| Research Campus Phase 1 |
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| Written by Scott Price | ||||
| Friday, 30 September 2005 09:24 | ||||
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Goals
Required Infrastructure ( Completed )
Working Infrastructure We have all the required infrastructure in place now.
Other Infrastructure We will be working on other infrastructure to make our campus more self sufficient. First Buildings Straw Bale Office and Workshop ( In Process ) Our first building will serve as our new workshop and office. Its main floor is approximately 3000 square feet. It is being constructed with stacked large straw bales which will provide super insulation with its three foot thick straw walls. The tall south wall is designed to allow maximum solar gain through the windows. This heat energy will be channeled into a massive heat storage system under the floor. This system should allow the building to need little or no other heat sources, even in our Minnesota winters.
Construction
 The building as of May 7, 2004 The bales were stacked in an interlocking pattern like bricks or blocks. The bales weigh 600 pounds, are three feet thick, and eight feet long. The south wall is stacked three layers higher than the north wall. This provides optimum solar exposure and appropriate roof slope. The bales are being coated with a natural clay plaster. The roof structure is made with 4 foot high wooden trusses and filled with 3 feet of fiberglass that is a combination of blown in insulation and batts. The roof surface is steel.
Heat Storage System The air channels under the floor were created using an interconnected series of concrete blocks. The air channels have been placed more than two feet below the floor level with sand fill between the blocks and the floor. The heat storage includes the concrete floor, sand fill, the blocks, and the earth beneath the blocks. Fan boxes with filters were then placed on the south side of these channels. This allows us to force air through the channels.  The air channels in the heat storage unit.
Thermal Efficiency The large bales provide extraordinary insulation having an R value of approximately 100. Our preliminary calculations indicate that on a -20 F day with no sunshine, the building will lose only 1 degree per day. Now that we have had a winter to experience reality, we learned that the solar availability tables we used were optimistic. The insulation was far less than perfect and we totally underestimated the effect of air infiltration. We are now a little older and wiser. We have a better appreciation for the difficulty of our goal, and we are fully determined to improve our building designs until they really do heat themselves (at least most of the time).
Download a 3D model You can download a 3D model of the building as it was conceived when we started building. It's a self contained executable so all you have to do is run the program and it will show you the building, allow you to rotate it around, and to turn on and off the roof, the foundation, or the bale walls.
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| Last Updated ( Tuesday, 22 November 2005 12:23 ) | ||||