Part Two-- building away...

One project that did get done is rebuilding the firebox for our main heat source, the rocket mass heater.  With firebrick and a tighter angle iron collar for the feeding tube, it works better.

We can now pile in trash cedar posts and let them burn.  They are very combustible, but if we run the fan it keeps the flame blowing down.  But I don't trust cedar post firewood enough to set them in the stove and leave.  We're thankful for this stove!  The recent cold spells had many days with very little sunlight.  That means we need to run the stove.

All in all, we sure like the help from our grandkids, operating their heavy light equipment to fill in the cracks between the urbanite.  Now everything is buried in snow.

Too much! We had our hopes for getting the solarium finished before winter set in, so we had another heat source.  But to get that done, the sunny john must be built. Josh helped me pour the floor of the vault after Springlane Construction did the stem wall for us.dd caption

Here's the heat storage for the sunny john. Look up sunny john on line to see how it works.

We snaked the pipes from a central barrel for airflow through 20" of fill to keep the place from freezing in winter.  Maybe.

We got the west wall done barely in time for some fall rains.  See the white walls between exposed studs?  We painted elastomeric over $1/yard mesh on the surface of our  EPS (styrofoam) 4" thick panels, and it makes a very adequate indoor surface.  Not quite as hard as sheetrock, but durable enough.  Works good.  Sand the styrofoam surface well so the paint adheres

The east wall is still open, after sever cold and plenty of snow it looks like we will not have a real thaw until springtime.  We have about 10" of snow on the ground. So our solarium cannot really get warm.  But it is protected enough for lumber, and for Sheila.

We tried to get it done!  Here's the backing for the solar air collector for the sunny john, a baffle to allow air to flow into the black ducts at the bottom and out the opening at the top into the Sunny John.

Here's the window with insulated glass for the collector, it's 5' X 6'

The collector surface is old aluminum siding, painted with a special highly-selective solar collector black coating, formulated to soak up the sun's rays efficiently, but block out radiation.  This allows the surface to get considerably hotter than something painted with normal black paint.  Well, it's not done, and the forecast is for more snow tonight....

Here's hoping for a mid winter thaw to finsih some of these projects! 
Maybe I've been spending too much time on my column with the local newspaper.  Check it out if you like, http://www.bighorncountynews.com/clergy.html
Grandpa Dave.