Living Room Temperatures in the Winter

A "neighbor" of mine shared his experience and send me this question:

"Winter is the time for talking about what is to be done next summer. What temp do you keep that house at during the winter ? I burn five to seven cords of wood, mostly elms that died the last summer, each winter. Stays 60F to 65F in the house."


Here's my reply:

My ultimate goal is to achieve 74+ °F all winter long while I'm in the house...and even just with passive solar and my masonry stove I frequently got the house back up to 72°. On cloudy, cold days the temperature might drop to 62 or 63 by 6 PM but by 8 PM it's back up in the upper 60s or lower 70s--with only one fire (using about 12-15 "smallish" logs). On weekends it's usually quite feasible to have the whole house warm (i.e., in the 70s) the whole weekend with four or five fires between Friday evening and Sunday evening. Overall I'm estimating that I used about four to five face cords or about two full cords per winter.

This winter, things will hopefully be even better. With help from friends I just installed my solar hot water collectors up on the roof (still need to do some leakage testing) and with that I'm ready to continue installation of my solar hot water and masonry stove heated radiant in-floor heating system. Which means that I will bring about 860 sq. ft. of 4" concrete up to a comfortable temperature (i.e., 72-75 surface temperature for a 65-67° "head-level" temperature). So I will have almost 300 cu ft. of concrete heated up - a lot of thermal mass that will be difficult to cool down once it's heated up.

Fridges and Refrigerators

Having heard about "A++" appliances (a program comparable to the Energy Star), out of curiosity I looked for energy-efficient fridges that are being sold in Germany.

One model that I found just after a few minutes of searching is a bottom-freezer fridge with about 12 cu ft of usable capacity (did you know that a fridge sold in the US as an "18 cu ft" fridge only has about 13 to 14 cu ft of usable space (source: Consumer Reports)?). Whereas a typical energy-efficient top freezer uses at least 370 kWh per year (that's what my fridge uses), this fridge uses only 211 kWh a year.

(For all those "off-gridders" out there - the Sunfrost RF19 (which has a little less usable capacity than 12 cu ft) uses about 300 kWh a year - at a cost of $2,700+...)

Christian

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Licht 'n Stein Featured on the National Solar Tour Homepage

The editors decided to feature Project Licht 'n Stein on the front page of the National Solar Tour 2008. Exciting!

(Although I feel bad because the picture does not show any renewable energy systems (okay, it shows rainwater collection and a passive solar design). Maybe I can send a new picture in this weekend showing my newly installed solar hot water panels)

See the pictures below:

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Licht 'n Stein Improvements, Fall 2008

Coming to Licht 'n Stein this fall...some long-awaited improvements: my solar hot water system and my photovoltaic system.

I've finally saved up enough energy (or converted some frustration into constructive energy) to start organizing the completion of two of my biggest still-awaiting-completion projects: My 3rd heating system (besides the Passive Solar Design and the Masonry Stove that kept me nicely warm for the past two winters) and the installation of a photovoltaic (converting sunshine into electricity)  array to complete my "off-the-grid" system.

Last Friday, September 19, Todd and DreamAcres' 2008 summer intern Andrew were instrumental in helping me to lift and install my two 40 sq. ft. solar hot water panels that had been standing in my backyard for the past 2 years. To be honest, I've been having nightmares the past two years trying to think about lifting those up...but Todd, with his great "barn raising conductor"  experience made it look and feel quite easy (except for the 30 seconds were both Andrew and I were up on the 30°/3:12 roof, trying to pull the 4 x 10 foot, 140 pound panels up onto the roof while the soles of our shoes (and we) were slowly sliding downward....but at last groaning (at least on my part) and muscle strength (on Andrew's part from a summer of farming organically) finally prevailed and the panels (one at a time) were up on the roof.

The installation on a standing seam steel roof was remarkably easy thanks to someone giving me the great tip (when I bought the panels) to buy some special clamps (S5!) that clamp on to the standing seam without pinching it (and of course eliminating the need to drill holes into my nice roof).

