Green Gate Guest House

Moving on...

2011-04-15T08:33:00.002-05:00

As I wrap up the big projects in the barn and the vision of a grand opening appears on the horizon, it is time to start advertising more aggressively. We recently launched a new website at www.greengateguesthouse.com, so please check us out. The blog has been incorporated into our new site, so future updates can be found there instead of here. Please link up if you're interested!

The Stairmaster.

2011-03-11T18:58:00.004-06:00

I started referring to the staircase as the 'stairmaster' because of the mental workout I get trying to build this thing. My last project was the railing, and I thought I could bend some wood strips around a curved plywood form to create the curve that was needed- however, after making the form I realized the railing must twist and curve 3-dimensionally, like a helix...and so my simple 2-dimensional form idea was useless. Rats. After a long period of head-scratching, googling (is that officially a word now?) and burning mental calories on the stairmaster, it seemed the best way to do it was to form the railing in place. So, the riser boards were removed and studs were lag-screwed to the framing to create an appropriate form for the railing path. Then, using every clamp in the arsenal, I glue-laminated maple strips like this:

Since there are two distinct curves to the staircase, I had to build two railing sections, separated where the pitch changes. Here is the upper section being clamped to the forms:

After removing them from the forms, I realized that I hadn't placed my uprights as accurately as I should've and the railing was pretty 'wavy'...another lesson learned on the stairmaster of life. Considerable reworking ensued, and I was able to get it trued up reasonably well, or at least good enough for a barn. I epoxied the two sections together, then painted the railing white to cover all my mistakes. I installed it with wrought iron balusters, tightly spaced to meet the latest code requirements (either babies are getting smaller, or their parents are becoming less attentive...). Voila!

A country kitchen.

2011-02-28T14:18:00.008-06:00

After two years of kitchen building, I now understand why most people leave it to the pros and buy all this stuff! I'm finding my 'developing' craftsmanship results in a lot of imperfection, but it blends in well with the country look...here's the finished product:

Open shelving made from pine slabs: An induction cooktop, which so far has been great to cook on: I hid the microwave under the countertop:

As well as the garbage/recycling bins and Asko dishwasher, which have panelized doors:

Running on the sun.

2011-02-20T20:54:00.006-06:00

The mega solar array has been active for over a month now and I am pleased to report that the everything has been working very well. I designed the barn foundation as a high mass sand bed storage system, capable of receiving the heat from the solar collectors during the day, storing it in the concrete slab/underslab sand bed, and slowly releasing the built-up heat to the living space. The benefit is higher efficiency from the solar collectors (since they are operating at much lower temperatures than a conventional system with tank storage) and it eliminates the cost and space required for the large water storage tank. The downside, however, is not being able to store the solar heat for more than a day or two. I was only able to find a few resources on this method (like here and here), but it seemed well suited for extreme climate areas like ours here at the north pole, where we pretty much need 100% of the heat capacity during the winter months and thus there is no reason to try to store it in a water tank.

Here are a few pics of the high mass foundation system during construction, showing the underslab insulation, high mass sand bed, hydronic tubing and finally the concrete floor:

Normally, hydronic tubing would be buried in the sand bed as well as the concrete, but here we only have the upper, slab run of tubing...in hindsight, I should've installed it in both areas. The poured slab. The concrete was polished and stained to be used as the finish flooring.

Unfortunately, I picked the snowiest winter in the last half-century to prove out a solar heating system, so the run time has been less than anticipated! However, when we have sun, the system is producing around 250kBTU per day, which is typically enough energy to heat the guest house this time of year. With multiple sunny days in a row, the high mass of the floor absorbs the heat and slowly releases it back to the living space- so far I have not seen more than a 8 degree change in indoor temperature during sunny periods, and we were able to make it through a cold -30F night without the need for supplemental heat one day last week. Very promising indeed. More later....

Disentanglement.

2011-02-08T21:14:00.006-06:00

One of my greatest fears is to have a failure in the heating system's PEX tubing, which is inconveniently entombed within the concrete slab of the barn. Having thought about if for a few years now, it just doesn't seem like a good idea to seal off any electrical, plumbing or HVAC systems behind walls or under floors- while it may be aesthetically pleasing to have the nervous system of the house well hidden from sight, this makes it difficult if not impossible to upgrade or repair things that break...and sooner or later everything needs fixing, right? Alternately, the concept of disentanglement keeps these systems separate and accessible, usually in chases, raceways and conduits, to increase the adaptability and longevity of the building. I like it, and kept the idea in mind when installing the HRV system, as well as plumbing and electrical runs going to the upper floor of the barn. With all the utilities in place, it looked like this:

Then I built removable soffits and a chaseway to cover it all, which looks like this:

Admittedly, the wood soffits wound up being quite heavy, but can be removed if necessary without destroying anything.

