Heat!

So, we had been going without heat until December 7th.  We had the woodstove, but it took time to figure out the stove pipe and chimney pipe parts we needed.  I tried to find someone to just hire to do it for us, but no luck.  Brent was super busy with work, so it got pushed aside.  It also got pushed aside so we could build the solar equipment shed as Cooper Power Solutions had to have that in place to do their work.

We went through a 9* night with no heat.  It only got down to 27* in  the yurt that night, so I was kind of impressed.  However, it was just cold.  We both found that we were just sort of always chilled, especially me.  It seemed like if you never had a chance to warm up, then even a temp you normally wouldn't be cold at, you were cold.  We wore a lot of layers, we went to bed early under a lot of covers and we stayed in bed late.

Our dog, Suki, even as hairy as she is wore a winter coat and had the use of my down sleeping bag.  She also has one bed on top of another for good insulation. 

Brrrrr!!!!!!!!!!!

Burrowed into my down sleeping bag for a cold night!

Hanging out on a chilly evening.











Finally, we thought we'd located all of the stove parts and were ready to install it, only to find out that the "through the wall kit" didn't come with the right adapter.  You see, we chose to use double walled stove pipe so as to reduce the clearance required from combustibles.  The yurt is small and we don't have a lot of space.  Most people use single wall as it is cheaper and the kit had an adapter for that.  You need an adapter to go from your stove pipe to your "through the wall thimble".  So, we thought we found one at ACE only to find it was the wrong diameter.  The fellow at ACE wanted to be sure we ordered the right part, so he put in a call to the company who made the kit.  They never called him back, never emailed him back - three days he tried.  I finally convinced him I knew what we needed and he ordered it for us.  But, it wasn't going to come before we left for our Thanksgiving trip.  So we went with out heat until we left.  (I thoroughly enjoyed the heat and hot showers we had on our trip!!!)

We got back and the very next day went to pick up our part.  Guess what?  The warehouse sent the wrong damned part, even though the right one had been ordered.  So, another order placed and two days later we had the right part.  We installed the stove on a rather rainy day.  Our well driller guy loaned us a fantastic massive drill that helped Brent get through some of the rotten bedrock stuff to get a hole deep enough for the chimney support.  That saved him a huge amount of time.

We had decided to go through the wall rather than the ceiling for a few reasons.  Most yurt companies recommend going through the wall.  Fortress Yurt, whom we bought through, prefers through the roof.  We were concerned about leaking issues if we went through the roof.  We also weren't sure how we'd handle supporting the chimney if we went through the roof.

Here Brent had cut the hole in the paneling for the wall thimble to go through.  The lattice will need to be cut out of the way too.  He figured out this height basing off the height of the stove we bought (Logwood 1296E), the length of pipes we could get and clearance requirements.  He wanted as long of a straight up run as he could get (within clearance requirements) before taking it out through the wall.  In order to mark this, we put the stove in place, built up the interior stove pipe and marked the wall.

We built our chimney support from two 4x4 pressure treated 12 ft posts.  We then used the metal clamps that hold the chimney pipe to the support to determine how far apart the 4x4 posts needed to be.  We then cut quite a few 2x4 pieces to that width and screwed them into the 4x4s to hold them to that distance along their whole length and help stabilize the setup.  Brent dug through decomposed granite and clay, rotten rock and then some bedrock in order to get the hole deep enough to seat these posts.  We were loaned a great big dirt drill that help speed things along.  We mixed sakcrete to anchor this in place.  A couple of boards were used in different directions to help us level the support and keep it that way while the concrete cured.

Here's Brent cutting away the canvas.

This shows the wall thimble with outside part is flat on table.  The longer black piece will be horizontal inside the yurt.  Between it and the round black piece is where the hard-to-find adapter goes.  That took some figuring out and was very frustrating.  It didn't fit as snugly/tightly as we expected, so we kept wondering if we had it wrong.  (Apparently not, as the woodstove is working just fine!)

The chimney is now in place.  It has to be 2 ft above anything within 10 ft of it.  We wanted to be sure we had a tall enough chimney for drafting well, but all this piping is VERY expensive.  It's $100/3ft sections.  We probably spent 3x for the stove and chimney pipe as we did on the woodstove.  Anyhow, we had a longer horizontal run than we wanted, but had no choice as we didn't want to dig the hole for our support into our rubble trench foundation.

Here's a closeup of the outside of the wall thimble (sort of - we had the plastic in place to keep the rain from running off the roof onto the thimble which wasn't yet caulked).  The short horizontal piece goes between the piece that is through the wall and the "T".  The angular piece you see at the bottom is merely a support shelf for the chimney.  The bottom of the "T" has a removable cap for cleaning out the chimney.

Brent is finishing up the stove pipe installation.  We decided to turn the stove lengthwise along the wall because it took up less room within the yurt that way.  It also felt much safer as our futon/bed is laid out in the middle and this keeps a great distance between the two.

We had to buy two stove boards, though, because of turning the stove this direction.  We bought one inch metal spacers that go between the stove boards and the wall and they are raised up off the floor as well.  Air needs to be able to circulate behind them.  Doing this really allowed us to pull the stove in tighter to the yurt wall.

Another view of the chimney.