Although now that I think about it, the installation of the panels was the easy part...here's what's left to do:

• Connect the 1/2" corrugated stainless steel pipes (flexible gas piping) to a 1" copper stub
  (actually from a picture of one of the houses on the national solar tour that is coming up, I got the idea of hiding/insulating my pipes in some PVC piping that I obviously would need to paint and then clamp to the roof)
  (Jonathan Allan pointed out that I would need a special torch for 1" piping)
  (Since I haven't done much pipe sweating I'm not sure how I will actually do it...Kirby offered to help, but with his shoulder I'd hate for him to have to climb up on that roof)
• Order and install a 20W photovoltaic panel (more S5 clamps, I guess)
• Figure out the whole plumbing design...with expansion tanks and all...then hook it all together
• Finish my heating manifold
• "Build" my heat storage tank and the heat exchangers
• ...and much more

For my photovoltaic system my steps are

• order the parts
• dig out the whole, install the 6" pipe and order a concrete truck to fill it back in
• install the Rack and the PV panels
• install the charge controller and hook everything up

It'll be a busy fall!

Christian

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Residential Wind Generators

Hello dear Reader!

Here's another blog entry from the category of "questions answered in an eMail"

>What do you know about residential windmills?

Here’s what I know about residential windmills:

• …that in Minnesota any energy produced by the generator that you don’t need can be fed back into the electrical grid, basically turning your meter backwards, i.e., you will earn the residential rate per kilowatt hour (kWh) of energy
• …that the current electrical rates of about 10 cents per kWh are going up at a rate of 10% each year, basically doubling in price every 7-8 years.
  
  
• …that a small generator (1kW Bergey, like mine) costs about $6-$8,000 to install, but will only produce about 2-5 kWh a day (i.e., the equivalent of 20-50 cents/day or $75-185 a year at the current electrical rates).
• …that a larger generator (10kw Bergey) costs about $45,000 to install, and will produce about 20-65 kWh a day (i.e., the equivalent of $60 to $200 a month or $750 - $2,400 a year at the current rates)
• ...that based on where I think I know you live, you have a wind potential of about 3-4 kWh/day with the small one and 35-50 kWh with the bigger one.
  
  
• …that Garwin McNeilus in Dodge Center has had plans to design, construct, and sell 10k, 20k and 40k residential generators for $10k, $20k, and $40k, respectively, but has not gotten anywhere.
  
  
• …that your best bet to do something for the environment is to spend some money on S.M.A.R.T. conservation (specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and technology-driven). To make my house work, I first reduced my electrical usage from 30 kWh a day to 30 kWh per week – a reduction by almost 85%.
  If you’d like to learn more, check out my fledgling consulting company at http://consulting.lichtnstein.org
  
  
• …that if your goal is self-sustainability, they work best in a hybrid system using photovoltaic (PV) cells and a wind generator.
  
  
  
• …that they are beautiful to look at:
  

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Frequently Asked Questions

Here is an interesting set of in-depth questions that I answered for a couple from Missouri that had heard about my house from one of their relatives:

>Is there a basement and what is it used for? Is it just to store the plastic water storage tanks?
Yes, the house has a full basement with 1,000 sq. ft. dedicated to living space and the rest to more utilitarian uses. The basement has three heated (radiant in-floor heat) rooms: a bedroom, a (future) home theater, and a (future) "studio" (a room with six walls of concrete). There is also a large storage space hallway. Other rooms are a "garden tools" room, a toilet/shower and utility sink, the utility room for the batteries, the on-demand water heater, the air-to-air exchanger, the hot water storage and the radiant in-floor heating manifold. The last room is the cistern room with the three 2,500 gal cisterns. The garden tools room has a walkout to the west, as does the utility room (with a double-wide door to allow for a skid steer or forklift to be driven in for replacement of the 2,000 pound battery (Twelve 166 pound cells).

>You said in your PowerPoint on the web that you used radiant floor heat. Is that connected to the masonry stove in any way?
Yes, once I have everything hooked up the radiant-floor heat will receive its heat from two sources: solar hot water panels on the roof (I already have the panels but haven't installed them) and two 1" heat exchanger pipes in the upper third of the masonry stove. That means I'll be able to take the heat of a fire the night before to heat up my bathroom the next morning using the radiant in-floor heat installed in the bathrooms. I can also take this heat to heat my basement, e.g., the home theater room.