Embellishments

2011-01-24T13:00:00.005-06:00

The bedrooms are basically finished, and the guest house is at least 'sleepable' now! Here are the details:

We purchased a natural mattress from OMI for the slab wood bed, and topped it with organic

linens from Coyuchi. The comforter is organic wool from our friends at Prarie Glenn Wool in South Dakota (we'll be getting more of these shortly- they are great). The night stands are Box Elder slabs bracketed to the wall.

The dresser was saved from the landfill and is in the process of being refinished.

Bedroom #2 with similar linens.

I made night stands from salvaged lumber and antique sewing machine bases. The lamps (made from wagon wheel hubs) were found in an antique store and seemed appropriate for the barn:

My mom donated a really nice antique dresser as well:

Solar Sundays Part IX- Finishing up

2011-01-13T14:05:00.008-06:00

We purchased Palram's twinwall polycarbonate panels from Farmtek to glaze the collectors. Since it is now the dead of winter, I brought them all inside to warm up before applying the gaskets. I sealed the top edge openings with Tyvek tape, and the bottom edge with a vapor-permeable tape supplied by Farmtek. Next, the perimeter was lined with adhesive-backed gasket strips. Back outside, I put the glazing panels up and covered the seams with cedar trim boards...as you can see, it has been a snowy winter so far. The finished solar array: The 'closet' at the far left end of the array houses the supply & return plumbing and wiring before it goes underground: The hot fluid exits the solar array at the top and connects to the 1" pex line below. The tee fitting at the top left leads to a schraeder valve for purging air from the high point of the system. The two valved tees midway down the closet are for a summer bypass loop- this is yet to be completed, but will likely lead to a heat exchanger in an outdoor shower system I'd like to build. The return water enters the array bottom right. Since I separated the 9-panel array into two 'banks', there are two separate supply lines. The two stubbed lines in the middle are for a spring/fall diverting loop which will dump excess heat into our garden beds to preheat the soil- this will be connected later. The diversion is controlled by the 3-way diverter valve at the first tee.

Inside the barn, I installed addition plumbing and controls to tie the solar system in to the existing hydronic system. My dad said it looks like "an organized Rube Goldberg project" and I can't really argue with that. I have managed to fit a 3-zone hydronic system, boiler and the solar hot water controls in about 4 square feet of floorspace...not bad. And it is actually quite simple- The solar heated fluid enters the barn through a pump (the pump is activated by a snap switch inside the first solar collector via a single-zone relay). The pump will send the hot fluid through the in-slab hydronic loops (2- 300 ft lengths of 7/8" pex tubing embedded in the concrete floor) then back to the collectors. Should the slab get too warm (say, spring and fall when not much heat is required), a thermocouple in the slab will signal an aquastat to switch a pair of 3-way diverter valves, thus bypassing the slab and sending the hot fluid to the diversion loop instead. The first diverter valve is located middle left in the photo below and the other in the closet at the collector array. Finally, the two stubbed lines at the top left are to send the hot fluid through a yet-to-be-installed DHW preheat tank. The photo below was taken as I charged the system with glycol, so the temp hoses and bucket-o-glycol are shown as well. Again, there are a lot of dangling wires since the controls for the diversion system are not yet connected, but you get the idea.Here is a shot from inside the utility room (actually just a 2 foot deep closet). The existing hydronic system is on the facing wall, and the solar branch controls are on the left wall.

SOOOO, I'm ready to flip the switch- all we need now is some sun!

Eccorok'd all over again.

