This morning, we finished off burying the last of our Energy Modules, Number 5, with sandy soil and covering it up too.
The warning red/white hazard tape was wrapped around the perimeter of the module to keep our heavy machinery off that area.
Module-5-Finished
So We are All Done At Last! Phew!
Today, we finished off the installation of the insulation panels on top of our Energy Module Number 5. At the same time, we started pumping water into the module, we will need over 16,000 litres of water to fill it! Also we sliced off the excess pieces that were sticking up above the module level, and inserted the various conduit pipes and inspection tube too.
Module-5-All-Insulation-and-pipes-done
We chucked all the “rubbish” bits into the gap alongside the module and buried them with the sandy soil we are pushing back in.
Module-5-End-of-Day-7-Nearly-finished
Tomorrow, we will finish off the filling around the module plus another whole day of putting water into the tank.
In a rain interrupted day of work, we finished assembling the Aquacell crates for Energy Module Number 5. Next we put down a plastic sheet to cover the top surface and then we pulled up the rubber sheet and folded in the corners and weighted it down with concrete blocks.
Module-5-Rubber-and-Dpm-fitted-1
Then the afternoon session was spent on sorting out the insulation boards to tape into big fat blocks (at least 300mm thick), we needed about 25 of them to go around three outer sides of the module. We were interrupted frequently by very short heavy showers. We got there in the end and in glorious sunshine, we trundled our trolley load of foam blocks to the hole.
Module-5-A-small-load-of-insulation
We placed all of them around the tank and piled in some sandy soil to hold them into place and that’s today job done (with thunder rumbling in the distance)!
Module-5-Insulation-fitted-to-sides-1
On Monday, we fill in the rest of the sand around the module and compact it down solid, and then put on the insulated lid and insert the final conduit pipes.. and we will be all done – phew!!
We continued with Energy Module Number 5 with the start of the assembly of the actual module itself at last!
But first, not forgetting this time, we put in the underground temperature conduit pipes, this time two of them as the module is so large, we decided to put two probes underneath the unit to measure the ground temperature. They were positioned 3 meters in from each ends.
Then We sorted out two layers of insulation boards, one pile of 120 mm thick ones and a second pile of 140 mm thick ones, all being each the 600 mm by 1200 mm size. We managed just, to find 30 of each size! We are really making a large dent in our pile of insulation materials!
Oh yes, we had also some 100 mm thick boards for going down the middle to make the 2.5 meters wide layers (two lots of 1200 mm and the 100 mm making the 2500 mm total).
Then the rubber membrane was unrolled and sorted and positioned into place.
Module-5-Insulation-Rubber-sheet-in-place
And finally for today’s day of work, we got our ramp and slid down, like a production line, enough Aquacell crates to form the first layer, all clipped together.
Module-5-Bottom-layer-of-cells-in-place
Tomorrow, we should be able to assemble the 2nd layer and pull up the rubber skin and wrap the module, then start putting all the vertical layers of insulation right around the unit and filling the sand back in to hold it in place. Phew!
Today, under the glorious hot sun, we finished digging out the hole, for Energy Module Number 5. We then started on the smoothing and leveling process, with the insertion of the guide rails down each side, doing section by section.
When we reached the middle section, we discovered that the wall just didn’t want to stop “pouring” into our hole, the sand was a very large grain size mixed in with small gravel and it just simply kept falling down into our hole, no matter how much of it we removed!! This was the spot where the mini-digger was also struggling to make it way along the top to do the digging task and it kept slipping slightly sideways towards to the hole – very scary! So We had to shore up the side with a sheet of OSB and posts and it seems to be holding
Module-5-Flat-bottomed-hole-1
Anyway, we have finally finished removing all the excess sandy soil by hand and it is now all flat and level and ready for the next step of the insulation boards for underneath the bottom of the module.
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Module-5-Flat-bottomed-hole-3
Tomorrow, it is sorting out the pile of the insulation panels to gather up about 60 to 70 pieces of 120mm thick boards plus an extra strip to fill down the middle. More will be revealed tomorrow – grin!
