Building Solacity's New Strawbale Warehouse

[Rob Beckers]

In 2008 I posted a thread detailing the building of a SIP 'barn' (http://www.greenpowertalk.org/showthread.php?t=5334), this has been serving me as the warehouse for the renewable energy business I started in 2006, Solacity Inc (http://www.solacity.com/). It has served me well, but the business has outgrown the space we have in there, and over the past two years I've been working on the process of getting a new office and warehouse built to serve as the headquarters for Solacity. This thread is intended as a diary of the building process of that new structure.

The new Solacity building is going to be a 9000 sq. ft. single-story structure, with around 2000 sq. ft. of office space, and the rest will be warehouse space. We have purchased land in Kemptville, Ontario, that is where it's going up. Since I am a firm believer in "greener" building, this one will be as green as we can make it without breaking the bank:


The building is all-electrical, no fossil fuels, and net-positive in energy use.
The office section will use passive solar as part of its heating.
The office makes use of day-lighting (natural light) through a light-shelf and large windows.
Insulation values will be well beyond the industry standard.
The building is designed to be as air-tight as we can make it.
We will use strawbale for most of the walls.
Heating will come from a geothermal heat-pump, with in-floor hydronic heating.
The roof area is optimized for 100kW of solar PV under the Ontario FIT program.
The roof will be covered with highly reflecting galvalume, to keep solar heat gain in summer minimal.
Energy-efficient lighting through LED and T5 fixtures.
Very highly insulating triple-pane windows.
No need for air-conditioning in summer due to high thermal mass and insulation.


The building design was done by John Donkin Architect Inc. (http://www.jdarchitect.ca/), if you need an architect in this area, John is a great guy to work with! The general contractor on this job is BBS Contruction Ltd. (http://www.bbsconstruction.ca/), they are straying well outside their usual 'comfort zone' with this project. Kudos to them for taking this on!

With the preliminaries out of the way, let's look at a few images of what it is going to look like. Here is an overview of the whole building plus the parking lot and truck dock area:

http://www.greenpowertalk.org/picture.php?albumid=23&pictureid=161

We are only paving what is needed; in part to save some money, in part because it is better for the environment to use less asphalt, and gravel will help drain rain water into the ground rather than having it run off. So most of that front area will be gravel. The truck dock has a ramp that we'll pave with asphalt, and the parking lot for customers right in front of the office will be paved. The area in front of the building is designed so trucks can pull off the road into the lot, then back into the loading dock, and from there drive out again onto the road without the need for any turning on the road itself. The design also separates the truck entrance from the (smaller) car entrance for customers and employees.

The next picture shows the car parking lot and building front:

http://www.greenpowertalk.org/picture.php?albumid=23&pictureid=160

The building is oriented perfectly south, and the roof has a slight slope. The front is largely made out of triple-pane windows, providing passive-solar heat in the winter. Retractable awnings regulate how much sun comes in, and provide shade in summer. The top section of the windows is separated out, so a light-shelf can be mounted there to provide day-lighting of the office. The roof is sized for 100kW of solar PV (when installed this will make the building not just net-zero, but net-positive in its energy use, it will produce more energy annually than it uses).

Here is a close-up of the entrance area:

http://www.greenpowertalk.org/picture.php?albumid=23&pictureid=159

There's a wood awning over the entrance, which will have some partially-transparent PV modules as a 'roof'. I'll use the panels to hook up a demo off-grid system (the few panels in there won't provide much energy, that part will just be for demonstration purposes, to run a few lights).

The next image shows an overview of the inside of the building:

http://www.greenpowertalk.org/picture.php?albumid=23&pictureid=158

You can see the separation between office and warehouse sections. The main entrance has an air-lock structure, to keep the heat in (in winter). The bottom wall is south facing, and with mostly windows and doors, it will be regular stick-framing with spray-foam insulation. The other three walls will use strawbale, provided by NatureBuilt Wall Systems (http://www.naturebuiltwall.com/). Straw bales have great advantages for walls: They combine a high insulation value with a high heat capacity (takes a long time for them to heat up or cool down, moderating the heat variations of the diurnal cycle of day and night).

Finally, here are two images that show the floor plan in more detail:

http://www.greenpowertalk.org/picture.php?albumid=23&pictureid=157
http://www.greenpowertalk.org/picture.php?albumid=23&pictureid=156

The office section is largely open space, 'flex space', so we can use this as needed for cubicles, as sales counter etc. There are two fixed offices on the east side, for my business partner and me, and we have a meeting room.

Heating will be provided by PEX pipes in the 6" concrete slab that underlies the whole building. That heat will come out of the ground, from 6,400 feet of 3/4" HDPE pipe that we will bury under the parking lot. This pipe feats a geothermal heat-pump.

Insulation values are R-50 for the roof, around R-35 for the walls (the R-value for strawbale varies according to the report you want to believe), R-20 under the slab, and the foundation walls are insulated with R-10. Windows are triple-pane Thermotech (http://www.thermotechfiberglass.com/) fiberglass units, with a whole-window insulation value of R-7.1.

That's it for now! I'll post some pictures of the site and the initial building progress next time. Anyone with questions or comments, please do not hesitate to post in this thread!

-RoB-

[Andy Rhody]

WOW Rob, looks like a dream come true!

Knowing you, this venture will not only be successful, but continue to grow and you deserve it.

Thanks again for all you've done to make me successful in both wind and solar.

[Ralph Day]

Looks great Rob. Are you planning on strictly being grid tied or hybrid? Some independence in an outage would be nice to have.

Ralph

[Rob Beckers]

Looks great Rob. Are you planning on strictly being grid tied or hybrid? Some independence in an outage would be nice to have.

Ralph

While I'd love some off-grid capability, it's not practical for something this size. The real issue is the price of batteries to run a place like this for any amount of time (which then need to be replaced every so many years, regardless if they have been used or not). Just the heat-pump is a 10kW load, and in winter it will be running a good chunk of the time.

Once we're all settled in, and finances have recovered a bit (building this is not cheap!). I'll look at a small system to till a number of critical loads over for some time during power outtages. Things like the computers/servers, phone system, a few lights etc.

Taking the 30,000-feet-view for a moment, renewable energy has really come a long way: PV modules are cheap enough that it is actually worthwhile to make your own energy. It is competitive with the grid. The bottle-neck is storage technology, we need better, and in particular cheaper, batteries.

-RoB-

[Rob Beckers]

WOW Rob, looks like a dream come true!

Knowing you, this venture will not only be successful, but continue to grow and you deserve it.

Thanks again for all you've done to make me successful in both wind and solar.

Andy, dream or nightmare, depending on when you ask me.:confused:
It sure keeps me awake at night at times...

We're eagerly waiting to hear about your recent solar PV project! (and see pictures of it)... :D

-RoB-

[Rob Beckers]

We purchased a lot of 11.5 acres on the outskirts of Kemptville some time ago. That's more than we needed, but the price was right. The building and associated parking lots and storm-water management will use about 2 acres, what we do with the rest has yet to be determined.

This land used to be farmland at one time (not very good for that though, too wet!), it has been lying fallow for at least a decade, probably more, and is overgrown with shrubs and some trees (poplar, considered a "junk" tree over here, basically a weed of a tree, fast growing, then falls over). This is what it looked like 'before' (though after we bulldozed a path into it):

http://www.greenpowertalk.org/picture.php?albumid=23&pictureid=165

And this is the picture 'after', actually the beginning of this week after they cleared the brush and trucked in lots of fill:

http://www.greenpowertalk.org/picture.php?albumid=23&pictureid=164

This land used to be, in essence, swamp. It's not considered a wetland, but it's not too far from that either. Part of the year there is standing water, then it dries out a bit during the summer. The water is never far away, as can be seen in this picture:

http://www.greenpowertalk.org/picture.php?albumid=23&pictureid=162

They are digging for the footings and foundation walls, and currently working on putting in the form-work so concrete can be poured next week. They had two pumps running to keep the trenches somewhat dry.

The footings are only about a foot, maybe two feet, below what used to be the old 'grade' before the land was cleared. From there we need to fill around 5 or 6 feet for the location of the building to get to the proper grade for it (and to get the footings below frost level).

The building will have a steel frame for its structural part. The steel has already arrived on-site, and can be seen here:

http://www.greenpowertalk.org/picture.php?albumid=23&pictureid=163

This is pre-fab steel made by Butler in the US. A steel frame is the most cost-effective way to do what we want to do here. They also had a good roof as part of their system; standing seam with R-50 insulation below and a continuous membrane to very effectively seal it against air infiltration. The roof and frame are the only Butler parts on this building, as mentioned the walls will largely be made out of strawbale, very unusual (possibly even a first!) for an industrial building.

The water has me worried, since we still need to dig all the pipe into the ground for the geothermal heating. That will be 6400 feet of 3/4" HDPE. Actually we will have 8 loops of 600 feet each, the rest is to return the loops to the building. Those need to go 7 feet into the ground (more if the digging is good and I can persuade the excavator operator :) )...

-RoB-

[Rob Beckers]

Things are moving fast!
Here are some pictures that were taken yesterday (Friday), after a week of more digging, form work, concrete pouring, and more form work.

The footings have been poured, and the guys are currently forming up the foundation walls:

http://www.greenpowertalk.org/picture.php?albumid=23&pictureid=166
http://www.greenpowertalk.org/picture.php?albumid=23&pictureid=167

The plan is to pour the concrete for the foundation walls next week, just before the Canadian Thanksgiving long weekend. After that weekend we'll be putting the geothermal heat exchange pipe in the ground (that was originally planned for next week, but postponed in favor of completing the foundation first).

There was some trouble with the lowest point of the footings/foundation, the truck dock area. This part will slope downward after it's all done, so the back end of the trucks ends up at floor level, and the wheels of the truck will then sit 4 feet below the new grade. The foundation walls therefore are 4 to 5 feet deeper there than anywhere else around the building, and there was lots of water:

http://www.greenpowertalk.org/picture.php?albumid=23&pictureid=168

The water was kept away with pumps, but the soils engineer determined that the underlying silt/sand/mud did not have the proper bearing capacity for the footings. The solution was a "mud slab", basically just the dumping of concrete over some geotech fabric in the hole. The footings sit on this mud slab.

The pipe for the geothermal will need to be at just about the same level as where these footings are. Let's hope we can dig faster than the water comes in...

Speaking of digging, more of that was done on the west side of the building where the septic bed will eventually be placed, and to the north where a holding pond will be formed for storm water.

http://www.greenpowertalk.org/picture.php?albumid=23&pictureid=169

That holding pond bears some explanation: The rules for building require that we do not discharge storm water (ie. "rain") any faster after this building is in place, then before there was a building. Clearly the roof and parking lot areas will run rain water off much faster than it would naturally happen, without a building, so a depressed area is going to be made in the back of the lot that will hold that water for some time, releasing it at a controlled rate. This avoid overwhelming the (limited) ditches in the area.

Lastly, here is a picture taken from what will be the car entrance from the street onto the site:

http://www.greenpowertalk.org/picture.php?albumid=23&pictureid=170

-RoB-

[Joe Blake]

Rob,

Looks good, and FAST. Good luck.

The "holding ponds" are fairly common around my neck of the woods, for taking excess rain run off and give it time to soak in to the soil. Most of my block is unpaved (except for the house obviously) so that the water can drain into the soil. At the moment we've had our wettest winter in a long time, and the grain farmers are ecstatic over the size of their possible crop. It's a pity we can't transport some of the excess rain out to the wheatbelt when it's needed. However, we've still yet to get the grain harvested, and rain at the wrong time can cause the seeds to sprout, which takes a lot of value out of the harvest.

Will be very interested to see progress on your project so keep the piccies coming fast.

My extra PV panels have really boosted my output and even though I've sacrificed my FIT, as the weather brightens I'll probably be making money anyway, and certainly saving a bucket load.

Have you considered making use of the groundwater by pumping it up into high tanks for later use as hydro-power? :amuse:

Joe

[Rob Beckers]

Hi Joe,

Yeah, it's moving fast! By now most of the concrete foundation walls should be up. I haven't been there since last week. My next trip will be on Thursday, to go and mark out where the trenches for the geothermal heat exchanger need to go. Those will be dug next week (6000+ feet of pipe!!).

No plans to do anything with the water other than drink it. We'll have a well to provide the water needs for the building.

-RoB-

[Rob Beckers]

I was out at the building site last Thursday to set out the layout of the pipes for the geothermal heat exchanger that we are going to dig into the ground next week. Most of the foundation walls have already been poured, only the front section of the building remains to be done, and by this time those too should have been poured.

Water remains enemy no. 1 at this site. This is the truck loading dock area, the deepest part of the foundation. We had torrential down pours last Monday (25+ mm of rain), and the guys told me the water came up to the middle of those boards:

http://www.greenpowertalk.org/picture.php?albumid=23&pictureid=171

Other than that day, we have been very lucky with the weather. It's been a perfect fall; nothing but sun, 20+ Centigrade just about every day. Almost all the digging we need for this project will be finished by the end of next week. For that reason I am holding my fingers crossed that this weather will hold just one more week, but it doesn't look like it. Lower temperatures and a whole lot of rain in the forecast.

Here is a picture of the finished foundation walls. The guys are putting the insulation on at this time (2" XPS, makes for R-10). If you look really carefully you can see two rectangular holes just to the right of the guy at the very bottom of the wall: Those are where the pipes for the geothermal come into the building (one hole for the inflow (warm), one hole for the outflow (cold):

http://www.greenpowertalk.org/picture.php?albumid=23&pictureid=172

We spray painted the pattern of the heat exchange pipe on the ground, so when the big excavator comes Tuesday (it's Thanksgiving weekend here, no work on Monday), they can go right to work:

http://www.greenpowertalk.org/picture.php?albumid=23&pictureid=173

That's me, crooked helmet and all.
By the way, this area where the pipe is going into the ground, will be the front of the building, between building and street. This is where the parking lot will go.

We will have 8 loops in the ground. Each loop is made of 800' of 3/4" HDPE, type DR-11, pipe (the stuff that's normally used for water lines). Part of that length will go in a header trench, effectively we will have 600' loops in the ground. Total pipe length on this project is a whopping 6,400 feet!!

As an aside: The original plan when this building was first designed was to use two water wells as a source of heat from the ground, to run the heat pump. That is the usual method in my neck of the woods; half the neighbourhood here has a ground source heat pump with two wells (including my own house, though the previous owner replaced the heat pump with a gas furnace, which I will replace again with a heat pump as soon as it is done for). One well is used to pump up ground water (the same well that is needed anyway for drinking water), the heat pump takes some of the heat out of that water, cooling it down a few degrees on exit, and the water then goes down back into the acquirer through a second well. This works very well for a few reasons: Ground water is much warmer and has a far more constant temperature vs. the soil at 5 - 8 feet depth, and the only energy needed to get at it is to overcome the friction of the pipes moving it from one well to the other. Heat pumps using 10 Centigrade ground water work much more efficient than those using 0C propylene glycol from a closed ground loop!

Unfortunately the Municipality of North Grenville will not allow open loop (two-well) heat pump systems; their fear is contamination of the aquifer. There is little evidence that heat-pump use of ground water poses a higher risk vs. regular household and agricultural use from wells of that same water does (I cannot find any published cases). In fact, it would be reasonable to expect that when wells are used for heating extra care is taken to keep those wells functional, while the risk of contamination from a poorly maintained or abandoned agricultural well would seem to be much greater. The heat pump itself is very low risk as well: There are (at a minimum) two heat exchangers between the well water on one side, and the heating fluid (for hydronic heating) on the other side, with refrigerant in between. Today's refrigerants in a heat pump are not toxic, and at atmospheric pressure they are in gaseous form, meaning they cannot contaminate the water returning to the well. All this to say that it is a pity that we (and anyone else contemplating a heat pump) are forced to go the much more costly and failure-prone route of digging in HDPE pipe. Allowing an open-loop system with two wells would lead to much more efficient heating, at a lower price point, possibly helping a wider adoption of this wonderful technology.

The pipe needs to go 7 feet in the ground. If I can convince the excavator operator, and the walls don't cave, we'll try for 8 feet. Each extra foot makes quite a difference in performance. We are digging in (essentially) sand, and there are water issues, so we will have to see how this goes. Each loop is 10 feet from the next one, and inside each trench we want the pipe spaced 3 feet apart (actually the excavator will come with either a 4' or 5' bucket, and with the sand we may need to dig wider to keep it from caving in).

Heat pumps are extraordinary pieces of equipment, it almost seems like magic: The ground temperature late in winter will be around 35 - 35.5 Fahrenheit at 7 feet depth (1.6 - 2 Centigrade). The water we circulate through that 6,400 feet of pipe will pick up some of that heat, and enter the heat pump at 30 Fahrenheit (-1 Centigrade). The heat pump takes some of the heat out of the water, and it will return into the pipe at 25 Fahrenheit (-3.8 Centigrade). Those are worst-case temperature numbers (and the design parameters). Hopefully we will be above for most of the winter. The heat pump works much more efficiently if we can get just a few degrees more going in.

On the other side of that heap pump there will be water of 100 Fahrenheit (38 Centigrade) going in. The heat that was extracted from the (freezing) water is added to this by the heat pump, and it leaves at a temperature 106.8 Fahrenheit (41 Centigrade). The heated water circulates in a storage tank, and from there into smaller PEX pipes in the concrete slab, providing heat to the building.

For this design we have what is nominally a 10-ton heat pump. Due to various deratings (anti-freeze in the loop water, the low ground temperatures) this ends up being closer to 6.8-ton. When it's all running full-blast we will be moving 57,000 BTU/hr from the ground outside into the building, and the inefficiencies of the heat pump add another 25,000 BTU/hr, making for a total heat-flow of 82,000 BTU/hour.

We are doing the geothermal and hydronic heating ourselves; meaning, I'm the engineer on that part of the project and a buddy of mine is providing the labour through his employees (for which we pay him). This was not the original plan, but after seeing the out-of-this-world quotes that came back, and seeing how some knew even less about geothermal than I did, we decided to go this route. I did a crash-course on the engineering that goes into geothermal, and can now design a loop field like the one we are using here. There is a set of books written by Oklahoma State University (http://www.igshpa.okstate.edu/publication/manuals.htm), that are (literallly) "the book" on geothermal. It's heavy on engineering, and provides a set of equations to work out what is needed. Very well written! Anyone interested in doing this work should have a look at them.

In this case we will run each loop into the building, and connect them to a header over there. This makes it easy to individually flush each loop, and fill it up, without the need for an (expensive) "flush cart". Most geo-installers will put the header in the ground, and run a single set of (larger) pipes to the building. However, the only approved method of making such a header is by heat-fusing HDPE (the pipe is heated, the ends are pushed together, and they fuse). Fusing HDPE requires special equipment, special training, and annual (re)certification. Since we do not have the experience for this, the loops are all going into the building.

Stay tuned for next week, when things will get really interesting...

-RoB-

[Rob Beckers]

I'm starting to feel like this is turning into a monologue... So, feel free to chime in!

We've started digging in the geothermal pipe. To refresh the numbers: We need to put 6,400 feet of 3/4" HDPE pipe into the ground, and it needs to be at about 7 feet under. This is a Very Large Dig, the amounts of soil to move are staggering, and it is turning out to be quite the project (we are currently halfway).

These are the 8 rolls of 800' pipe:

http://www.greenpowertalk.org/picture.php?albumid=23&pictureid=174

They look innocently small. Until you unroll them... Then you realize just how $@%! long 800' is!

Since we are the go-big-or-go-home kind of guys we got ourselves a big excavator. A Really Big Excavator! :eek:

http://www.greenpowertalk.org/picture.php?albumid=23&pictureid=176

Look at the size of the guy walking next to it, and you get an idea of the size of that Beast! One would normally dig in pipe like this with a 3' bucket on an excavator, but we suspected (and have) serious issues with caving-in of the trench as we dig. This is all very fine sand on our site. So this machine has a 5' bucket.

We are running each loop into the building, for that there is a header-trench where each loop starts/ends, and this is a picture of our header trench as it is being dug:

http://www.greenpowertalk.org/picture.php?albumid=23&pictureid=177

Because we expect some caving we made the header trench wider than needed, and since we expected water issues as well, we dug it about 10' deep so water from the trenches for the loops will run into the header, where we can pump it out.

The sandy soil proved very unstable; as soon as one reaches 3 or 4 feet the sides start caving in. That forced us to dig wider, and to use a steel box, from which to work and lay pipe. You can see the pipe sticking out on the far end of the box, on either side:

http://www.greenpowertalk.org/picture.php?albumid=23&pictureid=178

The guys have a good routine down now: The excavator digs a section of trench, pulls that steel box forward 15-or-so feet, the pipe is put down near the sides of the box, shovel some sand on it. The excavator then dumps more sand on it, partially back-filling the trench (keeps it from caving further and keeps it much dryer!). Repeat.

For scale, that steel box is 8 feet high. This is Big Stuff. Because it sinks into the sand somewhat, we get about 7 feet of depth where the pipe is going in. The box is 5 feet wide, and we're putting the two legs of the loop of HDPE pipe at about 3 feet apart inside it.

After laying pipe for some length, the trench looks like this:

http://www.greenpowertalk.org/picture.php?albumid=23&pictureid=179

We put caution tape a few feet above the pipe, in case someone digs in the future. Hopefully they will hit the tape first (it says "geothermal pipe below").

The header trench, where all the pipe comes out and goes towards the building, now looks like this (incidentally, this picture was taken from the top of the pile of dirt next to it, this is a BIG pile!):

http://www.greenpowertalk.org/picture.php?albumid=23&pictureid=175

As you can see there is some water in there. It's not too bad, but it will fill up a few feet if we don't pump. Luckily we can keep the trenches dry while laying pipe, the water is confined to the header at this time.

There is a lot of water down there. We can see it coming in while digging the trench, it just seeps out of the sides. Eventually, with the pipe in place, I suspect it will essentially be laying in saturated sand. From a heat-transfer perspective that is actually very good.

At the building I have put some 15 foot sections of 1 1/4" (cheap thin) HDPE water pipe in through the foundation, to function as sleeves to protect the 3/4" geothermal pipe:

http://www.greenpowertalk.org/picture.php?albumid=23&pictureid=180

The foundation walls are 5' high, and backfill will reach to about a foot below the top. That is not enough cover for the geothermal pipe, so we will put some styrofoam XPS board over the first few feet of pipe, until it reaches the 7' depth.

That is it for now. We will be digging in pipe for a few more days. I will post a few more pictures next week.

[Bryan Couch]

Well I don't have much to add in terms of conversation so it may remain a monologue but I must say this is a pretty impressive build. I've only been looking into and learning about this for a week or so and this thread is one that I'm really interested in. Solar, geothermal and non-conventional construction is the focus of my learning right now and this incorporates them all.

I'm sure I'm not the only one watching... Keep it up! :bigsmile:

[Joe Blake]

Yup, I'm watching too. The pity is that in winter here it seldom gets below about 5-6 degrees C for more than a day at a time, so as interesting as it is, I'm unlikely to use the techniques and materials you describe, Rob. But still very interesting anyway.

Joe

[Ralph Day]

Maybe for cooling Joe?

Ralph

[Rob Beckers]

Yup, I'm watching too. The pity is that in winter here it seldom gets below about 5-6 degrees C for more than a day at a time, so as interesting as it is, I'm unlikely to use the techniques and materials you describe, Rob. But still very interesting anyway.

Joe

Yeah, we fight the cold, you fight the heat...
Geothermal works very well for cooling too though. But it's expensive. For large commercial buildings that expense becomes a smaller and smaller part of the total building sum, and it can make sense.

In our case, the building (and more importantly the people in it) should be OK without installing A/C. We have so much thermal mass in there, and insulation, that the building will tend to follow longer term average temperatures rather than the daily extremes in summer (it does get hot here, 33+ Centigrade happens, though usually not for more than a few days in a row). We will see how it works out.

-RoB-

[Ralph Day]

"(it does get hot here, 33+ Centigrade happens, "

Did you all hear Joe Blake laugh at that? 33 C, his beer fridge is probably warmer than that!:D

No offence meant Rob, 33 C is way beyond my comfort level too, and it's not a dry heat around here.

Ralph

[Rob Beckers]

his beer fridge is probably warmer than that!:D
Ralph

LOL!! That's a great one!

Yeah, I know, but Joe in turn will be jealous to hear we don't need a fridge to keep the beer cool much of the year!...

Not to be entirely outdone: We've seen 38C here in summer. That's pretty rare though (and likely still colder than Joe's fridge). For an office the challenge is to keep it under 24C (if the humidity isn't too high) or maximum 25C (if we have some moving air). Beyond that these people they call employees tend to get upset.

-RoB-

[Peter Klaassen]

Rob, I am enjoying the views of your new construction. The next time we get up near Ottawa I will be stopping by to see it all for myself. Your efforts to educate your viewers are appreciated
PK

[Joe Blake]

(Not) Looking forward to 44+ degrees C in summer. New South Wales is burning to a crisp at the moment. I'd like to buy a freezer big enough to hold a Joe-sized body during the heat of the day.:eek:

Joe

[Rob Beckers]

We're moving on to the next part in this build: The steel frame has been erected over the last week or so. It's not the most exiting thing to talk about, and has little to do with renewable energy or efficiency (though it is financially efficient: steel is just about the most cost effective way to do what we want to do). It does finally show the actual size of the building though, giving a feel for dimensions.

Here is a selection of a few pictures:

http://www.greenpowertalk.org/picture.php?albumid=23&pictureid=181

The next one shows the entrance-area-to-be. As you can see we still have a bit of a water issue. Hopefully things will get dryer once grading has been done:

http://www.greenpowertalk.org/picture.php?albumid=23&pictureid=182

More steel in this picture, showing the scale of things (this is not a very large building, but still):

http://www.greenpowertalk.org/picture.php?albumid=23&pictureid=183

One more here:

http://www.greenpowertalk.org/picture.php?albumid=23&pictureid=184

This shows the view from the back to the front of the building, with that giant 'X' providing resistance to racking of the structure. It's a requirement due to seismic activity in the area; we don't get the huge ones like San Francisco, but the earth does rumble every now and then. That big 'X' will eventually be just behind the partition wall with the office area.

Normally the roof would go on next, but we seem to have run into a scheduling conflict with the strawbale wall people. It may end up delaying the roof and putting the strawbale walls in next, we will find that out tomorrow.

Meanwhile we have been working hard on a FIT application for a 100kW PV rooftop system (the Ontario Feed-In-Tariff). The amount of paperwork needed for that is staggering, and besides the usual application forms we also need to collect more papers from the architect, engineer, city council etc. Hopefully we will get it all together this month, so we can apply while the program is open (4 November through 4 December).

-RoB-

[Rob Beckers]

Another two weeks have passed and it's time for an update.
One big job that needed to get done is for the fire tanks to get dug into the ground. Because we are outside of the city, there are no fire hydrants, and the local fire department requires that we store 10,000 gallons (46,000 liters) of water on site. In actuality our building isn't all that combustible, too much concrete and steel, and strawbale walls don't burn well either. I suspect that the local fire department very much likes the idea of having a large water supply in our neck of the woods, not just for our building. In any event, those tanks represent a heck of a lot of money that's going into the ground...