2011-01-08T21:04:00.009-06:00

Despite my previous not-so-wonderful experience using Eccorok for the kitchen countertops, I thought I'd have another go at it. This time the project was smaller- making a curved vanity to fit in the silo bathroom. Since I had enough Eccorok left over from the countertop job, and my labor is still free, I could fabricate a $1000 vanity (yes, I got bids) for nearly nothing. Here is the form, made from leftover panels of Skyblend particleboard and other materials I had on hand. The sidewalls are strips of 1/4" plywood bent to the desired radius and held to the form with wood blocks. I cut a piece of XPS foam board for the under mount sink opening and glued it to the base with caulk. The three stubs of PVC pipe, also caulked to the form base, are for the faucet plumbing penetrations. The interior surfaces of the form were given several coats of shellac, then caulked around the perimeter.

I mixed the Eccorok using a cement mixer in the yard, and tinted it with carbon black to match the slate flooring in the bathroom. There are no photos of the mixing and casting process because it was done in EXTREME HASTE- unlike the countertop job (done in the winter) where the Eccorok was very slow to harden, this vanity (done during late summer) set up so fast that I ran out of time trying to pack the material into the mold before it hardened. Within 35 minutes, the Eccorok was rock-hard, and I got to spend a couple hours with hammer and chisel trying to clean the chunks out of the cement mixer that afternoon...apparently, ambient temperature is very critical when working with this stuff! Anyway, here is the rough cast vanity after it cured for a few days and was stripped from the form:

I "wet" polished the vanity using diamond sanding pads and a small amount of water from a spray bottle- just enough to keep the surface wet, but not so much as to make a mess in the barn. Then it was coated with the same Ecotuff Clear Coat used for the countertops. I used smaller pieces of Eccorok (randomly cut from larger squares that I cast along with the vanity), to make my own backsplash tiles. Here's the install:

I'm done with Eccorok for awhile.

Drain water heat recovery.

2010-12-29T21:01:00.005-06:00

Even after installing high-efficiency water heaters, low-flow fixtures, and practicing water-conservation habits, we're still faced with the fact that almost all our expensive hot water goes right down the drain. What a waste! Fortunately, I learned about Drain Water Heat Recovery (DWHR) devices from a friend who has been using this technology for over a decade, and was able to incorporate a DWHR unit into the barn. The drain water heat recovery system is basically a large heat exchanger designed to recover the heat from your shower water before it reaches the sewer system. The units consist of a large 3 inch copper pipe with smaller copper pipes wrapped around the outside. As your hot shower water drains through the 3 inch pipe it warms the pipe exterior. This heat is then transferred to the cold incoming water which is flowing through the smaller tubing wrapped around the drain pipe's exterior. There are no moving parts and nothing that can wear out- a very simple design and quite effective because there is lots of surface area and copper is highly conductive. By replacing a vertical section of your drain plumbing with the DWHR unit, a large percentage of the energy in the outgoing hot water can be used to 'preheat' the incoming cold water. I installed the DWHR pipe in a small vertical chase on the main floor to capture the hot water coming from the upstairs master bathroom before it goes under the slab. Putting the DWHR pipe in the basement would obviously be preferred, but since this is a slab-on-grade structure we don't have a basement- this is the only way I could incorporate the DWHR unit into the floor plan. I installed the GFX S3-60 model, which looks like this: Before testing it out, I insulated all of the drain plumbing between the sink, shower and the DWHR pipe. Before...

...and after. The insulating project is to retain the heat and also for sound abatement, since the bathroom is directly above the dining room. For this I used several layers of foam 'sill seal' material wrapped around the pipes and taped.Here is the vertical transition going into the chaseway:

I noticed most of the water noise was coming from the vertical transitions, so I insulated this area with XPS foam board and copious amounts of spray foam- not pretty, but it really cut down the noise and will contain the heat very well.

The building's incoming cold supply water (from our well water) always passes through the heat exchange unit on its way to the hot water heater, automatically extracting heat from the warm water running down the drain line. When I installed the DWHR plumbing, I added two gauges for monitoring the water temp going in, and coming out of, the heat exchanger: Today, I ran hot water through the shower to see how the DWHR would perform- results look good! With the shower running at 101F, the incoming cold well water was being 'preheated' from an initial 50F temp up to about 72F, capturing 44% of the otherwise down-the-drain heat! The manufacturer claims up to 57% efficiency is possible with this model, but that figure is based on a drain water flow rate of 5gpm- much higher than our low-flow sink and shower will ever provide. I'm guessing that around 40% is to be expected and is still very good. And the best part- the DWHR unit was virtually free- our electrical utility provider offered a $400 rebate for installing this $500 system, so the payback should be less than one year. Even at full price, this appears to be a very wise investment and a great energy conservation project. I'd be curious to hear what results others are having with the DWHR units.

