C. Letellier

You are missing another system that looks like it has super promise.  Passive no turn aerobic composting.  I have kept meaning to get this write up copied over to permies but haven't done it.  Here is what looks like a complete path covering all the pieces I assembled a list of.  I encourage someone else to bring the information in.  Hate to link to FB but I can't move this any other way easily.

passive no turn aerobic composting.

Learn wide ranging skills.  I am 60 years in on learning and still want more skills.

build or maintain?

Normal procedure is encase the insulation and PEX in an external conduit to protect the assembly.  So mice and external weather are less of a problem.  Being properly buried reduces it even more.

Only one I know of, as a problem was fiberglass wrap installed in PVC conduit around PEX.  Their mistake was aiming both ends up and it gathered moisture so the insulation failed.  So if you use a permeable insulation be sure the pipe is sloped so it can drain and stay dry.  Can't help otherwise.

Well the curtain has now done 3 years and is just starting year 4 and I will have to say it has met nearly all of the reasonable expectations.  Now I have a bunch of ways I have accidentally gotten lucky with this so lets start with those.  Pillow from here on out will refer to my giant inflated plastic bag of the greenhouse plastic.

1.  The light in is very good.  Sunny day in, in December or January with light reflection off fresh snow it goes to amazing.  The diffusing plastic combined with the light reaching 2/3 the depth of the shop and white walls, ceiling and floor mean the shop is so well lite that I don't hardly need a flashlight even in the dark corners of that room.  Still don't know if I will go to clear plastic or back with this diffusing plastic for that reason with the next replacement.

2.  Accidental success two was how well this seals the doors with the doors closed.  The shop stays way warmer over night.  Because the plastic is solidly sealed to the top and sides and fairly well sealed at the bottom it turns the shop into a big heat bell.  Loses are way less.  I truly never thought about how well it would seal the shop in the planning.  And the plastic balloons out forming a giant pillow with the doors open and with them closed it is compressed on one side up against the with only small gaps on the sides and top.  I did expect some improvement in sealing but this does better than expected.

3.  Another accident here was messing up the plastic and having it pull partially off the pipe when one side came loose and started whipping in the wind and then not getting it rerolled right on the pipe.  Instead of a smooth pillow on both sides the plastic now, sort of bulges out on the door side at the floor now.  With the inflation fan running this pushes the plastic down to the floor creating a foot wide seal that conforms to the floor in the roughly 1 foot wide zone between the doors and the plastic.  Now it is a pain to work around to avoid walking on it while opening and closing the doors.  More on that later.

4.  And that brings us to the one foot wide zone between the doors and the plastic hanging limp is another accidental success.  Originally the plan was just a 6 ½ inch gap.  But because of needing to clear the door latches and stuff up top it was moved out into the room a ways so at floor level it is about 1 foot from the doors.  First plan was to roll the curtain up enough every time to open and close the big doors and run their latches.  Turns out that is a pain in the butt.  So now I take the plastic loose at one side and pull the 2 layers apart to act as vent to let air out of my giant plastic pillow and then slide between the plastic and the wall into the gap between the doors and plastic, carefully walking that narrow path.  Works well but isn't exactly easy or comfortable.  The plan shortly after installation was to put a man door in the big door to get in between.  Tried it but without someplace to let the air out of the pillow the plastic drags hard on doors and deflating it thru the 2”x3” fan entry hole even with the fan off takes forever.   For the man door to work would need some sort of 3 to 10 square foot vent that was easy to use.  For now this is working well enough but takes careful stretching of the plastic while forcing the pillow to deflate to avoid walking on the plastic.

5.  Then we will add one final neat accident.  Hopefully it will eventually let me run this on way more windy days.  Last spring while things were warming up the outside temperatures were nearly equal to indoors so I opened the man door into the tool room and blocked it open figuring the added light heating floor would make up for any tiny losses from it being open.  This was a mildly windy day with the wind roughly out of the south and it had the plastic layers smashed flat to each other because my inflation fan wasn't tough enough to hold them apart.  About 10 minutes later there was this loud snap(it does it about 1/3 of the time rather than quietly moving and I still don't know why?) and I looked up and noticed the plastic was bulging out rather than in with both layers smashed together.  Then over about the next 20 minutes the pillow reinflated in spite of the wind.  Close the man door and in 10 or 15 minutes the plastic smashes flat and bulges back in.  So if I can hold the inside of the shop at the outdoor pressure my little fan will do it's job in spite of the wind.  Hoping this will apply even in high winds.  So far it works in all winds I was willing to try it in.  But way too drafty for cold weather having that door open with wind blowing in.

