency when it comes to electric, cooling, and heating the house!!! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xEdQRVQtffw&eurl=http://massiehouse.blogspot.com/&feature=player_embedded

I have started some work on milling the front railing out of the extra timbers that we had left from the house. The saw mill has come in handy for that, as well as the planer. This is just a simple mock up of what the railing will look like on the front protch and upper balcony.

Other than that garden seeds have been ordered and we are looking forward to spring time!!!

On a bit of a different topic my job as an Electrical Lineman and the area we live in takes us up to the Grand Canyon National Park quite often. Shortly before Christmas we had some trouble in the Canyon and were flown down by helicopter to make repairs. I thought I would share some of the pitures from that day.

Ripplin' Waters

A quick update on some more pictures of the interior of the house as well as another one of the bigger projects out of the way.

I have been working on and off getting the water falls behind the fireplace up an running. I had a stainless steel sink fabricated at a local welding shop for the water. It has a inlet for water for filling and an outlet for the water to be pumped up to spill over the stone, and also a drain for changing out the water from time to time.

Last weekend the stone crew showed up to finish off the stone work for the falls. I had made a mock up using some sheeting to see exactly what I would need for an angle on the stone to get the water to fall right with minimal splash. Originally a slab of stone was going to be used for the water to fall over. This turned out to be a little to heavy as the slab was upwards of 2 1/2 - 3 inches thick. This put the weight of it at about 500 pounds.

We opted to go another route. Instead we took 1/2 inch plywood sheeting and covered it with a rubber membrane. Next, screen was attached to it as well as a piece of angle iron to support the stone at the bottom of the sheeting. Then mortar was applied and stone was attached.

I wired in a small pond pump that is turned on from the wall, along with an accent light that has not arrived as of yet to cast a little light on the falls. The sound is terrific. And one of the other intents is to humidify the air which seems to also be a success!!!




Siding continues in earnest. We have been working as fast as possible to beat the winter weather but unfortunately I think we will end up losing that race. The front steps have finally been installed. Temporary treads are in place but at least the footing and stringers are permanently installed.

Free Heat and Water Has Arrived

Well, just about free. I should mention that our calculations show us re-couping the costs of the solar portion of our heating system at about 2 years.

Lately, most of my time has been spent getting the ground mount frame set up for the evacuated tube collector as well as getting the pumps and related equipment installed for the solar portion of our radiant floor system. And the way it felt last week was a bit of a wake up call to kick the process into high gear!!!!

The collector itself is a ground mounted system. We went with this for ease of any maintenance that may be required and the design of the house did not lend itself to have it roof mounted.

Initially, a simple footing system consisting of piers 3' deep were required, then two 4x6 beams were installed on top of the piers. Then 4x4 treated timbers were put across the beams. On those the stainless steel frame was mounted. The frame is what the header and the evacuated tubes plug into.

The tubing that circulates the glycol from the collector into the solar tank located inside the house has been in the ground for sometime. The Eco-Flex was installed prior to the slab being poured so that it could be brought in under the cement footing of the house. Shortly after the footing was poured we had a trench dug and the rest of the 85' coil was buried.

Next the stainless steel frame was erected and then lagged on to the the treated timber supports. The cylinder shaped piece mounted at the top of the frame is the header unit that I mentioned earlier.

With the frame completed I turned my efforts to getting the pumps set up inside the house as well as all of the copper tubing tied into the solar tank.

I should also mention that a 300' coil of pex tubing was looped in a trench that extended from the mechanical room and then outside for roughly 130' feet. This tubing acts as a heat dump. There will undoubtedly be times when all of the heat is not needed. When this occurs a secondary pump kicks in and circulates the glycol through this tubing. This dissipates the heat so the collector does not become damaged from the high heat that is created.

The brains of the whole unit is the RESOL controller.

The Resol has two sensors connected to it. One is in a conduit from the mechanical room out to the collector, which measure the heat being pruduced at the output side of the collector. The other sensor is near the bottom coil of the solar tank. When the output temperature is about 8 degrees warmer that the temperature at the bottom of the solar tank, the RESOL controller tells the circulating pump to turn on. This then circulates solar warmed glycol through the lower heating coil of the solar tank, which in turn heats the water inside. The water inside the tank is our domestic hot water. This hot water also heats the upper coil which has our floor water circulating through it. When the floor calls for heat the two pumps that circulate that water turn on and circulate the water through the floor and start to heat the floor which radiates the heat and warms the house. See schematic.