This picture gives an idea of just how big a hole we had to dig to fit them in. In fact, it was not quite as deep as we wanted it to be (or needed it to be), but water, and fear of the nearby road foundation caving into the hole dictated that this be the limit:

http://www.greenpowertalk.org/picture.php?albumid=23&pictureid=185

The 10,000 gallons are distributed over two interconnected tanks. This shows them being installed:

http://www.greenpowertalk.org/picture.php?albumid=23&pictureid=186

On top of those tanks and around the upper part of the perimeter we have 2" XPS to keep the water from freezing, and from there it's bermed up a bit more, so it currently looks like this:

http://www.greenpowertalk.org/picture.php?albumid=23&pictureid=187

Ultimately the finished grade will be higher than what you see in this picture. We will have to; the fire department indicated the tank outlet is too high for them to work from.

The other big job that has commenced is the installation of the strawbale walls. They come in segments that are craned in place and then attached to each other and to the sil. This is part of the north wall:

http://www.greenpowertalk.org/picture.php?albumid=23&pictureid=188

The walls themselves consist of 2" of cement stucco on both sides, with straw bales in the middle. They sit on a wooden box-beam, which installs on a curb rail (sil) that we installed:

http://www.greenpowertalk.org/picture.php?albumid=23&pictureid=189

Beads of foam between foundation/curb/wall are there to keep it all air-sealed. The wall comes in large segments that stack together (each segment is made to fit a specific location of the wall, and we will have two rows on top of each other):

http://www.greenpowertalk.org/picture.php?albumid=23&pictureid=190

The strawbale segments form a complete unit of wall cladding, insulation, and vapour barrier. In fact, no additional vapour barrier can be installed as this would impede the ability of the walls to get rid of moisture and dry out from the inside (there is straw on the inside, and that will rot if one tries hard enough to keep it wet!).

Installing the walls should complete during the next week, and after that we'll move on to the roof. The hope is that we will have the building closed in before the winter really hits. It's getting cold though, with -10C in the forecast the coming week.

We have also been working hard to get our Feed-In-Tariff application together for a 100kW rooftop PV installation. This requires for the municipal council to pass a resolution of support (to get 'points' that are needed to get processed by the OPA). They have been very helpful. With a little luck we will tie all this together next week and submit the application to the OPA.

Keeping our fingers crossed...

-RoB-

[Joe Blake]

Looking good, Rob.

Re your water tanks and firefighting, when I owned a "rural" block (ie off the water scheme) it was a legal requirement for each block (5 acres) of land with a house to have 32,000 litre tanks with a hose coupling compatible with the equipment of the local volunteer fire service. They were permitted to take up to 10% of the tank capacity if required. (This water was the ONLY water source for each house, other than seasonal creeks and rain.) The water tanks were above ground, because the ground was so rocky. Landowners were also required to have 3 metre "fire breaks" installed annually. Fire is a big problem in this wide brown land.

[Rob Beckers]

It's been some time since my last update; things have just been crazy busy, between running the business, getting a large off-grid installation completed before Christmas, and of course the warehouse/office building...

The crew from NatureBuilt has been busy installing strawbale wall panels, you can see one going in here, using a crane to sling each panel into place:

http://www.greenpowertalk.org/picture.php?albumid=23&pictureid=191

The walls have been completed, this is what they look like:

http://www.greenpowertalk.org/picture.php?albumid=23&pictureid=192

The part that shows tape are the joints; those will eventually be covered up with flashing. A small strip of flashing was incorporated into the bottom of the panels so water can shed over that strip, and then over the larger pieces of flashing we will install.

The space between the panel segments has been foamed in, and (on the outside) caulked. All this to make an airtight seal: Air infiltration will be our biggest source of heat loss, so anything that can be done to keep the air from moving through openings in the walls, roof etc. will help keep down the amount of heat it will take to keep the inside warm.

Besides the walls, the guys have also been working hard on completing the roof. The roof is made from a metal liner that goes over the steel frame. This liner has a membrane build into it on the top side, and it has 'sticky' edges where liner segments overlap, creating an air-tight seal between liner pieces. On top of the liner metal spacer strips are fastened (they too come with a 'sticky' underside, to seal the screw holes). The top of those strips is eventually crimped into the seam of the top standing-seam roof pans that form the outside of the roof.

In between the liner and the standing-seam roof pans is insulation. A whole lot of insulation! In total we have R-50 in here, made out of layers of rigid foam and bats:

http://www.greenpowertalk.org/picture.php?albumid=23&pictureid=193

Here is a detail of it:

http://www.greenpowertalk.org/picture.php?albumid=23&pictureid=194

There is actually quite a bit of thought that went into the level of insulation for walls, roof, and floor. I wrote a spreadsheet that calculates heat-loss based on heating-degree-days for our location, and the insulation levels we are using made it so that each part of the building (walls, roof, floor) contributes just about the same amount to the overall heat-loss of the building. It wouldn't make sense to have (say) an R-100 roof when heat losses through other parts of the building vastly outweigh the heat-savings of that roof.

More insulation to follow...

[Rob Beckers]

Since the roof was mentioned in the last post, I should also point out that the roof was designed to hold 100 kW of solar PV modules. The building (and roof) face perfectly south (I checked; the surveyor got it right within a degree or so!), and the roof has a 1-in-12 slope to it, so the rows of panels can be spaced closer together without having the shading of one row interfering with the next row. In all it will fit 20 rows of 20 panels each, and with the standard panel size being 250 Watt at this time that makes 100 kW.

We have applied for an Ontario FIT contract during the last round that the FIT program was open (in November), under the new "unconstructed rooftop" category. I have received notice from the OPA that they are reviewing the application at this time. Hopefully we will get a contract awarded!

If we do get a FIT contract and install the solar panels then the building will produce roughly 2x as much energy as it actually uses (everything in the building, including heating, is electrical). We would not just be net-zero, but actually net-positive to quite a degree!

To get back to the insulation: The spray-foam crew was in to foam in the south wall (which is a stick-frame wall), and to foam in the space between the top of the strawbale wall segments and the ceiling/roof. Spray foam was chosen because it air-seals very well, in ways that are hard to achieve with regular plastic vapour-barrier and tape, and at the same time it (of course) insulates:

http://www.greenpowertalk.org/picture.php?albumid=23&pictureid=196

The foam we are using is a little 'greener' than the usual, by being soy-bean based for part of its components. This is a 2-part polyurethane closed-cell foam (https://www.demilec.com/Technical-Library/Heatlok-Soy-200-Plus-High-R.aspx). If you pull up the spec sheet from this link 1353 it will show this foam is R-7.4 per inch. We're bringing all walls up to R-35 in total, so the space above the strawbale panels gets 5" of foam. The metal purlins that hold up the roof, and that stick through the walls from inside to outside, get foamed in a little further along the inside, to minimize thermal bridging. The front (south) wall gets 3.5" of foam, making for about R-25, because it will have another 2" of rigid foam (R-10) on the outside as a base for the synthetic stucco.

Another picture of the south wall being foamed in:

http://www.greenpowertalk.org/picture.php?albumid=23&pictureid=195

[Rob Beckers]

The next big job that I was personally on the hook for was to install the piping for the hydronic (in-floor) heating. Since I am not a heating/HVAC engineer by trade a little (a lot of) education was first in order. I read a number of books, and spent way too many hours on the Internet to dig up the engineering and practical parts of hydronic heating and its installation. For anyone in the same boat, by far the best book I've found is "Modern Hydronic Heating" by John Siegenthaler. It truly is very complete in both the engineering side (calculations that are needed), as well as much of the practical side (installation).

The result of all this was to divide the building into 4 zones that can be heated independently: The warehouse is one very large zone, Most of the office space is another zone, and each of the two (small) directors offices is a zone as well. This is the minimum number of zones that we can get away with, and still provide decent temperature control for all of the areas.

The most common pipe used for hydronic heating is 1/2" PEX with an oxygen barrier. The oxygen barrier is there to prevent oxygen from the air from migrating into the water that's circulated through the pipes, so regular (cheaper) cast-iron pumps can be used to circulate the water. Without it, the oxygen that gets into the water would turn the iron to rust over time, causing the pumps to prematurely wear out. It's entirely possible to use regular PEX without the oxygen barrier, but that means using either bronze or stainless-steel pumps. In truth this is less important today than it used to be: Most high-quality pumps use coatings on the parts that contact the fluid, making them nearly impervious to oxygen. Still, all the PEX that's sold for hydronic use has an oxygen barrier, so why not use it.

There is a loop length limit for the PEX pipes that are put in the slab: The water needs to move at an average speed of at least 2 ft/sec, so it can move entrapped air along. If it moves any slower the air will stay put in pockets along the pipe, forever gurgling and bubbling when in use, and making it near-impossible to eliminate all the air from the system. On the other end, an average fluid speed above 4 ft/sec makes the pressure that is needed to move it along (at that speed) shoot up quickly, making it energy inefficient (and expensive!) to move the fluid through the pipes. For 1/2" PEX this means that loop lengths are limited to (around) 300 feet. For longer loops the pressure needed to meet that 2 ft/sec fluid speed rises to the point where it takes too much energy to run the pumps (and while that does get converted to heat, it's not an efficient way to heat a building).

There is a third requirement for the fluid flow in the pipes: If it flows too slow the flow will be laminar (very smooth). That is good in that it keeps the pressure needed to move it along at a minimum, but for heating this is bad because only the little bit of fluid right next to the pipe wall will actually exchange heat with the concrete floor, most of the fluid in the pipe won't loose any heat and come out at the same temperature as it went in. What we need is turbulent fluid flow, so all of the fluid partakes in exchanging heat with the floor. Flows in pipes turn from laminar to turbulent when they reach a certain speed (for long pipes), determined by the Reynolds number (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reynolds_number) of the flow. It needs to be at least 2300 to have a high probability of turbulent flow in the pipe. Luckily we already satisfy that condition by sticking to a minimum flow speed of 2 ft/sec.

In our case the use of 1/2" PEX would mean a heck of a lot of 300' loops to satisfy the heat-load requirements of the warehouse and office sections. Instead I choose to go with 5/8" PEX for those areas, which can be used with loop lengths of 400' using the same pressure as those 300' loops of 1/2" PEX.

While it is possible to draw out all those loops by hand, and keep track of their length, it greatly helps to use software. I downloaded and installed the 30-day trial version of LoopCAD (http://www.avenir-online.com/AvenirWeb/LoopCAD/LoopCADHome.aspx), an industry standard for this job. This works very nicely, and is very expensive, luckily all I needed was the one design and that could be done within the 30 trial days. For anyone doing this on a regular basis it is very much recommended though, and well worth the money!

The resulting drawing can be downloaded from this link (http://www.solacity.com/docs/825%20Van%20Buren-LoopCAD%20Drawing.PDF) (a 3.5Mb PDF file!).

While LoopCAD can auto-generate the loops, I laid them out by hand (which is very quick anyway with the software). The goal was to get more heat near the windows and walls, and to make it easy to install the piping with a minimal effort in setting out the layout. The 5/8" PEX loops are close to 400' each, and designed to be nearly the same length each (within 10%), so no balancing is needed. There are two 1/2" PEX loops for the two small offices, each 300' in length; this length was needed to satisfy the heat-load of the corner office (it has the largest heat-loss due to the two outside walls and windows), and the 300' length allows me to run those loops at the same pump pressure as the 400' loops of 5/8" PEX, so a single pump can be used for the whole system while still keeping the flows balanced in the individual loops.

LoopCAD also does heat-load calculations if given the insulation parameters, and I was pleased to see that it agrees pretty well with my own numbers. Once it knows the heat-load of each part of the building it will also indicate which rooms are over- or under-heated. In our case, the conference room that is sandwiched between the open office space and the warehouse was getting too much heat vs. the rest of the office. This could be made a zone of its own, to solve the problem, but that would mean another zone valve and more complex controls (ie. more money!). Since this room is not used all that much, the choice was to space the PEX out a bit more and lower the heat-flow into the room that way. Doing so also solved a slight under-heating of the small office/desk space for the warehouse manager's section, close to the outside wall, by putting that pipe into this area instead (while still keeping the loop length at 400').

There are a few more details worth mentioning: For the warehouse section I kept the PEX 4' away from the outside walls. The floor space close to the walls has the highest heat-loss, and I did not want to heat the great outdoors any more than needed. For the warehouse it is not important that the floor is heated evenly, all we need there is a fairly constant air temperature.

The other detail is that we are stapling the PEX to the foam insulation at the bottom of the slab. The professional world is roughly equally divided between those that fasten the PEX to the rebar or steel mesh that is embedded (about halfway) in the concrete slab, vs. those that put it on top of the underslab insulation. In theory it is better to have the pipes halfway in the concrete: It will make for a better heat-flow from the PEX to the concrete to the air above it. Putting PEX at the bottom of the slab incurs (as close as I could determine, it is hard to find good numbers) a 20% - 30% penalty in heat-flow vs. having it halfway in the slab. This is not a loss in heat; it means that water in the PEX cannot move as much heat into the concrete (and ultimately the space above it that is being heated), so the water returns back to the manifold at a higher temperature than it would have otherwise, that 30% of heat is still in the water, available for circulation. It does mean that to satisfy the heat-load requirements of the space either a higher water temperature is needed, or more pipe is needed, to make up for the loss in heat-flow. We cannot raise the water temperature; heat-pumps have a very limited temperature range before their efficiency (their COP) plummets. Luckily the design heat-loss of this building is low enough that we have sufficient floor space to put enough PEX to meet the requirements, despite the lower efficiency in heat-flow.

There are a number of very good reasons to put the PEX at the bottom of the slab: Installation is much easier and much faster, as it now can be stapled to the insulation instead of having to hand-fasten it every few feet to rebar or mesh. It is also much better protected from damage by the concrete crew during the slab pour, control-joint cutting in the slab (normally to 1/3 of its thickness), and drilling for fastening walls etc. That last part is a very convincing reason to put the pipe as far down as possible. Fixing leaks after the concrete is poured is hard!

After this long story some pictures. Before PEX can be installed we need the sub-slab insulation in place first:

http://www.greenpowertalk.org/picture.php?albumid=23&pictureid=197

What you see in there is 6-mil polyethylene as a vapour barrier, and then two sheets of 2" rigid XPS (R-5 per inch, making for a total of R-20 under the floow). The sheets are installed so the joints are staggered, and the top joints are taped so we don't have sheets coming loose all the time when walking around to install PEX.

The manifolds are nickel-plated brass, they come ready-made with isolation valves and temperature meters. For their price it is hard to make these ourselves out of copper pieces:

http://www.greenpowertalk.org/picture.php?albumid=23&pictureid=198

If you look very carefully you'll see that the upper manifold points in one direction (the inflow), while the lower manifold points in the other direction (the return flow from the PEX). This is not the usual way manifolds are installed, but I've done this so they form a set of 'reverse flow' manifolds, where the a PEX loop will have its inflow on (say) the higher pressure side of the manifold, while its return flow would then be on the other side, of the outflow manifold, creating roughly the same resistance to flow for each loop. This helps automatically balance flows in the PEX loops without the need for balancing valves, as long as the individual loop lengths are close to each other.

The next picture shows the first loops going in:

http://www.greenpowertalk.org/picture.php?albumid=23&pictureid=199

The run from the upper manifold (the hot side) to the lower manifold (the cold side). In that same picture the PEX stapler can be seen in the upper-right corner: It uses large plastic staples to fasten the PEX to the insulation. This works very well! One can simply walk along the pipe and push it down every 4 feet or so. It's fast!

The last picture shows some loops in the warehouse section:

http://www.greenpowertalk.org/picture.php?albumid=23&pictureid=200

In total we will have 14 loops, each 400' of 5/8" PEX, for the warehouse section. There are 5 loops, each 400' of 5/8" PEX, for the larger part of the office section. Lastly, there are two individual 300' of 1/2" PEX loops for the two offices on the side of the office space.

In total we have 8,200 feet of PEX in the slab!
Another hurdle we have to deal with over here: The morning we started with the PEX it was -29C outside (that's about the same in Fahrenheit). Luckily we have a small heater in the building, keeping it just under zero Centigrade. Downright cozy compared to the outside temperature!

Next is to pressure-test all that pipe...

[Rob Beckers]

It's been a few busy days!

The PEX installation for the hydronic heat was completed. Here's one that shows the larger picture.

http://www.greenpowertalk.org/picture.php?albumid=23&pictureid=201

This shows how loops originate and terminate at the manifolds.

http://www.greenpowertalk.org/picture.php?albumid=23&pictureid=202

In all, the installation of the PEX went very well. For once not too many surprises. The stuff was easy to bend in the radius we needed, despite the cold. The staples went into the foam with ease and held on well, setting out the layout on the foam was quick.

Next we had to show the building inspector that the pipe could hold pressure. I installed pressure test kits on the ends of the manifolds, and we pumped them up to 60 psi (the recommended test pressure for the pipe and manifolds).

http://www.greenpowertalk.org/picture.php?albumid=23&pictureid=203

The issue that I had was not with the pipe, no holes there, but in getting these manifolds to seal. They are just not made in a way that makes it easy to tighten everything up. Now, these are "cheap" Chinese manifolds, not the worst by a long shot, made from nickel plated brass. I put "cheap" in quotation marks, because the 4 manifolds we're using are still just about $1,000 altogether. I could have spent another grant and bought either Uponor or Caleffi manifolds (the industry leaders in this field), maybe those would be easier to work with, and if I had to do this again I probably would. It's just that the prices of these things are obscene!

In any event, I got the manifolds mostly closed off, except for a few very small leaks. The plan is to take them apart after the concrete floor is done, and reassemble them with some pipe-dope on the gaskets (too many gaskets in there!).

Today was the concrete slab pour. We started around 8am, and were done getting the concrete in place at just about 5pm. A total of 120 cubic meters (about 150 cu. yards). Outside temperature was around -17C (about as cold as the inside of your freezer). It wasn't too hard to keep the inside of the building warm enough, but the outside cold did cause some peculiar problems that I'll explain in a bit. Putting the concrete in place is just half the job of making a slab though; the guys will be working through the better part of the night to do the finish work on the top of the slab!

In our case we have 4" of XPS, then the PEX hydronic heating pipe, steel mesh, and all of that embedded in concrete.

http://www.greenpowertalk.org/picture.php?albumid=23&pictureid=204

This picture shows the mesh up a little from the PEX, about as good as it will ever get. The theory holds that the steel mesh should sit in the middle of the slab, but because the workers constantly step on it most of that mesh ends up right back at the bottom of the floor, on top of the PEX. It makes one wonder what the point is of using steel mesh. Actually (and contrary to popular opinion) the point of the mesh is to keep the cracks in the slab from getting too wide, and to keep the two sides of those cracks at the same height, so the cracks are less of a problem than they otherwise would be. Mesh does nothing to make concrete 'stronger', it really does not: First off, concrete in a slab-on-grade floor is only loaded in compression, not in tension, and steel in concrete only helps make it stronger in tension. Second, the thin steel wire in concrete mesh just doesn't have the strength to do much, even if that concrete would get loaded in tension. It's just there to keep the pieces more or less together in case of cracks.

Big pieces of concrete that are poured in place as we do here will crack. It's a given. So, to make those cracks a little more acceptable saw cuts are made after the concrete had a chance to set for a few hours (but before it shrinks enough to start cracking!). A diamond saw is used to make cuts up to 1/3 of the thickness of the slab in places, with the hope that the slab will eventually crack all the way through in those same places, making for a neat crack that relieves the stresses in the concrete, and everyone lives happily ever after. As I'm writing this, they are probably doing just that: Making the control joint cuts.

Anyway, back to that steel mesh. It's use to help keep cracks under control is dubious and rebar on chairs (setting the height of the rebar in the slab) would be much better. Costs much more too of course. The mesh did help protect the PEX pipe, with all the equipment being hauled over it that is a good thing! The PEX in turn helps to elevate the mesh at least about 1" up from the very bottom of the slab. So maybe there is some benefit. One can hope!

In case anyone wonders, the PEX pipe is flexible enough to handle those cracks. It has enough stretch to it so these are no problem.

http://www.greenpowertalk.org/picture.php?albumid=23&pictureid=206

We had a concrete pump (outside) with the hose running through a window opening to get the concrete to where it was needed. This was because of the PEX: Without it they would have used a power buggy (big motorized wheelbarrow) to get the concrete from the truck to the slab, but those are too heavy to use on PEX.

After the concrete had a chance to set (about 2 hours) the guys opened up one of the big overhead door openings we have (and that were carefully tarped closed), to get The Big Stuff in. These are ride-on power trowels and other heavy equipment to finish the top of the concrete. This had the unfortunate effect of letting in very cold air from outside, which mixed with the very moist air above the concrete, to create a very dense and instant fog!

http://www.greenpowertalk.org/picture.php?albumid=23&pictureid=207

The effect was quite spectacular!

http://www.greenpowertalk.org/picture.php?albumid=23&pictureid=208

As picturesque as this was, the problem with this is that the laser-level that had been set up on one side of the building could not longer be read, so it became hard to keep the pour level (and the slab thickness a constant 6").

The heavy equipment I mentioned can be seen here. This is a power trowel, to knock down the top layer of the concrete (helps make it harder and smoother).

http://www.greenpowertalk.org/picture.php?albumid=23&pictureid=209

We're putting a coloured hardener (http://www.euclidchemical.com/product_detail.asp?id=86&pselect=159) on top of the slab. For commercial concrete slabs a hardener is always used on top of the concrete, to make the surface much harder and more durable than it would otherwise have been. So it stands up to the traffic of forklifts and even people (for an office or store front). The easiest type is one that is simply sprayed on as the concrete is setting, a liquid. Instead of that we are using a hardener in powder form that also has colouring in it. This is the cheapest way we could find to give the concrete some colour (other than the dark-gray it otherwise becomes), that is durable, and allows for a 'brighter' floor surface (the concrete is our 'finished' floor, there is nothing else going on top). It's spread with a shovel, and the power-trowel then works it into the top layer. This is done in two steps; first it's mixed into the top layer (as in the picture), later another batch is put on top and that is troweled in when the concrete surfaces is made smooth and shiny.

http://www.greenpowertalk.org/picture.php?albumid=23&pictureid=210

The colour we choose is 'tan'. Hopefully it is reasonably light-coloured. I will find out tomorrow.

There is one thing to note for its absence in that last picture: The windows do not have any condensation on them! (Not all the windows are in yet, those opaque 'windows' are plastic sheets stapled to the rough opening) With near 100% humidity inside due to the concrete and -17C outside we expected problems with water dripping from the ceiling. However, the R-50 in the roof, and the triple-pane windows managed to keep the inside temperature at around 10C (with a small heater) and the surface temperatures above the dew-point. Especially for the windows that was impressive (they are R-5.9 whole-window insulation value)!

-RoB-

[Rob Beckers]

There is another thing I would like to mention for those considering hydronic heating with PEX in the floor: As previously mentioned the professional PEX installation world is roughly divided in two, between those installing PEX on the bottom of the slab (right over the insulation, as we did here), and those installing it either on the steel mesh or rebar.

After seeing the concrete floor pouring process close up I hereby declare anyone who wants to put PEX on top of rebar or mesh insane! It is asking for trouble! Concrete crews making a floor will not treat it kindly. On top of that, with mesh one never knows where that PEX ends up in the floor. Add saw-cuts to the mix (the control joints) and you have a recipe for disaster! That was reinforced by one of the concrete guys, who mentioned that just last week they cut through 3 PEX lines...

In short, PEX on mesh, don't do it! PEX on rebar (on chairs, so the height is controlled), still a bad idea, but just maybe. Life is too short, just staple the PEX on to the insulation (and if you have a smart enough engineer or heating person they can adjust for the loss in heat-flux by raising the water temperature a little or by adding a bit more pipe).

-RoB-

[Ralph Day]

Can't wait to see this place. Once we get our travel trailer this summer it will surely be on the list of 'must see' places in Ontario. (how big is your parking lot?)

The trailer is coming with a rooftop solar panel and charge controller for the battery. I have a Xantrex 1800watt Prosine inverter to add in as well (it comes with a dc converter/charger).

Rlaph

[Rob Beckers]

We have a big parking lot Ralph!
The township required that trucks have enough space to turn around in front of the building, instead of having to back in from the road. For that reason we moved the building back quite a ways, away from the road. So, plenty of space!

I went over for a look at the new slab on Friday. The good news is that we have a slab.

http://www.greenpowertalk.org/picture.php?albumid=23&pictureid=211

The bad news is that it's quite a bit rougher in some areas (unfortunately in particular in the part where the office is going to be, I would care much less if the imperfections were in the warehouse). Also, there is no trace of the 'tan' colour that we asked them to put on. As mentioned, this is a coloured hardener that comes in powder form. It goes on in two applications; first when the top layer is still relatively soft, it's mixed into that with a power trowel, the second application is when it's setting, so the last batch of powder stays close to the top of the slab. My guess at this point is that they got the timing wrong. However, the company doing this work does giant slabs for a living (this is just a tiny one for them), they ought to know how it's done.

At this point the decision is to wait until Tuesday and take another look (the slab is currently covered with poly to make it dry out very slowly). Maybe the colour still has to 'come up'. We don't know. If nothing is showing Tuesday we'll have to have a chat with the concrete company.

Trouble is that there is no good (or economical) way to put colour on that slab if the coloured hardener failed. Regular concrete floor paint doesn't hold up well enough for commercial use. Epoxy coatings work great, as do some urethane coatings, but the installation cost for those is through the roof (and beyond our budget). All we wanted to archive is to make the floor a few shades lighter vs. regular concrete colour, so the space would be brighter.

As mentioned, they made saw cuts with a diamond saw (control joints) at regular intervals. This is to make the slab crack in those places, rather than randomly. In particular around the steel columns this is important, as these areas are crack prone.

http://www.greenpowertalk.org/picture.php?albumid=23&pictureid=212

Nothing much else to report at this time. The rest of the windows arrived, and should have been installed by now. Next step is to build the interior walls and start running electrical and other wiring, plumbing etc.

In all I'm happy the slab is done, and the PEX hydronic tubing is still holding pressure. This was one area with large potential for problems. We'll sort out those slab issues next week.

-RoB-

[Ralph Day]

Rob,
For the rough areas of concrete, could you have them ground off? Institutional hallways, like schools and such, have coloured concrete ground off so you see sectioned stones, and their flat and level. Is it called terrazo? Not sure. Could you have some tile put in the offices? Some self-levelling cement/grout and tile would cover over the blemishes if they're not too high. They would be contiguous with the concrete, so no thermal break for the heating.

Project is looking good. What's the move in date?

Ralph

[Rob Beckers]

We had a meeting with the slab/concrete installation company yesterday to discuss the slab issues (colouring didn't work at all, and the rough spots). The result is that the slab company will make it up to us by grinding down and polishing the office section of the floor (they use abrasives, stepping up the grid to several thousand for the last pass, leaving a mirror-like finish). They will run the machine over the warehouse section as well, just to buff it up a bit, without going for the ultra-smooth polish. The concrete in the warehouse section is already pretty smooth, most of the rough spots were unfortunately in the office section.