 Intention is to build / put a collector panel on the south east corner of the shop.  Build a scoop up top right at roof line(roughly 14 feet up)  to gather the wind up where it is the strongest and run the air down the wall behind the collector.  At the bottom turn it around and go up thru the collector heating the air before it goes into the shop.  Thus hopefully solving the cold draft problem.  It will be slower than opening the door to pressure the shop but as long as it moves more air in than leaks out it should pressure the shop up.  Alternate plan instead of the scoop is to go above the roof line and put one of those turbine style roof vents in but rebuild it so the fan blows in, instead of out.(is this possible?)  Short term plan is some sort of manual door over the air entry so it doesn't bring cold air in at night.  If this works, thinking a wax cylinder greenhouse opener to run it longer term.  The collector will have to have an exterior vent door too for summer operation so it doesn't bring heat in.  Simply let it thermo-syphon in summer and vent back to the outdoors.  Another lucky accident here.  The area down low between the corner of the building and the radiator room big doors is 51 inches wide.  In the glass salvaging I got more than enough 48 inch glass panes in 51 inch wooden frames to do the whole vertical column of a collector there.  

Now lets go back to the previous post and the problems still to solve list,

1.  I still don't know whether I want the diffusing plastic or a really clear plastic.  The light is amazing on a good day and I haven't figured out yet what my loses are because less sun hits the stuff that will store the heat directly and instead is scattered.

2.  Anchoring the sides I have solved but need better answers.  The top roughly 8 feet is being held by my C shaped plastic pipe clips.  The clips are being held by this wood bracket (see photo) because high winds will cause the plastic to pull the clip off the closet rod.  Adding the bracket over the top stops this.  This causes 2 problems.  Taking those brackets loose involves 2 ladders and 3 screws on each side. So it is slow and work to do.  The other problem is every time I put the C shaped clamping pipe back it seems to end up damaging the curtain plastic in small places.  I have worked hard with a little plane to get rid of the sharp edges that do the damage but still get some damage even being careful. Most cars and trucks will go under the roller pipe without taking that part down.  So I only need to do that upper part when running bigger stuff in and out is the only saving grace.  And most of the bigger machines typically come in for a longer/bigger bigger jobs so it doesn't have to happen very often.

Now the bottom 7 feet of the curtain I have been rolling both layers of my plastic flaps around a furring strip with pool noodles on it and tucking it against the wall behind the 2x holding the closet rod.  Then I have a 2x4 that levers from the wall to a wall bracket to the roll at the other end pinching it in place. So far the friction of a hard pinch combined with basically 2 complete wraps has mostly held it all in place.  Faster to disconnect.  Used nearly daily on one side to slide out to latch and unlatch the doors as well as create an air vent to get the air out of the pillow.  Still a tad slow but I can open everything run a vehicle in and have it resealed in under 15 minutes at the lower level so still not too bad.  And is doing almost no damage over time.  The one small spot of damage is protected by a duct tape patch.  Would like to do this up high to but haven't found a way to do it from the floor.

I played with magnets but as best I can tell I will need a 60# magnet about every 6 inches on both sides to maybe hold the curtain.  They also damage the plastic when it is pulling hard on the localized area of the magnet so for now that idea has been abandoned.  Would mean removing 30+ individual magnets and still 2 ladders etc plus $100 of magnets.

3. with the one semi major wreck I had to reroll the plastic on the pipe so I got it painted black  On a good day the heat boils out of both ends of that pipe and it feels really warm thru the plastic so likely more to gain there.  So this one is completed.