Today, we started the major task of digging out the hole to receive our largest Energy Module we are assembling underneath our house. But first, we tidied up various bits and pieces like old concrete post with their concrete footing still attached and moved them away. We need all the room we can get to store the sandy soil being excavated.
The hole we need, measures 10 metres long by 3.5 metres wide and the usual 1.2 metres deep, this amounts to over 40 cubic metres or well over 80 tons of the sandy stuff to move!
It was tricky to position the mini-digger in the various places and angles to do the job, firstly, cutting one long side to make it neat and tidy. We discovered that this patch of our ground, is rather made up of course sand particles and it was a fluffy nature and didn’t hold together too well, so we had some slippage in some spots around the edges.
Module-5-Mid-way-through-digging-hole
We loaded as much as we could against the wooden wall of the mountain of dirt we placed there last year, and we still had loads more to shift. We had to use our dumper truck to ferry a large amount away and dumped near our holly tree!!
By the end of the day, we managed to dig out pretty much all the material at last.
Module-5-End-of-Day-1-Hole-mostly-dug-1
Module-5-End-of-Day-1-Hole-mostly-dug-2
Tomorrow, we will do the more accurate scraping of the bottom of the hole and start assembling a rather large number of insulation boards to form the bottom layer for the tank to sit on.
It is day 2 (and last day!) of our cleanup operation of the remaining Aquacell crates we have had in storage ever since we bought them several years ago! The location is now one bare patch of ground!
Empty-Storage-Area-1
We discovered that we had only 89 crates left in the pile and not the full 90 we needed! It was pure chance that it turned out like this anyway, as we had used about 10 of these Aquacell crates a couple of years ago to improve drainage in front of our temporary living quarters! Fortunately, we had 1 odd unit lying around, a heavier duty version so we are going to use that one instead of doing the tedious task of digging up one of the buried ones and swap it!
So We now have a pile of 90 plastic crates sitting near the final resting place, to form the body of our Energy Module Number 5 under the Great Room.
Module-5-All-of-the-Aquacells-waiting-for-the-hole
Tomorrow, we will firstly tidy up at the top end of the plot, to allow somewhere for the huge quantity of the sandy soil to be placed and stored semi-permanently, mostly up against Mount Sod and its wooden wall barrier. It is a large amount in the order of 25 cubic meters, weighing about 50 tons!!
We started the huge task of cleaning all the remaining 90 Aquacell crates to get them ready for our biggest underground Energy Module, Number 5. It measures nine metres long by two and half metres wide, containing two layers of forty five of these plastic crates.
Today, we managed to do half of them – a layer!
Module-5-Half-the-Aquacells-waiting-for-the-hole
Tomorrow, we continue with the chore, and we should have the second half all cleaned and ready – we hope!
Today, we carried on with the filling operation for our Energy Module Number 3. We had pulled most of the water out of the swimming lane and the meter reported that we got about 1900 liters from that source. We then switched over to ordinary mains water and did another 2500 litres before stopping for the night. Tomorrow, we will finish off the fill with another 2500 litres more to bring the total amount to about 8400 litres!
Today, we finished off the job of resetting and re-establishing Energy Module Number 3 back into working order again. we dug out behind one of the ends to allow us to gain that extra 10mm we lost so we can and did get the final Aquacell crates back into the module. Oh yes, we had about an inch of water floating around the bottom of the tank from all the rain we had these last couple of days!
Then, we sorted out the last pieces of the insulation boards on the long sides of the module and then pulled all the sandy soil back in around to compact it all back together. All the original pipes, conduits and inspection tube are now back into place, with the insulation lid back on too.
Module-3-Repairs-Nearly-Finished
Finally, we started immediately filling the module up with water to weigh it down this time! We will need about 8500 liters and it will take well over 12 hours of running our hose pipe. In fact, we noticed that we had about 100 mm of rainwater in our swimming lane so we thought we would nick that instead of using fresh water. We think we can get about 2500 liters from there, we will find out tomorrow, as we are measuring the amount of water being drawn and put into the module.
Module-3-Repairs-Finished