>Can I assume that your floor is made of plywood, etc. and not concrete?
Actually to make the Passive Solar Design work, I needed a substantial amount of thermal mass on the main floor. So I have a poured-in-place concrete floor that has a total thickness of 16" with insulation. The concrete is 4" thick (with the radiant in-floor heating pipes embedded at the bottom of the 4" though in retrospect I should have spent some time trying to figure out how to lift them up a couple of inches so that they would float in the middle, since I fear that the latency (the time it takes from turning on the heat to actually reaching the desired temperature) will be quite high, but I haven't hooked everything up yet, so this concern is at this point just theoretical. The sub-floor for the half 2nd story is double-layered plywood - double-layered, so it accomodates the thin layer of gipkrete that I poured in the bathrooms for the radiant infloor heating, and I didn't want to have any uneven surfaces.

>Does the wind turbine require much maintenance?
No, the wind turbine does not require much maintenance and if I remember correctly an inspection is only required every five years. It's a tilt up tower, so it's not too complicated to do.

>How did you determine where to place the turbine?
The rule of thumb is that you don't want to have any trees or other obstructions higher than 30 feet below the wind turbine within 500 feet of the tower. The downside is that the further you place the turbine from the battery, the thicker (and more expensive) the electrical cable neeeds to be. I used a quite thick 1/0 aluminum cable for about $650 to run the 450 feet from the battery to the top of the tower. Basically I positioned the wind generator as far away and as highly elevated as possible. I went with an 84-foot tower since the 104-foot tower would have required me to get a conditional use permit for $400 and a hearing, but in general the higher you can go, the more favorable the wind conditions (and fewer turbulences). >Do you have a solar collector somewhere, because we could not see one on the roof, tho we couldn't see the roof on the north side of the house. I currently have no solar collectors installed (neither solar hot water nor photovoltaic electric) but everything is set up for it - I have the pipes already on the roof for the solar hot water and I have a cable in the ground for the photovoltaic panels.

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3D Home Software

Many people have asked me what software I used to design my home.

After some agonizing months with the home design package I bought, I settled on this two-step process:

1. Design the floor plan using Microsoft Visio Professional's floor plan template. It's easy to make changes and the floor plan is what changes most frequently - and it's relatively easy to make changes. Besides, Visio supports "layers" so you can add electrical stuff and radiant in-floor heating layout and plumbing, etc.
2. Once you're comfortable with the floorplan, fire up your 3D home software - I used "Punch Home Design" but based on my research all ~$100 packages have the same capabilities (and quirks). The most agonizing thing for me (which maybe has been resolved, who knows) was doing any kind of redesign, even as simple as moving a wall...it worked fine for a while, but quickly the model became "unstable".

Don't get me wrong - spending all these hours on sweating over how to put the design into the 3D modeling software was definitely worth it. I learned a lot from it and would go the same route again. I'd just brace myself for at least 3 iterations, i.e., starting from scratch in the 3D home design software for at least 3 times. You'll get faster, too.

If you have thoughts on or experience with 3D Home Design Software, use the comments feature below.

Christian

Not sure when I'll continue this blog -- feel free to check out our scrapbook. 

Certified Lumber

Since Wednesday we are proud owners of a big stack of certified lumber from sustainably managed forests. Now, not many people (and definitely not any local lumber yards) have heard about "certified" lumber (yet). But then, many people still shop at Mall-Wart too ;-)

The way I use the term Certified Lumber is to refer to wood harvested from forests that are managed responsibly (management for sustainability being one of the goals). According to my research there are three major "certification bodies" out there: FSC (Forest Stewardship Council), SFI (American Forest & Paper Association (AFPA) Sustainable Forest Initiative) and SmartWood.

FSC is an international, independent organization to "promote responsible management of the world's forests". According to their website, over the past 10 years, 50 million hectares (190,000 square miles - the size of MN, WI & IA combined) in more than 60 countries have been certified.