4.  Drilled the pipe and went from the rope wrapped around both sides to a single rope threaded thru the hole and anchored inside the pipe so it only wrapped one way instead of two.  Works way better.  It means half the weight of everything is hanging from the plastic which I don't like.  But if it isn't damage somewhere the breaking strength of the plastic is greater than the ropes so that risk is low and the other danger is the plastic coming loose at the top and after I added the clamp brackets to the top that risk is very small.  I did pull ups from the pipe and it stays.  Also completed.

5.  Have done nothing towards automating this.

And that completes the problem list from the previous post.

Now lets look at look at a problem I didn't understand when I built the original clamping pipes out of the black poly pipe.  I used a knife to cut the length of the pipe but my cuts wandered like a drunken sailor just off a merry go round.  I tried really hard to cut a straight line and it kept wandering one direction and when I tried hard to come back suddenly it was a jagged cut the other way.  I blamed that on me.

What I have learned since while doing another project is that poly pipe has a grain to it that spirals slowly around the pipe.  The pipe I learned this on made one full revolution about every 6 feet.  And cutting straight down the pipe with a knife is nearly impossible.  I even made a fancy pull type cutting fixture and the grain was so strong that forcing the cut to stay straight was enough to snap a heavy duty sheet rock knife blade.

So now I know that, I should build a cutting fixture to hold the pipe at both ends and trap it in the middle so I can use a saw or a router to force a straight line cut or cuts.

In the dream world I would like to shape the clamping pipe to look like the #3 cross section in the drawing.  So it did less damage putting it on and off over the closet rod.  So far not smart enough to figure an easy and cheap answer to do it.  Better ideas?  Did try using bale twine to create a big net to force it to stay smaller to the inside but way to much work to set up and take down

My other major complaint is the amount of space the pillow takes up in the shop.  Still worth it for the gains but big space consumer.  This pillow fully inflated is roughly 5 feet thick in the middle  tapering to zero at all edges.  On smaller doors would be less of a problem

One other problem other than the small bit of damage to the plastic being in a shop environment and a rough clamping system cause is the plastic rubbing against the wood doors.  The outside layer of the plastic is getting cloudy with that abrasion.  I am sure this is cutting solar gain a bit.

Quick explanation of the drawing.  #1 is the as built showing the 2X spacer and the closet rod.  #2 shows the closet rod with the clamp pipe around it.  But the 2X has 2 small rabbets in it.  I would do this if I ever did it again because the clamp pipe hits the 2X in places because I didn't cut a straight line. #3 is the cross section of how I would like to shape the clamping pipe to minimize damage to the plastic taking it on and off.  Still no idea how to do that?

Now other future goals not already listed.

A.  To do a better job of sealing the edges I would thermal weld both layers of plastic the whole length of the one side and most of the length of the other side leaving around 6 or 7 feet not bonded on the one side so it can be opened to vent air.  The filling fan is rated 10 CFM and it takes a bit over 20 minutes to solidly inflate the pillow so it has roughly 200+ cubic feet in it, so to let it out quickly, a big vent is needed.  Would also seal the bottom part way in on where it wraps around the pipe based guessing part of the reason the plastic hasn't been staying put on the pipe like expected is that the layers around the pipe are trying to inflate.  Found directions for welding the plastic using a household iron and parchment paper to keep it from sticking.  The small experiment worked well.  Would do that while the curtain was laying flat on the floor for assembly.  The iron was slow.  The welds may weaken the plastic but I think I can keep them to low strain locations.

B.  On a new curtain would add a small rope folded in where it is folded in half to go to the top.  Would have to punch it out at each side where the plastic is fold back on itself, but then I would add a cleat on each side to anchor the rope to giving me 2 safeties.  The rope would be harder to pull under the clamp pipe and even if it pulled out or off  the rope would be inside the plastic providing another protection from something breaking and clomping me on the head.

C.  Need to build a pipe anchor system.  Started just to build a steel bracket that stuck out from the wall to catch the pipe in a you shape.(can't use the letter)  but it sticks so far in the room I has afraid of it being a tripping / falling danger when the curtain is up.  So what ever hooks the pipe needs to fold back to the wall for safety.

D.  Keeping the ropes tracking.  Have had the ropes fall off their rollers and sag in the middle and fall off and snag stuff.  Original plan was to always keep the rope tight to prevent this problem.  Mostly do but the occasional problem means want to do better.  Thinking is to run a small guide pipe across the beam at the top so the rope is trapped up there and some guards at the rollers to the rope can't possibly fall or jump off them.

