Dry stacked concrete blocks

sounds like it is not so much thermal mass as massive insulation .. IFC are great for insulation .but the other factor is that they allow for almost zero air infiltration which goes a very long way towards keeping the cold or the hot where you want it to be

Steve, go look at the links. 1.6 million pounds is massive thermal mass. It is also well insulated. Different parts are insulated different amounts. It's shells. There is also no uncontrolled air infiltration because it is a mold poured building. Look at the links so you understand.

As you say massive amounts of insulation.. the concrete holds it up. the insulation I would guess is 2- 3 ft thick so that with whole wall insulation that does not allow for air infiltration is why you have the amount r value that you claim.. It likely could be more.

Wondered why you were not installing your own co gen plant since the cost of your electric is so high.

Generator running high efficiency cooling I dont know how cold one really needs to keep the place but 45 below is cryogenic LOL

steve pailet wrote:As you say massive amounts of insulation.. the concrete holds it up. the insulation I would guess is 2- 3 ft thick so that with whole wall insulation that does not allow for air infiltration is why you have the amount r value that you claim.. It likely could be more.

You're not understanding. Go look at the posts to see how things are put together. Start with the diagram on http://SugarMtnFarm.com/butchershop and follow the links from there. You're thinking about simple boxes construction. It's more complicated than that.

steve pailet wrote:Wondered why you were not installing your own co gen plant since the cost of your electric is so high.

I don't have infinite time or money. Other projects of more importance. Besides, we would put in hydro-electric before co-gen as we don't need to be burning much. Go see http://SugarMtnFarm.com/cottage - it takes almost no wood (<0.75cord/yr) to heat our house and none to heat the butcher shop due to it's larger mass.

Or perhaps you meant taking the heat off the refrigeration compressor - that we have setup although the amount is nominal due to the efficiency of the system. If our system were more wasteful we would get more heat. But then fortunately we don't need much heat so it works out.

steve pailet wrote:Generator running high efficiency cooling I dont know how cold one really needs to keep the place but 45 below is cryogenic LOL

We have no generator. Running a diesel or propane generator to generate electricity would be far more expensive than the ~20.5¢/KWhr we already pay. Electricity is expensive here but generating it off of fossil fuels would be more expensive. For us hydro is the best solution but that is a project for another year. Things take time.

I got the concept of the box within the box within the box ... guessing the coldest parts are in the middle so that as you move away from that area it gets a bit warmer.

What I was thinking about when I mentioned co generation is using a gen set that also ran the refrigeration units. Obviously the more insulation the less power required to heat ... Curious what sort of system you actually are using for chillers..

Am guessing that you are so far out in the boonies that NG is not available. Was kind of surprised that your electric is running two times what I am paying.. I am just around $0.10 a KW here

steve pailet wrote:What I was thinking about when I mentioned co generation is using a gen set that also ran the refrigeration units. Am guessing that you are so far out in the boonies that NG is not available. Was kind of surprised that your electric is running two times what I am paying.. I am just around $0.10 a KW here.

There is no piped NG or anything like that. I laid a mile and a half of phone wire to get service and the owner before us had put in the electric which was that far too. Propane is delivered by truck but too expensive to use for much. We heat our home with wood (0.75cord/yr). Minimizing our use is my first objective. To create power for electric micro-hydro is the best option for us followed by wind followed by solar electric. Solar hot water works well and produces a lot more than we can get off the condenser of the mechanical refrigeration. We have "Fre-Heater" which is a hot water tank that runs off the refrigerant line before the condenser. Ideally the condenser actually does little since the Fre-Heater grabs the heat from the refrigerant. Eventually we'll have two of those in series and they'll work with the solar hot water. One step at a time.

About 1/3rd of the building is a coolth attic which is up above the cold section, the reefer. In the coolth attic we will eventually install tanks to store winter's cold. The dark panels will be able to charge in as little as three days. We get -20°F for extended periods each winter and sometimes -45°F. This will let us roll that 'negative energy' around through the summer when we need it. It is all setup to be able to run on thermosiphons by having the cold above the well of the reefer. Theoretically this would allow us to do refrigeration without any electricity. According to my math that would let us run 46 weeks of our hottest summer period. Since we only get that heat for a couple of weeks this takes us right around to the next winter. That's the theory. We'll find out how well it works in the real world. The mechanical refrigerating is our backup system and allows us to pull down to -45°F continuously. Our biggest load is actually not the freezer but the incoming weekly ton or two of hot carcasses.

sounds like you have it really working together.. very cool and hot LOL do understand about the hot carcases

how far up north are you that you can freeze that water down to 45 below.. are you using water or some more exotic mixture?

steve pailet wrote:sounds like you have it really working together.. very cool and hot LOL do understand about the hot carcases

After slaughter the hot carcasses go into the hot portion of the carcass chiller. The energy from the carcasses is captured and used to drive a thermo siphon that powers the lungs of our reefer. In other words, we're powering the place with dead bodies.

steve pailet wrote:how far up north are you that you can freeze that water down to 45 below..

We're in the mountains of northern central Vermont. Zone 3 they say. -45°F is the lowest we've gotten and we've had that many times. I would rather not. -20°F is a lot more common and unpleasant enough.

steve pailet wrote:are you using water or some more exotic mixture?

The latter. Several solutions and phase change.