SFI on the other hand is the industry's voluntary program for responsible forest management that the members of the trade organization must "agree to work towards wood procurement and forest management strategies that meet the SFI program guidelines".

SmartWood was the world's first independent forestry certifier established in 1989.

So, what's FSC-certified responsible forestry management ?

• biological diversity:
  maintain, enhance, or restore the long-term integrity of natural habitats, ecological processes, soil, water, and stand development
• age class distribution:
  maintain or restore portions of the forest to the range and distribution of age classes of trees that result from processes that would normally occur on the site
• endangered species:
  protect rare, threatened, and endangered species and their habitats; conservation zones and protection areas shall be established
• habitat diversity:
  protect, maintain, and/or enhance diversity of habitats for native species
• reserve areas:
  representative samples of existing ecosystems within the landscape shall be protected in their natural state and recorded on maps
• harvest rate:
  rate of harvest of forest products shall not exceed that which can be permanently sustained
• clear cutting:
  some clearcutting allowed, but "silvicultural practices provide disturbances and generate stand conditions that result in a successional phase that would occur naturally on the site; and: forest conversion to plantations or non-forest land uses shall not occur.
• chemical use
  promote the development and adoption of environmentally friendly nonchemical
  methods of pest management and strive to avoid the use of chemical pesticides; World
  Health Organization Type 1A and 1B and chlorinated hydrocarbon pesticides that are persistent, toxic or whose derivatives remain biologically active and accumulate in the food
  chain beyond their intended use…shall be prohibited. If chemicals are used, proper equipment and training shall be provided to minimize health and environmental risks.
• genetically modified species:
  prohibited

Most of the information above was taken from an excellent paper by the "Natural Resources Council of Maine".

Where can I get it?

It took me about half a day to find a local source for FSC certified lumber: Certified Wood Products out of Minnetonka. Owner Dan Haugen was incredibly friendly and helpful on providing our small project with the lumber. Typically his company only supplies large commercial projects with lumber. Compared with the cost of a local building supplies company, we only paid 6% (about $500) more for knowing that we did the right thing!

In the Trenches

Yesterday after the raising of Allan & Michelle's timberframe Jennifer and I stopped by our site and hung out for a while. I used the time to constructively play in the largest sand pit ever marking and digging the trenches for the drain lines and other pipes that will have to run beneath the slab.



It's quite amazing how much infrastructure goes into a house. The pictures above show trenches for for the following elements:
shower drain, toilet drain, utility sink drain, main waste line, kitchen drains, floor drain to holding tank and pipes to bring the electrical supply lines (DC and potential future grid AC) in.

Rain is Good (Special - This Weekend Only)

Usually you don't really wish for rain during a construction project*. But we've reached one of those few days during our construction project where rain actually is quite helpful.

*Unless of course you're building a rainwater collection system and have the roof hooked up to the cisterns. Then we'll want lots of rain to get the cisterns full for the winter ;-)

On Friday the crew from Clark Construction filled the floor of the lower level with sand to prepare for the pouring of the concrete slab next week. And the rain that we've gotten this weekend will help to pack the sand down (although it's been raining off and on for about 24 hours now and I'd be fine if it stopped now - it's getting too slippery on the clay around the house).

The picture to the left shows the lower level with the filled-in sand. The two lonely walls in the center are the support for the poured concrete ceiling (the cDeck) to leave an opening for the stairs. The concrete slab to the right is the support for the masonry stove. Left of the support walls you can see a shallow trench which is for the drain of the kitchen sink and dishwasher.

So the rain will do a good job of packing the fill-sand down for the pour of the concrete slab next week.

It's pouring!

Concrete that is...

Well after our "community stacking" event on Sunday where Deb, Tom & Boom, Sangeetha & Chris, Mark & Alex and Bonita helped, the crew of Clark Construction finished the stacking of the lower level walls on Monday and Tuesday. So on Wednesday they were ready for the first big pour.