Now a quick discussion of the big train wreck.  Opened it up for solar gain early one spring morning.  It was dead calm.  Called out on a “quick” service call.  When I got home many hours later had a 30 or 40 mph wind out of the south east with huge gusts.  The plastic had pulled loose on one side and about a quarter across the top and was flapping in the wind.  In the process it was jerking the pipe up in the air on that end.  So it pulled the plastic off the pipe a bit too.  So had to reroll it on the pipe which meant taking it clear off the pipe and starting over.  It was way harder to do with the curtain hanging than it was originally when assembled on the carpeted church gym floor. Given what I have learned since guessing part of what saved me was the shop pressuring up thru my “leak” taking most of the strain off the rest of the plastic.  I have since added a bunch of my clamp brackets shown in the photo to hopefully keep that from ever happening again.  But the side ones are a pain to install and remove so still want a better system.  The top ones stay put nicely and since they only have to on and off while removing the curtain for maintenance being a pain there is not a problem.  Since this is probably only once every 3 years or so

I have a very tentative plan to go in 32 inches to grab that stud to be the hinge grab the 16 inch stud to pull to the wall and put a clamp pipe on the far end so this creates big clamping force to the curtain rod.  Possible pulls to the wall are a fancy folding cam mechanism and the other answer is pulleys and rope.  Still too tentative to call it a goal.

Over all very glad I did this project and certainly worth while but still much room for improvement.

Should clarify some of the things above.

Passive solar.  The sun directly puts the energy in the area needed.   Ideally the sun shines directly on the mass inside (ideally dark mass) an enclosed space (probably thru a window).  You could label this one direct solar.  Next level down of passive is reflected sunshine on mass.  For example right now in the early morning the sun hits the white ceiling of my passive solar home.  This light is reflected around the room with some hitting the back wall heating mass directly by reflected light and some hitting furniture carpet etc.  Sort of the final level is sun in hits low mass items, they get hot and heat the air, air flows around and heats the mass.  Last is very ineffective as if you want to heat tons of mass with air you need to flow tons of air past the mass.

Passive solar done right keeps the sun and its heat outside when you don't want it with no effort on your part and lets it in during the times when you do want it.  Because of season lag that may mean you are to hot for a month or 6 weeks or even 2 months in the fall and to cold for the same time period in the spring.  For example on the longest day of the year in this house the sun rises north of the house.  It doesn't get around to the south side of the house until about 10:30.  By which time the eves are shading the top 6 to 8 feet of the wall.  This mean the sunlight doesn't even come close to the clerestory windows up high in the wall.  On the shortest day of the year the sun comes over the mountain shining on the south wall thru the clerestory windows.  As it rise in a flat arc the sun moves across the ceiling while slowly descending on the back wall.  At noon the full power of the sun is shining directly right at the top of the back wall directly heating that concrete.  Then it moves back up the wall and onto the ceiling toward early evening.  From sun up to sun down the light was coming in the clerestory windows.

Now this is a good place to mention other forms of time delay.  You have season delay and annualized.  For example in annualized geothermal I might be storing heat in the middle of summer for use in the middle of winter.  The earth does this naturally about 8 feet down which is why it is supposed to nearly constant at that depth in most places.

Discussion should include solar thermal air based collectors too.  Reason is they are easier to retrofit in many cases.  Simplest form is a wood box  with a glass cover with an absorber in that takes in cold air and puts out warm/hot air.

Solar collectors over heating is only a problem with badly designed systems mostly.  A good system self limits and simply shuts down so the heat stays outside instead of hurting anything.

An advantage of good active thermal collectors is if they are well designed you can simple choose to not bring the heat in.  Leave it where it is or vent it outside for example.

Should also mention PVT systems.  PV is photalvoltaic and the T is thermal so they do both.  The PV part gathers roughly 20% of the energy as electricity.  The T part gathers another 60+% as heat.  At the same time the PV part is kept cooler making it more efficient and also extending its life expectancy.