They will also use acid-stain to colour the office section concrete. What we wanted with the original colour was to brighten the floor up (concrete gets very dark when it gets older) and to make in particular the office section look more 'finished' than just a concrete slab.

The acid-stain colour we've picked is called "gold" (http://www.ameripolish.com/color-charts/ameripolish-classic.pdf). If you follow the link you'll see; I believe that picture in there showing a motorcycle show room is using that "gold". It's the lightest colour acid stain on the list. By the way, the concrete really does look that shiny after it is ground and polished! They did a small section yesterday to show us what it would look like. Quite spectacular! Acid stains don't form a solid colour, they give more of a mottled effect. I think it will look very nice!

The interior walls have been postponed a few days; finishing the concrete should be done by Tuesday. I'll post some pictures after my next visit.

All the windows have been installed now. We are waiting for the large overhead doors, and the front entrance door (this is a special "store front" type aluminum door with vestibule and another aluminum door between vestibule and interior office space). Those should come in next week as well, so we can close off the building.

We will do a blower-door test after that to see how we are doing. The expectation is that half our heating load is due to air infiltration. Therefore it is important to find out exactly where we stand, avoid surprises, and if possible find the larger remaining leaks so they can be fixed before walls are finished.

-RoB-

[Rob Beckers]

Things are suddenly moving very rapidly; with me being in charge of HVAC and the low-Voltage wiring it all has to happen "right now", with zero advance warning. A bit frustrating at times...

The refinishing of the concrete slab was completed yesterday. The guys really did make it up to us, the new and improved office floor looks like a mirror!!

http://www.greenpowertalk.org/picture.php?albumid=23&pictureid=213

What looks like an uneven floor surface is actually a reflection of the ceiling purlins. This is just concrete, there is nothing on top, it's like a glass surface, pretty amazing! They put a liquid sealant on the concrete that both hardens the surface and makes it water repellent. This does not form a layer though, it goes into the concrete, it is not what makes it so shiny. That is just the concrete itself after grinding/sanding/buffing to a very fine grid.

The acid-stain can be seen as well. It came out a bit darker than expected (and this was the lightest colour available), though the picture doesn't fully do it justice. It's actually a bit brighter, and it makes the surface look remarkably like granite.

On this very cold day (-27C this morning) those very big triple-pane windows in the front wall are working as designed: It's sunny today, and just standing in front of the window (on the inside!) one feels the heat of the sun. Note the electrician installing wiring near the windows, in short sleeves! We have a small heater running inside, and it is pretty toasty. That's before the large overhead doors are installed (coming Monday I have been told). For now those openings are just tarped off.

We have put some thick paper/cardboard on the floor (actually this is sold as roof underlayment, without the tar, cheapest stuff available). So it doesn't get scuffed by the trades. The concrete guys assured me though that the surface really is very, very hard and it is not easy to scratch it.

The same sealer was applied to the warehouse floor section, and as you can see it really does not add any sheen too the floor.

http://www.greenpowertalk.org/picture.php?albumid=23&pictureid=214

The warehouse floor has been ground and buffed some as well, though not nearly to the same extend as the office section.

The interior walls are being installed, and the drywall guys are already adding drywall to one side of it.

http://www.greenpowertalk.org/picture.php?albumid=23&pictureid=215

That is why suddenly everything has to happen all at once: I am on the hook for the network wiring, that needs to go into the wall before they close it. Thermostat wire needs to go in. The same guys also do the drop ceiling, and the grid for that needs to go up before a number of interior walls go in (they extend to just the height of the drop ceiling). Before the grid can go in we need to install the ducting for the ERV, another one that is my responsibility.

Another thing that needs to happen before the front wall gets closed in with drywall is to do a blower-door test. That is scheduled for Wednesday morning next week. By then all the doors will be installed and foamed in, so the building should be as sealed as it is going to get. We will finally get an idea of the level of air-infiltration (and find out if my heat-load calculations are worth the electronic paper they are written on)...

Not enough hours in the day!

[Rob Beckers]

We had a blower-door test this morning, to see where we are at, before the front (south) wall gets closed in and we have no chance to fix leaks there. I should have taken some pictures for those unfamiliar with a blower-door test, but forgot all about it. Sorry!

The results are in, and we currently clock in at 1.13 ACH @ 50pa, or 1.13 ACH50 as the terminology goes. :nuts:

This means the blower door de-pressurizes the building until the interior pressure is 50 Pascal below the exterior pressure, and then measures the air flow. Divide this by the building volume, and you have the ACH50 number (this is the general idea, in practice they actually measure flow at a number of pressures, down to 60 Pa, throw this into a computer program, and out rolls the ACH50 number).

The 50 Pa pressure is roughly equivalent with the building in a 20 mph (32 km/h) storm. This is far more than the 'natural' air exchange rate that a building will be subject to (on average), and that would be used for heat-load calculations. Natural infiltration rate depends on building geometry and other factors, and ranges from 1/10 to 1/30 of the ACH50 value.

For comparison of our 1.13 ACH50 number:


Energy Star v3 requires (depending on region) <4 ACH50.
2012 IECC requires <3 ACH50.
Maximum LEED points are credited for <2 ACH50.
The Canadian R-2000 standard requires <1.5 ACH50. Very few houses actually reach R-2000 values, even today.
Passivhaus requires <0.6 ACH50.


Anything under 3 ACH50 is considered 'very tight', and most codes in various countries are gravitating to making this the norm. At 1.13 ACH50 we are:


72% better than an Energy Star home
25% better than R-2000
44% better than the highest LEED norm


I was hoping we would come in at or below 3 ACH50, and used that number for our heat-load calculations to size the heating system. At that number, just about 50% of our heat-load would be due to air-infiltration (the building is very well insulated, so air-infiltration becomes very important in overall heat-loss).

Add to this that we know where most of the leaks are; a number of doors have not yet been properly sealed, and we still have to replace a few door thresholds with new ones that seal far better. The front (south) wall is not finished yet either; there will be 1" of rigid foam going on there, followed by a layer of stucco, sealing that wall even further.

One of my worries was that the overhead doors would be a large source of air leaks. I talked to the guys putting them in two days ago, and asked that they pay special attention to getting the seals in properly. They did a good job!

In short, we are doing very, very well in sealing up this building. For an industrial building 1.13 ACH50 is unheard off! We'll do even better once the known leaks have been addressed.

For your edification enjoyment, here are a few interesting links that further explain air-infiltration rates:

http://www.greenbuildingadvisor.com/blogs/dept/musings/blower-door-basics
http://www.buildingscience.com/documents/insights/bsi-053-just-right-and-airtight
http://www.energyconservatory.com/sites/default/files/documents/Blower_Door_Basics.pdf

-RoB-

[Ralph Day]

Hi Rob
Do you require an HRV with the building being so tight? Are your lift trucks electric or propane? With a loading dock and such you must need to provide ventilation/air exchanges.

My house is pretty tight, not the R2000 tight, but providing more fresh air sources for the combustion units (wood stove, water heater) our health has improved. I used to be all about sealed up, but not anymore. I don't even have the patio doors sealed shut in the winter any longer. There's a 3" dryer vent open year round, and a basement window opened enough for 18sqinches or so.

With fans on the battery box, Takagi water heater and range hood I have to watch out for downdraft action from the wood stove if starting a fire with a cold chimney. I'll get smoke coming into the house until the plug of cold air is forced out the chimney top. Standby backdraft I think it's called. With the basement window open a crack that doesn't happen often (the stove is hot from October to April anyway).

Ralph

[Rob Beckers]

Ralph, yes, we will have an ERV to provide fresh air, and currently a whole network of pipes is being installed to move that air around the building. We will not have any combustion appliances or equipment in the building; the forklift will be electrical. Everything, including heating, is going to be electrical.

Here is a picture of the ventilation pipes going in, taken yesterday. The pipes will be above the drop-ceiling, and out-of-sight:

http://www.greenpowertalk.org/picture.php?albumid=23&pictureid=216

An ERV (=Energy Recovery Ventilator) does the same thing as an HRV, and in addition it keeps moisture 'separated'. That means that when it is more humid outside vs. inside (as happens often on hot summer days), the ERV will keep that moisture outside, and the dryer air inside. Same thing in winter, when outside air gets very dry here, the ERV will keep the moisture inside the building.

The type we will use is the RecoupAerator 200DX from UltimateAir (http://www.ultimateair.com/product/). This is the go-to unit for Passivhaus construction, because of its incredible 95% heat-recovery when exchanging air. I've just ordered a unit from the US, so we can install it as soon as it gets in.

-RoB-

[Marvin jordan]

Rob you are doing amazing work.. When you work will be finished? i need some of your ideas.

[Rob Beckers]

Marvin, I estimate there's about 2 months of interior work left, and then we will have to finish up outside, where there's still quite a bit of site work left to do. The plan is to be able to move in sometime in spring (which comes in late April, early May here).

I've fixed the second link about blower door tests in my earlier post (it was broken). It's a good read for those that want to learn about blower door tests, here it is again:

http://www.energyconservatory.com/sites/default/files/documents/Blower_Door_Basics.pdf

Being an engineer, I'm happiest when crunching numbers :cool:, so here is some more for the HVAC connoisseur:

Our building has an interior volume of 136,245 cubic feet (=3,858 m^3).
An ACH50 of 1.13 translates to a CFM50 (cubic-feet-per-minute at 50 Pa) of

CFM50 = 1.13 * 136,245 / 60 = 2,565 cubic feet per minute (=72 m^3/min)

That is how much air is leaking in/out of the building (that needs to be heated up in winter) each minute, when the building has a 50 Pascal pressure difference due to wind with the outdoors.

To get to the natural air-leakage rate with an 'average' wind speed outside there is the "N" factor converting from ACH50 to ACH-natural. This is the number for heat-load calculations. It can be accurately measured, but this involves very special equipment using trace gas testing, well beyond the average HVAC-professional's tool shed. In practice it is approximated based on building climate zone (because of the 'stack effect' with hot air rising), height, and sometimes shape. For our building, the nearest approximation I've found is N = 15. That makes for:

ACH-natural = 1.13 / 15 = 0.075 air exchanges per hour

There is a movement to stop using ACH50 and move to another measure as a better representation of air-infiltration of a building. The reasoning is that ACH50 uses the building volume in it, as a metric, while it is building envelope, not volume, that causes air leakage. For that reason the ELR (Envelope Leakage Ratio) was developed as a better way to quantify air leakage. ELR = CFM50 / SFBE, where SFBE is the total of the square footage of the building envelope, in contact with the exterior; the floor, ceiling, walls etc. Note that even though our floor is a slab-on-grade that doesn't 'leak' air, the definition is about any surface that exchanges heat with the exterior, and that includes the slab.

For our building the SFBE, the total building envelope, is 23,538 sft (=2187 m^2). That makes the ELR:

ELR = 2,565 / 23,538 = 0.109 [ft/min] @ 50 Pa

That measure too stacks up very favorably; 'high performance' buildings are in the range of ELR=0.25, 'energy efficient' buildings are around ELR=0.40, 'standard' new construction is around ELR=0.70, while 'older' buildings are ELR=2+.

Something that is much easier to visualize is the equivalent 'hole in the wall' that would cause the amount of leakage that is measured. There are two competing measures for this.

The first is Equivalent Leak Area (EqLA), this is the area of a theoretical sharp-edged hole in the building envelope that would leak as much as all of the building’s actual holes at a pressure difference of 10 Pa. Think of it as a square cut out in a sheet of plywood on the building's wall. The approximation for EqLA (in square inches) is:

EqLA = CFM50 / 10 = 2,565 / 10 = 256.5 square inches = 1.78 sft (=0.17 m^3)

The last measure is the ELA, the Effective Leakage Area. This was worked out by Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, as a round-edged nozzle at a pressure difference of 4 Pa between the inside and outside of the building. The approximation is:

ELA = CFM50 / 18 = 2,565 / 18 = 142.5 square inches = 0.98 sft (=0.09 m^3)

Any way you want to look at it, we have a total of about 2 sft in total holes in our walls. Not bad for a building this size! Some are known (mostly door thresholds and weather stripping), and those will be fixed.

-RoB-

[Rob Beckers]

I spent all of today at the new building, working away on the Ethernet wiring. We're putting Cat6 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cat6) in the walls. If anyone is interested, the cable we are using is Belkin type A7L704-1000-BLU (http://belkinbusiness.com/products/a7l704-1000-blu). Nearly 2000' so far. It's good cable to work with. Cheaper than Home Depot's Cat6, and this is a decent brand name instead of the semi-no-name sold in the big-box stores. I have just ordered another two boxes (2000' more), since we still have to wire up the front (south) wall. Just amazing how much wire two dozen RJ45 outlets eat up...

Actually this Belkin cable is Cat6e, which has twice the bandwidth of regular Cat6; 550 Mhz instead of 250 Mhz. There is also Cat6a, which is much more rigorously specified, but the few brands that are certified to that standard currently charge outrageous prices for their cable. This only becomes an issue when running 10GBase-T, something we are not planning any time soon. We will just run 1000Base-T (Gigabit) over the wires.

It is interesting how things in an office environment have changed: There are no phone lines any more, just Ethernet. No video cables either, we can run that over Ethernet if needed as well. There will be wireless network access too, still, nothing beats a hard-wired network connection. Especially for critical-infrastructure such as telephones.

The drywall guys are going all-out. It's is impressive to see them put up drywall; about 15 minutes was all it took to put sheet rock on one side of one of the two principal offices. As things stand now, all the interior walls have been installed, the drop-ceiling grid is in, and one side of the walls has been dry-walled. That is also the reason we are running wires now; it's easy to install caddy-type low-voltage boxes in the drywall, and the other side allows access to the studs to run wires.

These steel studs have sharp edges! My hands have a few new battle-scars to prove today's work.

The protection has been taken off the office floor (it was ripped up from use anyway). I still stand in awe looking at it, just amazing what regular concrete can look like. It really looks like finely polished granite. Here is a picture, though it doesn't do it justice since the floor is very dirty.

http://www.greenpowertalk.org/picture.php?albumid=23&pictureid=217

By the way, with a snow storm raging outside, at -10C or so, it is very comfortable inside the building! On a sunny day those big windows very noticeably add heat to the office section as well. Passive solar works!

I'll be going in Friday again to run the last of the wiring: We need thermostat wires to control the 4 heating zones. That won't take long. As mentioned, the front wall still needs its network wiring installed; that can be done later. We installed conduit from the outlets up to above the drop-ceiling. It's easy to pull the wires into that, and run those all above the ceiling.

Next on the list is to get the light fixtures in and to get those mounted. I've been working on sourcing them (more economically than the local stores can provide them).

-RoB-

[Rob Beckers]

Not too much earth-shattering news about the built, but since it's been a little while I figure I'll post an update.

The crew has been busy finishing up with drywalling inside, and they are currently mudding all the joints. That should be done some time next week. With all the walls and drywall in place it now looks like the building we designed (on the inside). It's exciting to see!

http://www.greenpowertalk.org/picture.php?albumid=23&pictureid=218

I've been busy figuring out what light fixtures we want to use, and sourcing those. For the warehouse they are T5HO wrap-arounds (http://www.homedepot.com/p/Lithonia-Lighting-2-Light-High-Output-Multi-Volt-T5-Fluorescent-White-Wraparound-LB-2-54T5HO-MVOLT-MVPS/203124228?MERCH=RV-_-RV_search_plp_rr-1-_-NA-_-203124228-_-N). Cheap fixtures, with two 54 Watt T5HO bulbs inside. The 'HO' bulbs are closely related to regular T5's, but run at twice the current/power, putting out 54 Watt instead of the regular 28 Watt each. This gives us twice the light per fixture, at a slightly lower efficiency vs. regular T5. While LED fixtures are great, and their efficiency has actually (slightly) surpassed the efficiency of T5HO bulbs, they are just plain too expensive at this time. No doubt 10 years from now we won't have any more fluorescent tubes, and it's all LED. At this time it's not affordable yet (we have 36 of these T5 fixtures in the warehouse!). It is very easy to spend $10K in fixtures for a warehouse like ours (really easy!), it's just not worth it though. The ceiling is not high enough for regular high-bay fixtures, and these T5's are about as efficient as you can get at this time without throwing a fortune at it.

For the office section we're using direct/indirect fixtures that are suspended under the ceiling (http://www.aleralighting.com/products/cv/). They throw most of their light up to the ceiling, where it bounces off and lights the room. They are much nicer in a work environment with computers vs. regular direct-light fixtures. The fixtures in the link are on the low end of the price spectrum for direct/indirect types that use T5 bulbs, costing just over $200 a piece. Others we looked at are more than double that, and while they are likely a little nicer to look at and sturdier, they work the same. We have 14 of these fixtures in the office part of the building; it is a lot of money in lights!

The office fixtures use regular T5 bulbs (sometimes referred to as T5HE, for "high efficiency"). These are 28W a piece, two bulbs per fixture. Those regular T5's are really as efficient as it gets, at 95 lm/W, even LED fixtures won't do any better (some LEDs do better, but because they are expensive they are run at a high current to get more light-per-bulb out of them, and that drops their efficiency, making their best measured real-life efficiency right around that 95 lm/W). T5 bulbs have good CRI as well, the number that describes how closely their light matches natural day light, making these the best choice for us at this time.

The ERV came in as well. We'll be installing that next week.

On the outside of the building we finally have been getting two days of above-freezing temperatures (highest temperatures in a long time!). The guys used the opportunity to work on the fascia and soffit. The OSB sheeting on the outside of the south wall was wrapped in Tyvek; this will help keep it dry now that the rains start again, until we can put stucco on there. It will also add yet another air barrier to seal the building.

http://www.greenpowertalk.org/picture.php?albumid=23&pictureid=219

In all, the building is coming together pretty well, and is in fact almost done! We will have some outside work to do once the frost lets up. The end is in sight though!

The guys working there love the comfort; with minimal heating the inside stays warm, and those triple-pane windows keep the cold from radiating in. It's working out well!

-RoB-

[Rob Beckers]

It's been a little while since my last post. Not that work on the building is not progressing, it is just that there is little noteworthy to report. Winter is still firmly here, with temperatures at night (and some days) around the -17C mark. We had yet another snow storm with 20cm of fresh snow yesterday, and spring still seems very far away. Keep in mind that we still don't have electricity in the building, and won't have, until the ground thaws out enough for an excavator to dig a trench.

The drywallers have finished their job, and most of the plumbing and air lines (for the ERV) are done. The electricians have nearly finished the electrical work, and I've purchased a little kitchen from IKEA. The contractor installed that (for the most part) over the last few days. That will give us a way to reheat the pizza and a place for the coffee maker! :nuts:

http://www.greenpowertalk.org/picture.php?albumid=23&pictureid=220

I've been spending many quality hours at the building doing interior painting. To save some money I do that part of the job myself. Another 7 hours of yellow paint today.

http://www.greenpowertalk.org/picture.php?albumid=23&pictureid=221

Despite all the advertising of "primer-and-paint-in-one" and "only two coats needed" I find that it still takes 3 coats of paint to get decent coverage. This is Home Depot's Behr paint, since that brand consistently tests at the top in Consumer Reports. Only a few thousand square feet more to go...

When the weather (finally) turns we will have some more outside work to do. The end is in sight though!

-RoB-

[Bryan Couch]

Hey Rob. It's been a few weeks, how goes the battle?

Looking forward to another update :)

Bryan

[Rob Beckers]

Bryan, the battle continues (daily)!
I've been painting, and painting, and painting. It's looking a lot more yellow now! The office section is almost done; I have the two smaller offices and the meeting room left to paint. Then there's the warehouse walls...

I usually go over two days a week, sometimes three, to work on the new place. It's not easy to run the business (and it is busy these days!) and work over there.

The contractor has been busy with lots of small stuff that needed to be completed. Things like baseboards, flashing, putting a ceiling on the mechanical and computer rooms, and the list goes on. Mundane things, not really worthy of a report here. I've installed a honking sump pump that will help keep the truck dock dry (currently looks more like a lake!).

Bigger things are afoot though. Next Tuesday we plan to dig the trench for the electrical (it should be thawed out enough now to work the excavator), and hopefully by the end of that week or beginning the week after we'll finally have electricity! It is a first for the contractor to have built something this size without so much as a temporary electrical hookup. Of course, I have been spending a kings ransom on gasoline to keep the generators going that we've been using. Maybe there is light at the end of this tunnel! :cool:

While we have the excavator we'll dig two more trenches that need to get done: One is for lighting up a sign near the road, another for future parking lot lighting (and a possible electrical vehicle charging station).

I'll take some pictures next time I'm there: We did install the 'light shelves' on the inside of the windows. They seem to work pretty well; it lights up a stretch of ceiling that was previously pretty dark, though it's hard to tell if the light really gets further inside. The office section is pretty bright anyway with those big windows. The light shelves look cool though!

The outside retractable awnings have been ordered, and with the above-freezing weather we should be able to slap some stucco on the front wall soon. I'm still waiting for the interior office light fixtures; hopefully they will come in next week.

And so the work continues...

-RoB-

[Rob Beckers]

Another day of painting.. And I took some pictures.

As mentioned, we installed light-shelves at the windows. Their purpose is to throw light onto the ceiling (at a shallow angle) and the ceiling then reflects it back into the room. From the theory in the books, this will make daylight reach an extra 50% into the room, away from the windows.

http://www.greenpowertalk.org/picture.php?albumid=23&pictureid=222

It does work. Though hard to tell from the picture, those ceiling tiles adjacent to the shelf are much brighter than they would be when we take the shelf away. How well it works I don't know: We don't have the ceiling tiles in yet, and it is already pretty bright with these big windows, even on the other side of the room.

http://www.greenpowertalk.org/picture.php?albumid=23&pictureid=223

For maximum effect there should also be a similar part on the outside of the window, at the same height as the inside shelf. I think we will forgo the outside portion, it is bright enough as it is and it will be much harder (read: 'more expensive') to fabricate decent outside light shelves.

By the way, we had these shelves made up from 22 AWG flashing material. We just took the shiniest flashing we could find (turned out to be regular galvanized steel, it is even more shiny than galvalume), and asked the flashing shop to cut/bend these. They have a 90-degree lip at each end for stiffness and the edge is rolled over so it's not sharp. The rails holding them up on the sides are some type of aluminum profile that normally is used with carpeting (not sure what it is, our foreman came up with it, it was much cheaper than regular aluminum profile and looks cool too!). In all these shelves were very cheap to fabricate. They are not fastened to the L-profile, so we can just lift them off for window cleaning and such. We will fasten pull-down blinds underneath them (the partially see-through type), in case we want a little less light in there.

Another project that was completed was the installation of the ERV. As mentioned earlier we have an ERV made by UltimateAir (http://www.ultimateair.com/product/). This unit is used quite a bit in Passivhauses, because of its very high 96% heat recovery rate.

http://www.greenpowertalk.org/picture.php?albumid=23&pictureid=224
http://www.greenpowertalk.org/picture.php?albumid=23&pictureid=225

The pictures are not very good: We don't have light (yet) in the mechanical room so this was taken with the camera's flash.

The unit is hooked up to 8" trunk lines. The ones going to the outside are insulated, and you can just see the pre-heater on the left side; it kicks in when the outside temperature dips below -12C to heat up the incoming air. Without it there would be ice accumulation in the unit, eventually shutting it down. By the way, only those outside lines and the first few feet of the inside lines are flex duct, the rest of the 8" trunk lines is rigid, to keep the flow resistance (and therefore electricity use) down. To reach the flow rates we need the unit has a power use of just about 200 Watt.

This ERV also has a MERV-12 filter (the filter is the same media that is used for the heat/moisture exchange). That is good enough to filter out pollen and other pollutants from the incoming air flow. Not too shabby!

I have also set the various flow rates to the rooms. Lacking the needed instruments I found a method on the Web that's pretty easy and (according to research) pretty accurate! By using a garbage bag with a known volume and a timer one can figure out flow rate. The Canadian Mortgage and Housing Association even made a neat little table with measured/calibrated values.

http://www.greenpowertalk.org/picture.php?albumid=23&pictureid=226

That worked remarkably well! We had set flows in all the rooms within 15 minutes (I would simply hold the bag over the hose end, tightly, and someone helping me would start a timer on their cell phone). By the way, the UltimateAir ERV is self-balancing, so there's nothing to set there, other than total air flow.

The UltimateAir has another neat feature: It can be set up to bring in (cool) air at night in summer, switching off its heat-recovery, to cool down the building for the next day.

And that is it for this episode! The direct-indirect light fixtures for the office came in yesterday, and mayby, just maybe, we will finally get electricity by the end of next week. Keep your fingers crossed..

-RoB-

[Bryan Couch]

It's coming along well! I'm impressed with how much of the work you're doing yourself, it can't be easy to run a business and build a new building at the same time.

The light at the end of the tunnel will get brighter! :)

[Ralph Day]

We'll all know who to call when we need help building a shed or painting a bedroom :D

Ralph

[Rob Beckers]

In all likelihood I'll be so sick of painting after this is done that I can't look at another paint can...

I need to get another 5 gallon pail of paint this weekend, that will be number 4 as far as the yellow colour goes. That's 20 gallons of paint (plus 2 gallons of the same colour in a more water-resistant version for the kitchen and washroom), and most of the white walls in the warehouse have yet to be done!

There will be ugly words for any employee that messes up the paint job! :confused:

-RoB-

[Rob Beckers]

It has been a few weeks, and we have been very busy at the new building!
The push is currently to get everything ready for a conditional occupancy permit, so we can start using the building. We're almost there!


First the bad news: After 9 months we still do not have electricity at the building!! Hydro-One had told us they would connect the building yesterday, May 2nd. Two days before that date they called to cancel. Initially no reason was given, after more phone calls I found out they still need a signature of the land owner across the road from us, to get permission for a guy-wire that would fall onto that property. Why Hydro-One cannot get their act together in 9 months, and continues to sc$#w up on this is absolutely beyond me! It has reached the level where more delays are just not acceptable, and I am mobilizing the municipality and anyone higher up at Hydro-One I can find to see if we can get the ones causing this mess to start doing some work for a change.

Meanwhile we have built this entire building running off generators. At quite the additional expense I may add (thousands in fuel costs alone, besides delays because it's just more difficult to get the work done). It is a first for my contractor, he's never built anything this size purely on generators. All this courtesy of Hydro-One Ontario! "Hydro-None" would be a better name for that company (in Canada 'hydro' is the common word for the electrical company)!

Back to the building.
Most of the ceiling is in, but they ran short a few tiles (they were told this would happen, but the ceiling guys didn't believe us, so now we're waiting for more tile). The light fixtures for the office were installed as well. See the next picture.

http://www.greenpowertalk.org/picture.php?albumid=23&pictureid=227

The light fixtures are direct-indirect type fixtures: They throw 20% of the light directly downward (through those perforations), while 80% of the light is thrown upward and reflected off the ceiling. This makes for a much more 'pleasant' light to work in vs. direct light, especially when computers are used. By the way, the end-caps of the fixtures are (still) missing. The manufacturer forgot to ship them with the fixtures. I'm impressed with the quality of these fixtures, they are good value for money (not cheap, but under half the usual price of a direct-indirect office fixture like this). These are Hubbell Alera 'Curv' fixtures (http://www.aleralighting.com/products/cv/). The light bulbs going in them are two F28T5 fluorescents, and at around 95 lumen/Watt they are about as efficient a light source as one can get today.