I took the day off and came in the morning to help get the penetrations ready that I had marked the previous evening. And at a quarter past twelve the pumper showed up - unfortunately not the nice guy we had for the footings on Thursday but a rather "different" individual (they couldn't get the nice guy again)...

Then, at 12:55 PM, the concrete trucks showed up (Tony had ordered them for 1 PM and from what I understand last week they were late showing up for the pouring of the footing). Tony created some motivation by letting us know that all the concrete trucks are lined up at the bottom of the hill... A few minutes later, while Lyndon Lee, the ICF form distributor from Mabel, Lyndon Clark and Paul Hynes were still laying hands on last minute preparations, Tony was pumping away starting in the 9" wall between the studio and the storage room. All walls were filled about half-way with the first pour.

After that, Lyndon hooked up his Vibrator backpack and together Lyndon and Tony worked the concrete - I think they looked like Ghostbuster chasing away the airbubble demons ;-). The Vibrator that Lyndon is holding helps the concrete to settle all the way done. Actually the scientific way to test whether the concrete is all the way down to the bottom is to take a short piece of 2x4 and bang it, carefully and with the flat side, against the wall. If it sounds hollow, there is no concrete in.


Radio Licht 'n Stein

Our First (American) Giant Puffball (Riesenbovist)

Last week Jennifer and I picked up some nice big mushroom heads at the Good Food store in Rochester and ate them on Sunday. Jennifer ground up the stems with some bread crumbs and parmesan and olive oil and garlic, then baked the heads in the oven for about 30-40 minutes with some nice cheese on top - yummy.

Eating a mushroom as a whole meal reminded me of my childhood where I used to find quite a few Giant Puffballs on a meadow near where we lived. The biggest one I found weighed about 10-12 pounds and had a circumference of almost 5' (1.43 meters) (that's a diameter of about 18 inches or 45 cm). So I was mentioning to Jennifer that I wish we could find some "Riesenbovist" here.

Next day when we went up to Licht 'n Stein I was mowing our little "yard" and on one of the paths, wouldn't you know it, I found a small to mid-sized puff ball!!!

Maybe I should wish for some money next time?? ;-)

We tried to slice it and sautee it in Olive oil last night, but it just soaked up all the oil and became all mushy - not very tasty. So tonight we'll try to batter it first, then fry it...

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More Blogging

What good is a diary if there are no entries?

Well, as our project has now officially moved in to the construction phase, I will try to take 10 minutes every day to summarize accomplishments, events, successes and challenges.

Enjoy the reading!

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It's a High Way!

Yesterday, Labor Day, we arrived at Licht 'n Stein and were surprised to find Lyndon Clark and Paul Hynes "laboring" on our driveway!

They had made quite some progress since Friday and especially turned the lower part into quite a wide highway! It now looks much less scary than last week.

(The problem with this part of the driveway is that it is really narrow, the bank to the north is about 8-10 feet high and it drops of sharply to the other side, which would make it especially "interesting" if the road is icy and you're coming down... Also, most of this part of the driveway is almost completely shaded by the bank to the north...)

Over the weekend I had made a quick calculation on how much crushed rock they would need - Tony was saying that they'll put at least 6 inches at the bottom, where it is already pretty rocky and up to 12" in the middle part where it is very sandy and gets pretty muddy after a good rain. So I estimated an average of 9" for about 1,500 feet, 12 feet wide or about 13,500 cu.ft. or 500 cu. yd. On one website I found that there are about 2500 lbs in one cubic yard or rock, so that's about 625 (short) tons of rock...(562,500 kg))

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The Ground is Broken

On Labor Day afternoon we had our little informal groundbreaking ceremony. The building permit was approved by the Fillmore County Zoning Inspector Norman Craig and is currently for signature at the township.

Tony, one of the guys from Clark Construction, currently plans on excavating the site by the end of this week - that would be quite some progress.

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cDeck Forms and Heavy Machinery Arrived

Today our cDeck forms arrived (oops - don't actually have a picture).