Then another chart of home energy usage.  Notice this one shows way higher heating percentages.  But government data so guessing it is likely closer to accurate in this case.  This web page has a number of other useful tool for geography etc.

home energy usage US  

Calling this good for now but will try and get back to add more.

Creighton Samuels wrote:


Legionella was unheard of in the United States until PVC piping became the dominant material for plumbing use.  The reason for this is that Legionella defends itself from the heat by forming a "mother" on the inside of a pipe, but copper is a toxic surface to almost every form of single celled life.  I'm pretty sure that just about every tank heater sold in the United States today has a copper lined tank, for this exact reason; so the threat of getting Legionella spores in your lungs from a tank heater is probably an over-blown concern today, no matter what the thermostat is set to.  That said, they are designed to heat to 135 F, in order to be able to provide at least 110 for an extended period of demand; and that is hot enough to slow cook to destruction just about any form of human pathogen known.

Most water heater tanks are actually lined with glass and NOT copper.

you are aware you can stick weld with 2 or 3 12 volt car batteries in series?  24 volts and 1/8" rod is minorly too cold.  You have to stretch the arc length right to breaking point to get a penetrating weld and because of the low voltage it is very easy to break the arc.  Your rod control needs to be nearly perfect.  Add another battery for 36 volts and move up to 5/32 rod and now you are a bit too hot.  You can practically try and bury the arc.  Push hard enough you feel the flux breaking against the steel to keep the arc as short as possible.  3/16 rod is about right for 36 V.  Basically you have an unlimited current source.  Keep the arc short and you have about 3X to 4x of the cold cranking time of the battery before you need to put a charger on your weakest battery running 5/32 and 36 volts.  So if it will crank for 15 minutes say then you probably have about 45 minutes to an hour of welding before needing to recharge the batteries.  It is really interesting to weld with because one of a welder's instinctive means of tracking how he is doing is listening to the welder hum or load up.  This is dead quiet other than crackle of the arc itself.  Are these great welds?  Most definitely NO.  But in many cases they can be adequate welds.  Have always wanted to build a chopper circuit to pull the 3 batteries voltage down to welding good with 1/8" rod.  

Quick PS #1  24V is really hard to strike the arc with.  I normally bounce strike but usually end up drag striking to get this to start
           PS #2  On nice thing about welding off batteries is how totally stable the current is.  No hesitation, great stability.  Noticably better than most welders I typically use.

This is combing thinking from 3 sources.  1.  Self stopping folded path solar collector design.  2.  Discussions of cold plug on mass heater start up.  3. And the video including the discussion of the RMH with too much draw.  Don't know if this will work or not?

Can we make a chimney that does cold plug to shut itself off without draining heat from the mass?   The folded path solar collectors take advantage of having the inlet and outlet at the same height and insulation in the right places to do what amounts to a cold plug stood vertically.  The you(won't let me use character) facing down fills with cold air as the burn comes to an end while the you(same problem) facing up stays filled with warm air/smoke from the shut down to start with and then maintains the warm side of the plug from heat conducted by the uninsulated first riser pipe.  The insulation around the downward one keeps it from conducting cold into the room.  Would stacking a cold plug and a warm plug stop flow in the pipe?  Probably ideally this would have wall jack outlet slightly lower than the top of the upward aimed you(letter) so you could have both plugs fully active.  Picture is the pipes laid out flat but probably you would want them in a triangle with just enough room for the by pass door/damper.  On start up you would open the door so the smoke bypassed both plug locations.  Once it was hot it close the door.  This would add a bit of drag to the system  going around 2 complete reversals of direction plus 2 extra straight runs which is why added draw would be wanted.  To automate this what if a bi-metal spring latch was added to the uninsulated riser pipe.  When that pipe gets hot enough for the latch to trip, the damper is weighted to close.  That would give a time delay while things got started and add the flow restriction only after things get rolling good.  If mounted close to the barrel the uninsulated pipe would be heated by the barrel to aid in start up and towards the end just a bit to help keep it flowing.  Ideally the door/damper should seal well and be somewhat insulated.  The stacked plugs combined with inlet and outlet heights the same in the top of the wall greatly reduces back siphon.

A bit of health and limited finances.   Second limit is I am concentrating on solar first.  Beyond that I would actually like to do rockets in 4 buildings potentially.

