Roselea

Category: Ventilation System

The Air Ventilation System, provides Fresh, clean and heated Air to all rooms, plus waste Air is extracted specifically from all Rooms as well.

  • Earth Tubes Days 13 & 14

    Day 13 – Monday 23rd August

    Short days work today, started late after Shaun had an appointment and finished early because it rained!

    But we got the first section completed by leveling the sand over the area and compacting. The mini loader does manage to drive over the compacted sand but cuts it up a bit when turning
    leveled sand over the earth tubes

    Day 14 – Tuesday 24th August

    Full days work today. Completed 7 tubes! We had to clear more sand than expected as a large part of the wall fell in.
    .before and after pics of the wall

    Where the tubes bend we mitered the joint and covered it with geo-textile.

    joint in the tube showing wraping

    Continued this for the next 6 tubes, so finished 7 tubes completely.

    end of day 14

  • Earth Tubes Days 11 & 12

    Progress in installing the actual earth tubes in the bottom of the pit.

    Day 11 – Saturday 21st August

    Installed 5 earth tubes today, this involved moving large amount of sand as the hole is not quite deep enough and has a few ‘hills’.

    The first 6 tubes inplace

    Day 12 – Sunday 22nd August

    Buried the last 6 tubes in the first section of the pit. Once again the walls slumped in a bit when compacting near them, this time they tried to bury me! Luckily it was only knee deep, I pulled myself out and caught up with the compactor which was merrily carrying on…

    All the first set of tubes in place

  • Earth Tubes – Day 7, 8 and 9

    With the hole finally dug out, we have been sorting out the bits and pieces that will be placed down, down into the pit! Not much visible work is happening especially our video camera cannot see right into the hole! So you will have to imagine us hard at work 2.5m (8feet) down!

    Day 7 – Tuesday 17th August

    The delivery of the extra 10 tubes we needed and the wooden battens for constructing the framework to hold up the earth tubes and keep them steady while we fill in the hole around them. We also ordered another 10 bags of cement just in case we need to bed or lock in anything down. Today’s work was shortened as we had to go shopping (we have to eat something)!!!
    We did some investigations in the bottom of the hole to see how much work is needed in moving the sand around to lay the earth tubes down. We checked the depth and laid two concrete blocks to get a feel for a particular method to achieve a satisfactory results!

    Day 8 – Wednesday 18th August

    We had visitors around so it was another late start. We cut 4 tubes into 12 pieces and clamped them together. These are the vertical tubes for transferring the air up out of the ground and into the house. We also mounted a wooden framework at the garage end ready for the vertical 3m (10feet) tubes.
    The 120 crates arrived from Jewsons today – these crates called AquaCell are designed to allow large amount of water (usually rain) to be collected and leached out of the sides.
    stacks of blue crates

    Day 9 – Thursday 19th August

    The hired tiny little earth mover machine arrived today and used our mini digger to lift it into the hole! It got stuck in the soft sand!
    The mini earth mover
    So we got on with cutting 6 earth tubes in half and mounting them vertically on the support framework – these tubes transfer the incoming air from the Garage down into the cool earth!
    the entry tubes standing up near mass wall
    Then did the other end where the 12 tubes done yesterday were situated near the point of the house. At both ends we placed the concrete blocks underneath to support them.

    12 tubes clamped togther for the exit

  • Earth Tubes Plan B – Day 5

    The growing and unstoppable hole continues .. .. We are nearly there! Does anyone want some nice soft sand? Going cheap! Just bring your own 20ton lorry!

    Day 5 – Sunday 15th August

    The main part of the backwards “L” is done today. Just the little spur to do tomorrow!
    picture of the large hole
    The dumper truck is holding well, no sign of the flat battery problem but the level, at the end of the day, was 12.91V which it is a bit low. Again it has been cloudy today compared with yesterday. Yesterday the voltage was a good 13.5V and there were much more loads to move and hence more starts! But it was glorious sunny weather! So the solar panel does do a good job even though it is only rated at 1.5W!

  • Earth Tubes Plan B – Day 4

    With the newly energised Dumper Truck (the battery is now fully charged!) Stephen dashed out to do as possible before the forecasted heavy rain comes!! guess What? No Rain! Stephen worked all day and we counted 36 loads dugs out! Phew!

    Day 4 – Saturday 14th August

    Lovely day with both the weather and the amount of work done!

    It’s time to go around the bend tomorrow! The spur of the L is next!
    the hole at the end of day 4
    The pile of stuff dug out.

  • Earth Tubes Plan B Day 2 and 3

    Stephen is working hard in digging the Great Hole! It is a case of doing a few hours in between rain showers and sometimes heavy ones!! But also tackling man made problems like the battery going flat on us (The infamous Dumper Incident!).

    Day 2 – Thursday 12th August

    Quick before the rain comes!

    Day 3 – Friday 13th August

    The Dumper Incident or is it a Friday 13th thing??!

    The Great Hole is coming so watch this space!!

  • Earth Tubes Design Conclusion!

    We have finally settled on a design of connecting up all the earth tubes and getting the air in and out of them! We have 12 tubes all together, each one being 150mm (6inches) diameter internal) in order to provide time for the air to exchange its thermal energies with the surrounding thermal mass! The 12 tubes is equivalent to a single 600mm (2feet) diameter pipe!

    After consulting with our friendly structual engineers, who advised us that our original design of using concrete blocks to construct a chimney and tunnel to pass the air down to the tubes, has potential problems at the joins due to the loading pressure from all directions but especially the sides, at 2.5m (8feet) depths! They advised the use of pre-casted concrete pipes segments to make the chimney and tunnel / chamber but this lead us to realise that we could route the tubes themselves upwards with 90degrees corners and terminate them inside the buildigs! This makes it so much easier and avoid mssing around with concrete blocks, pouring concrete around them and other reinforcing methods or drilling holes in the sides of concrete pipes!!

    So Many Thank goes to our engineers at Burrell Partnerships of Norwich!!

  • Earth Tubes Plan B Day 1

    We started digging for gold today! The 4.2m wide (over 13 feet) by 18m long (59feet) hole is quite big with a spur (like a capital L) spur for another 5m (16 feet). Oh Yes it is as deep as we can go with the digger and this is about 2.5m (8feet) down! Down! down we go! Now that’s a lot of dirt or rather in this case sand!

    We discovered that the sand is quite loose and keeps collapsing into the hole so we are being careful not to get too close with the digger!

    Day 1 – Wednesday 11th August

    The heaps will grow and grow so we might end up blocking the camera view! Certainly the house’s windows will be completely blocked! So we are thinking of extending the pole up some extra metres to peer over!

  • Earth Tubes Approval

    We had a flying visit from our Building Control inspector and we had a quick talk about the need to make sure the ground under and around the garage will be compacted very carefully to minimise settling effects. He was reassured that our garage slab is going to be 150mm thick and will have fibre reinforcement added. So we can now get on with the massive task of digging a large hole!

  • Collapsing trenches

    We started to dig the first trench for the earth tubes and as soon as it was full depth the walls started to collapse, a large chunk from the right and a smaller section on the left.

    first trench
    shows the collapsed side of the trench
    As we were planning to work at the bottom of these trenches this is a bit of problem… When we dug out the leach field the sides of the hole stayed put for a week and more!

    I think we will have to think of another way to do the earth tubes…