The final steps on the yellow brick road.

2010-12-24T14:52:00.007-06:00

It feels good to be actually finishing projects on the barn lately- this time its the yellow brick road. When standing in the original barn before it was deconstructed in 2007, I always felt that the brick floor gave the building a unique feel. Since the bricks were simply laid on the ground without mortar, it was easy to remove them undamaged, so we saved as many as possible. Some areas were heavily coated with oil and grease from decades of tractor parking, but the majority of the bricks cleaned up nicely using a pressure washer (thanks mom and Lisa!). To incorporate the old bricks into the new floor, I formed a meandering pathway across the new barn slab before the concrete was poured, which looked like this: After the structure was roughed in, I mortared the salvaged bricks into the recessed pathway- it soon became aptly named, the 'Yellow Brick Road". Since the bricks were laid with tight joints, I wasn't sure exactly how to go about the grouting process. Having absolutely zero experience with tile work at the time didn't help- so I decided to leave it 'as is' and come back to it later...that was 2008! Finally, almost two years later, I vacuumed all the debris out of the cracks (which amounted to over 3 gallons of sawdust and wood chips), and got started. I mixed some home brew grout using 2.5 parts sand to 1 part Portland cement- then with my mom's help we worked the powder it into the cracks using an experimental sweeping, rubbing and putty knife-packing technique. This worked relatively well, albeit very messy.

Working in sections, the dry grout was packed into the joint lines, then the excess was vacuumed off the top of the bricks and gently wiped clean with sponges. Once the bricks were fairly clean, I sprayed water over the dry mix using an HPLV sprayer to start the hydration process. We worked from one end to the other in this manner, taking an entire day to do the pathway. I gave the pathway a few more sprayings of water over the next few days, letting the grout set up. Then it required about a dozen moppings to remove the haze of grout that was all over the rough-textured surface (I had put two coats of AFM Mexeseal on the bricks before starting the grouting process, but it didn't seem to help that much). After alot of scrubbing, here's the nearly finished product:

The grout was VERY slow to harden using this method, and required some touch up in certain places where there didn't seem to be enough Portland in the mix for it to set. I changed the sand/Portland ratio to 2:1 for the touch up work and this seemed to be much better...more lessons learned on the rocky road of barn-building.

Heavy treading on the staircase.

2010-11-01T05:40:00.005-05:00

Since the stair-building process has become a multi-year saga, let's recap. Starting with the timber-framed opening in 2009, I framed the curving staircase and built a border on the wall side using mostly reclaimed lumber and wainscotting. I milled slabs for the stair treads from some maple logs (these were from overgrown trees removed from the city streets in our nearby town).

The slabs were kiln dried over the winter, then cut into stair treads, planed and sanded smooth. A lot of precision cutting was required here, due to the unique shape of each tread and my choice to attempt a trimless installation. I finished them with Ecoprocote Eco-Tuff Clear Coat.

The final product:

I also made slab tops (these from white pine logs) for all the curved border sections.At the top landing, I built a small linen cabinet. The door pull was made from a hay rake handle that I found on the farm years ago (and saved for something like this). The stair treads have a variety of nail holes, knots, and worm holes to keep it real.

And finally, the treads were drilled for the motion-activated LED stair lighting kit, which is pretty cool in itself.

Final task is to fabricate a curved handrail...I'm still scratching my head over that one.

Solar Sundays Part VIII- getting closer!

2010-10-17T20:20:00.013-05:00

*Warning* - this post is a lengthy, detailed description intended primarily for solar geeks. Proceed at your own risk.

The next step for the solar heating project was to install aluminum absorber plates to all the copper tubes in the system. When I built my prototype panel this spring, I stamped the plates myself. While this was a lot of fun to do once, the thought of pounding out a couple hundred more was not too appealing. Plus, I found a great source for high-performance pre-stamped plates so decided to buy them instead. These plates are made with an over sized groove which wraps around the copper tubing to maximize the contact surface and increase the heat transfer efficiency of the solar collector. They were also custom cut to my desired length, so all I had to do prior to assembly was paint the groove area with metal primer to prevent galvanic corrosion where the aluminum and copper are in contact. Time saved= lots. Normally, the absorber plates are fastened to the plywood backing of the collector framework, sandwiching the copper tubing in between. However, because I wanted a modular design that could be easily disassembled, I opted to build the fin-tube assembly separate from framework. I basically followed this design from the Build-It Solar website, with some modifications to work for my situation. I started by laying one of the copper tubing assemblies on a plywood work surface on the ground, then spacing it off the plywood with strips of 1" foam (I used the pieces of foam that were trimmed off when insulating the collector frameworks, but any thickness would work here).