1.  My house.  Passive solar mostly with some active active.  Since I started adding active solar, 3 of the last 5 years in northern WY at a bit over 4000 ft elevation I have run without heating the house at all.  But not at a temperature most people would consider acceptable.  Coldest ever the upstairs got down to 42 degrees for one day.(I was gone several days and didn't have time to light heater and it was 36 below out that day and really gray)  Mostly running just over 50 degrees.  And lighting the propane heater when it reaches 50.  My single biggest problem is how tight this house is.  To run the clothes drier something must be opened or it backdrafts either the heater or the water heater.  The house is extremely high mass so changing its temperature is a major undertaking.  Concern over air leaking in when heater off is another part.  Would need major dampers.  Guessing ideal would be J tube here.  Best would be done in the basement and bring the chimney up thru the floor where the current propane heater is located.  Exit would be thru a existing roof jack where the propane goes out now.  When the house was built planning for a wood stove as an option means all the piping going thru the roof is 10" properly UL listed stuff.  Just inside it necks down to 4" for the propane heater currently.  Other big problem is the destruction of storage space along that basement wall.  20 feet of super usable storage would have to be eliminated.  For the house have active solar with 33" x 154" worth of double pane glass.  Have 44" x 152" of double pane glass salvaged this last summer to add to that collector so I can more than double it.  Then on another part of the front wall I have 160"x 48" worth of glass for another collector for solar thermal air.  Also have 53"x58" double pane for a solar thermal hot water box on the goals too.  Till I get that much in and see where I am, I will continue to study rocket here with no action.  Hope is I can get the house so it gets to warm on sunny days in the winter.  Then use geothermal water with no heat pump to air condition the house and act as battery for any long runs of cold gray days.  But would still like the backup of a RMH.  Part of the future solar goals may help with ventilation though because I need a HRV system when on pure solar.  Propane stove dries the house out and never a problem but sealed tighted on pure solar have some moisture problems to solve.  Working on building an HRV core and that would probably solve air in for heater too.


2.  My shop.  Current heat is mostly solar with some coal stoker/wood.  Want to add a geothermal battery out the west wall and down the hill to hold the shop above freezing on it so the solar is starting from a warmer bottom base temperature.  Dream system would be all on solar beyond that.  Still thinking some heat would be need in quick bursts for a day or 2 at a time will be needed so more backup plan here.  Biggest hold up here is effort to clear the space.  Big pieces of steel etc in the way.  Rough guess about 6 ton of stuff to move off that wall and get stored elsewhere.  Probably 3 to 6 days effort just to make the hole in current storage space. Concrete floor and concrete block  wall to 8 foot high.  So stove itself would be simple.  Earth berm outside so getting to the back wall to go out through the 2x6 framed wall just about concrete height would be easy.  Best guess would be want a bigger batch box here with the pipe folded back on itself vertically up the wall.  While I have 40 feet of back wall even clearing 20 feet of it is work.  Other goal here possible would be a used oil burner stove.  From recent glass salvage got (6)  44" square double panes to add to solar thermal air on one end of the building and on the other corner of the building is a 51" wide area beside big doors and I got way more than I need of single pane windows in wood frames that just happen to be 51" so more solar there.

Have roughly 50 feet of 8" brand new stove pipe gathered.  4 barrels gathered.  Have great clay for dirt but would have to haul in sand for cobb.  So I am nibbling towards potential goals.

3.  Is the neighbors shop tool room.  Interior block wall with concrete floor and roof jack accessible at one end.  Still think RMH would be ideal for this location and I am still trying to talk him into it.  He belongs to the build a big fire and choke it to death thinking and convincing him that creosote is not a problem is so far a losing battle.  Likely to win this battle have to get one running to demonstrate.

4.  Want to gather enough material to do both a RMH and solar thermal air on one of the fair grounds buildings for Demo purposes.  The one building would be easy to implement both in.  And done properly wouldn't hardly affect any of that buildings uses.   Would be a matter of gathering enough materials, finding volunteers and talking the fair board into allowing it to happen.  Concrete block wall and floor with windows air paths in and out  and stove jacks could go thru.