zepickens
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- Member for
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| In 50 characters or less... | Posted by | Post date | Last comment | Number of Comments | # of Comments new to you | |
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Ventilation System Calculations | zepickens | Thursday, February 7, 2013 - 4:25pm | Thursday, February 7, 2013 - 4:25pm | 0 | |
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Passive Solar Heat for Cold Houses | zepickens | Monday, November 19, 2012 - 2:32pm | Friday, February 1, 2013 - 1:04pm | 4 | |
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eFarmony in NYC? | zepickens | Tuesday, November 13, 2012 - 10:26am | Tuesday, November 13, 2012 - 10:26am | 0 |
I've numbers that say passive venting requires an area 20% of your square footage to be open during the day. So if I have 200 sq ft of growing space, I would have to have 40 sq ft of vents, which is a lot. I think these would be awesome for the air intake portion of the system. Now I just need to figure out the exhaust side of things.
We're going to be working on a similar hack for this greenhouse with FarmhackNYC: http://www.farmhack.net/tools/solar-powered-greenhouse-ventilation#wiki
Maybe using the FIDO alert system...
Thanks for the input, gentlemen. I was doing some rough calculations (based on the U. Mizz site), and I determined I'd need about 1,000 gallons of water to keep the temperature up through the winter. So that would be about 18 55-gallon drums. And yes, jbd, water weight would normally be an issue for a roof, but our roof happens to be concrete-finished and reinforced--overbuilt to say the least. Good for me as a gardener... I did add about 100 gallons of water in various buckets/containers, etc but haven't noticed any real temperature changes.
An Orange County, NY farmer recommended using drums of water as props for planting benches, thus using the space the drums are taking up to my advantage. I would have to pull up the planting beds and source the barrels, which is more work than I can put in right now. But it's definitely on my mind.
One other point, another farmer in Saratoga Springs, who is dealing with the cold a lot more than us, said water could be HARMFUL in the winter if it ends up freezing. He said if it freezes, it might end up radiating colder temperatures than the air. It takes a lot of energy to thaw the water out, so the water may be staying colder longer than the air. Just a thought, but I'm definitely game for experimentation.