As an aside, prices of "architectural light fixtures" are obscene, no other word for it. It's very easy to spend $10K+ for a handful of fixtures. I did not pay quite that much, though the 14 fixtures we needed still ran just a hair under $3K. Lots of money!

The ceiling tiles were selected to be very high light reflectance and high sound absorption (with all the concrete we need that). The type is Armstrong 2989 (http://www.armstrong.com/commceilingsna/ceiling_data.jsp?productLineId=38&itemId=44588), though these were special order because that type is normally a tegular tile, while we wanted non-tegular 2-by-4 feet. Light reflectance is as good as it gets for any ceiling tile at 89%, while the NRC (sound) absorption rating is 0.80, it means 80% of sound impacting the tile is absorbed. Compare this to the more usual/typical ceiling tile values of 75% for light reflectance and an NRC of 0.55. There was not much of a cost difference between those 'average' tiles vs. high-reflectance/NRC tiles, and it directly translates to electricity savings since the lights won't have to be used as often.

The light shelves that we installed at the windows do work, and you can see that from looking at the picture as well: See that bright band along the ceiling next to the windows? That's light being thrown to the back of the room at a shallow angle (the picture was taken all the way from the back). Take the shelves off and that bright band goes away completely, it's not direct light from the windows. The picture actually does them some injustice, because of the bright windows the automatic exposure of the camera makes it seem darker in the back of the space than it actually is. The fear was that the back would be relatively dark, and that was why those light shelves were added to the design. As it happens it is actually quite bright, all the way to the back of the room, and we probably didn't need any help from those light shelves. Still, they cost next to nothing and look cool!

To be more effective there normally is an equivalent part of the light shelf on the outside of the window. We won't be building that, it would be much more expensive to fabricate than those inside shelves (it would have to be structural, withstanding wind and weather), and there is enough light in the space not to need more.

My temporary job as a painter is coming to an end! Yoho! I am just about done painting the offices, and the drywall part of the warehouse has been painted white as well. Unfortunately this will be just a temporary reprieve, as all the door frames, doors, and columns in the warehouse need paint too, while we have to paint (at least) the outside of the strawbale walls as well. But those jobs are less urgent, so for now I can focus on other things.

The outside is seeing a rapid transformation as well. Conduit has been put in the ground for (future) outside lights, and the plan was to put some larger conduit in at the same time in case we want to install an electric car charging station. Unfortunately the electrician forgot about that, and we had to float a backhoe in a second time to dig an additional trench for that. Here is the charging station conduit going in. The conduit that is already there is for the lights.

http://www.greenpowertalk.org/picture.php?albumid=23&pictureid=228

We have been contemplating the installation of a class 3 car charger; those things are very high power (around 40kW!), and they can recharge the average electrical car that is equipped for this in just about 20 - 30 minutes! These chargers do not come cheap, and it would be a credit-card swipe type setup (just like a regular gas station). We don't need to make money on this, but would need to be pretty sure that the investment can be earned back within a reasonable time. It would be a great advertisement for the business though, as this will attract people driving electric cars that come down the nearby highway (we are 1 minute away from the 416 highway going towards Ottawa).

Much more outside work has been going on in the last couple of days. Final grading is being done, roadways are being put in, landscape areas set aside, and water management is put in place. This is the truck dock after final grading, with stone sides being put in place.

http://www.greenpowertalk.org/picture.php?albumid=23&pictureid=229

By the way, that hump on the left side in the picture is our septic bed. Due to the water table we had to have a raised bed, so there is a lift-pump hidden in the ground (under a cover, you can see it just left of the building). Another reason why we absolutely need electricity; without it the plumbing won't work.

In the back we currently have a lake. This is for water discharge management; all the water running off from the building and the side is funneled into this, and it has a pipe with a small opening to discharge all that water at a specific (low) rate to the nearby ditch along the road. So if we have a torrential downpour the water will collect in the holding pond, and it will only be released slowly to the ditch to avoid overwhelming rivers and streams in the area. All commercial buildings going up these days have to have such a water management system in place.

http://www.greenpowertalk.org/picture.php?albumid=23&pictureid=231

If you look really closely you can see the discharge pipe on the right hand side of the water, with some rip-rap and a concrete barrier around it.

This holding pond will get re-graded a bit over the next few days. It is not actually supposed to be a lake with standing water (when it is not raining). The grade is too low and it needs to be reshaped to drain water out. The sides are not supposed to be this steep either, they will be reshaped to a gentle berm. Ultimately we have to grow grass in this area, and it needs to be mowed once a year (to avoid trees from growing in). So we have to be able to get a mower in there.

The last picture I have is of the back of the building. Showing the back overhead door and the strawbale walls of the north and west sides. That piece of galvanized culvert is not supposed to be there, it's just 'parked' in the ditch while they do the grading.

http://www.greenpowertalk.org/picture.php?albumid=23&pictureid=230

As mentioned, we still have to put paint on those walls to protect them long-term from water and moisture intrusion. The paint needs to be something special, as I described earlier, latex won't do since that would seal those walls in and not allow them to dry out from the inside. Instead, we have to use silicate dispersion paint. I'll talk more about that when I get to the actual painting.

We have a "landscaping and planting" plan that was submitted to the municipality as part of the permitting process. Being a cheap Dutchman I designed that myself, with an eye on (ahem) economy. The plan calls for 300 cedar seedlings along the border between our lot and the neighboring two houses. Last week I purchased those, and got lucky, it was all they had left. With all the expensive things happening I finally got a break there, they were just 69 cents per tree (1' or better in size). Cedars will do very well in this area, as we are essentially in a swamp here with standing water part of the year. They are still in cold storage at the grower, I will likely pick them up next weekend when grading in that area is complete, and plant them. This is the right time of the year to do that.

The landscaping plan calls for a number of other plantings/trees and some hard-scaping as well. That is all to-be-done in the near future.

-RoB-

[Joe Blake]

Amazing job, mate. Will look forward to seeing it up and running.

I like your thinking about attracting passing traffic by offering electric vehicle recharge! Wonder how long before it goes up in advertising for other businesses -

"High Speed Electric Vehicle recharging. Free WiFi hotspot. Come in, browse around and recharge yourself at the same time with a complimentary coffee."

Neat.:bigsmile:

Joe

[Rob Beckers]

"High Speed Electric Vehicle recharging. Free WiFi hotspot. Come in, browse around and recharge yourself at the same time with a complimentary coffee."


That's exactly what we had in mind Joe!
I still have to do the research, but there likely are directories for high-speed charging stations so people driving around in an electric car know where to find the nearest one. Tesla has their own charging stations, the one thing I don't know is if they can handle a standard class 3 station, and if there is a way to get into their directory.

Anyway, for now these are just thoughts. I'll take a closer look at this once we are up and running in the new place.

-RoB-

[Paul Bailey]

I still have to do the research, but there likely are directories for high-speed charging stations so people driving around in an electric car know where to find the nearest one. Tesla has their own charging stations, the one thing I don't know is if they can handle a standard class 3 station, and if there is a way to get into their directory.


-

Hi Rob : Nationwide Chargepoint directories are available with active veiw here http://www.plugshare.com/ Quite interesting to see what is in your area and charger capabilities of each unit. And yes a lot of people are Willing to share!!!

[Rob Beckers]

Thanks Paul! Interesting read!
Lots of residential and level-2 (or less) chargers at hotels and such. Not a single level-3 around in a very wide area. Nearest is Montreal! We may actually get lots of customers! :love::flypig::rockon: (my 14-year old daughter made me put these...)

I have been reading up a bit on this, and it seems that the standard for level-3 is still being hashed out; currently there are two competing standards and Tesla (the 10,000 lbs gorilla of electric cars) does their own thing altogether, though they are coming out with a converter plug to use level-3 chargers. Hopefully all this will shake out in the next year or so.

-RoB-

[Mark Ross]

It has been a few weeks, and we have been very busy at the new building!
The push is currently to get everything ready for a conditional occupancy permit, so we can start using the building. We're almost there!

Nice, Rob! We met with Randy the other day and he mentioned you were going for your occupancy permit! That's great news!


First the bad news: After 9 months we still do not have electricity at the building!! Hydro-One had told us they would connect the building yesterday, May 2nd. Two days before that date they called to cancel. Initially no reason was given, after more phone calls I found out they still need a signature of the land owner across the road from us, to get permission for a guy-wire that would fall onto that property. Why Hydro-One cannot get their act together in 9 months, and continues to sc$#w up on this is absolutely beyond me! It has reached the level where more delays are just not acceptable, and I am mobilizing the municipality and anyone higher up at Hydro-One I can find to see if we can get the ones causing this mess to start doing some work for a change.

Good luck with those chumps @ Hydro One! I still can't believe their audacity regarding new rural connections...that they expected me to pay them nearly $7k just to "design" a system without any idea about what their "designed system" would cost to implement! Crazy, they must think people are suckers, or perhaps they haven't been paying attention to the falling cost of solar pv!

Hopefully you can get it all worked out man!

[Rob Beckers]

Mark, regarding Randy; I've met more than a few building inspectors since we install solar PV and until recently that required a building permit in Ottawa. Randy is just the nicest, most helpful inspector I've ever come across. Can't say enough good thing things about him!

He usually shows up every Wednesday around lunch time to see how things are progressing, but he's been absent the last few weeks. I guess things got busy now that spring finally arrived and people started doing their building projects.

Regarding Hydro-(N)One, we have a new connection date for next week Wednesday. Let's hope they don't pull the rug again two days before as they did last time! I understand that North Grenville has been "urging them" to get things moving along. That seems to have worked!

I spent this afternoon planting about 400 cedar seedlings around the perimeter of our site (a couple rows thick). That is part of our planting plan that was submitted to the city. When they grow in, in a few years, that should look nice! We'll get a little cedar grove going there. No shortage of water by the way, it's a swamp. Those cedars will feel right at home (as would Shrek)!

-RoB-

[Rob Beckers]

The moment that has been 9 months in the making is finally approaching: Electricity for the new building! Hydro-One showed up yesterday to plant poles and hook up wires. They also left again at 1:30pm after one pole, and no connection yet. I'm not at the site today, but am hopeful that when I return there tomorrow we will at long last have the let-there-be-light moment!

http://www.greenpowertalk.org/picture.php?albumid=23&pictureid=232

With rain in the forecast for days to come I have put down grass and wildflower seed in all the locations that have had their final grading. Much of the disturbed/graded area of the site will simply be turned in to a meadow with one or two feet of grass, and I'm throwing wildflower seeds into the mix for the visible areas (along the street mainly). With that, all we need to do is mow it once a year to keep trees from getting established, and that is it. Should look nice!

I am also trialing some "eco-lawn" seed for an area alongside the building. This is a type of grass closer to a traditional lawn, made up of very hardy fescues such as creeping red, chewing, hard, and cheeps fescue. Once established these don't need watering or fertilizing, and can be either left to their own devices or mowed like a regular lawn. It will look a little rougher than your typical Kentucky Bluegrass lawn, but still makes a useable and no-maintenance lawn. If this works out I will stock this seed as a product for our customers.

The stucco company has started work on the south (front) wall. It will have synthetic stucco on it, on top of 2" rigid foam, adding another R-7 or so to the insulation value of that wall.

http://www.greenpowertalk.org/picture.php?albumid=23&pictureid=233

Today's synthetic stucco is an interesting product: There have been lots of issues (and lawsuits!) over the years involving stucco walls, where the wood behind it got soaked and rotted, resulting in mold and other problems. What they are installing here are sheets of EPS with channels on the back side, as can be seen in the picture. They also put a water-proof membrane on the wall sheeting (goes on like paint, and when dry is like rubber), that is the blue stuff you see. Together this makes for a drainage plane, where any water or moisture between wall and stucco has a chance to drain and evaporate before damage is done to the wall.

http://www.greenpowertalk.org/picture.php?albumid=23&pictureid=234

The sheets of EPS are glued on to the blue-skin, and three coats of stucco will be applied on top of this. In all they will take about a week to finish the job (I was told).

http://www.greenpowertalk.org/picture.php?albumid=23&pictureid=235

Meanwhile I am talking to a landscaper to take care of the hard-scaping that needs to get done. We have some river-rock around the building, and a few areas have top soil so I can plant some trees and shrubs. The west side of the building also has a simple patio planned, we need a place for those Friday afternoon BBQs after all!

-RoB-

[Mark Ross]

Hey Rob,

I wanted to ask about the hydronic in-slab heating you are using...I guess a couple questions:

1) Since you did the design and installation yourself how did you ensure you complied with "CSA B-214" (which Randy says is a requirement that must be met).

2) Do you have a good supplier for the manifolds etc? I talked to like home hardware they don't seem to really get into any part of the hydronics except the PEX tubing and some classy (probably high priced) styrofoam that has channels in it for the PEX tubing to assist in laying out your loops (hydrofoam i think it was called).

We are keen to do radiant in our slab and for our main floor, and seems to make Randy happy he primarily just needs to be assured that CSA B-214 is met. I found the PDF for this online, at $168 not cheap...willing to buy it but not sure I 'have' to - thoughts?

Thanks!

[Rob Beckers]

Hi Mark,

You can find that CSA standard at various places online (for free). Google is your friend!

CSA B-214 is largely just common-sense requirements that are very easy to meet. Much of it deals with safety in case of systems that mix potable water and heating/hydronic water, and high-temperature boilers that can be very dangerous (pressure and temperature!) in case they are not installed properly. With a heat-pump as we used you can't make water very hot, no matter how hard you try. Ours runs at just 100F. We're not mixing drinking water with heating either, so all those parts don't apply.

The other part deals with the requirements that PEX and materials need to comply with. Again easy to meet, it would be very unusual for things you buy specifically for hydronic heating not to meet those rules.

In our case Randy would drop by every Wednesday (usually) and see what was done since the week before. He inspected the PEX we used, it had the right markings so we were OK, we showed him the pressure test of the pipes (60 psi for 1 hour), etc.

I've purchased all my PEX and manifolds from the US. Prices here in Canada are just too crazy for me to oblige them. For example, a friend who did PEX in a warehouse they built bought his supplies locally (Ottawa HVAC wholesale) and paid about a buck per foot for PEX, mine came from the States and was 37 ct/ft. Manifolds were equally cheap, though if I had to do it again I would buy better (brand-name) manifolds. I had some trouble getting them to be leak-free at 60 psi (we're going to run them at a far lower pressure, so it's not a big deal).

As you can see from the pictures I used a stapler to install the PEX on the (regular) XPS insulation. That worked like a charm, very fast, very easy! Personally I don't see why you'd pay more money for special foam with grooves. There's no need. In fact, if you're interested you're welcome to rent my stapler (normally people rent these staplers but it was cheaper for me to buy one outright since it was coming from the USA), I also have quite a few boxes of staples left over that can go for a good price. Just contact me offline.

I can also get PEX and such for you from the States; we ship stuff in all the time and once the new warehouse is up and running will have a loading dock. It doesn't cost much for me to haul this in.

To get back to CSA B-214: One of the requirements if to show a heat-load and loop calculation for each room. If you read back you'll see I used software to do that, it's free in 30-day trial (which was all I needed), and Randy was happy with the printout it produced, showing the layout and heat-load. Of course, I could defend the numbers in there as well, having done those calculations 'by hand' as well.

-RoB-

[Mark Ross]

Rob, you are an incredibly helpful person! Thank you so much for all this information, it really makes me feel a lot better about the situation!

I will contact you offline regarding the PEX, etc :)

Picking up my copy of Modern Hydronic Heating tomorrow and going to get the LoopCAD trial fired up also. I hope I will be able to get something together for Randy for early next week (god willing and the creek don't rise).

Thanks!! :D

[Rob Beckers]

The miracle has finally happened!!
We have power, and the lights are on for the first time. That 'only' took 9 1/2 months since our connection application!

We had the "Let There Be Light" moment, and we saw it was good! In fact, the lights are quite a sight. We have the direct-indirect fixtures in the office section, and they look great!

http://www.greenpowertalk.org/picture.php?albumid=23&pictureid=240

A bit of their light comes through the perforations on the bottom, and most bounces off the ceiling. It makes for a very soft, very even light, and with the lights on it is quite bright in there (we were shooting for around 20 - 25 fc, foot-candles, for the office section). The indirect lighting makes computer work more pleasant on the eyes, avoiding strain. The 6500K F28T5 bulbs blend in very nicely with the daylight (it's a very white light, very much at the "cool white" end of the spectrum). Each fixture holds two fluorescent tubes, so the total is 56 Watt per fixture.

The warehouse uses cheap-ass T5HO wrap-arounds, and they work beautifully!

http://www.greenpowertalk.org/picture.php?albumid=23&pictureid=239

It is very nice and bright in there, and thanks to those diffusers it looks very, very even. For the warehouse I was shooting for 40 - 50 fc in light levels in there; that puts it at the bottom end of the needed light for visual-medium-contrast-tasks. Lithonia has a very nice computer modeling tool on their Web site that allows one to input the geometry of the room and required light level. It then calculates how many fixtures that takes, and how they are spaced. Each of these fixtures holds two F54T5 bulbs, making for a total of 108 Watt per fixture.

I didn't grab those lighting levels just out of thin air, there are actually tables of recommended lighting levels that can be found in books on lighting, and I found a very useful PDF document that lists those levels for all kinds of different occupations and uses: 1108

The other BIG event today was that we received our occupancy permit!! :peace:
That means we can have people (work) in the building, and we no longer need hard hats and steel-toed shoes. The building permit is still open, since we need to complete site work, the heating system, and a few other odds-and-ends. This is a big step though!

It almost didn't happen (again, since we already scheduled the inspector twice before for occupancy, only to have to cancel because Hydro-One didn't hook us up on the dates they promised): When I arrived at the building this morning one of the breakers was popping, and that breaker controlled one set of emergency lights, as well as the lights in the mechanical and computer rooms. I traced the wiring, and very quickly disconnected the mech/computer room lights, only leaving the emergency lights on that group. The breaker held, no sooner had we screwed the cover on the breaker panel and in comes the building inspector! I am talking about 5 seconds to spare. Seriously! Not kidding! First question was "pop the main breaker and let's look at the emergency lights".

They worked, and we got occupancy. I tracked down the short circuit that caused the breaker to pop later that day and fixed it, and now the lights in the mech room and computer room are working as well.

Having an official occupancy permit came in very handy, as we had several job-interviews planned with prospective employees later that day. We are looking for people to work in sales and to manage the office. If we did not receive occupancy we would have relocated those interviews to a local restaurant. As it turned out we could use the office.

The stucco on the front wall has been completed as well. Here are a few pictures that show how the two base coats go on, followed by the final coat. People in the area probably though we couldn't make up our minds about colour: That wall was first blue (water-proof membrane), then white (2" EPS insulation), then gray (base and scratch coat of stucco), and finally ochre-yellow.

http://www.greenpowertalk.org/picture.php?albumid=23&pictureid=236
http://www.greenpowertalk.org/picture.php?albumid=23&pictureid=237
http://www.greenpowertalk.org/picture.php?albumid=23&pictureid=238

The retractable awnings (in terra-cotta red) are going in tomorrow. That will largely complete the front of the building. There is a wood trellis/awning planned as well, but the wood for that is not ready yet.

We are getting to the end of this build, but there is still quite a bit of work to do: Outfitting the building will take time. There's an alarm system and security cameras to install (my job). A rack for computer equipment, servers, etc. need to go in (my job as well). There's book shelves to install (you guessed it, my job too). We also need to paint the outside of the straw-bale walls to provide proper water-proofing. And the list goes on...

It's looking good though!

-RoB-

[Bryan Couch]

It looks great Rob! Congratulations on the occupancy permit and FINALLY having power!

Still a lot of work to do but step by step and you'll be there soon! Great work!

[Rob Beckers]

It's been a month since my last post, and some are probably wondering what's happening over here (at least I hope this is of interest to some of you!). I've been working my rear off to get to the point where we can actually start using the new place; as it happens I have several new employees starting in a week, and the hope is to have things to the point where they can do something useful at the new building.

So, with that I've been busy buying some furniture (IKEA mostly, that is just about the cheapest way to get semi-decent stuff), we're looking at (used) cubicles and other furniture, and hopefully will have that sorted out within the next week. We got our Internet connection last week, a wireless 10Mb down, 5 Mb up link to a tower that then puts it on the fiber that runs around the area. I've installed switches, so the internal network is working, and have bought a number of VOIP phones (all our telephones use voice-over-IP, we don't have any traditional phone lines).

I've just finished building a Terrabyte-server for bulk storage and backup; this gives us about 11 TB in storage with a two-drive redundancy (two drives can fail before we loose any data). For the connoisseurs, it's running ZFS under the hood, a very data-safety oriented file system. Some IP surveillance cameras are on the way for our security system, I'll have to set those up (likely with ZoneMinder). Also on the to-do list is to put some PCs together for everyone in the office, and then get it all to work together. Lots to do!

In short, lots to do!
I'll post some pictures when we have the rest of the furniture in.

Much of the heating system still needs to get installed as well. My job for over the summer...

-RoB-

[Rob Beckers]

Time flies, and another month has passed..
Meanwhile we have moved the business and started working from the new building. The past weeks have been a time of very hard work; we have a growing business with customers that need attention, while at the same time working on the building to finish up the details. Here are some pictures of where things are currently at.

http://www.greenpowertalk.org/picture.php?albumid=23&pictureid=241

The outside, in particular the strawbale walls, has now been painted. That right-hand side wall is strawbale, and we have put silicate dispersion paint on it. That's a type of paint that makes the wall much more waterproof than it would be without, while at the same time allowing the straw inside the walls to continue to dry out (unlike latex, which would seal it off).

The front (south side) retractable awnings have also been installed. These allow us to control the amount of sun that reaches the inside. Now, in summer, no sun comes into the building. All that takes is a 2-foot extension. If we threaten to overheat in winter we can use the awnings to cut down on sun, and light, if needed.

Some people commented that a mistake was made since those awnings are mounted a foot below the top of the windows. That is to allow light to reach the interior light shelves. Sunlight is blocked from the top part of the windows from mid-March through mid-September by the roof's overhang.

http://www.greenpowertalk.org/picture.php?albumid=23&pictureid=242

This is the entrance area in its current state. The sidewalk has been poured, but all the landscaping (and some paving) still needs to be done. Also missing is the wooden structure that will adorn the entrance. The wooden beams for that are currently drying and will be available at the end of August. It'll look great once that's done!

http://www.greenpowertalk.org/picture.php?albumid=23&pictureid=243

After walking in this is what you see. The cubicles are coming in two weeks, and they will fill a good chunk of this space. We will keep the area close to the windows free, and the table that's there now will continue to be at that spot. It's a great place to sit and work! The picture does not do it full justice, it's actually very bright there. I switched on the lights for the picture, but most days we don't use lights. It's bright enough without and those light shelves work remarkably well!

Sitting at the table is Sheila, our Master Cook (of the books), and Office Manager.

http://www.greenpowertalk.org/picture.php?albumid=23&pictureid=244

Now we move on to THE most important piece of office equipment: The espresso machine!! There is no life as we know it without it. No work would get done. Spirits would be broken..

http://www.greenpowertalk.org/picture.php?albumid=23&pictureid=246

The other side of the office is where the cubicles will go. By the way, in case you notice a certain resemblance with an Ikea store that is sheer coincidence... ;)

Turning left from this vantage point brings us to the conference room.

http://www.greenpowertalk.org/picture.php?albumid=23&pictureid=248

We've installed a big 4 by 8 feet white-board on the wall. No chairs yet.

http://www.greenpowertalk.org/picture.php?albumid=23&pictureid=245

Moving to the other side of the office area and this is what it looks like. We have a new network printer since a week or two, an HP Officejet Pro X576DW. Amazing piece of equipment! It's an inkjet, but twice as fast and half as expensive to run as the average laser printer. HP designed a printer head that is as wide as the paper, so it does not have to move. Only the paper moves. There is no toner, belt, drum etc., just the 4 ink cartridges that last 9000 pages.

http://www.greenpowertalk.org/picture.php?albumid=23&pictureid=247

This last one is a peek through my office door. The desk is made of bamboo, and goes together without a single nail or screw! Love it! (Also love that it was on sale at Costco at the time I got it, making it really cheap!) That back wall is strawbale by the way.

That is it for now. Overall we are all very impressed with how well the building performs: We have had a number of very hot weather periods (meaning 30C and humid as can be outside). There is no air-conditioning in the building, just an ERV, and it will coast right through these periods with the inside never going above 24C. It takes a long time to warm up or cool down inside, even a single degree. It is very bright in the office, as mentioned, most days we don't use the lights, and this is summer. In winter we will have direct sunlight coming into the windows, making it much brighter yet. The ERV does its thing too. It's very quiet, and the air stays fresh. We don't notice inside when it is hot outside, the air coming in does not change noticeably.

The only minor issue so far is that the building has not yet fully dried out. There is still a great deal of moisture coming out of the concrete. For that we use the cool/dry days to open the windows and dry things out a bit (like today, when I took those pictures). It will take a winter to fully dry the building out.

Speaking of winter: A major task yet-to-do for me is to install the heating system. That is next on my to-do list, after a bit of vacation during the first 3 weeks of August.

Come visit us when you are in the area! The address is 825 Van Buren Street, Kemtpville, Ontario.

-RoB-

[Ralph Day]

But Rob, the painting looks like it's all done...what will you have to do on a vacation?:confused:

What a good looking project. I'm in the midst of building a garage/quilt studio. I skipped out on putting any panels on the roof, but am having it's power supply on a generator panel so we can select utility or house/renewables for powering lights, door openers, sewing machines or whatever is needed. Even having 240vac available in case of an electric car charger in the future.

Ralph

[Rob Beckers]

But Rob, the painting looks like it's all done...what will you have to do on a vacation?:confused:

Exactly! That's why I finally can take a vacation! :cool:


What a good looking project. I'm in the midst of building a garage/quilt studio. I skipped out on putting any panels on the roof, but am having it's power supply on a generator panel so we can select utility or house/renewables for powering lights, door openers, sewing machines or whatever is needed. Even having 240vac available in case of an electric car charger in the future.
Ralph

Isn't it amazing how much time these projects take...
I'm lucky that we have two new employees, and one of them, Kye, is great at DIY work. He's been doing all the painting lately, the outside, now the inside doors etc. We've been installing some shelving, a whiteboard, things of that nature. We also had to take a wall apart to move some blocking around, so shelves could be installed on the other side. That was unfortunate. We put a new piece of drywall in yesterday and are mudding up the joints. Hopefully it will look like nothing happened after it's all done and repainted.

The work never ends!

Good luck with your new garage/studio! One can never have enough garage in Canada...

-RoB-

[Rob Beckers]

The OPA released their lists with those that will be offered a FIT contract (the Ontario Feed-In-Tariff), and we are on it! :cheer2:

That means we will indeed have 100 kW of solar panels on the roof of our new Solacity building. It is also a not-insignificant amount of money that we will gain over the 20 years of the contract, helping to pay for this building.

