evan's ant village log

Hmm.... Kew... Anything to do with Kew Gardens in the UK?

Sue, "seed trafficking!" Ha! I really dig that turn of phrase. Thanks for that.

Rhys, Sharla's family is from England...

Day 308

Did a bit of sketchup work on Siesta Verona. It's not very fleshed out and some key structural components like the posts and beams and the loft and some walls are missing, but maybe it gives some idea of what I have in mind. Note the little grow bed, the cold trench, and the bathtub in the greenhouse part. Pretty fancy, eh?

A feast at basecamp! Spaghetti! Pie! Yay! Thanks Jocelyn and Paul!

evan l pierce wrote:
Did a bit of sketchup work on Siesta Verona. It's not very fleshed out and some key structural components like the posts and beams and the loft and some walls are missing, but maybe it gives some idea of what I have in mind. Note the little grow bed, the cold trench, and the bathtub in the greenhouse part. Pretty fancy, eh?

From your first description I thought you were going to build it over the south berm of Siesta with an extension past the end for access. The south berm of Siesta then becomes the planting area for the greenhouse. If before you place the outer layer of berm on Siesta you wrap it with earth tubes that take the hot air at the peak of the greenhouse and return it to the cold well the thermodynamics should pull in the hot air cool it in the berm causing it to drop to the cold well. This will warm the berm in the summer. At night the flow will reverse emptying the cold well and returning warm air to the greenhouse. The greenhouse would be too hot to grow things in the summer when you are growing outside anyway but would function well for growing in the cold weather while cooling the berm for next summers heat. If such an arrangement could get the temperature of the soil around Siesta above 70 by the end of summer, instead of the below 50 like the Abby, You should not need additional heat. Then by heating the greenhouse the berm is cooled to make it comfortable during summer heat.

I have worked this plan out in my head to heat a south facing hillside for my winter growing but I have not started to put it into sketchup.

Nice! Looking forward to see how the expansion develops.


Hans, I can definitely see heating the mass in summer to prepare for winter. But deliberately cooling the mass in winter to prepare for summer, more than will happen already as heat bleeds out from both inside and outside... well, nothing wrong with that as long as you make sure to reheat it in time for fall, but I was getting the impression that heating such an, um... massive amount of mass might already be a multi-year project?

Bah, I wish data for various depths inside the Abbey mass was available!

Dillon Nichols wrote:
Hans, I can definitely see heating the mass in summer to prepare for winter. But deliberately cooling the mass in winter to prepare for summer, more than will happen already as heat bleeds out from both inside and outside... well, nothing wrong with that as long as you make sure to reheat it in time for fall, but I was getting the impression that heating such an, um... massive amount of mass might already be a multi-year project?

Bah, I wish data for various depths inside the Abbey mass was available!

I keep telling them to get a compost thermometer and work it between the logs and into the mass.$20 at home depot if someone wants to send them a gift card.
The logs stop radiating heat back into the room after the center of the heat in the logs nears the surface then radiant heat in the room is absorbed by the logs and transferred to the dirt. The logs slow the heat transfer and as The ants have testified having the heat inside 80 degrees is uncomfortable. So you really don't want to bring hot summer air inside to heat the mass. In theory having even hotter air transferring through the tube will heat the mass more quickly yet it has to travel through the soil which takes time so it reaches the walls when it is needed. Because the greenhouse will continue to add some heat to the system on sunny winter days it should slow the winter loss. The graph shows that when it is 25 outside it is just below 50 inside but when it is 50 0utside it is still just below 50 inside but at 50 outside today it was 80 inside my greenhouse. On 60 degree days it reaches 100 on 70 days it reaches 120 That is from 6 sliding glass single pane aluminum framed door panels vertical not at right angles to the sun. Plus they get a loot more sunny days in the winter there than I do here. So Evan look for those doors at the repurpose store they are commonly replaced with double paned vinyl ones and become available.

Hans and Dillon, thanks for the feedback! I like the idea of a greenhouse that charges the mass of a wofati, but my primary consideration is drainage. I began implementing the idea of a greenhouse built into a south-facing berm with the wofati I built in New Hampshire in 2014, but from recent reports it seems like there were some erosion issues. One advantage to a downhill, as opposed to sidehill, addition is that the drainage problem is already mostly solved by having the uphill patio and gable roof shedding water away and around. That said, I'm still interested in trying to have a greenhouse that charges the mass, and I'll continue to play with different designs, as I don't think the drainage issue is insurmountable.

Days 309-314 (part 1)

We've had some warmer weather lately and lots of the snow is melting off. Siesta's drainage system seems to be mostly working, despite being not quite finished.

Thanks to all the snow melting on the Abbey's roof, there's a waterfall pouring into the ponds just south of the Abbey.

The first pond I dug on Ava, the gulf of Téjas, is filling up nicely. We'll see how quickly it soaks in and/or evaporates away.

Days 309-314 (part 2)

Kai has been doing an awesome job gathering fence materials and thinning the woods for fire prevention. And slowly but steadily I've been collecting firewood, fence materials, and peeled logs too.

Days 309-314 (part 3)

The pile of peeled logs is growing.

I carved a combination spoon and butterknife out of some of that applewood.

Kai had a bunch of cattail seeds and we planted them all over the wettest parts of Ava and the surrounding lands. Planting cattails is pretty much the most fun gardening-related activity ever.

Days 309-314 (part 4)

Jim got a stove for his house! Awesome! He's been hard at work vinegarizing his moldy posts and drying his house out.

He also got a hand-operated well-drill. We're gonna try to drill down 60 to 80 feet and see if we can come up with some water.

Until the extension pieces arrive, Jim let Kai and I use his drill to help dig post holes for our fence.

Days 309-314 (part 5)

Kai and I got the posts in for the western and a big chunk of the southern borders of Ava. We've come up with a new style of junkpole-esque fence that doesn't use any screws or any other fasteners. It's beyond simple, actually, just put two posts in the ground where you would normally put one, and stack horizontal poles between them. We'll see how this double-post free-pole fence holds up, but I'm optimistic that it's the best way yet to build a fence with 100% materials from the land while spending zero dollars.

On another triumphant note, I finished that Ursula K Le Guin book and then curled up like a pouchbat and read another one too. Radical, idealistic, peaceful, hard-working, freedom-loving peasants were a common theme in both of these beautiful works by Le Guin. And this one, the Eye of the Heron, I can't recommend highly enough.