The cDeck are basically T-shaped EPS (expanded polystyrene) forms with a thick vertical line that will form (pun intended) the basis of the floor between the basement and the main floor. The forms are about two feet wide and I guess 10 inches high. The vertical "line" of the T is about a foot or so wide. The forms are placed "horizontal bar of the T" down and are shored from below. Then, concrete is poured, forming beams between the foot-wide EPS beams. The concrete then extends another 4" above the forms.

The reasons we went with a cDeck rather than a traditional framed floor are two-fold: primarily we wanted to get a good thermal mass for our passive solar design as well as our masonry stove heating. The 4" concrete floor (and up to 12" where the beams are) will provide a nice thermal mass that will heat up either through the sun or when the masonry stove is on and will provide a nice, even-tempered and slow-changing environment. The mass should also help with keeping the house cool well into the summer. (In the summer months the overhang on the south side will prevent the sun from entering the living room and heating up the mass).
(See our floorplans for more detail (you need to be logged in to our photo gallery for the link to work - ask us for userid and password))

Today also the bulldozer and loader/backhoe arrived for the driveway construction. Our current driveway is somewhat narrow in some places, pretty muddy for the most part, and it has pretty poor water management. So the crew from Clark Construction is going to make it wider, put in about five smaller culverts, dig out a ditch along the north side, grade it and fill it up with 6-12 inches of crushed rock (1-3/4"). That should give us a nice 12-foot driveway.

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The Windmill is on its way!

Every since I heard from Dennis (our renewable energy contractor from GoSolar in Decorah) that Bergey (our wind mill manufacturer) raised their prices again (and they mostly sell only direct) I've been monitoring the "dirt-cheap" prices on the RealGoods website (they obviously don't update their website too often...). So when we got the green light for our "wind mill pole" building permit last week, I called RealGoods on Friday night an ordered our 84-foot tower and our 1kW XL.1 wind mill. Compared to the current list prices on the Bergey website we saved about $880 - over 25%!

When I ordered the "gear" they quoted me a $270 FedEx shipping fee...although I explicitly mentioned that the website notes that both items will be shipped freigth. So on Monday I called up RealGoods and talked to a nice guy in the technical department...he immediately commented on me getting a good price on the tower set - I saved "$180" and I politely expressed my surprise ;-) But he put me on a conference call with a gal at Bergey and we reserved the gear right away - Dennis had told me earlier in the month that Bergey would discontinue reselling the NRG tower kits and make their own. I had also talked to Steve Wilke from Bergey last week and he mentioned (and confirmed what Dennis had said) that it might be 6-8 weeks until they would be able to ship out the new tower kits - which would take us out to November when it can get quite cold.

Well, today RealGoods confirmed the shipping cost and the total is $390 (which includes a "fee" of $25 for the trucking company to give me one (1) phone call 24 hours ahead of time - they really must have an expensive phone provider.....?). So for $3,850 I got ourselves our supply for all our energy needs (or so we hope). Couldn't have really done it just with Solar Panels....

(quick calculation: six 125W modules for $3,475 plus pole/rack & shipping...750W...6 hours on a sunny day...80%...3.6kW/day -- not even close. We hope to get on average 6-8kWh per day out of the wind mill...but we'll know more in a year).

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Construction Starts!

Well, on Tuesday August 30, 2005 we finally closed our construction loan at 7:30 AM in the morning at F&M community bank in Chatfield. Mary, our friendly loan officer, helped us to "wade" through the pile of paper work and signatures.

The overall process turned out to be a fairly efficient and painfree one. Of course things took twice as long as I had hoped, but that was still pretty fast, thanks mostly to the good work of Mary who kept things on track and prepared.

Now we have until May 30, 2006 to finish our project!

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Propylene Glycol in your Ice Cream

One of the things we learned at the MREA fair is that it makes good sense to go with a Solar Hot Water System for pre-heating our household water as well as to use it for our radiant floor heat. Obviously if we are going to use it in the winter, we need to protect it from freezing, which is why we need to use some antifreeze. The antifreeze most commonly used in these applications (usually environmentally conscious people) is Propylene Glycol. Interesting enough I learned that Propylene Glycol is used in ice cream (to prevent it from freezing rock hard). Here is a good article from Tom's of Maine about their use of Glycol and alternatives.

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