The official contract offers still have to be send out, the OPA did send us a notice this morning to expect that in the next few weeks.

This is great news!
And the building will look even more awesome when the roof is full of solar panels...

-RoB-

[Ralph Day]

Congratulations Rob! Good news for sure. Now you have to deal with the OPA for yourself instead of clients:blink:

Ralph

[Joe Blake]

Good work there, Rob. Been following your progress. You definitely deserve a vacation.

Joe

[Krista Hiles]

Hi,

I appreciate the idea of Rob Beckers. It really shows his concern towards the environment.

[Rob Beckers]

We will participate in the Ontario Green Doors Open event on Saturday October 4th. You can find the official announcement here. (http://www.greenpowertalk.org/showthread.php?p=27327#post27327)

If you have been following this thread and are interested in seeing the building for yourself, have a chat with me, this is your chance to come and visit!

Hope to see you!

-RoB-

[Peter Klaassen]

This project of yours is quite an accomplishment Rob, so I think I will have to come by to see it. I have been working at housebuilding for the last few years so I have an understanding of your efforts. It looks great from all the pictures.
Pete

[Joe Blake]

I guess it depends upon time zones etc, but would it be possible to use a camera on skype so those of us living outside N America could have a look and possibly say hello. Maybe a skype conference call.

Joe

[Rob Beckers]

Joe, great idea!
Yes, that can be done. I just have to remember to take my iPad Mini to work with me. With that I can easily walk around and point the camera at the various things-to-see.

How about the time difference? Probably midnight your place when it's noon over here(?).

My skype address is rob.beckers1
I'd have to 'accept' you beforehand, before we can do video.

-RoB-

[Joe Blake]

Hi Rob

My Perth WA time is GMT+ 8hrs.

Ontario is GMT - 4hrs.

So yes, about 12 hours difference.:sad2: Ah well, it was worth a thought. But I've sent a request on Skype anyway. Perhaps I can take you for a tour around my house and show you what I've got, especially once I have my "grid back-up" system installed. The necessary goodies should hit our shores in a week or two hopefully.

Joe

[Rob Beckers]

Joe, we should be able to do the tour! I just need to remember to take the iPad to work, so I can walk around with the camera and show you the place.

I'd love to see your setup too!

-RoB-

[Rob Beckers]

Time flies when you're having fun!
I can't believe it's been almost 3 months since the last pictures. Business is, well, busy, and meanwhile we have been chipping away at completing the building as well. The end is in sight (finally!). After about 3 years since we started this project that's A Good Thing. Here is where things are currently at, this picture is a view from the road.

http://www.greenpowertalk.org/picture.php?albumid=23&pictureid=250

Landscaping was completed about a week ago. The areas that were affected are mostly covered in geotextile and river-rock, to create a low-maintenance surface. We did install a small stone patio on the west side of the building, that's where the BBQ is parked (very important!). That side also has some area with soil: We will trial a product called "eco-lawn", consisting of grasses that look much like regular lawn, but don't need any watering, fertilizing, and little mowing. They are mostly hard-, red-, and chewings-fescues, not quite as pretty as regular 'lawn' fescue, but much hardier.

Those two poles are to hold a future sign with our business name. This is alongside the road.

http://www.greenpowertalk.org/picture.php?albumid=23&pictureid=251

Getting closer you can see most of the 'rocked' area, and some of the plantings. There are not many plants, just some trees that stay small/low enough to work for us, and some shrubs: The ones in the foreground are norwegian maples (some people call them 'red maples' because their leaves are dark-red all season, but red maples are another species entirely), they get to be about 30' x 30'. Closer to the building we have some red maples (so named because their leaves turn bright red in fall), the variety we planted should be around 18' tops. In between the trees are varies types of lilacs since those look nice and are low maintenance (smell nice too!). At the front of the building we planted some mugo pines, an alpine species of pine that only gets to be about 4 feet high and wide.

http://www.greenpowertalk.org/picture.php?albumid=23&pictureid=249

The trellis in front of the building entrance has been completed too, nearly killing us in the process!! It is made out of white oak, a species of wood that is extremely rot-resistant, and very, very heavy. There are 5" x 7" beams in there! We built these assemblies on the ground, and tried lifting them in place with 3 people and some ladders. Each is several hundred pounds! We quickly figured out that we were not going to be able to do this "by hand" without someone getting killed in the process, and enlisted the landscaper to use his backhoe to lift up the frames one-by-one, we would then clamp them in place, align them, and drill the holes. Holding things together are 3/4" steel timber-bolts. Somehow they don't look nearly as large as they actually are now that they are in front of the building. They are big though!

Not in the picture, but completed two days ago, are the 3.5" x 5.5" purlins running across the top. I'll post an updated picture later. The plan is to put some PV modules on top of the purlins to create an awning. My hope is that I can find transparent PV panels for this, we will have to see what is available and at what price.

The interior has been finalized as well, with cubicles

http://www.greenpowertalk.org/picture.php?albumid=23&pictureid=252

These are "reconditioned" cubicles, at about 1/3 of the price of new ones. Not a bad deal! A local company named Advanced Business Interiors (http://www.makespacework.com/) installed these, I can highly recommend them. We picked the fabric colour, and they re-skin and repaint them as needed.

http://www.greenpowertalk.org/picture.php?albumid=23&pictureid=253

Each desk is a generous 6' x 5', in an L-shape arrangement. As cubicles go this is on the large end of the size-spectrum. Our architect had the foresight to size the office space so we could fit in a total of 8 units, which for us worked out perfectly.

Hard to tell from the pictures, but also completed, was the asphalt for the parking lot and the truck ramp. Most of the areas that see vehicular traffic have been left with gravel; it's cheap, it allows for water to percolate somewhat instead of causing run-off, looks decent, is low maintenance, and did I mention it is cheap! Everything asphalt is not. Only the actual car parking area is paved, and the truck ramp. Even so, the cost of that little bit of commercial asphalt is obscene, and we already have issues (looks like the paving machine was leaking hydraulic fluid, which is eating its way through the asphalt). The paving company is very helpful though, and we will see in spring what needs to get done to remedy the situation.

What is left to do is a little bit of exterior electrical work; we have outdoor LED light fixtures that need to be installed. And then there is the heating system... That is a whole lot of work and the Last Large Job left to do. I have been tackling the engineering for that the past few weeks and will discuss that in my next post.

-RoB-

[Andy Rhody]

Okay Rob, Congrads! You're just about done!

I've been laying low since I knew that you were so busy. At least one and a half people have been asking me to hook them up with the guy that enginnered my solar. They talked with solar guys down here but thought that I had done better.

I may contact you within the next 2 weeks or so about a 6Kw grid-tie system down here in Pa.

[Rob Beckers]

As mentioned I have been working out the engineering for our geothermal - hydronic heating system. Attached to this message is the installation drawing that I've come up with, though some of the details and exact components used may still vary (scroll to the bottom of this message and you'll see the PDF).

On the outside, under our parking lot, is 6,400 feet of 3/4" HDPE pipe. We circulate fluid through this to pick up heat from the ground. This goes into a Waterfurnace NDW100 heatpump. The heatpump takes fluid coming in at 30F, extracts some of the heat, and spits it out at 25F. On the other side of that same heatpump water comes in at 100F and is pumped up to about 107F when it exits, using that heat extracted from underground. On the building side the hot water circulates through 8,200 feet of oxygen-barrier-PEX of 5/8" (mostly) and 1/2" (some of it). The PEX heats the concrete slab and it in turn heats the air in the building.

That is it in a nutshell, though there are a whole lot of parts that enter into this picture before it actually works! Let's start on the geothermal side.

While doing my due-diligence it became clear there are a whole lot of unhappy geothermal customers out there: Common issues are: Noise, because they never quite get the air out of the system, loss-of-pressure because the (commonly used) pressurized flow center looses pressure over time, the pump failing after a few short years (or sooner), running on backup-heat much of the winter (expensive!), and the list goes on. There likely are lots of good geothermal installers out there, but for sure many have no clue how this stuff actually works!

I should mention that most of the issues listed above are for closed-loop geothermal systems, things are far easier and work far better for two-well open-loop systems. However, for reasons that make no sense and can only be described as a paranoid phobia; North Grenville (where we are located) will absolutely not allow two-well systems. The mere mention of this to township officials makes them turn two shades paler and results in language that makes one quickly abandon all hope. Reason was tried, with zero effect. So closed-loop it is, in horizontal shallow loops (the suggestion of vertical boreholes with closed-loops gets a similar reaction).

The causes of previously mentioned problems are actually not all that difficult to understand, and can be avoided (at a price though, and that is where the rub is): From the quotes we received when we send out the heating system for bids I know for a fact that many installers will grossly undersize a geothermal system. This keeps the bid price low, and cost for the installer down, in particular when it comes to digging in lines (an expensive part of the job!). The result is that the customer will be on backup heating much of the winter, in particular the latter part of winter when the cold permeates deeper and the loop-field drops in temperature. Backup heat is a fancy way for what is no better than baseboard heaters, it is very inefficient and expensive.

By the way, we threw all those undersized quotes out of-the-bat. Unfortunately that only left quotes with such obscenely high numbers that we ultimately decided to do the job ourselves.

The heatpump and the loop-field I selected are such that they will provide 100% of our heat-load. This heatpump is a two-stage, so we can run it on its first stage for much of the winter when heating loads, which is more efficient.

The noise and pressure-drop problems frequently found are somewhat inherent to the type of flow center commonly used: The industry standard is a pressurized one- or two-pump flow center. They are essentially just a pump in series with the loops. Trouble is that these systems usually have no way to eliminate air, other than the initial flush. Flushing can never get all the air out of the system; there is too much dissolved in the fluid that will come out of solution over time. There is also little or no 'spare fluid'; the smallest leak (or even pipe expansion) will result in a pressure drop. At the very least these systems should have an expansion tank to stabilize pressure somewhat, but generally they do not. Because of the lack of expansion tank or large body of fluid there is no pressure reference point either, the pump(s) just 'float'; with pressure before the pump dropping somewhat and that after the pump rising as it runs. If the steady-state pressure of the system was low to begin with that can result in cavitation in the pump ('boiling' of the fluid due to the low pressure, creating gas bubbles that suddenly collapse again). Cavitation is noisy, and it will kill the pump over time, by eroding the impeller.

Now, a pressurized flow center system can be installed properly. That requires skill and knowledge by the installer though, and to some extend luck (no tiny leak in the system!). There is an easier solution that takes much of the guess-work and luck out of it: A non-pressurized flow center.

A non-pressurized flow center is simply a reservoir that holds some fluid, open on top (they are not really open, but the pressure can equalize with the air pressure), with the fluid from the loops simply going in the top of the reservoir, and the pump drawing out of the bottom, pumping it into the heat-pump and around the loops. This simple design solves a slew of potential issues in one fell swoop: There now is some spare fluid, so a micro-leak no longer presents an issue. Heck, since the loops are not pressurized a small leak does not cause pressure to drop! The reservoir is at air pressure, a (near) constant 14.7 psi. That means the input to the pump(s) is always at that pressure, so there will never be any possibility of cavitation. Lastly, having a way for air from the fluid to escape to the atmosphere means that air bubbles in the system can work themselves out. So simply, yet so rarely installed!

There is a US company named B&D (https://www.bdmfginc.com/) that makes such non-pressurized flow centers. I am planning to get our flow center from them (and incidentally, if you need cheap geothermal supplies such as HDPE pipe, flow centers, pumps etc. we can supply those now too!).

There is a last issue with many geothermal installations that I spent quite a bit of time looking into: Just about every installer and installation I've come across uses regular cast-iron pumps. Some of today's cast-iron pumps use special coatings that make them less sensitive to oxygen (i.e. "rust"), nevertheless they are all meant to be used in a environment where oxygen is (nearly) absent. Still, they are routinely and commonly used to pump fluid around a geothermal loop field. Even when a closed pressurized flow center is used, that HDPE pipe in the ground is no barrier to oxygen at all. As with most plastics the pores between HDPE molecules are more than large enough to allow oxygen molecules to readily pass through, and dissolve into the fluid (you don't need bubbles in the pipes to have lots of oxygen in the fluid!).

I have not been able to put my finger on this: Do those iron pumps live a few years and fail? The installer just claims that "sometimes they just break", and the home owner just replaces the pump every so-many years. Or do the better iron pumps just live a long and happy life under these conditions, despite slowly rusting away? In short, maybe I am seeing a problem where there is none. Nevertheless, using cast-iron pumps for a geothermal loop field doesn't make sense to me. So the plan is to use a stainless steel pump. They are readily available, just more expensive vs. cast-iron. In our case we pay an extra $700 for that pump. It will never rust out though.

To talk a bit more about pumps; a typical closed-loop geothermal-hydronic system will have (at least) 3 pumps. One for the geothermal loops, one to pump water between the heat-storage tanks and the heatpump, and one to circulate fluid through the hydronic loops. It is easy to spend a heck of a lot of energy on running those pumps, in particular if the installer used loops that are too long, or simply sized the pumps wrong. You see, most pumps are constant-speed devices that run at one fixed speed, so they will simply pump fluid around at a set flow rate (which depends on the pressure needed to force the fluid through the pipes, called "head", from zero flow at the maximum head that the pump can create, to zero head and maximum flow for that pump, this is called the "pump curve"). If that pump is oversized it will pump around fluid faster than needed, at the very least wasting energy, and wost-case causing erosion of fittings and the heatpump.

Undersizing a pump is no better: Fluid in a pipe has two ways to flow through, one is where it's all very organized with no swirls, just all 'bits' of fluid moving along at the same speed in orderly fashion, with no mixing inside the pipe, this is called laminar flow. The other is where those bits of fluid are bounding off a wall one moment, flowing through the center the next, and bounce off another wall after that. This is turbulent flow, and for good heat-transfer from the soil to the fluid in the pipe we need turbulent flow. Turbulent flow mixes the water in the pipe constantly (laminar does not), making sure we always have a colder bit of fluid next to that pipe wall to soak up heat. Run it laminar and you suddenly lost a good chunk of your heat-input to the heatpump. Laminar vs. turbulent flow is determined by something called the "Reynolds number". It's hard to calculate for pipe, so luckily someone else went through those motions and gave us tables to work from, including the effect of anti-freeze such as glycol (makes the fluid more viscous, requiring a higher flow rate for turbulent flow). For 3/4" HDPE it happens to be just above 3 gal/min when using 20% glycol.

This same story applies to the pump for the hydronic pipes as well: We need turbulent flow, and at the same time we don't want to get too much flow as this will make things noisy (and worst case scour metal off fittings!). The target range for hydronic in PEX or copper is between 2 ft/sec and 4 ft/sec in flow speed. The corresponding flow rates depend on the pipe diameter. The minimum speed is not just so we get turbulent flow, it also is such that air bubbles are moved along in the stream (flow is faster than the rate of rise of the bubbles in a vertical column so they can actually move down and along with flow). This is a requirement if we want to get all the air out of the system.

The third pump goes between the heatpump and the storage tanks: It just needs to remove heat fast enough from the heatpump so the temperature rise of the water flowing through is not excessive. This is something determined by the manufacturer of the heatpump, and sticking to that is a good idea, as heatpump efficiency takes a nose-dive if it has to heat the water too much. A similar argument applies to the geothermal side of the heatpump as well: The fluid needs to flow fast enough so the temperature drop caused by the heatpump is reasonable (heatpumps extract heat at a fixed rate, so if the fluid flows slowly it just means it comes out colder). Once again deviation means efficiency goes down, and the risk of freezing the pipes on the ouput side goes up.

Back to pump power use, and how this is definitely not negligible: We have three circuits (refer to the attached drawing). The first one for the hydronic loops is worst-case 41.1 GPM at a differential head of 29 ft. Using a nifty online calculator (http://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/pumps-power-d_505.html) we can figure out that it takes 220 Watt to move this water around using a perfect 100% efficient pump. The second circuit is 30 GPM at 10 ft. head loss, which takes 60 Watt for a 100% efficient pump. Lastly are the geothermal loops at 25.6 GPM and 25 ft. head loss, taking 120 Watt. That makes a total of 400 Watt, before figuring in pump efficiency! A typical (small) centrifugal pump ranges from about 20% to 50% for the regular AC pumps (yes, this is quite the range, and not something to write home about for the lower-end pumps). The high-end variable-speed DC pumps (like the Grundfos Magna3 I'm planning to use) are about 65% efficient in the middle of their pump curve. That means we would be looking at around 600 Watt to run the pumps. Still a sizable load!

What makes these variable-speed DC pumps worth their rather hefty price tag is that they do not have to run at 100% all the time: They can adjust their flow rate based on demand, or be controlled such that they pump just enough to meet the requirements. The DC motors are more efficient than their AC counterpart, but the real savings is in adjusting the flow rate as needed. On the geothermal side we have a two-stage heatpump, and we don't need that 25 GPM flow rate when it is running on its first stage, same on the hydronic side from the heatpump to the storage tanks. When it comes to the flow into the PEX loops in the concrete floor this is even more the case: There are four distinct zones and each can request heat independently. That means we may just need 1.4 GPM if one of the small offices demands heat. Because the PEX loops were designed to automagically get the right flow rate based on the pressure difference across them it is pretty easy to set up the pump to provide constant pressure and change flow rate as needed (this is one of the standard modes on a Magna3 pump). Things get even more interesting when we add a micro-controller to the mix: It can be programmed to drive the pumps on-the-fly as dictated by temperature differential of the geothermal heatpump, and it can stage the zones on the hydronic side so that except for the few very cold nights it will never switch on all zones at the same time. Large energy savings can be had this way!

There is another source of savings: We don't actually have to run fluid at 1.4 GPM in 1/2" PEX, or 2 GPM in 5/8" PEX (the requirement to reach 2 ft/sec. flow speed to move air along with the fluid). As it turns out we can throttle this flow to about 60% and still get nearly the same heat-transfer in the concrete. Once the air has been worked out of the system, and the heating demand is not too high, we can save a whole lot of energy by reducing the pump speed. Something easy to do with a micro-controller.

This was a very long story explaining some of the reasoning behind the design. To quickly move along the rest: The storage tanks are there to prevent short-cycling of the heatpump. The heapump is most efficient and will last longer if it is allowed to run at least 10 minutes each time it comes on. That is why there are heat storage tanks, and the two times 120 gallon works out to be just about the right size for that (a 5F water temperature differential when the heatpump is running 10 minutes at first stage). The expansion tank is there to accommodate the expansion and contraction of the water as it heats and cools. Equally important is that the expansion tank fixes the pressure at that point in the system to (about) 13 psi, making it a perfect place to feed the pumps from and avoid cavitation. The size and initial pressure of the expansion tank can be calculated through a set of equations, based on the total system volume and temperature differential.

An assortment of ball valves are there to isolate parts of the system in case parts (such as a pump) need to be replaced without the need to drain the entire system. On the geothermal side the valves also help short-circuit the pump so it can be used to flush the pipes. To get rid of the ever-present air in the system there are two automatic air-separators; the one near the expansion tank is a special type that is good at removing micro-bubbles from the fluid, while the second one is intended to be mounted at the top of a long circuit that moves along the ceiling of the warehouse (to reach the manifolds that heat the office). When air gets removed from the system we need to add water to make up for the lost volume; that is done through a connection with the building water supply. A back-flow-preventer makes sure water only flows in one direction (this is a code requirement as well), and it also takes care of dropping the water pressure from 50 psi to 13 psi.

Zone-valves are electrically operated valves that switch the flow to a heating zone on/off. Finally, spring-loaded check-valves ensure that we don't get thermo-syphoning when the circulation pump is not running.

And, in a nutshell, that is it!
Now all we have to do is build it... :confused:

-RoB-

[Rob Beckers]

As mentioned we've finished building the front-entrance trellis/awning structure by adding the purlins. Those purlins are 3.5" x 5.5", not exactly matchsticks!

http://www.greenpowertalk.org/picture.php?albumid=23&pictureid=254

From another angle:

http://www.greenpowertalk.org/picture.php?albumid=23&pictureid=255

It's nice to see it all come together (finally)!
The plan is to add some transparent PV modules on top of this trellis structure, making into a proper awning. I am still looking for those modules though, and they need to reasonably priced. Hopefully it will work out, I'll keep you posted.

-RoB-

[Rob Beckers]

This never-ending saga once again continues...
That is what it feels like at this time, though in truth the end is slowly coming in sight. What is left to do is (primarily) to get heat in the building. Not a trivial matter since we have seen temperatures drop here to -11C at night already. Beyond that there's 4 outside LED light fixtures that need to be installed, and lastly, we need to do a bit more landscaping in the back to satisfy the township's requirements (the latter will have to wait until spring though).

There is progress though. The past week saw the installation of the transparent PV modules for the front-entrance awning. More about that in a minute. Also, all the supplies needed for the heating system finally arrived two days ago. Waiting 3 months for a heat-pump is pretty crazy (not sure why that needs to happen; we're using WaterFurnace, a very well-known brand, seems the manufacturer not only has zero stock but a long production queue).

Back to that awning at the entrance though. I'm declaring it the Most Awesome Awning in eastern Canada (and maybe even North America)!! :canada: The plan there has always been to install a few see-through solar panels. In part as an "architectural feature", in part to keep snow and rain away from the front entrance, in part as something we can later use for a demo-off-grid system, in part because it simply looks incredibly cool!

This is what it looks like:

http://www.greenpowertalk.org/picture.php?albumid=23&pictureid=257

These panels have thicker glass than usual (to get the needed rigidity without the aluminum frame a regular panel has). They are heavy! Turned out a module manufacturer we have been buying from before makes these as OEM modules for a US brand (meaning they make them in Sault-Ste-Marie in Canada, then slap the brand name of that US brand on it). Price is nearly the same as regular PV modules, so they are not too expensive. The panels are regular construction; glass on top, then EVA (basically a type of transparent glue), the cells themselves, EVA, and on the bottom a transparent sheet of Tedlar. Each panel is 250W in full sun.

http://www.greenpowertalk.org/picture.php?albumid=23&pictureid=258

We installed them last Monday and Tuesday, while winds were blowing fiercely! Not our first choice for installing panels, but Monday saw temperatures go up to 18 Centigrade (65F). This time of year not a day you want to pass up for outside work. The hefty weight of the panels actually helped, despite the winds they didn't have a tendency to fly away while we fastened them.

http://www.greenpowertalk.org/picture.php?albumid=23&pictureid=260

The panels have 1/2" holes drilled through the glass, so they need to be fastened exactly in those spots. Not something we took into account when the purlins were installed on the wood awning structure. We did not have access to the actual racking one is supposed to use with these panels (would have been much too expensive to import a few pieces from the US for this), so we improvised. I got some 5mm aluminum L-bracket, with 3" flanges. Comes in 20' pieces and three of those did the trick with very little going to waste. Drilling holes in the right places with the use of a plywood template did the trick. The aluminum rails are fastened into the wood with stainless lag screws. In all this is rock-solid. The space between the panels was caulked with the same transparent tri-polymer caulk we use for PV installations (good for 50 years under UV exposure), so the whole thing is leak-proof.

http://www.greenpowertalk.org/picture.php?albumid=23&pictureid=259

By the way, that white stuff on the panels is ice, from radiative cooling at night (panels are a dark surface, cools down really good on a clear night). Moisture in the air freezes on the panels.

The other 'project' that should come together over the next few weeks is the heating system for the building. Despite all the insulation and air-tightness the temperature in the office has been drifting down. The warehouse doesn't really change, it just very, very slowly drifts down in temperature there. The office has windows, many windows, large ones, and that is the weak link: Even these triple-pane ones are 'only' around R-5.9 overall for the solar heat-gain windows. With night-time temperatures dipping now well below zero Centigrade that means lots of heat-loss through those windows.

I've bought a few (cheap) ceramic heaters, 1.5kW each, and with three of those running we can pretty quickly bring the office up to reasonably temperatures in the morning. If we have sun, even a little sun, the office temperature quickly shoots up to 20C or 21C, even that day we had -9C outside at the same time. Passive solar most definitely works! But there's only so much you can do given the amount of glass, and a real heating system is called for during a Canadian winter.

We have been busy last Friday to build up the 'cold' side of the system; the plumbing that hooks up to the geothermal lines.

http://www.greenpowertalk.org/picture.php?albumid=23&pictureid=261

I made those manifolds out of PVC, and the rest of the pipes there is PVC as well. It's a great material to very quickly (and relatively cheap) build up lots of plumbing. The downside is that Kye and I nearly passed out from the fumes coming off that primer and glue! Nasty stuff!

That black thing standing up in the picture is our flow center. A pump attaches to it to move the fluid around all the pipes (and underground through the geothermal lines). This is an unpressurized flow center, relatively rare in the geothermal world. I've discussed its merits a few posts back. It makes great sense to me (vs. the more traditional pressurized flow centers).

On the left side in the picture are two 120 gallon tanks. These are for heat-storage and buffering. The heat-pump heats the water in the tanks, the tanks supply hot water to the hydronic pipes in the floors. Without the tanks the heat-pump would be short-cycling when demand is low, not a good thing for longevity. The tanks make it so the heat-pump will run a minimum of 10 minutes at a time.

The pumps in the system are all Grundfos Magnas. Not cheap, but very efficient, and they let me do things to further reduce energy use (pumps are a major energy hog for a geothermal system). I didn't realize just how large and heavy these things are until they arrived!

http://www.greenpowertalk.org/picture.php?albumid=23&pictureid=262

The plan is to start work on the rest of the heating system tomorrow. Stay tuned!

-RoB-

[Rob Beckers]

-15C (5F) outside this morning, +20C (68F) inside around noon with just the sun heating the office!

Passive solar REALLY works!

For the sake of full disclosure: I do have a source of heat for the building; we have 4 little ceramic heaters, 1,500 Watt each. On the (cold) overcast days they can bring the office up from 14C in the morning to a more pleasant 19C in a couple of hours. On these very cold nights I leave one running overnight, so when we get to the office it's not too cold inside. This morning started out at 14C inside. By 9:30am those heaters had been switched off because so much sun (and heat) was coming in through the windows, that pushed it up to 20C in no time flat.

The high heat capacity of the building, including the office, works in curious ways. The heat from the sun (or heaters) can warm up the air pretty quickly so it gets to be a couple of degrees above the slab temperature. But then the larger the temperature difference gets between slab and air, the faster heat starts moving into the slab from the air. So, despite the sun continuing to shine it doesn't really get above 20C, that would take a tremendous amount of additional heat, as at that point the heat is going towards warming up the slab (which takes a really long time). Works the same in summer too, when it's hot outside (we keep the sun out in summer, but there's heat conduction through the windows no matter what). Pretty neat!

