If anyone has any interest at all in making bulk food or other emergency supply purchases, send me a PM with an email addy. I was thinking of putting together a mailing list to see if there is enough interest to where we could get it going.
And no smart alecks claiming to be the FBI, please!
I was up all night designing our passive solar greenhouse. I'm looking at a 13x32 foot footprint with the north side buried into the hillside. We also came across the idea of using plastic gallon milk cartons painted black, filled with water and stacked on shelves along the north wall for stabilizing night time temperatures in winter.
Water has been used in many greenhouse designs to maintain temps at night and keep from freezing in the winter. A properly designed "solar greenhouse" does not need additional heating 95% of the time, even in the winter, with maybe the exception of a few really super cold nights. In college, we would design passive loads to about 90% of the worst case senerios. We never designed to 100% because that is typically cost in-effective.
My suggestion is to use solid rock in place of the water. Different types of rock have different density factors- but almost all rock has a density per cubic foot much greater than water. This means it has a greater capacity for storing heat, and releasing it slowly over a longer period of time- as opposed to water. I don't know the details of your greenhouse or the btu load you are trying to overcome- but it will take a considerable amount of water to keep it heated.
Using rock would accomplish basically the same thing in a much smaller space, the rock can be painted black to collect the energy from the sun in the day- and slowly release it at night. The thickness (size of the rock) will determine how many hours it will take to release the energy. I have seen greenhouses that use 50 gallon drums of water stacked on the north side and painted black, but rock would do the same thing in less space.
In order to raise the temperature of one pound of water 1 degree f, you will need to collect 1 btu. To raise the temperature of one gallon of water 1 degree f, you will need to collect 8.34 btu. It could take in the thousands of btu's (per hour) to keep your greenhouse warm in the winter- depending on how cold it is outside and how fast your greenhouse loses heat. This is why it's important to insulate walls and even the floor from the outside.
Anyway- Rock- and it can even be collected locally- might be a better option for heat storage. The diameters will depend on how much glass you have - what your heat load is- and how many hours of release time you are looking for. Some days in winter only give us 8 hours of light- so your max release time could be as high as 16 hours.
I also know how to build ethanol stills. I probably won't be posting the details on here though!
HEARTLESS wrote: How about commitees that have beer?
Oh, they're even more useless!
AspenValley wrote: If anyone has any interest at all in making bulk food or other emergency supply purchases, send me a PM with an email addy. I was thinking of putting together a mailing list to see if there is enough interest to where we could get it going.
And no smart alecks claiming to be the FBI, please!
AV, are you on Facebook? A group of us mountain ladies, coordinated by Farmgirl-Redhead over on PC, already has something like this going on - the order has to be placed by a certain day/week every month and we can add people to the group anytime!
From the FB post:
Girls
I have come in contact with an organic distributor that will deliver organics up here to Bailey area. They are the same people that supply Whole Foods, Vitamin Cottage, etc their organics, but we can cut out the middle man. The thing is that most of the things are in BIG quanties (50lbs, etc).. I want to get in on this and am very interested on a few things.. I thought if we could go in together (if you are interested only), then we could split it up and save big $$$.. but anyway, no pressure whatsoever, was just thinking outloud and there is some really good deals.. Let me know if you are interested, I attached the list--whethere we go in together or if you want to buy in bulk on your own, let me know and we can put in an order this Wednesday.. otherwise we can't order till next month (only once a month ordering).. they've got EVERYTHING--If I don't hear back by Wednesday morning from any of you then I'll let the order pass this time and maybe order next month.. ) I might have missed someone or if you know of someone that's not a friend on my FB then forward to them..
"Now, more than ever, the illusions of division threaten our very existence. We all know the truth: more connects us than separates us. But in times of crisis the wise build bridges, while the foolish build barriers. We must find a way to look after one another as if we were one single tribe.” -King T'Challa, Black Panther
The truth is incontrovertible. Malice may attack it. ignorance may deride it, but in the end, there it is. ~Winston Churchill
If you don't want to sign up on FB just for that, then you can PM me, or Farmgirl-Redhead (I don't know if she's here, or only on PC yet), with what you'd like, and I'll put in your order for you! I'm not sure if we've missed the deadline for this month, but from your posts about stocking up, it sounds like you probably aren't in immediate need of anything!
If anyone else is interested in ordering anything, let me know!
Heartless, I don't know the answer to that.
"Now, more than ever, the illusions of division threaten our very existence. We all know the truth: more connects us than separates us. But in times of crisis the wise build bridges, while the foolish build barriers. We must find a way to look after one another as if we were one single tribe.” -King T'Challa, Black Panther
The truth is incontrovertible. Malice may attack it. ignorance may deride it, but in the end, there it is. ~Winston Churchill
HEARTLESS wrote: AV, you are so right with the transition towns comments. I think many folks up here are gun owners, but never speak of it. Regarding sustainable agriculture up here, I think it is greenhouses not gardens due to short growing seasons. I personally have greenhouse envy as we haven't made one yet, but plan to.
I was up all night designing our passive solar greenhouse. I'm looking at a 13x32 foot footprint with the north side buried into the hillside. We also came across the idea of using plastic gallon milk cartons painted black, filled with water and stacked on shelves along the north wall for stabilizing night time temperatures in winter. Something that seems counter intuitive is that larger greenhouses tend to be more stable temperature wise than smaller greenhouses. I understand there are permit issues with Jefferson County, but when times get really tough the number one thing to bear in mind is surviving first and somewhere down a long ways in numerical order is where permits come in.
We have decided to shelve the idea of a bigger greenhouse for now and are thinking about doing a small one, but not right away (maybe a year down the road). We just have too many things going on right now to tackle this as well. The inside greenhouse will suffice for now. I loved the cobb oven and that might be a fun thing to do too.
" I'll try anything once, twice if I like it, three times to make sure. " Mae West
HEARTLESS wrote: AV, you are so right with the transition towns comments. I think many folks up here are gun owners, but never speak of it. Regarding sustainable agriculture up here, I think it is greenhouses not gardens due to short growing seasons. I personally have greenhouse envy as we haven't made one yet, but plan to.
I was up all night designing our passive solar greenhouse. I'm looking at a 13x32 foot footprint with the north side buried into the hillside. We also came across the idea of using plastic gallon milk cartons painted black, filled with water and stacked on shelves along the north wall for stabilizing night time temperatures in winter. Something that seems counter intuitive is that larger greenhouses tend to be more stable temperature wise than smaller greenhouses. I understand there are permit issues with Jefferson County, but when times get really tough the number one thing to bear in mind is surviving first and somewhere down a long ways in numerical order is where permits come in.
We have decided to shelve the idea of a bigger greenhouse for now and are thinking about doing a small one, but not right away (maybe a year down the road). We just have too many things going on right now to tackle this as well. The inside greenhouse will suffice for now. I loved the cobb oven and that might be a fun thing to do too.
If anyone decides to build a cob oven, I would just love to help out in return for seeing how it's done!
) I might have missed someone or if you know of someone that's not a friend on my FB then forward to them..