With all of the tubing and wiring complete, as well as the lines purged with a 40% glycol water mixture, it was finally time to install the evacuated tubes.

The tubes actually heat the glycol with a gas created as the sun hits the collector in each tube. The gas rises to the top of the tube which heats the glycol flowing through the header and then is circulated into the house. It was highly cautioned to have all components ready to go prior to plugging in the tubes due to the high heat that is created resulting in damage to the collector.

Prior to installing each tube a small amount of grease is applied to the top of the tube to help in the transfer of heat to the header.

Each tube top is then inserted into the header and then clipped in on the bottom side of the rack.

Our collector has 32 tubes on it. We finished installing the last tubes by 11 A.M. By 1:00 P.M. we were producing 121 degree heat off of the collector. This was given the fact that we already were heating our domestic hot water and had also turned on the floor heat. In other words, we probably would have been at a higher temperature if we were not trying to heat so much all at once.

Along with work on the collector we have been trying our best to get the majority of the house sided prior to winter setting in. We are making steady progress and if the real cold, wintery weather can hold of until after Thanksgiving we will be in pretty good shape!!

As I mentioned last time, we have moved into the house. I will end this post with some of the finished pictures of the inside of the house. There still remains a lot of small work to be completed but it is starting to look more like a home inside!!!

Details, Details...................

Again, I must apoligize for the lack of posts on this blog. It has been nothing less than working two full time jobs with both requiring overtime for the last two months.

We are finally in the process of slowly moving into the house, although things are far from completed. For the most part, what remains inside the house are very minor things that will be left to early mornings or late evening jobs due to the rapidly declining daylight.

As you can imagine, many changes have taken place over the last two months with the inside of the house pretty much taking on its final look.

From where I left off a couple of months ago the tile was just about ready to get installed. We were fortunate to find a company out of Prescott which is about an hour south of here. They were very good to work with and did an excellent job. The cost, as a whole for the tile, was a bit of a shock, but some of that was due to going with porcelain tile instead of ceramic tile. The porcelain tile, I am told, is supposed to hold up much better. The tile was another one of those jobs that we had thought we would do ourselves, but again, the time crunch dictated otherwise. In the end, with the ideas they had for designs in laying it, I am glad it turned out the way it did.

I guess I should also mention that the granite was installed without a hitch. It took them about two days to get it all completed but it all turned out very nice. We kind of held our breaths as to how it would all look. It is one thing to look at the big slabs of granite out in the daylight but once it is all cut and in place could be a totally different look. As it turned out we were very happy with the results.

We ended up going with an engineered hardwood floor after all, which initially was not what we had intended. But the difference with this flooring is that it comes unfinished. So in the end it is treated like a solid hardwood floor but is installed as an engineered. This, as well, went rather well. It is glued down to the cement slab, sanded and then three coats of a water base sealer are put on it. I did mention it went rather well. The sealer, when it was applied, was not done evenly in some locations. So the company that did the installation made another trip back up to buff the floor out in some areas and re-sealed it.

The stairway was another one of those projects I envisioned doing ourselves. Although I would have loved to have tackled the project, it would have been a very lengthy job. And after watching the people who did install it, it made me even more certain that this was another one of those projects that was more involved than what we had time for. Not only that, the parts themselves took a long to get here, and a wrong cut would not only have been very expensive, but very costly in time as well.

As you can imagine, our time is still split between getting things moved in and trying to get the inside completed. However, our focus now is on getting things as wrapped up outside as much as possible before the cold weather hits.

This weekend has been spent trenching. Trenching in conduit for the telephone and satellite dishes. Trenching for the piers that will hold the evacuated tube solar collector, and also in conjunction with that the heat dump line. I have started some preliminary work inside for the tie in to the solar tank. This has been mainly where and how I am going to configure it all.

I will end this post with a few other miscellaneous pictures. My hopes are to start keeping up with the blog and make more detailed and more frequent updates once again!!