Then a 3" wide strip of aluminum flashing was centered under the first tube, between the tube and foam strip.

Using a pair of modified Vice Grip 'clamps' (I had a friend weld these up for me, but they can also be purchased from the folks who made the absorber plates), the aluminum absorber plate is clamped tight to the copper tubing and held in position while a pair of sheet metal screws are attached at each end, through to the aluminum strip below. The foam strips underneath keep the screws from penetrating into the plywood work surface below. Next, the clamps are moved towards the center of the absorber plate and two more sets of screws are placed as shown. I found it beneficial to stand on the clamp with one foot to flatten out the absorber plate as much as possible before attaching the screws.

Then, repeat the process for three plates per copper riser... ...and a total of 24 plates per collector. Once the collector is finished, it could be lifted off the plywood work surface and the foam strips are easily peeled off the tips of the screws from behind. The result looks as follows- great contact between the aluminum and the copper! The finished assembly is light and easily movable. I also like that the fin-tube assembly is isolated from the plywood backer by the foam insulation in this design (less mass inside the solar collector is a good thing).

Two panels finished, seven more to go! Once all nine collectors were finished and connected back into the framework, I painted the whole system with Rustoleum High Heat black paint. The remainder of the bull work consisted of burying insulated water lines as well as power and communication wires between the solar array and the barn. I rented a Ditch Witch for a day to carve a trench about 150 feet across the yard. I was able to get about 30" deep with this machine- not below the frost line, but since the system will contain anti-freeze, it shouldn't be a problem. When the barn foundation was put in, I included a run of Thermopex under the slab and out into the yard about 20 feet. Now I needed to extend the insulated lines the remaining 60 or so feet to the solar array. Since Thermopex is around $12-$13 per foot, it was cost-prohibitive to use it again and I opted to make my own system (for about 1/4 the cost). I cut 1.5" XPS foam board into strips and glued them together using spray foam insulation...

...Then put a temporary board on top and clamped it while the foam cured.

The cured insulation assemblies (each 8 feet long) were positioned over the trench and 1" pex lines were placed inside before foam-gluing a cover piece over each one. I staggered the seams between the top and bottom pieces of foam for strength. Once the finished assembly was cured, I turned it on edge (it was too wide to fit in the 5" trench otherwise) and covered the top and sides with poly. The poly was taped around the insulation to hold it in place during installation. Finally, the wood cross members were removed and the pipes lowered to the bottom of the trench- it was a tight fit in places, but it worked!

I left a couple feet of pex on one end so the new run could be coupled to the existing Thermopex end using pex fittings. After the connection was made, I wrapped the bare pex with pipe insulation...

...and wrapped a slit piece of 4" corrugated pipe around that before covering the area with pea rock and landscaping fabric.

After pressure-testing the water lines, the trench was back filled with gravel to about the 4" depth, where installed a run of conduit containing a CAT5 wire and four T-stat wires.

FINALLY, the remainder of the trench was filled and pathways cleaned up- good as new!

The big timber bar.

2010-10-09T08:20:00.008-05:00

Back when there was still snow on the ground, I milled a huge white pine log into slabs using the Alaskan chainsaw mill. The tree has quite a history- it grew for decades next to the mess hall at a youth 4-H camp a few miles from our property. Eventually, the 3' diameter tree was encroaching on the building so much that it had to be removed. Since it would be just plain wrong to turn it into firewood, I consider it my obligation to come up with more noble uses for the big timber.

I had a couple of the slabs kiln dried, and set out to build a bar top using the largest of the pieces. Unfortunately, there was some rot on one end which couldn't be cut off because I needed the full length of the slab. So I decided to cut out the punky area and put an inlay in its place.

I traced an outline around the rotted area and cut it out freehand using a router. the faces of the slab were planed and sanded smooth.

Inside the barn, I built a pair of support brackets using salvaged barn timbers.

After finishing the slab with Ecoprocote Eco-Tuff Clearcoat, it was set in place and screwed in place from underneath.

