Jen’s Boot Camp and Allerton Abbey Experience

Any chance that the thermometers provide temperature graphs?

Jen,

Thank you for all the great data. This got me thinking about the impact of having a person inside the structure (both Allerton Abbey and our house). The walls of our house are insulated concrete forms and the floor is concrete, so we have good insulation and lots of thermal mass, although not as much as all that dirt covering the Abbey. Last night got to about 12F and this morning the inside air temp was 54F with no heat on of any kind.  I looked up the amount of heat produced by a human body and found that for a typical 2000 calorie intake, a human produces around 330 BTU/hour on average. Less while sleeping and more if involved in heavy exercise. 330 BTU/hour converts to 96.7 W which is a fair amount of energy. I think most of us know that a 100 W incandescent light bulb puts out some nice heat.

We've noticed that the house is warmer by a couple of degrees if we're inside and doing work. It is colder if we're both out for a few hours. I couldn't believe it at first but we've seen it over and over. And a few degrees doesn't seem like much, but 12F vs. 54F is pretty huge in my book. Good insulation and thermal mass is a winning combo, and I appreciate you recording all of this and sharing with us.

Monday morning, the Abbey was about 55 degrees subside, while it was in the mid-twenties outside. Unfortunately, we got the van stuck (and Fred got his truck stuck) in the snow on Monday while working, so I decided not to drive up to the Abbey on Monday night and spent the night at basecamp instead. Last night when I returned after being away from the Abbey for about 36 hours, the temperature inside was in the low forties—colder than expected. Then I realized that the back door, which has been on the list of repairs due to a slight issue with the fit, had shifted slightly somehow and had been hanging open while I was gone (much to the delight of Cloud, Jeremy’s cat, who broke in and ate all of his cat food in my absence). I was unable to get the door to stay closed without propping it shut from outside, and will hopefully be repairing it tomorrow. This morning, the temperature inside the Abbey has crept up about a degree since last night, but was still only about 43 degrees. However, since it was below zero (-0.5) outside, that still seemed relatively toasty!

Joshua,

I would say it takes about an hour from the time I start building the fire until my tea is boiled and ready to drink.

Paul, I am including the week’s graphs for each sensor with this post.

Robin, thank you for the confirmation! We think (and so far my observations seem to indicate) that having a person (or multiple people) occupying and spending time in the wofati should have a pretty significant impact. One thing I am worried about is that I am not going to be able to spend enough time in the structure to do justice to the thermal inertia test while “commuting” to boot camp, but we are in the process of trying to work out a workaround or two.