So, how's it working?  Well, the first fire we lit in it nearly smoked us out.  There was also an odd smell.  I was trying not to worry that we'd bought too cheap of a stove or that we'd screwed up the installation.  Both of us have lung issues and don't need to be breathing smoke!  This stove is not air tight.  It really isn't set up for you to have much control over the damper.  It is right next to the yurt door and facing it, so opening the yurt door creates a vacuum that can suck smoke out of the stove if the stove pipe isn't heated up.  I went and bought a few different kinds of fire starters to help get things going.  Brent's mostly got it figured out.  Get it going and get that stove pipe heated up.  Try not to have to open the yurt door before then, but if you do, do it slowly.  It does tend to want to let smoke out when you need to add wood or tend the fire.  It has been holding coals pretty nicely.  It seems over the week we've had it now, the earthen floor has warmed up and our yurt is staying pretty cozy even though the fire doesn't burn through the night.  Sometimes we do find ourselves chilly at 3am, so we'll grab another blanket.  But, Suki isn't needing her coat or my sleeping bag anymore.  If I wake up chilly, then I will put a blanket on her, but I figure if she's truly cold she'll climb in bed with us.

It is so wonderful to not have to be bundled up all the time.  It's nice to have your fingers working well enough to type!  We did have to buy a cord of wood, just got it today.  Our chainsaw has been in and out of the shop for months and they finally figured out what the problem is (oiler is broken).  It will be fixed sometime next week.  We'd been buying wood bundles at Tractor Supply and burning scrap lumber from building the solar shed.  Tomorrow I'll be moving and stacking our new stash of wood!

Solar Power!

I'm late in posting this.  We have solar power!!!  Cooper Power Solutions, LLC finished installing our solar array and associated equipment on November 12th.  Brent made a very long extension cord to run power from the solar array down to the yurt.  We bought some metal conduit to run the extension cord through and ran it across the road that way, buried a few inches.  It was great to have all the power we could possibly need.  The array is sized for the house we will be building, so there's loads of power for the yurt.

This is the gimbal.  It will be attached to the pole.  This is what the strongback attaches to and it is what will allow us to change the angle of the panels seasonally.

Here the gimbal has been attached to the top of the pole.

A backhoe was used to lift the strongback up in order for Cooper Power Solutions, LLC to attach it to the pole.  The strongback weighs a few hundred pounds, so paying the backhoe operator for his help is well worth it!!

The "dance" between the electrician and the backhoe operator was fantastic to watch.  Cynthia was quick with her hand signals, but Owen seemed to know just what he needed to do anyway.  Great team!

The strongback is attached to the gimbal and ready for panels.

The sun is shining - let's get those panels on!

In the background you can see the Cooper sisters working on the panels.  In the foreground, Brent is working on getting the solar equipment shed pad ready.

Work smarter, not harder!  It was quickly determined that parking their work truck under the strongback made the most sense.  Brent would hand a panel up to Jen on the truck and she and Cynthia would get it up onto the strongback.

Back to the shed:  The concrete piers come like this, ready to accept a 2x4 frame.  However, we had done a doubled 2x6. So, this need modification.

This is one of the modified piers.  Brent used his angle grinder to do the cutting/shaping.  These aren't 100% concrete like the old style, so they were much easier to cut.

Here's the shed floor setting on the piers.  We needed to do some fine tuning to get it leveled, but it went pretty smoothly. The conduit you can see coming up is where the wires from the panels will come up and then go into the equipment in the shed.

Much progress made on the shed here.  We wanted to get that back wall ready for the sisters to be able to go ahead with installation whenever they were ready.

Here, you can see all of the panels are on.  They then worked on linking them.

Solar shed and the solar array - looking good!

The shed is nearly done and the panels are ready to go.

The front of the solar shed.  Still need to build the door.

This is the concrete backer board that was requested for mounting all of the solar equipment to.

Brent also built a battery box for our 8 batteries.  We got Rolls Surrette batteries and they are wired in series parallel.  The gray plastic looking thing is a shower liner and will capture any acid should the batteries leak.  These batteries do require some care.  We will be doing monthly checks on specific gravity and fluid level.  They need to be equalized quarterly.

Here you can see the charge controller on the far left (tall white thing).  The thing in the middle is the control panel for the inverter.  The thing on the right is  the inverter.

This is the east side of the shed.  What you are seeing here is the power center for the soon-to-be house.  Below that is an outlet.

This is the south side of the shed - the back of it.  This is where the wires from the solar array go in to the solar shed.  We will have a little "dog house" for our generator on the back here as well.  There will be an outlet that a "pigtail" made by Cynthia will connect our generator to the system.  It will be a manual set up where we will need to determine when to use the generator and then turn it on.  The generator will then charge the batteries and the house will still run off the batteries.

 Here everything is pretty much done.  The code requires a light inside the shed and outside.  I've painted the shed with an exterior paint.  When we build the house and have it stuccoed, we will have the shed stuccoed to match as well as put on a matching metal roof.

The panels are also now tilted at the correct angle for the winter.

On the back is our little generator.  There's an outlet box for it to plug into and it can then directly charge our batteries.  We will be building it a little house to better protect it.

On the outside here, you can see the main control panel that will be for the house.  Below it is an outlet where we have a very long extension cord plugged in for the power to the yurt.

Our well has its own solar array.  It won't have any batteries, but they aren't needed.  The well pump will run when the sun is shining and our storage tank (1550g) needs filling.  If it doesn't need filling, it won't run.  If it's dark, it won't run, but we'll have water in the tank for use as needed.  When the house is built, we will be putting in a little pump house with a jet pump and a pressure tank that will send the water from the tank to the house.  For the yurt, we'll just be using a hose and filling jugs to carry down to the yurt as needed.  The storage tank will have a frost free hose bib installed.

The back of the well's solar array. The well pump can be run either from the house's solar power or run from the well's solar array.  There's a switch that we do manually.

1550 gallon storage tank.