The temporary storage shed building and its gutter have been showing signs of being blocked. So we had a look at the down pipe to the soak-away module and cleared out a couple of inches of flowers and leaves! We put a mesh in the top of the downpipe to stop this! But also discovered that the soak-away modules had sunken by an inch or so which means the downpipe is missing the entrance hole! We extended the pipe!
Now it is all sorted!
Stephen finished off his assembly of the air con unit by fitting servo motors and connecting rods to the air vent shutters. He also sealed the cover on the front with draught excluder rubber strips.
Heat exhanger installed
Heat exhanger installed
Next is the little last piece connecting the heater to the air ducting already in place under the floor.
To meet our electricity distributor’s requirements regarding the underground conduits, we had to replace our original 50mm twin wall conduit with their 40mm solid wall tube. It was a pain but we got there!
Inside the garage, the new conduit is now poking up from the concrete floor slab and cemented in place alongside our other 50mm conduit which goes off to the main house, which we are happy with.
Replacememnt electricty ducting
Replacememnt electricty ducting
Now we need to complete the rest of the trench to the point where the electric cables enter our plot, weather permitting!
The air con unit is now assembled together and the “old” extracted air is now going through the heat exchanger and blowing up the chimney to the outside as waste.
The second fan is installed ready for operation but it will not be working much at all until we have provided a chimney at the very beginning of the earth tubes over by the main house! the other end is still underground waiting for the main house to be built but we can put in a temporary chimney to benefit from drawing in fresh air and cooling it down through the buried earth tubes.
Heat exhanger installed
Heat exhanger installed
It is getting there!
Over the last few days, we have installed the air ducting from the fan box, along the ceiling in the garden room, through the doorway into the lounge and then to the sun corridor, and finally all the way along to the end.
Extract vents and ducts
Extract vents and ducts
Extract vents and ducts
Extract vents and ducts
Extract vents and ducts
Extract vents and ducts
It is quite interesting learning about air ducting and how quiet or noisy air is blowing inside them. These ducting are made of 18mm OSB sheets which are not the smoothest of materials and perhaps that is part of the noise and also the joints needed to be sealed with a little bit of cheap caulk filler!
Now the next step is to fit the second fan to push the fresh air into the rooms!
We have finished the heat exchanger at last! It took three days to build, putting layers upon layers of thin plastic film and spacers to create 50 layers of air “ducts”! 25 for each of the two air streams, separated alternatively in the layers. It was quite difficult to get the plastic film to stay straight and not wobble! We are definitely won’t be using this choice of materials again!
Heat Exchanger finished
Also we have put up the first fan ready to pull the “old” air out of the living quarters and the garden room. The ducting will be along the ceiling in the garden room and pop through the doorway into the living quarters. The ducting will be 75mm high and 300mm wide to create a fairly low profile square shape, painted white. This is only temporary while the temporary living quarters are there!
Extract vents and ducts
Today we started building the heat exchanger module to transfer the energy in the old “waste” hot air to the clean cool fresh air! The new fresh air is coming from underground via the Earth Tubes we installed last year. This cool air will help keep the temperature down during the summer and the heat exchanger to transfer as much as of the useful valuable energy back into our living quarters during the Winter times.
We are making the heat exchanger out of thin layers of plastic films separated by 5mm glazing tapes with gaps at both ends for the four connections! It is slow work building up each layer one by one and we are learning the pros and cons of the materials we are using this time around. We realise that the plastic films might not be stable enough for long term use and it is quite fiddly so we will probably switch back to looking to use thin aluminium sheets instead. We were looking for a cheaper material for our smaller temporary exchanger so We will finish this one and put it into operation to learn the results of the heat exchanging efficiency and other factors!
Tomorrow we will continue the build!
Heat exchanger half built
Heat exchanger half built
The header tank for the garage and our temporary kitchen, shower and WC is now built and installed on the roof. It is a long box made of OSB boards covered with some left over rubber sheeting to make it waterproof.
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It is only 400mm (just over a foot) high (the water level) but it is 2.4metres long (8feet) and 500mm (1 and half feet) wide!!
This gives us a capacity of about 600 litres to allow us to run the pumping of the tanked rain water in a less frequent on and off cycles. This will reduce wear and tear and noise.
Stephen has wired up the high frequency high efficiency low power florescent tube in the WC in the Garage building. It is 1200mm (4feet) long and it is only 28W producing a maximum of 2900lumens output! The controller will allow us to dim this light to various levels too!
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This light might serve as our “night light” to provide a gentle glow during the night times. At 10% light level, the power consumption would be very low at around 4W (power vs. lumens is not a straight curve)!
Today we put up two extra layers of plastic sheeting on the underside of the corrugated roof. We wanted to reduce the heat losses of such a large “window”! being only a temporary construction, we use standard builders plastic sheeting which is not absolutely clear and only costs a few pence per metre.
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Putting up two more layers will hopefully create some additional insulation effect especially during the Winter months. It does cut down on the light level (probably by a third) but it is such a large area (10m x 2m), it is still very bright.
Now we can install the return-path air ducting to remove the old hot air from the corridor and allow fresh cooler air in the bedrooms and lounge.