-RoB-

[Rob Beckers]

An update on our quest to get some heat in the building.
After two weeks of soldering, cutting, fitting, and cursing we're finally getting closer to firing up the heat-pump (figuratively we hope). The outside looks more and more like Christmas (with a meter of snow on those transparent panels over the entrance).

http://www.greenpowertalk.org/picture.php?albumid=23&pictureid=263

The inside is changing too, with pipes popping up in various places.

http://www.greenpowertalk.org/picture.php?albumid=23&pictureid=264

It is somewhat mind-boggling to see the sheer number of couplings, reducers, unions, and nipples that go into (what is) a pretty simple system. Not to mention that those things (in brass) do not come cheap!

http://www.greenpowertalk.org/picture.php?albumid=23&pictureid=265

That last picture is just some of the plumbing to connect two tanks together so they share the flow evenly. The tanks come with 2" NPT holes, which is a bit big for the flow we have, so we drop it down to 1-1/2" (that makes for cheaper parts too; a 1-1/2" ball valve is half the price of a 2" one). So, in order for each tank hole we have: A 2" nipple, A reducer to 1-1/2", a 90-degree elbow, a union, a ball-valve, and another 90-degree elbow. There are 8 of these holes on the tanks with the same hardware!

I've worked out the electrical parts that we will need to control the system (in my head), and the coming week I will hopefully build all that up. We have a few loose ends on the plumbing side, and those should be taken care off by Tuesday (today is Sunday). So, if all goes according to plan we can fill up the warm side with water by the middle of the coming week. Let's hope there are no leaks!

The geothermal side is largely ready as well. I'm still waiting for a couple of hoses that connect it to the heat-pump, those should come in by the middle of the week. The next step for that is to fill the system up with a mix of water and anti-freeze.

A big week ahead!!

-RoB-

[Ralph Day]

A pressure test (pressurize the system with air, not water) might save a lot of headache if there's a one small solder joint leak. It's such a pain to drain, purge, re-solder and hope for the best (ask me how I know). Pressurize, if it holds great, if not run around with some soapy water and check the solder joints.

Project looks good, as always. You're a man of many talents Rob (or are you the soldering jedi?)

Ralph

[Rob Beckers]

Nope, I'm not the soldering Jedi... :nuts:
I was lucky to get help from an HVAC technician with 40 years experience building these systems. He's been soldering everything. I did the PVC part (on the right-hand side of the pictures), which is more about gluing. I've done lots of soldering in life, but don't know all the different bits and pieces that go into all that copper plumbing (ever heard of "near-to-close nipples", "street-90s" etc?!).

Tough to pressure test this with air: There is an air-remover in the system that can't be closed, and the overpressure valves on the tanks are only 30 psi. The PVC side is even more problematic, as one is not allowed to pressurize PVC with air (it can shatter and blow shards of PVC around, so the only approved method for testing PVC is with fluid). We'll probably just have to make an offering to The Gods of Plumbing, fill it up, and hope for the best!

-RoB-

[Ralph Day]

Then may the Force be with you.

[Laurie Forbes]

Rob, just found this thread and have read (most of it anyhow :)) with a lot of interest. A most impressive project and job done if I may say so!

One minor point that occurred to me though. I'm wondering what the rational is in laying the rigid insulation over the entire floor area i.e. the insulation under the Pex and concrete slab. I have always had the understanding that it is necessary to insulate the perimeter only as heat loss from the more central areas of the floor will be minimal due to the long distance (and resultant high R value) the heat has to travel to reach the "outside". IOWs, there will be substantial heat loss (to the earth) when the heat is first turned on but that will decrease to a small value once the earth warms to a stable temperature (?).

Also, an even more minor point - the sheet poly placed over the wet concrete is not there to prevent the concrete from drying too quickly, it is there to prevent the concrete from drying at all i.e. all the water in the wet concrete should ideally remain in place so the concrete cures rather than dries where-in the water reacts chemically with the cement to harden the concrete rather than evaporating (as it would with drywall filler or latex paint for example).

The rigid insulation BTW under the slab serves a similar purpose in that it prevents the water in the wet concrete from leaching into the gravel or sand lying beneath. Six mil poly would similarly serve if the insulation is not present although I'm told that the concrete finishers sometimes don't appreciate it as it takes the concrete longer to set up (even though the end result is better).

Anyhow, thanks for the most generous and comprehensive write-up of your project. I'm certain it will provide a wealth of useful information to anyone contemplating something similar.

[Rob Beckers]

Thank you for your kind words Laurie!

Regarding the underslab insulation: If you truly have the condition that the earth underneath has limited heat capacity and poor conduction (dry sand is about the only thing that comes to mind) it may be possible to get away without insulation. However, in our case it's structural fill (granular-B mostly), essentially rock, which conducts pretty well, and just 3 feet underneath it's very very wet! That water also wicks through the fill to the slab. With ground water temperature at around 45 - 50F it in essence forms an infinite heat-sink. Without the insulation we would loose a very, very large amount of heat to the ground and there would not be an end to that. Keep in mind that the hydronic heating pipes run at the bottom of the slab at 105F, creating quite the temperature difference to drive heat transfer.

Assuming 50F for the ground underneath and with R-20 under the floor my (admittedly simplified) model shows we're still loosing 17% of total heat-loss (at design conditions, -23C outside) through the floor. After air infiltration (30%) and the roof (19%) that's the third-largest source of heat-loss for the building.

I believe that the idea of limited heat-loss to the ground is largely disproven (I don't have any literature to cite, but everyone that designs high-efficiency buildings does NOT ignore the under-slab insulation).

The poly sheet under the floor insulation is meant to keep water vapour from migrating into the concrete (did I mention it's WET under there!); officially the polystyrene insulation does not form a vapour barrier. While I'm pretty much convinced that 4" of XPS are as near to a vapour barrier as one can get, the 6 mil poly sheet is just cheap insurance.

Meanwhile we are still struggling with the heating system (no heat in the building yet). A new problem every day... :cry:

-RoB-

[Laurie Forbes]

Thank you for your kind words Laurie!

Not at all - well deserved IMO.

Regarding the underslab insulation: If you truly have the condition that the earth underneath has limited heat capacity and poor conduction (dry sand is about the only thing that comes to mind) it may be possible to get away without insulation. However, in our case it's structural fill (granular-B mostly), essentially rock, which conducts pretty well, and just 3 feet underneath it's very very wet! That water also wicks through the fill to the slab. With ground water temperature at around 45 - 50F it in essence forms an infinite heat-sink. Without the insulation we would loose a very, very large amount of heat to the ground and there would not be an end to that. Keep in mind that the hydronic heating pipes run at the bottom of the slab at 105F, creating quite the temperature difference to drive heat transfer.


Ah well then, that explains it. Where I live (semi-arid Alberta) the water table is usually hundreds of feet down so I'm biased in that direction.

I believe that the idea of limited heat-loss to the ground is largely disproven (I don't have any literature to cite, but everyone that designs high-efficiency buildings does NOT ignore the under-slab insulation).


Interesting - have not seen any calcs myself. It does seem at least semiplausible but maybe not. I have BTW, also read with interest your Building with SIPs thread and what you did there (for floor insulation) is what m/l I had in mind. BTW, that's also one fine looking "barn" you built!

Engineers do like to build things right :bigsmile: I have an engineer neighbour who built his own house and I swear his framing has tighter tolerances than my kitchen cabinets. I get pretty anal myself when building things - have to keep reminding myself not to sweat the small stuff, at least not excessively.

Meanwhile we are still struggling with the heating system (no heat in the building yet). A new problem every day... :cry:


Please keep on reporting the progress...

[Rob Beckers]

It's been a little while and I thought an update may be in order.

We finished installing all the heating bits and pieces, and I've wired things up to the point where it could (should) be functional. Alas, it seems this is not meant to be. Some of this I suppose I brought upon myself by going with 'unusual' technology: The flow center I'm using is non-pressurized and open to the atmosphere. There's a good picture of it a few posts back. The anti-freeze from the underground loops gets dumped in it at the top (it has a stand-pipe of about a foot inside), the pump sucks it out to send it to the heat-pump from the bottom. This has some obvious advantages. For one it lets air easily work itself out of the system, and since it's not pressurized the system doesn't loose pressure in the process (a big and usually ongoing problem with pressurized systems, that then need to be re-pressurized). It also allows for easy filling and topping-off, no "flush cart" needed. Those things did work out beautifully when we filled up the system.

Where things go spectacularly wrong is when the pump switches off. The momentum of the water (anti-freeze) in those 6400 feet of pipe will not stop the flow just because the pump stops moving it along: It will continue to dump water in the flow center for a number of seconds after the pump stops. Lots of it. Less than a second after the pump stops the fluid will come over the top and continues to flow for several more seconds, dumping anti-freeze on the floor in multi-gallon quantities..

A rough guess is that about 5 gallons get dumped in the flow center each time the pump shuts down. If the pump doesn't run for some time then fluid from the pipes above it may drain down into the flow center as well, adding a few more gallons. The 6" diameter flow center is much, much too small to handle this; each gallon added to it raises the water level by about 8". Clearly at that rate we run out of inches very quickly.

The plan is to build our own flow center out of a blue polyethylene drum, the 55-gallon type that the loop fluid comes in. Same principle, just a much wider diameter, 22 inches, so a gallon of fluid coming in raises the water level by just 0.6". We'll do some replumbing as soon as parts are found (I need a 1-1/4" bulkhead adapter in brass).

Just so some heat is produced I ran the circulation pump continuously (it's only a problem if it shuts off suddenly, as long as it runs things are fine). When I fired up the heat-pump for the first time it ran beautifully for about 6 hours. Then it threw a "LD SENSR FAIL" message and one of the two compressors quit (it's a two-stage heat-pump). Many sensors are described in the installation manual and circuit diagram, but of course nothing by that description, or the more legible "load sensor" name. By deduction I've managed to figure out what sensor this is, and can even pull up its values on the controller (where it has yet another name; writing firmwares and manuals clearly is not a skill WaterFurnace has mastered). The values displayed are obviously bogus, so either the sensor is broken, or the electronics that read the sensor are broken. At this point I need to get WaterFurnace involved and make a warranty claim. Not as easy as it would seem, as they will only deal with one of their "certified installers" and ours may not exactly be on that list (not to mention that I did all the wiring and much of the loop field plumbing myself).

While the heat-pump was running it performed beautifully. Calculating the heat production showed it to be spot-on with the specs. Water and anti-freeze temperatures were as expected, for once no surprises. One thing became clear pretty quickly: It takes mind-boggling amounts of heat to raise the temperature of a 9000 square feet 6" concrete slab, by even a single degree!

I have a much better appreciation and understanding now why this building just doesn't change in temperature. The warehouse section, which never sees any sun to warm it up, was still at 10C after drifting down ever so slowly since summer from a maximum of about 17C. All that without any heat input at all.

So how much heat does it take to raise that slab a degree C? Such being the questions us engineers contemplate...

The heat capacity of concrete is around 31 Btu per cubic-foot per degree F. We have about:

9000 x 0.5 = 4500 cubic feet of concrete

That means we need:

4500 x 31 = 139,500 Btu per degree F

The heat-pump will put out just over 100,000 Btu/hr with the current temperatures of anti-freeze and water (coming from the slab, being pretty cold). So, for a degree Centigrade we need roughly 2 hours and 45 minutes of heating!

And that's just the concrete, in reality there's heat leaking away underground, air above the slab warming up and moving heat away, heat escaping from the building, and a very large amount of that heat getting absorbed by the strawbale walls, all at the same time. The long and short of it is that a day of continuous heating only makes a very small difference to the inside temperature. That works both ways (and that's the good part). A day of very cold outside temperatures does nothing to the inside temperatures either. Once those temps are established all the heat-pump needs to do is make up for average heat losses, a much easier job.

Good there's the sun: It's amazing to see how the office goes from 14C in the morning to 21C by noon with -12C outside! Much of that is due to heating of the air in the office, not the slab, though some of that heat does go into the slab to raise its temperature ever so gradually as well.

The struggle for heat continues...

-RoB-

[Brian McGowan]

I have a friend from the service living in Montana that is interested in radiant floor heating. Is there any information you could pass along for me to give to him?
Thanks.
Brian

[Rob Beckers]

Brian, that question is a bit too open-ended to give a meaningful answer to, beyond a generic "radiant floor heating is great!"..

For residential use most people have a somewhat different situation from ours, they don't have slabs of concrete as a floor but something with a lesser heat capacity (such as wood floors), or at best (thin) tile floors. Those can be heated through hydronic heat as well, it's just a somewhat different mechanism using aluminum heat-spreaders underneath the floor, with pipes embedded in there.

Does he want to drive the heating from geothermal, or does he have another heat source in mind?

Meanwhile, I've been looking into our heat-pump issues in a bit more detail. Since it's a two-stage unit, it has two identical setups of compressors and sensors. I plugged the sensor that is giving the bogus values into the circuit of the other compressor, and vice-versa, then ran the unit. The bogus values now show up for the other compressor, indicating that it's almost certainly the sensor itself, and not the circuitry that reads the sensor (ie. the main electronics board).

On Monday I'll try to get WaterFurnace involved to see how we can get this resolved under warranty.

A sunny day here again, with -8C outside. It was 15C inside this morning (in the office), with a 1500 Watt ceramic heater left running overnight. Now, an hour later, we're up to 18C with no other heat but the sun. By noon it'll be 20C in here. You gotta love the sun! :love:

-RoB-

[Rob Beckers]

A new sensor and the heat-pump is once again working! I didn't go through Waterfurnace; it just seemed easier to buy another sensor and install it myself. I've also wired in all the thermostats and zone-valves. That works beautifully: When a zone calls for heat the zone-valve comes on and water flows through that floor segment.

After running the system overnight all the spaces are now at their set temperature values and the slab has warmed up again (after slowly cooling since summer). It's very comfortable inside!

What's yet-to-do is to fabricate a new flow center. Meanwhile we have to let the geothermal circulation pump run continuously when the heat-pump is switched on. For that reason I've switched off the whole system now, during the day, with the sun coming in the office is at 24C currently (-10C outside and very windy!). I'll probably leave it off over the weekend and switch it back on again Monday morning. Even if it gets very cold out the warehouse and office won't drop more than a few degrees.

It was -29C (!!) yesterday morning here. Despite that low temperature the heat-pump had no trouble at all maintaining the temperature. Heck, just one stage (half a heat-pump) could do that. This building does not need much heat to keep it warm!

-RoB-

[Ralph Day]

Sounds like a dynamite heating system Rob. If you had a power outage of 24 - 48 hours, do you think the building would stay above freezing? and for how long? What's the size of your backup generator and what do you keep going in an outage?

Ralph

[Rob Beckers]

No backup generator Ralph..
I've not measured the load, but that heat-pump draws serious power. Would be hard to run (3-phase!) from a generator. Besides that, we don't have natural gas, so we'd have to go with either diesel or propane (or gasoline, but that doesn't store too well).

On the bright side, the warehouse section of the building takes weeks to drop a few degrees (we were at 10C before starting the heat, and that's after slowly dwindling down since about 18C at the height of summer, and near-zero heat input since). The office is more sensitive to lack of heat because the windows are a weak link for heat-exchange: I left it unheated over the weekend, with sub-zero temps outside, and it went from 19C Friday to 14C this morning. Mind you, that is air temperature. The slab would still be fairly warm, and it would take much, much longer to go below 14C.

I've found that with sun (or cold) the air can fairly quickly change about 4C vs. the floor, before the heat exchange between the two puts a stop to further changes.

In all, without electricity and serious freezing temperatures outside, it would likely take a few weeks before we have to start worrying about freezing the pipes. Pretty amazing! My house is nothing like that..

-RoB-

[Ralph Day]

That's quite a reservoir of heat you have then. No generator, even a baby one to keep the computer/lighting systems working for the business?

I watch a place that has hydronic heat. It's holding at about 8C with the pump running at a reduced (from full circulation) rate. I wouldn't want to leave the oil fired water heater off (the system's heat source) for any length of time in the hard cold. The slab wouldn't have the mass of your place. Oil consumption so far this winter is perhaps 200litres (no way to meter it accurately, just a dip stick).

Ralph

[Rob Beckers]

An update, now that the heating system is running full-time: It's great! :cool:
Radiant heat from the floor has this special quality not found with forced-air or other heating. It feels like it's radiating from 'everywhere'. Very comfortable!

We still need to fabricate a new flow center and plumb that in. I'll post pictures when that happens. Meanwhile the geothermal circulation pump is running full-time. Just for kicks and giggles I wanted to revisit the topic of "pump efficiency", as was discussed a few posts before. What I mentioned there was that regular AC pumps of the size we use would have an efficiency of around 20 - 50%, while a good DC pump would be up to around 65% in the middle of their pump curves. Let's take a look at real-life.

I'm running three state-of-the-art DC Grundfos Magna 40-120 pumps. The geothermal circulator is currently doing 26.9 gpm, with a constant head of 21.7 feet, and it is using a constant 180 Watt even. That puts the pump at 61% efficiency. It's pretty well in the middle of its pump curve, at about half its maximum load. There you have it; not quite 65% but close, and likely about twice as efficient as your average AC pump of this size.

On these very sunny (clear blue sky), and very cold (-20C outside) days we have a bit of an 'overheating' problem. Passive solar works so well that the indoor temperature will rise to 26C if I don't lower the awning some in the morning to cut down on incoming solar heat. Amazing! That also illustrates what the effect of thermal mass is: The slab and indoor temperature is kept at 19C (if there is no sun). The extra solar heat will generate about a 4 to 5 degree Centigrade temperature differential, pretty much regardless of how much heat is coming in from the sun. At that point the slab starts to 'eat up' the excess heat fast enough to prevent further rise (heat needs a differential to 'flow' from hot to cold, the more of a differential temperature, the faster the heat flow).

Of course, the heating system doesn't really run at all on days like this. It will run just a bit at night but that's it..

-RoB-

[Rob Beckers]

With The Winter That Doesn't Want To End going on (-24C this morning) I thought I'd share a little update here. This is what things looked like this morning:

http://www.greenpowertalk.org/picture.php?albumid=23&pictureid=266

Due to the aerodynamics of the building we have an impressive snow-berm built up in front of the windows! The picture doesn't fully do it justice because the scale of the building is deceptive, it's big though! It was even a little higher at one point. Snow blows off the roof and the wind "rolls" right in front of the windows (big vortex), dumping it there.

By the way, at the edge of the picture you can just see one of the LED light fixtures we installed. Those are 57 Watt, with 5800 lumen in light coming out. That makes for an impressive 102 lumen/Watt! They are really, really bright!:cool: Your old incandescent light bulb does 11 lumen/Watt...

Meanwhile the heating is holding up like a champ! This time (end of February, early March) is when the ground is coldest, and horizontal loops that are relatively shallow see the coldest temperature. The fluid temps show that the soil at about 8' under is around 41.5F (when the heat-pump is not running). With the heat-pump going full-blast the inbound fluid temperature drops to about 38F, and goes back into the ground around 30F. Those are fine temperatures for a heat-pump, it is still very efficient with those temperatures. The design (worst case) temperature for this system is 25F so it is clear the engineering worked! This has been the coldest February on record here, and despite that the ground temperatures are still well above worst-case.

While I'm at it, a little "plug": We have recently spun-off our solar installation business into a new company, named SunSmart Solar. It's a joint venture between Solacity (my business) and Eco-Energy (a friend of mine who runs an electrician's business). I've been working hard on the new Web site, and for those interested it has some good detailed info (financial analysis, energy production etc.) for MicroFIT, Net-Metering, and off-grid systems. See http://www.sunsmart.solar/ for all the details.

Stay warm!

-RoB-

[Mark Ross]

That's some serious snow Rob!

How are those double-sided panels doing above the entry? Are they still generating with the tops covered in snow??

I was wondering if you have a recommendation for a circulator pump for our radiant heating system. Read that Bell & Gosset make the most efficient circulators but cannot find a local distributor :( But basically looking for a pretty small pump as our system is not that big, expect a 1/25HP would probably do the job. Any thoughts you have around this would be appreciated!

Glad to see you guys are warm up there!

[Rob Beckers]

Hi Mark,

Those panels have not been hooked up to anything, so not a whole lot of energy coming out! :weird:

The plan was and is to eventually use them for a small demo off-grid system, to (possibly) run a light at night for the sign. That is low-priority though, first I need to get the building permit closed, right now we still have that open pending a few small matters that need to be addressed, then the 100kW solar PV for the roof's FIT system is gearing up, I just bought panels for that, and there's a business to run (two businesses now). Business is busy, as we've already signed up a number of people for MicroFIT and net-metering systems as soon as spring rolls around.

For the most part those panels are for esthetics, as an "architectural detail" as it's called. The tall wooden posts will project a shade on them the whole year, cutting into production, and we knew that going in. It's to show that a solar awning with transparent panels can look really neat, and maybe we can install a few more of them for customers (with less shading off course). With all the snow in winter they don't produce anything during that time; at one point there must have been 3 feet on there! At a 5 degree angle it's not coming off either. They look great though...

The installation here may be for show, but these are real 250 Watt panels (and we have 8 of them), so one can certainly build a very functional awning or carport this way!

The circulators I have in building are all honking-big Grundfos Magnas. For very efficient small circulators the only type I'm familiar with are Grundfos' Alpha pumps (http://www.grundfos.com/products/find-product/ALPHA2.html). They are truly meant for small hydronic systems, and priced pretty well (relatively cheap for such a good pump). Take a look at them, they may fit your bill.

-RoB-

[Mark Ross]

The plan was and is to eventually use them for a small demo off-grid system, to (possibly) run a light at night for the sign. That is low-priority though, first I need to get the building permit closed, right now we still have that open pending a few small matters that need to be addressed, then the 100kW solar PV for the roof's FIT system is gearing up, I just bought panels for that, and there's a business to run (two businesses now). Business is busy, as we've already signed up a number of people for MicroFIT and net-metering systems as soon as spring rolls around.


Awesome, glad to hear you guys are keeping busy! I guess you will have a busy spring!

The circulators I have in building are all honking-big Grundfos Magnas. For very efficient small circulators the only type I'm familiar with are Grundfos' Alpha pumps (http://www.grundfos.com/products/find-product/ALPHA2.html). They are truly meant for small hydronic systems, and priced pretty well (relatively cheap for such a good pump). Take a look at them, they may fit your bill.

-RoB-

I'll check those out, thanks!!

[Rob Beckers]

Once again a long time has passed since my last post in this thread. The building continuous to function marvellously! Especially in the winter it's great being in here; with the sun flooding in through the entire south wall of the office it's truly very nice!

I realized I have been remiss in updating the story about the heating system, so that is what I intend to do in this post. It has been two winters now, and no issues, none at all. It just simply works. The first picture gives an overview of the heating system as it is installed:

http://www.greenpowertalk.org/picture.php?albumid=23&pictureid=289

The ERV is hanging up near the ceiling in the upper-middle of the picture, and behind it you can see the geothermal side on the right, the hot water hydronic side on the left.

I mentioned before that we had some issues with the flow center I had purchased (and installed), and that we were going to plumb up one of the barrels that the loop fluid came in as a flow center. That can be seen in this picture:

http://www.greenpowertalk.org/picture.php?albumid=23&pictureid=293

The big pump in front of the barrel is the geothermal loop pump, a Grundfos Magma. In total there are three of these pumps in the system, and they are fantastic! This particular one is a stainless steel one, since the loop fluid contains oxygen (it is open to the athmosphere, circulating 20% ethanol). Here is a close-up of the display on the pump:

http://www.greenpowertalk.org/picture.php?albumid=23&pictureid=294

It is set up for constant pressure, and just right for the 25 - 26 gpm that we need to circulate through the geothermal loops. Speaking of which, the geothermal loops (8x 800 feet of 3/4" HDPE) terminate in a home-made PVC manifold on both sides. This is a picture of both manifolds:

http://www.greenpowertalk.org/picture.php?albumid=23&pictureid=296

These are "reverse-flow step-down" manifolds. Reverse flow because pipe no. 1 starts on the left on one of the manifolds and ends on the right of the other manifold. Step down because the diameter of the manifold tapers as the flow rate drops off (fewer pipes to feed towards the end). This keeps the pressure constant along the manifold, and together with the reverse flow this auto-balances the flow rates through the pipes so all are carrying very nearly the same flow rate without the need for balancing valves.

Here is one of the manifolds in detail:

http://www.greenpowertalk.org/picture.php?albumid=23&pictureid=295

The white paper sheet above it has the whole design, with flow rates and pressures. Handy to have around!

From the manifolds and the flow center the loop fluid goes through the heat-pump, and that is what the next picture shows:

http://www.greenpowertalk.org/picture.php?albumid=23&pictureid=292

This is a two-stage, and much of the time just one stage is running. Because the outflow temperature of the loop fluid will be higher that results in a higher efficiency (one stage vs. two). This heat-pump has shown that it easily, easily can provide all the heat needed for our building, even on the very coldest of nights. It may even be oversized a little. By the way, those two big stainless steel hoses are the connection between the PVC side with the manifolds and such and the heat-pump.

To move on to the hot water side of the system, this is a picture showing one of the hot water storage tanks, and the pump and line going out to feed the hydronic zones in the floors:

http://www.greenpowertalk.org/picture.php?albumid=23&pictureid=291

You can see the expansion tank hanging there; it takes care of allowing the water to expand as it heats up (so the pipes don't burst and the pressure does not change). Above the expansion tank is a brass-coloured 'thing'; that is an automatic aerator that allows for air in the system to escape. These units are pricey, but very, very efficient! Run the hydronic loops for a few hours on the pump and all the air is gone! We filled the system up, let it run a few hours, closed the fill valve, and it has been like that ever since. There has not been any need to add more water to the hydronic side. These aerators work by creating turbulence inside, causing the pressure of the fluid to drop, which in turn makes any dissolved gasses come out. Very much like a coke bottle that is opened and starts fizzing. It works!

The next pictures shows the two hot water tanks:

http://www.greenpowertalk.org/picture.php?albumid=23&pictureid=290

They are there to provide a buffer between the heat-pump and the hydronic loops. They make sure the heat-pump will run at least 10 minute every time it comes on, and does not short-cycle. The heat-pump switches on and off based on the temperature in those tanks; you can see one of the two dark-grey thermostats behind them. Each thermostat controls one stage of the heat-pump. Both tanks are interconnected and have the same water temperature inside. When the temperature drops about 5F the first thermostat comes on, starting one stage of the heat-pump. If the water temperature keeps dropping, at about 8F below set point the second thermostat comes on, kicking in the second stage of the heat-pump. That second thermostat switches off again 1F before the first one switches off.

Also visible in that picture is the fill-valve that fills up the hydronic system with regular tab water (the white PEX line in the upper left corner). The water goes through a backflow preventer (a code requirement) and a pressure regulator valve that drop the pressure down from 50 psi to about 13 psi.

The last picture is of the "brains" of the system. All the control logic that makes sure the right things get switches on at the right time. Actually it's amazingly easy, all I used for that is a hand full of relays:

http://www.greenpowertalk.org/picture.php?albumid=23&pictureid=297

The four relays on the left side are each activated by a thermostat from one of the 4 zones we have in the building. When a zone thermostat says that heat is needed it activates one of those relays, and the relay in turn switches on its corresponding zone valve to allow hot water to flow through that section of the floor, as well as the zone circulating pump (the one big Magma pump mounted above the heat-pump).

The two remaining relays on the right are connected each to a thermostat that looks at the temperature in the water tanks. One relay for each state of the heat-pump. When the water tank thermostat activates it switches a relay on, and the relay switches on a stage of the heat-pump, as well as activating the middle relay (the third from the right). That third relay takes care of switching on both circulator pump, the one mounted on the flow center and the one mounted below the water tanks (to circulate hot water to and from the heat-pump).

That's it!

-RoB-

[Ralph Day]

Fascinating stuff Rob. Here's a picture of my heating system. Pacific Energy Alderlea T6

Orange pot...introduces humidity, fan is sterling engine type for air circulation. Outside air provided via 3inch dryer vent. Heats 1100sq ft very well.

Not quite as fancy and high tech as Rob's.

Ralph

[Rob Beckers]

Now, see Ralph, I told the township I was going to put a stove in the middle of the warehouse, much like you have; it would provide our hot water, and to keep the employees warm(er) I would have them shovelling coal. That's when the planning guys looked at me funny and we ended up with the geothermal... :blink:

Seriously though, your setup makes great sense for living off-grid. I've done some largish off-grid systems for 'regular' houses, where they have a propane furnace and forced air for heating. Just the blower motor is 25% of their electrical energy consumption in winter, when it's hardest to make that energy.

-RoB-

[Paul Camilli]

Nice work Rob,

just stumbled across this thread and waded through it, well impressed. That sure is a dream realized and great to see it working so well. Love the polished concrete floor, we did that in our 120m square 'off grid' new build, that was a real 'labour of love' I can tell you.

https://lifeattheendoftheroad.files.wordpress.com/2015/05/110515-017_thumb.jpg?w=409&h=308

Won't be doing that again in a hurry :bigsmile:

Cheers, Paul

[Rob Beckers]

How many passes of the polisher did it take, and what grid numbers for the sandpaper? I can only imagine, luckily the concrete company did the work for me. I am curious though what the steps are for polishing concrete.

Regarding our floor; the cleaners at the end of the build put a type of floorwax on that's very matte in appearance. So the floor doesn't look shiny at all, and it's hard to tell it's polished. I've meant to remove the wax, but so far didn't get around to it (not so easy to do now that all the furniture and cubicles are there).

-RoB-

[Paul Camilli]

Hi Rob,

it was a true 'labour of love' and we seemed to be grinding and polishing for ever. Started with very coarse grit diamond discs and just kept going finer. Think it was something like 40, 80, 120 in a steel disc with the diamonds embedded into it then hybrid discs down to 400. After that a lithium densifier and then more hybrid discs down to 1800/3000 depending on which room. It was really hard going so we only did a couple of rooms at 3000.

We're kinda remote so it was all mixed and poured by hand so there are a couple of cracks where the pour was interrupted. Still we're really pleased by the result, having done it all ourself. I mixed a lot of broken car windows (not screens) and marble chips in it and one of my regrets is that I didn't get more glass in there, it looks amazing.

https://lifeattheendoftheroad.files.wordpress.com/2015/07/250812-046_thumb.jpg?w=244&h=184

https://lifeattheendoftheroad.files.wordpress.com/2015/07/250812-043_thumb.jpg?w=244&h=184

Cheers, Paul

[Rob Beckers]

I can see how that was a labour of love Paul!
That is quite the process...

Luckily I didn't have to do the grinding/polishing myself for our floor. From your description it's clear why they would normally ask a hefty sum to polish a concrete floor. These guys had all the right equipment, and it still took them quite some time. It looked really spectacular just after they were done, truly like a mirror, almost like looking to water (it has a 'depth' to it). The floor wax undid that though, and by now there probably are so many tiny scratches on the floor that even if I strip the wax it will never look quite as spectacular again. Still, even as it is now it's a nice surface for an office floor. Very low maintenance for one!

-RoB-

[Rob Beckers]

Folks, I'm back!
It looks like the last chapter of this built has not been written yet: We have approval for solar PV on the roof! I'm stoked! This was long in coming and honestly did not look like it was going to happen at all.

After 3 times going through our utility's "Connection Impact Assessment", and two refusals (and about 14 months), the utility finally found a way to hook us up.

Let's take a few steps back and talk a little history first...
We applied for a 100 kW Feed-In-Tariff contract (a special program for solar PV in Ontario) back in 2013. This was while the Solacity building was still being build, under the "unfinished rooftop" pilot program. We won the contract, and were informed in August 2014 that we could go ahead. We had 2 years (until August 2016) to make it happen.

The next step in the process is CIA, or "Connection Impact Assessment" with our electrical provider. You give them lots of money and papers, and they look if and how they can connect the project to the grid. That's when we found out that the distribution station the building is connected to does not have any more "capacity". Our provider, Hydro-One, only allows up to 7% in renewable sources to back-feed any point in their network. Once that 7% is reached, there is no more capacity, and that was the position we found ourselves in. Normally you have to show there is capacity before even applying for a FIT contract, and we did, but because this building was not finished and did not have an electrical connection yet we found it hooked up to a different distribution station than expected. And "no capacity".

After much back-and-forth and kicking it upstairs at Hydro-One, a way was found about a year later (we got the approval just a week or two ago). The plan is to change the 8kV feeder that feeds our building over to a 44kV feed from another distribution station. It involves adding a few poles on Hydro-One's side to bridge a gap between the current location of that 44kV and our feeder, and re-wiring some poles with the wires needed for the higher Voltage.

Normally 44kV is used to connect the big 10 Mega-Watt solar farms, not for a puny 100 kW project, but sometimes you have to get creative. It's more expensive to connect to 44kV, some of it is paid by Hydro-One, some we pay. The estimate to connect that we received (to pay to Hydro-One) is $64,000, and we have to provide the transformer that converts 44kV down to 208 Volt 3-phase for the building, another $25,000 expense. Nothing to sneeze at, though the good news is that it can be done!

Meanwhile our final connection date for the contract had expired as well, that was August 27th, 2016. That would normally mean the contract is void. Luckily we got a 1 year extension, and now need to get it done before August 27th, 2017! That comes at a price: Instead of 20 years we have the remainder of our connection date and 27 August 2036 as far as payments from the government go. In short, we loose some revenue.

Overall, quite a few long shots that had to come through. I am very happy to see that they did!

The plan is now to work through the administrative side, design, and materials procurement over the winter, and install as soon as the snow is off the roof in spring 2017. That will get us most of the revenue of next summer.

The administrative process is lengthy! I just sent in to proceed with Connection Cost Agreement with the utility. That means they proceed with a more detailed study, and we all get together in about 2 months to talk about who is going to provide what. Stamped engineering drawings are involved and all the other good stuff. With the IESO (the government) I have submitted to get our Notice To Proceed. That is when the contract is formalized, large deposits are paid (and forfeited if the project is not completed on time), and we get the formal go-ahead.

Meanwhile I'm also looking at inverters, panels, racking, and (yes) stupid stuff like squirrel protection (a code requirement over here!).

I've also measured the roof very exactly before the weather gets too bad to go up there, and it is onward with design now!

More to follow!

-RoB-

[Rob Beckers]

The rooftop solar PV is not all: We also applied to Ontario's 20 million dollar investment in electric car charging stations. This government investment is to put infrastructure in place for electrical cars so they can recharge along the major highways. The charging stations that are going in will be spaced so electric cars can make it (easily) from one to the next, and they are never all that far away from a charger.

That was in spring 2016. We lost that proposal...

I had given up on it, until I got a call out of the blue from Quebec Hydro: They had also put in for a number of charging stations, about 1 1/2 million dollars worth, and they won all of those. Mind you, those stations will all be in Ontario, though it turns out that Quebec Hydro runs the largest car charging network in Quebec! Their location for Kemptville (where we are located) had fallen through, and they were looking for another place to put that charging station.

And so we will still get our charging station!

This is a level-3 car charger. Those are the big guns that run at a very high DC Voltage, and can charge an electric car in 20 minutes flat. They use 30 - 50 kW!! Luckily we can easily supply that much, because our electrical supply was sized to handle a 100kW solar PV project (such coincidence...). We are next to the 416 highway, very close to an exit, making the location ideal for those barreling down that highway. I will put in a level-2 charger (basically just 240V 60Hz at a much lower power level) at the same time, paying for that part myself. That will allow me, or employees to charge their car if they come to work in an electric car.

Suddenly the stars are aligned for Solacity and good things are happening! :nuts:

-RoB-

[Ralph Day]

Yes Rob, the stars are aligning for you it appears. Just hope one of those stars is not an extinction event asteroid heading your way disguised as a star:eek:

What's the pay rate on a Fit now? Your connection costs are going to be pushing $100K with taxes, that's before equipment! You're brave.

Ralph

[Rob Beckers]

Ralph, there's always the way of the dinos... I don't think I'll worry about solar on the roof when that happens...

Not sure what the current FIT rate is. My contract is for 34.5 ct/kWh for 20 years (or 19, since we're connecting late). That is a LOT of money for a 100kW installation!

You are correct about connection cost. I've budgeted about $100K for that part. Then there's the actual solar system, so when it's all said and done we'll likely push $350K. To paraphrase Kermit, "it's not cheap being green"!

-RoB-

[Ralph Day]

Hi Rob
Not a abad "payback" timeline then. I figure you'd harvest about 10x what our Microfit does, so 16,000kwhrs x 10. 160,000 x .345, $55,200 per year payout. About a 6-7 year payback on investment. Just about the same as a microfit install, in theory.

Have fun with it. That deserves to carry on with this thread, or maybe it's own.

Ralph

[Joe Blake]

Good job, Rob. Hope it all works out. Will be watching this space. :smile1:

[Brian McGowan]

Wow Rob,
What an incredibly difficult process. They certainly don't make it easy at all do they. Good for you for sticking with it and good luck to get it finished.
I will have to go back through this thread because as I recall you put tubing through your floor for heating. I have to replace my driveway and walkway and am thinking about putting tubing under it for future use to melt snow and I am interested in what kind of tubing you actually used.
Keep it up. I am rooting for you.
Brian

[Paul Camilli]

Hi Brian,

we put underfloor heating in our all electric 'off grid' house, used stuff like this http://www.theunderfloorheatingstore.com/water-underfloor-heating/accessories?cat=44&gclid=Cj0KEQiA9ZXBBRC29cPdu7yuvrQBEiQAhyQZ9KY9JcVq 8rc_UTLOPcsOYV6Sw4UL4gQAOQbn2_yLC7QaAup88P8HAQ

Cheers, Paul

[Rob Beckers]

Things are steadily moving along regarding the rooftop solar PV. We are in the middle of "CCA" or Connection Cost Agreement with Hydro-One. The result of that narrows down what is their and our responsibility for the connection of the solar system, time-lines, and such. On the IESO/OPA side we just received "NTP" or Notice To Proceed. That is the official kick-off from them, giving the go-ahead to build.

I'm thinking of ways to mount those 400 panels at a 20-degree angle with roof. It'll be Kinetic Solar racking (we are a distributor for them) with some custom parts to make those stand-offs since the panels won't be flat on the roof.

Also still sorting through inverter options and plans. That is complicated by what was submitted to Hydro-One; we are more-or-less bound by the original drawing, or risk having to redo CIA (Connection Impact Assesment), something to be avoided at all cost. I can change the inverter brand and type, but changing the inverter Voltage triggers a review (we submitted for 208V, but there are many more inverter choices that work at 480V, just a simple transformer to hook up to 208V, not an option if it requires another CIA).

On the panel side I have ordered a container load of Canadian Solar 280 Watt mono modules. That is more than I need, but the price was right, and we can sell the rest to customers next year.

Meanwhile our day-to-day renewable energy supplies business is still going strong. Usually we see a slowdown for winter, that has not happened yet.

Brian, I've written quite a bit about our heating system, with lots of pictures too. If you look back through this thread you'll come across it. If you need PEX drop me a line; we get good pricing on Uponor PEX from one of my suppliers.

-RoB-

[Rob Beckers]

It's been a little while since my last update. I've been working hard on our projects, and things are moving, though not always in the right direction.

To start with the level-3 electric car charger: That project is slated to be installed starting next week. Of course, what should have been completed in November met delays, and now the ground is frozen, making this much harder and more messy. For better or worse, the crew is coming Monday to start digging for the concrete slab. With temperatures in the -20C range forecast I don't envy them.

This was the good part. It's all downhill from here!

We had our "kick-off meeting" with Hydro-One a week ago. This is where they bring out their metering, lines, distribution and other people to the site (ie. this building), and we discuss what each side's expectations are.

I believed that our 44kV connection would be a fairly straight forward matter, that had been all worked out though the CIA process. Seems my Hydro-One contact believed this too, until he came out here. Because the building is on the same electrical feed as where we will connect the solar PV to, the 44kV connection needs to get done for the existing electrical account, ie. the building. So, what was a done deal is now again open for more discussion; we have to apply for a "service upgrade" to take the building to 44kV and they will again look at how to best do that.

The group that does service upgrades is not the same group that handles the CIA process or renewable energy connections. Hopefully, hopefully they are not going to duplicate all the work that's already done, or give me a vastly different connection cost.

At this time I've already paid Hydro-One about $65K for the connection upgrade (and this has to be backed out from the renewable group, and put towards the service-upgrade group).

That was just the start of the fun though...

In my innocence as a European electrical engineer, where overhead lines are a thing of the past, and 44kV is considered mid-Voltage, and cable is the normal way to connect, I laboured under the mistaken belief that hooking up to 44kV was just a matter of running a cable from Hydro-One's pole into the ground, to my transformer. Not so.

We have to put a pole in (concrete pole, wood is not allowed), there needs to be overhead wire between Hydro-One's pole and our pole, and a load-break rated switch needs to be installed in our pole. So Hydro-One can disconnect the 44kV feed when they like to. This then goes to our transformer. Other requirements are surge protection, and a very extensive ground grid that limits potential rise in case 44kV gets on any metal part.

My previous estimate was that connecting to the grid for this measly 100kW solar PV project was going to be around $100K (it would have been just a few thousand if I could use my existing connection). After talking to a special high-Voltage engineering firm yesterday I have revised that number upwards to $200K. Possibly it will be even more. And that is JUST the connection, nothing else. Panels, inverters, racking, installation all comes on top of that.

By the way, regular electricians cannot do 44kV work, that requires 'special' electricians and engineers that to nothing else but those high-Voltage jobs.

What is worse is that Hydro-One will not move forward with anything until we apply for a service upgrade, and we cannot apply until we have a physical layout of the 44kV connection, and an updated single-line-diagram for said connection. We can't do a layout until electrical ground measurements are done, to design a grounding grid. Those measurements cannot be done until the ground is no longer frozen.

In summary, I just saw another $100K in cost added to this project, and my time-line to get his up and running by June 1st is no longer anywhere near certain.

I will have to do some head-scratching and see how we can resolve the issues and get this moving again.
Kermit had it right: "It's not easy being green"...

-RoB-

[Brian McGowan]

Is it even worth it to tie to the grid? Can you find some other way to use or store the power locally? It sounds like they are raking you over the coals. You could do a lot of things with that extra $100K. Granted I am not as close to the situation as you are but something just feels wrong here. I have to read back through this thread.

[Rob Beckers]

Brian, it's still worth it. At least financially. Of course, it would have been nice to be able to do something else with that $100K. For one, building our current office/warehouse was not cheap, and PV income would help offset that some.

My real issue has now become time; we're past the point of no return, and there is an absolute August 27, 2017, deadline. With the way things are going with Hydro-One I am very concerned.

I've redesigned the panel layout for the roof, and added another 20 panels. I've also switched from the original plan of 260W panels to now use 280W panels that have become available (if anyone needs cheap panels, we're blowing out the 260's that were bought for the roof, they're on our Web site, www.solacity.com).

That makes the design that's planned for building a total of 420 x 280W = 117,600 Watt (I'm allowed 120kW of PV, and 100kW inverter AC power). With about 1,100 kWh/kW/yr that works out to 19 x 117.6 x 1,100 x $0.345 = $850K (just about).

The cost to build now looks to be around $450K, that means profit is around $400K after 19 - 20 years.

On the face of it things are of course idiotic. :amazed:
Just because Hydro-One came up with an utterly inflexible and from an engineering perspective nonsense rule of "maximum 7% renewables" at any point in their network we're forced to jump through incredible hoops to get some solar hooked up to the grid. It's utterly mind boggling to have to run a 44kV electrical connection, at very high expense, to a building that's producing (and using) at most 100kW at any time.

The distribution station we're currently on, the one that "has no capacity", would never notice the energy we would backfeed. On the scale of things 100kW is less than a drop in the proverbial bucket. It's minuscule. This is a distribution station that handles several dozen MW (ie. at least a factor of 100x what we produce).

Ah well, upward and onward...

-RoB-

[Rob Beckers]

Time flies when you're having fun! It has been a little while since the last update on our ongoing building-related projects.

The electric car chargers are in! As of yesterday they are operational, though for now they are not advertised as such yet. I will update the PlugShare listing next week. Here is a not-so-good picture.

http://www.greenpowertalk.org/picture.php?albumid=23&pictureid=363

In spring we will have to fix the landscaping, right now everything is frozen solid.

The big one is the DCFC (DC Fast Charger). This is a level-3 car charger, it runs on 480 Volt DC and can push up to 50 kW through the line. In short, if the car can handle it, this thing will put 50 kWh into the car battery in 1 hour of charging. Most cars can only charge at that rate for a short time; the battery gets too warm and it backs off on the charge current.

The smaller (column) car charger is a level-2. Basically just a 240 Volt AC connection you could do at home as well. It is meant for employees with electric cars, so they can charge their car during the day. We don't have any yet (with electric cars) but I'm sure that will eventually come. The level-2 charger can push 7 kW through the line, 1 hour of charging gains 7 kWh of energy in the battery.

There has been quite a bit of interest from the locals in these chargers. We have had people visit to ask about them as they were being installed. We even had a lady tear into the parking lot at high speed, jump out of her (electric) car, and attempt to hook up the level-3 charger to recharge her car. Unfortunately for her it wasn't working yet...

-RoB-

[Rob Beckers]

On the solar PV front I have been steadily working away at finding solutions to ever more problems. It looks like we have crested the hill on this, and things are looking up, though I'm sure this is an illusion that will smack me in the face sometime soon!

I have been going back-and-forth with Hydro-One about how to connect our building to 44kV. Ultimately the solution we have both agreed on is to leave the connection of the building as it is now, hooked up to Hydro-One's 8kV line. We will pipe in 44kV and only use that to connect the rooftop solar PV system. Going that route solved a number of (expensive) problems. It is nuts to have two connections for a building like this, it is nuts to have to connect to 44kV for a 100kW solar system, but if crazy is called for to get it done then crazy is what one does.:crazy:

This is the Single-Line-Diagram (SLD) of what we're planning to build:

1269

The simplicity of the SLD is deceptive: What you see is the result of several weeks of back-and-forth, with many versions getting rejected by one group or another at Hydro-One. In particular in trying to connect the building to the new 44kV connection. Once we had something that worked for Hydro-One we had to get a workable solution for the 44kV engineers, and then it also had to comply with electrical (ESA) code.

Hydro-One will put 2 poles in to get 44kV to the boundary of our property. We install two poles as well, one to connect to Hydro-One's lines, with a 10-feet tall AC disconnect switch, from there overhead lines go to the second pole, with a set of 3 single-phase transformers at the top. The transformers take 44kV down to 277 Volt, and by connecting them just right that makes 480 Volt 3-phase. We will use the 480V 3-phase for the inverters.

On the panel side there are 20 rows of 21 panels each. The panels are CSI 280 Watt mono-crystalline. Every two strings get combined into one, and fed through the obligatory rapid-shutdown box. From there they go to a set of five 20kW inverters. Each inverter has two independent inputs, each input gets connected to 2 of the rows/strings of panels (so 5 inverters x 2 inputs x 2 strings = 20 strings total).

By using pole-mounted transformers we can use wood poles; those are very much cheaper than concrete poles. It also avoids a very expensive "ground grid". By not involving the rest of the building it avoids metering issues, and the need for 208 Volt 3-phase (that the building is currently using). I will have to resubmit an updated CIA (again), and Hydro-One will likely charge royally for that. All in all, just for the 44kW-to-480V connection and not counting panels, inverters etc, the connection cost is now right at $200K.

Nothing comes cheap...:sad:

As mentioned the roof will have 20 rows of 21 panels. The panels will be mounted at a 20-degree angle with respect to the roof, to increase energy yield. The layout looks like this:

1270

We will use "S5!" clamps (that is the spelling of their brand name) to fasten the racking to the roof. There is a special version, clamp type "S-5-E Mini" that fits exactly over the seams of a Butler-building roof as we have. In total it will take 1,300 of those clamps.

The racking itself is coming from Kinetic Solar; they have designed a tilt-up method using special 20-degree L-feet that will bolt to the S5-clamps.

1271

The die for the extrusion of the aluminum L-feet is being made right now. Once the 1300 L-feet can be made. The rails that the panels sit on is regular Kinetic rail. All the racking parts are aluminum and stainless steel, so it will not corrode.

At this time the panels are in. I also have the inverters. The racking for the rooftop has been designed and ordered, the S5-clamps have been ordered, and the three transformers have been ordered (takes 3 months to make those!). My next steps are to get the SLD stamped (cheaply I hope!), resubmit an updated CIA, get engineering analysis done for the roof, apply for a building permit, get an electrical permit and plan-review done, and line up the building crew. The plan is to start work when the snow is off the roof, sometime in April.

-RoB-

[Rob Beckers]

I've started working on our 100kW solar PV install on the roof. For now we've been putting on "S5!" clamps on the standing seams of the roof, where the racking will attach to it. First we measured out the sides, and installed clamps along them. We then use a string-line across to position the rest of the clamps. It's a repetitive process; squat, put a clamp, torque it down to 140 inch-lbs, get up, move over 4 feet, squat, put a clamp, etc. Doing hundreds of squats and bending my back has taken its toll. I'm hurting pretty good today! :hurt:

https://www.greenpowertalk.org/picture.php?albumid=23&pictureid=374

So far it's been around 8 hours of clamp installing, and we are halfway. Total number of clamps for this roof is right around 1,350 of the S-5-E-Minis. I need two more nice afternoons to finish up, unfortunately not something that is in the forecast this week. It has to get done though, and soon.

In another week-and-a-bit, on the 17th, we'll get a crew to install the actual racking and panels. The electrician is slated to start around the same time with the inverter installation, and I'll be on the roof as well, doing some of the DC wiring.

The plan is (still) to be online by June 1st, and catch as much of the solar summer as we can. Most of my schedule is still, well, on schedule, but some has slipped. The 44kV/480V transformers should have been in already, but they have been pushed back to the middle of May. This project has proven to be a challenge!

As Kermit put it, it's not easy being green...

-RoB-

[Joe Blake]

Progress is seldom pain-free. :eek: But nice job. (as long as somebody else has done it).

[Rob Beckers]

Still sore today ... but we finished up installing clamps yesterday afternoon. A total of 4 afternoons and about 1,300 clamps.

https://www.greenpowertalk.org/picture.php?albumid=23&pictureid=377

On Monday we'll start installing racking and panels. If the racking parts arrive on time; we're expecting them today. There's only tomorrow, Friday is a holiday here ("Good Friday"), so it is a pretty tight schedule.

https://www.greenpowertalk.org/picture.php?albumid=23&pictureid=375

My hope is to test out a section of racking BEFORE Monday, so we have a chance to figure out what to watch out for, how best to go about installing this etc. Hopefully we will have the parts and the time to do that.

The whole reason of installing the clamps beforehand is so the guys hauling panels don't have to measure anything. All the attachments points for the racks are already in place, and in the right place.

https://www.greenpowertalk.org/picture.php?albumid=23&pictureid=376

With a little luck the racking and panel installation will take about 2 weeks (10 working days). That is if everything goes smoothly. I will keep you posted!

-RoB-

[Rob Beckers]

Work has started on the 44,000 Volt connection to the grid that the solar system is going to feed back in to. This is officially the smallest 44kV connection ever done; usually this type of connection is for a 10,000 kW solar power plant, while we will have just 100 kW peak.

Here is the disconnect switch. This will go on the first pole, so the system can be switched off and isolated from the grid.

https://www.greenpowertalk.org/picture.php?albumid=23&pictureid=378

We have two 45 foot poles, the first one for the incoming lines from Hydro-One and the disconnect, the second one will hold the transformers that take it from 44,000 Volt down to 480 Volt 3-phase. The wait is for the transformers, they should have been ready very early April but are delayed. We are currently looking at late April to early May. It's almost inevitable to have delays with projects like this. Still, I'm trying to keep things moving along.

https://www.greenpowertalk.org/picture.php?albumid=23&pictureid=379

Planting poles is easy if you have the right tools...

https://www.greenpowertalk.org/picture.php?albumid=23&pictureid=380

In other (related) news, we received the racking components in as well. It was packed as two giant bundles, a 3000 lbs (1,400 kg) 20-feet (6 meter) one with aluminum rails, and another somewhat lighter one of just 15' length with "the rest". We have a forklift, but even so, getting that 20' bundle off the truck was, well, 'interesting'. The truck driver was good about it, even if it took some time. We managed to get it done without loosing any extremities.

Today we will test-fit a section of racking to come up with a plan for the crew that is going to work on this starting Monday.

-RoB-

[Ralph Day]

Nice to see it all coming together Rob.

Looks like a nice little creek for kayaking there. Or just little boats for the staff to race when they're not busy.

Ralkph

[Rob Beckers]

You probably mean our truck dock Ralph? :D
That's asphalt, not water (most of the time at least)...

-RoB-

[Ralph Day]

Ha! Anything flat and grey this spring looks to me like flowing water. Everything looking good. On time for your EPA start date?

Ralph

[Rob Beckers]

Ralph, alas, the OPA/IESO start date was last year August. I'm in "overtime" so to speak; I have until August this year to be operational and it comes off of the 20-year contract. That's why I'm trying hard to get this up and running ASAP so I get most of this summer's revenue.

The high Voltage install crew finished up as much as they can do at this time. We're waiting for transformers (now expected late April) and for Hydro-One to do their end of the connection.

https://www.greenpowertalk.org/picture.php?albumid=23&pictureid=381

I think the guys may need a new level, or whatever they use to put these poles in vertically... Or maybe they plan on pulling it straight with the transformers hanging off one side?

https://www.greenpowertalk.org/picture.php?albumid=23&pictureid=385

This is a nice and shiny 44kV disconnect switch. Atrocious how expensive these things are; you could buy a decent car for what just that part costs.

We also test-installed a section of racking to see how easy or hard it is. Conclusion, it's somewhere in the middle: If I could redesign the racking there are a few things I'd do different to make it easier, but overall it can be done and with reasonable speed.

https://www.greenpowertalk.org/picture.php?albumid=23&pictureid=382

It is very rigid, and that's before the panels are installed. With panels it will be even more solid.

Onward to Monday! That's when things will really start happening!

-RoB-

[Ralph Day]

With the angle beyond roof angle you should have lots of ventilation under the panels.
If you're on that roof on a sunny day doing some of the work, don't forget sunscreen, lots. I did a galvanized roofing job once and was quite sunburnt from the reflected light. Behind the ears, under the neck...anuywhere you wouldn't think of the overhead sun catching you unprotected.:cool: Sunglasses, long sleeves a must.

Ralph

[Rob Beckers]

Your advise comes too late Ralph! :sad:
The first day we installed S5 clamps was sunny (cold, but sunny, clear blue), and as you say, it was BRIGHT up there! Hands and face got a bit burned, luckily my skin doesn't burn easy, and it'll happen just once a season, after that I'm good for prolonged exposure.

Actually the unpainted metal roof was very much on purpose. You can get these roof panels in nearly any colour you want, special stuff that's baked on. I asked for bare Galvalume for the building; it's steel, that's galvanized, that's aluminum plated. It lasts a long, long time before it starts to rust.

The idea was that the shiny roof will reflect sunlight and heat away, keeping the building cooler in summer (there's R-50 in the roof, but still). The other idea, hope more, was that the some of the reflected light will make it onto the panels and add to energy production, much like the "snow on the ground effect" that helps ground mounted PV in winter. The panel angle is really too shallow for that, but one can always hope...

You are very right about the ventilation aspect! That will help considerably in production. Solar panels loose about 0.5% in output Wattage (for the same light intensity) per degree Centigrade. The warmer they get, the lower their output. Panels on a shingle roof that follow the roof line (4" from the roof deck) will easily reach 60C in summer. Keeping these panels cooler will have a profound effect.

With the money I'm paying for our grid connection I can use every dollar they generate!

Happy Easter bunny day folks! :cool:

-RoB-

[Rob Beckers]

Regarding the out-of-plumb pole: It seems it'll be righted properly once all the wiring is in place and tensioned. In fact, it's the wires that'll pull it upright.

So we'll wait and see for that one.

-RoB-

[Rob Beckers]

Since Monday a crew is furiously at work to install the solar panels on the roof. By yesterday afternoon they had 2/3 of all the racking up, and they expected to finish that off later in the evening.

https://www.greenpowertalk.org/picture.php?albumid=23&pictureid=387

Not bad for two days of work!

https://www.greenpowertalk.org/picture.php?albumid=23&pictureid=386

The next step, starting today, is to tackle panel installation. That should move along pretty fast; it's more work to install racks than it is to slap panels on them. Unfortunately the weather is changing and today has showers in the forecast, tomorrow will be even worse. We'll have to wait and see.

Also starting today is the electrical work. The electrician is starting this morning with the low Voltage part of our grid connection ("low" is 480 Volt 3-phase).

It is all moving along nicely! If only we can get a few more days of decent weather...

-RoB-

[Rob Beckers]

Five guys, one week, 420 solar panels ... They got it done!

All the panels are installed, and it looks fantastic! Last week was a busy one, everything worked out though. The guys worked through two days of rain and finished up installing all the racking and panels in a week. The electrician has started as well, we put conduit in the ground between the building and our new 44kV sub-station, and the inverters are hanging on the wall. All the wiring still needs to get done though.

https://www.greenpowertalk.org/picture.php?albumid=23&pictureid=388

For now the panels are just clicked together as strings, and we put the return leads in. Next step will be to install the rapid-shutdown boxes every 4 strings, and write strings together.

https://www.greenpowertalk.org/picture.php?albumid=23&pictureid=391

One of the panel installation guys referred to our roof as "a sea of panels", and that is really how it looks. Because the panels are at an angle vs. the roof they are much more prominent then roof-hugging solar would have been. The rows really look like a set of waves.

https://www.greenpowertalk.org/picture.php?albumid=23&pictureid=390

I don't really have any good shots yet of the finished roof, the weather was too dark and gloomy to really show things off, but here is what it looks like.

https://www.greenpowertalk.org/picture.php?albumid=23&pictureid=389

Fully finished, 117,600 Watt of solar PV!

https://www.greenpowertalk.org/picture.php?albumid=23&pictureid=392

Next week is more electrical work. In about a week we'll get the 44kV transformers and should be able to proceed with the connection. The hold-up will likely be Hydro-One's administrative process that we have to work through. Never a dull moment!

-RoB-

[Ralph Day]

Really looks good Rob. Anyone stopping for e-car charging yet?

Ralph

[Rob Beckers]

Lots of cars charging Ralph. Oddly it seems electric car drivers drive more on nice sunny days than they do on the cold wintery days: On a nice day we'll see two or three cars charging on average, cold days none.

Here are some "glamour" shots of the newly installed panels. Today the weather was much nicer here, 18C and sunny!

https://www.greenpowertalk.org/picture.php?albumid=23&pictureid=394

... and one of my favourites ...

https://www.greenpowertalk.org/picture.php?albumid=23&pictureid=393

-RoB-

[Jon Hache]

Love these shots, Rob. Heading out to Merrickville next Saturday, so I'll have to swing by to see this install in person.

I've been very inspired by this whole thread. I have a microfit system on our house in Ottawa, and can't wait until the time we move back to New Brunswick and start 'solarizing' down there. I'll be looking to produce a good chunk of the 21000 kWh/yr used to heat the place.

Keep up the great work!

J

[Rob Beckers]

The transformers have arrived!
Now if your first thought was of some cartoon characters you're of a different generation than me; we're talking about the things that will turn 44,000 Volt into 480 Volt.

They are big! Much bigger than they look up in a pole.

https://www.greenpowertalk.org/picture.php?albumid=23&pictureid=395

Just how big shows this picture, with Zach next to one (Zach's a pretty tall guy!).

https://www.greenpowertalk.org/picture.php?albumid=23&pictureid=397

Each of them weighs 1,400 lbs. That makes a total of 4,200 lbs hanging at the top of the pole!

Tomorrow the high-Voltage crew will come back and hang the transformers in the pole. Meanwhile we've been working away at wiring; most of the low-Votage AC wiring is done, the DC wiring is still left to do. Then there is the Hydro-One 44kV connection, so far no word when they will hook us up.

The work continues!

-RoB-

[Rob Beckers]

It's been a busy few days working on our solar project (while also running a very busy business)...

At this time the 44kV sub-station we built is complete. ESA inspection is scheduled and we should pass that soon. Meanwhile the wait is for Hydro-One to install their poles and lines. It looks more and more like that will be what's going to hold us up.

The transformers have been placed and wired up, and on the other side of the 44kV lines the lightning arrestor has been wired, and the fuses placed.

https://www.greenpowertalk.org/picture.php?albumid=23&pictureid=398

Even though they have bucket trucks, the guys still use a belt and spurs to climb the poles and work up there. Heck, one of them spent most of yesterday hanging up in a pole! Pretty hard on the legs!

https://www.greenpowertalk.org/picture.php?albumid=23&pictureid=399

This is the final 44kV sub-station. The weather is turning here, with lots of rain in the forecast for the next 3 days (and flooding in places!).

Meanwhile Zach and I have been working hard on the DC wiring up on the roof. We've wired the two sections of panels together to form strings (of nearly a 1000 Volt DC!). The strings have been combined (2 strings per inverter input, using Y-connectors), and we've wired them to the Rapid-Shutdown boxes.

The electrician has wired up the Rapid-Shutdowns to the inverters, so we're nearly complete on the DC side. Zach and I just have 4 more rows of panels to do. With the coming rain that'll be next week.

https://www.greenpowertalk.org/picture.php?albumid=23&pictureid=400

The inverters have been wired up as well, though a little bit of AC wiring remains. Unfortunately the sub-panel we use to combine the inverters came with the wrong breakers. So the wait is for replacement breakers before that can be finalized.

The DC wiring has been strapped to our Internet radio tower. It was there anyway, so why not put it to use! It all looks very neat & tidy, and is rock-solid at the same time.

https://www.greenpowertalk.org/picture.php?albumid=23&pictureid=401

We have a Rapid-Shutdown emergency "stop" button. That shuts off the DC coming from the roof, a code requirement over here. The inverters are all Fronius 20 kW 480 Volt 3-phase. Each inverter has two inputs, each input hooks up to two rows of 21 panels (via a Rapid-Shutdown box).

By the middle of next week we should have all the wiring complete and can get final inspection on that. Then the wait is for Hydro-One to hook us up...

-RoB-

[Andy Rhody]

Wow!............I'm having big windmill problems but also having tons of personal problems like both parents in a home etc. and it goes on and on so I haven't been able to get much time to check in on Rob's situation with the new building for quite a while but man, even though he really has his plate full, every time I email him about my windmill problems, he gets back to me right away.

Thanks Buddy.

[Ralph Day]

That's some nice DC wiring Rob. Looks pretty compared to the 44kv stuff...but if it's what you paid for it all looks beautiful:D

I sure hope nobody hits that big red disconnect button on you. If someday you come to work and find no FIT production, that would be my first checkout. Kids or whatever. I know, I used to be one.

Ralph

[Rob Beckers]

Not just that big red button Ralph; there are several disconnect switches too. Throw any of them, and I'm out of business. I can't lock them, since they all have to be accessible to Hydro-One and firefighters.

A nice summer day equates to about $250 in revenue. You bet I'll be keeping a close eye on production!

-RoB-

[Joe Blake]

Fully finished, 117,600 Watt of solar PV!

I have a distinct case of "panel" envy.:eek: But this is one time when size does matter.

[Rob Beckers]

I have a distinct case of "panel" envy.:eek: But this is one time when size [I]does matter.

:rofl:

Don't be too envious: There's a lot to be said for a nice, simple, small system for home use. The hoops I've had to jump through, the administrative nightmare, and the grey hair this caused has not been all that much fun.

For a country, and province that keep stating how much they promote "going green" there is a huge disconnect between talk and action. It just shouldn't be THIS hard to install and hook up a small PV system (and yes, 100kW is small, consider that over here they stick 400A / 240V service in houses to power today's conveniences, that's 100kW peak!).

Ah well, onward and upward...
We should have ESA inspections and something our electricity company named "COVER M2" done by late next week. That's as far as I can go until they hook us up. The wait will be for Hydro-One to place the poles and string the lines.

-RoB-

[Rob Beckers]

Another week, another update: ESA inspection of both the 44kV and 480V sides of the system passed without incident. Hydro-One's "COVER M2" was done as well, and submitted to Hydro-One. Wiring has been finalized. For now that is all we can do. We are done on our end.

The 44kV crew was back last week to change out the wires they had left for Hydro-One to connect to their poles. Turns out Hydro-One can't use their inline switches with 2 AWG wire, it needed to be 3/0 (ie. VERY thick stuff). This is aluminum-clad-steel wire, as used for overhead wiring. Our 44kV substation will only see about 1.3 Amp maximum, 2 AWG wire is good for about 100 Amp so that was overkill already. 3/0 wire is good for around 175 Amp, i.e. overkill and then some...

With a number of nice sunny days in the forecast I can only hope Hydro-One is going to hook us up soon. There has been some info from people that work there, indicating they will start work this week or the next. That's progress, though putting in the lines is separate from powering us up (obviously one needs to come before the other, but even with the lines in place there will be more hoops to jump through before they switch things on).

At this point I'm cautiously optimistic that we'll be in business by June 1st!

-RoB-

[Rob Beckers]

Hydro-One showed up!
They're putting in the missing lines, to connect or 44kV substation to the grid. Yeah! :cheesy:

https://www.greenpowertalk.org/picture.php?albumid=23&pictureid=403

They put the two missing poles in yesterday, and connected up our lines to their pole. Hopefully they'll show up again today to put the rest of the lines in.

With a little luck we'll actually be in business by June 1st. Hard to wrap my head around after working on this project for several years, with all the setbacks.

-RoB-

[Joe Blake]

Got a virtual bottle of best quality bubbly on virtual ice to pop when the job is done. Wow. As Paul McCartney sang "It's been a long and winding road".
https://emojipedia-us.s3.amazonaws.com/social/bottle-with-popping-cork.png

[Rob Beckers]

Joe, great idea!
For now the bubbly will have to chill in the fridge: My Hydro-One friends didn't show up today to finish the job. With just over a week left in this month I'm getting nervous if we will meet the June 1st date.

The winding road continues...

-RoB-

[Ralph Day]

One can almost fathom why your connection costs are so high Rob. A boom truck, backhoe and at least 5 workers...probably a combined billed out cost of at least $1000 per hour. That doesn't count the layers of foremen, supervisors, supervisors of the supervisors ad infinitum.:D

Will you feel like Sisyphus without the weight of the boulder on your shoulders on June 1? (In Greek mythology Sisyphus would roll a boulder up the hill, only to have it roll down for his task to be repeated for eternity.) Sounds somewhat like your experience over the last how many years?

Early congratulations anyway.

Ralph

[Rob Beckers]

I do indeed feel a bit like that Greek guy Ralph! :cry:
A new day, but no Hydro-One this morning...

Here is a project that did complete successfully, our level-3 charger. The pictures I posted earlier were pretty drab, due to the weather. This is a sunny one taken this morning.

https://www.greenpowertalk.org/picture.php?albumid=23&pictureid=404

I'll give it another hour and then start calling my Hydro-One contacts. We're sooooo close, yet so far away...

-RoB-

[Rob Beckers]

The never-ending saga continues...
Hydro-One did (briefly) show up that day to do a little more line work. In talking to one of the guys I was told they won't be able to complete the job because they are not allowed to string lines over top of live wires (the new 44kV lines go over top of the existing 8kV lines that currently feed the building). An outage would be scheduled, and they would complete the work at that time.

Of course, nobody had bothered to contact me, to schedule an outage. Trouble is that without power we're dead in the water. I have to send my employees home, nothing works. I sent a more strongly-worded message to my FIT contact at Hydro-One, and to his credit he did manage to finally get some people to see there is a need for urgency (not in the least because Hydro-One took on the obligation to have this project connected by June 1st, it has been in their paperwork for the last 6 months).

So it happened that a few minutes later I got a call from the lines people, to schedule an outage. Turns out they can work in the weekend too, which would be my preference for obvious reasons, but with only a week left before June 1st the decision was that they'll switch off power for half a day on the 23rd (next Tuesday). If need be they will finish the job the next weekend, though the hope is that they'll get it done then.

I have (some) hope again that we will actually be connected by June 1st! We have a long weekend here, Victoria day, Tuesday is actually the next working day. I'll keep you posted...

-RoB-

[Rob Beckers]

Hydro-One did finish up their work on the lines on Tuesday, after Victoria day (for reference, today is Thursday). However, no power yet...

All the lines at 44kV and higher Voltages are controlled by the OGCC. Hydro-One has to get permission before they throw a switch, as do I if/when I switch on my side. Hydro-One forgot to put in the paperwork to connect (close the switch) to the OGCC, and consequently they could not switch the system on when installation was done. Normal processing time at the OGCC for said paperwork is 5 business days. This one is a head-scratcher.

This morning I got word that they expect to finally close their switches tomorrow (Friday) at 9am. So, we may be in business tomorrow! I'm keeping my fingers crossed!

-RoB-

[Ralph Day]

Never heard of the OGCC before Rob. What do those initials stand for? Glad to hear you're almost generating. It looks like short term won't bring in a whole lot of revenue, cloudy, rain, showers...but let's hope for the best for you.


Ralph

[Rob Beckers]

Stands for "Ontario Grid Control Center" Ralph. They're the cops of the transmission network. Since electricity is not stored (for the most part), they're the ones that have to make sure supply and demand match, that the grid is stable etc.

Normally they deal with The Big Stuff, my measly 100kW is of no consequence to the grid. Since Big Stuff tends to connect to 44kV and up I got caught in the same net, and I have to talk to them (and get permission) any time I open or close the high Voltage connection.

Until a week ago I didn't know they existed either. This whole project has been a learning experience.

https://www.greenpowertalk.org/picture.php?albumid=23&pictureid=405

This picture shows the poles and lines Hydro-One put it. You can just see the open switches, at our property line, they're the little 'bars' that are dangling down from the three lines. That's what's keeping the power off for now.

Hopefully we'll see Hydro-One show up in 3 hours to switch things on, then I can do the same, and commission the system. As you said, not much to be made in the foreseeable future. Being an optimist in nature I feel sunny days are ahead of us! :cool:

-RoB-

[Rob Beckers]

The switches were finally closed yesterday, we have 44kV running to our sub-station, and the panels are producing power!

1302

Two-and-a-half years in the making! Sometimes persistence pays off...

Not that I'm completely out of the woods yet: Officially we're not yet "producing" but only testing. I have 10 days to complete yet-more-paperwork involving expensive engineers, to prove that everything is up to spec, that all the safety measures are functional etc.

The end is near though!

-RoB-

[Joe Blake]

http://www.listandalucia.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/Mark-Webber.jpg

[Rob Beckers]

Joe, that guy looks exactly like me! Amazing you found my picture! :amazed:
Can't be me of course: Being Dutch I wouldn't have wasted that stuff as shampoo, I'd have drank it all...

[Ralph Day]

Hardly recognized you without the big hat Rob.

[Rob Beckers]

We've been producing clean, green, renewable energy for about a week now, and it's great! :cool:

The panels work very well indeed: Any time between 9am and 3pm when the sun breaks through (it's been rainy here), the inverters shoot up to 100kW output. It's 7:20am and cloudy here, and they're already doing 12kW.

The engineer is coming back today to do more tests and measurements. Mainly to verify safety measures such as disconnects, anti-islanding, power factor etc. That should be the last bit we need to submit to Hydro-One to complete their paperwork. We do need to have 90% output power for some of the measurements, so hopefully the sun will come out!

After that it's the IESO, hopefully their process is not too onerous. There's paperwork to describe the system, sources of materials, and the contract itself. They sure like their forms in this country!

When I have some time I'll take some pictures showing the system working away. It's actually crazy busy here, this is top season for people installing solar and the days are filled dealing with customers.

-RoB-

[Rob Beckers]

Coming up on a month now and the solar panels are still going strong! The weather has been such that it's been better for the mosquitoes than solar PV, but I can't complain about how it's performing. The Fronius Symo inverters we use come with (free) monitoring, and this is a screenshot as of this morning:

https://www.greenpowertalk.org/picture.php?albumid=23&pictureid=406

This was a rare moment where the sun poked through the clouds and output shot up to 101 kW. The screen also shows past days, and as you can see the best one so far was 830 kWh. I have a feeling that a really nice, crisp, cool, blue spring day will see energy production exceed 1000 kWh/day, but those won't happen too often.

The current statistics:

Total energy produced: 15,165 kWh
FIT money earned: $5,232


Meanwhile, I'm still desperately trying to get through Hydro-One's administrative process. We are still doing COVER M3, and at the same time I'm trying to get SSLA done (Site Specific Line Adjustments). If you love acronyms you should go work for Hydro-One!

SSLA is about the losses of the lines and transformers between the meter and the point where Hydro-One's responsibility starts, otherwise known as PCC (Point of Common Coupling). Hydro-One doesn't want to pay for losses incurred in the lines on the customer's property, so they assume a standard loss of 1.5% that's used to settle the bill. If your lines exceed a set number of feet, you have to calculate actual losses, and send in SSLA. In our case we do not exceed that distance, but the transformer loss of ours is only about half of that 1.5% so I WANT to send in SSLA and get actual losses to be used for settlement. Nothing's easy...

I am hopeful that we will see the (sun)light at the end of this tunnel eventually, and everything will work itself out over the next couple of weeks!

-RoB-

[Rob Beckers]

As of last Friday we passed all the utility requirements/hurdles, and now have our "Authorization to Generate" letter from Hydro-One, the local power monopoly. If promotion of green energy is a goal, their process is the opposite of that. Yikes!

Now it's on to the IESO. That's the provincial government's electrical overseeing body. My FIT contract is with the IESO, and they too have their pound (or ten) of paperwork that needs to be completed.

The end is near though! :blink1:

Regarding the project, my plan was to get this built and going as fast as we could after winter, so we would get the most of the 'first year' of the FIT contract (that started last August 27). We did get it built very quickly as soon as the snow was off the roof, then Hydro-One took their sweet time connecting us and we lost about a month there. What has been absolutely atrocious though is the weather: It's just been continuous rain and overcast here! This spring/summer must be one of the coldest, darkest, and wettest on record! Unfortunately that doesn't work well for solar PV, even if there's little I can do about it...

Officially year 1 will be over come August 27, and we'll see where the count is at that time. An average solar year would/should bring in around $40K in revenue from this system, at this time we're at $6.1K.

Summers here are normally hot and fairly dry. Let's hope the weather turns and we get more sun!

-RoB-

[Rob Beckers]

All the paperwork has been sent to the IESO. Hopefully that is the last of it!

Hydro-One was out yesterday (a sunny day) to test the meter: They put probes on the lines, measure how much energy is produced over a 15-minute time span, and verify that with what the meter reports as production. Seems they do this for all generation projects, I'm impressed!

My Hydro-One liaison happened to be there as well, cheer coincidence, as we've been communicating by phone and E-mail for the past 9 months. He figures the IESO only starts paying from the day we received our official Authorization to Generate. That would mean I won't get paid for that first $6K in energy produced. That's a lot of money down the tubes! It wouldn't matter for someone that starts their 20-year contract on that day, but we're already in year 1 and only get 19 years-and-change.

We'll see...

-RoB-

[Ralph Day]

All other Hydro One customers thank you for your kind donation Rob.:blink1:

Good to hear everything is on track now. Who's got the film rights to your story? I think your part should be played by Liam Neeson.

Ralph

[Rob Beckers]

You're very welcome Ralph! All part of the service! :Cry:

Working on the movie rights... We're thinking either Disney musical, or Indiana Jones adventure. Vin Diesel would be a better match for me in terms of likeness... :cool:

-RoB-

[Joe Blake]

And you already have the hat. :laugh:

"Indiana Becker: Trader in the Lost Amps"

[Rob Beckers]

The miracle finally happened! We have "Commercial Operation" status from the IESO for our solar PV roof. That is the very last step, and other than their payments I am finally rid of them!

We did it!!! :first::high5::peace::humble::canada:

So, to recap for those that lost track, the timeline is as follows:


We applied for a FIT contract in November of 2013
August 2014 we received word that we can get a FIT contract
Until August 2016 we negotiated with Hydro-One to find a way to connect (in total 3 CIA applications!)
December 2016 kick-off meeting with Hydro-One
Mid-April 2017 we start building the solar PV array
Early May 2017 we finish building our part
Last day of May 2017 Hydro-One connects us
June 29th we finish all requirements for Hydro-One
July 9th we finish all the paperwork for the IESO
August 8th 2017 the IESO completes processsing and we're in business!


In short, this took just shy of 4 years...
The plan was to get the array operational as soon as we could after the snow was off the roof. That is why we started building the array in the middle of April. Unfortunately the IESO only starts paying at the FIT rate of 34.5 ct/kWh as of July 9th, our official Commercial Operation date. The energy produced before (about $10K worth!) will be paid at wholesale rates, which is next to nothing. This was as fast as I could possibly get through the process, or just under 3 months. Shaving any time off this would be hard.

The feeling this leaves with me is that installing solar PV should just be simpler and easier (and faster!). It can't be THIS difficult, but it is.

Anyway, this is another chapter closed. The roof with the panels looks awesome! I'm very pleased with the result!

-RoB-

[Joe Blake]

https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/originals/47/9f/5e/479f5ec3dc9832d2758b6feb9822b982.png

[Ralph Day]

Congratulations Rob. All of us who've watched your process from the beginning salute your determination.

Ralph

[Rob Beckers]

Thanks guys! Appreciate it!
It has indeed been a slow, long slug...

I'm currently in the Netherlands, visiting my (both) 86-year-old parents. Surprisingly there are lots of solar panels on the roofs here. It really took off the last few years! More surprisingly is that it's MUCH cheaper to install here than in our neck of the woods in Canada. Far less red tape. It's all net-metering, with the added incentive of getting the sales tax (21% here!) back.

That is how it should be if our government was serious about green energy.

-RoB-

[Ralph Day]

21% sales tax! Yikes, I won't complain about 13%HST for a while.

[Rob Beckers]

We finally received our first payment from Hydro-One. With a little luck we'll get monthly payments from now on. Yeah!

That's the good news. The bad news is that we won't get paid for the first month-and-a-half of production, about $10,000 worth in electricity at the FIT rate. Officially we were 'testing' during that time, never mind that it was all supplied to the grid. That happened to be an awesome solar month, with the rest of the summer pretty well rained out. C'est la vie I guess...

I've looked at our electrical use for the past 2-1/2 years, and keep in mind everything in our building is electrical, including space heating. We use around 20,000 kWh per year overall (first year a little more, second year a little less). If we guestimate an annual PV production of around 130,000 kWh that means we are net-positive by a factor of 6!!!

The building produces 6x more energy than it actually uses. Which I think is pretty cool! :cool:

-RoB-

[Joe Blake]

SIX times!! Wow. I thought I was going well producing 200% over a good month.

Excellent.:smile1:

[Laurie Forbes]

Nice job Rob!

Was wondering though about snow on the roof (no, not the white hair you must have after dealing with all the issues :)). How is snow cleared from the panels? I would guess it would have to be done manually (which would be a major job after a one foot snow fall). It's hard to tell from the pics but it looks like there is not a lot of walk space on the roof either.

Also why only 22 degrees elevation on the panels - I would think something around 40 or 45 would be more appropriate for better winter output and snow shedding but then I guess the panel "density" would have to be reduced to avoid shading(?).

[Rob Beckers]

Thanks Laurie!

The white hair certainly got a bit whiter than it already was. It seems impossible to do these projects without lots of drama and crises.

The panel pitch was a function of trading off total size, yield, and shading. They're at nearly 25 degrees by the way; the roof is just shy of 5 degrees (1-in-12 roof), and the panels are tilted exactly 20 degrees vs. the roof.

The assumption was that snow will pile up on the bottom 1/3 of the panels in winter, and at best I'd get 2/3 out of them. So, pitch vs. inter-row shading was calculated such that mid-winter shades exactly the bottom third. That happens pretty well from November through early February. By the way, there is very little difference in annual yield once you get above 15 degrees panel pitch. Steeper panels just move more of it towards the winter, but annually it's within a few percent of the ideal yield (for us that happens at around 40-degree tilt-angle). Increasing pitch would have meant dramatically wider inter-row spacing, the 20 degrees on this 5 degree roof was the best compromise I could find.

For the snow cover in winter, we just take it as it comes. Nobody goes up to clear off the panels. Sure there are losses, but winter yield isn't very large compared to the rest of the year, so we take the bad with the good and not worry about it.

These are the actual production numbers by day for the past couple of months (the vertical scale is different for each graph):

https://www.greenpowertalk.org/picture.php?albumid=23&pictureid=467

https://www.greenpowertalk.org/picture.php?albumid=23&pictureid=466

https://www.greenpowertalk.org/picture.php?albumid=23&pictureid=463

https://www.greenpowertalk.org/picture.php?albumid=23&pictureid=465

https://www.greenpowertalk.org/picture.php?albumid=23&pictureid=464

You can see maximum daily production tapering late October, that's when inter-row shading starts to kick in. No real snow yet in November, it was just a very dark month. Mid-December the snow starts to cover the panels. A bit of a melt in mid-January, more snow, then serious melting late January. Snow again early February, and its been warm here since mid-February. Panels are no longer shaded, so yesterday saw nearly 600 kWh for the day (best I've seen so far was 820 kWh for the day, in spring).

That's the story so far! It's working very nicely and hopefully we'll have a good solar year. The system needs to make some money! It was quite the investment.

-RoB-