In the cut out area, I inserted an inlay using pieces of the Eccorok countertop I had left over from the kitchen countertop project.

Solar Sundays Part VII- Lots of Copper!

2010-10-06T19:39:00.005-05:00

Taking advantage of the T-shirt weather of October, I decided to focus on the solar hot water system until it is finished. The last few days have been all about copper- cutting, cleaning and soldering together the network of tubing that will carry fluid through the solar collectors. Each of the 9 collectors has around 45 pieces, so I set up a little assembly line for the process. I'm building the collectors in 4'x8' modules with threaded fittings on the ends to connect each one to adjacent units in the system. Thus, I needed a way to ensure proper alignment between adjacent modules so that the union fittings would line up perfectly. For this, I built a simple wood framework on sawhorses to act as a jig/table for assembling each module.The vertical spacing is achieved with stop blocks at either end of the first riser, and I cut another block of wood to use as a gauge of the riser tube spacing. Before any of the fittings were soldered, I checked the assembly for squareness, length and spacing.

Starting from the 'jigged' end (you can see the stop block in the top of the photo), I soldered the first 5 tee fittings, leaving the final 3 fittings loose for the next step. Likewise, I soldered the opposing 5 fittings at the other end of the assembly.Next, the partially-soldered assembly was rotated 90 degrees on the table, and the previously finished (already soldered) module was set to the left of it. Then, the stubs and a union fitting were installed between the two modules. The unsoldered fittings of the module-in-process are towards the union of the two modules, such that they can be brought into perfect alignment before proceeding. With the union in place, I soldered the remaining tee fittings on both ends, but not the union itself.Before soldering the union in place, I separated the two modules and attached Sharkbite end stop fittings at three of the corners, plus a pressure-testing assembly at the fourth corner. The module was pressurized to check for leaks. Once this was done, I removed all the Sharkbite fittings, reconnected the modules at the union fitting and soldered the union in place. Now the modules can be disassembled and reassembled to one another using the threaded union fittings.

Meanwhile, I installed insulation in the collector frames. I opted for 2" of insulation using a bottom 1" layer of XPS foam and a top layer of 1" polyisocyanurate.

To test fit the system while building the modules, I temporarily installed them as I went. Here is a closeup showing the union fittings in place. Holes bored in the vertical frame members allow each unit to be inserted into place. Next step- installing the heat transfer plates....

Solar Sundays Part VI- building the behemoth

2010-09-12T20:03:00.009-05:00

The large solar hot water system to provide space heating for the barn will consist of (9) 4x8 collectors vertically-mounted to the south wall of our steel cargo container. The solar-heated water will be pumped to the barn's in-floor hydronic system via underground insulated PEX tubing. The nearly 300 square feet of collector area will theoretically provide enough hot water for about 75% of our annual heat requirements, as well as domestic hot water needs during the spring, summer and fall months. But so far, it has all been 'on paper', and I've been hesitant to start building until all the design issues were cleared up in my head. After much deliberation, I finally strapped on the tool belt and got to work today. I started by bolting 4x4 beams across the bottom of the cargo container, then attaching short sections of 2x2s every 4 feet to act as ledger boards for the solar collectors.

I am building the array in smaller 8'X8' sections- a manageable size to lift into position without difficulty. I made the first framework today using 2X6 cedar material.

I rabbeted the backside of each 2X6 so that the plywood backing would be flush with the framing members.

Then screwed in place the two 4x8 sheets of plywood.

Because rainwater/runoff is a concern, I decided to protect the back side of the collectors by attaching a weather barrier layer. For this I used synthetic roofing underlayment that was leftover from the barn project. I stapled it to the plywood and taped the seams.

With Lisa's help, we set the finished framework on the ledger boards and screwed it in place. Mounting the solar collector array to the cargo container eliminates the labor and expense associated with building a separate support structure. But since the cargo container is only temporary (we hope to build a garage/workshop in a few years, then sell the container to someone else), the collector array must be built with ease-of-disassembly in mind. The modular design I came up with should allow the whole system to be disassembled, moved and reinstalled on our future garage with little difficulty.

On the top end, the framework is held in place by 1 foot lengths of 2x4's, which are bolted to the roof of the container via the 1/2" lugs that I had welded on previously. The 2x4 brackets are raised off the roof about an inch using pieces of PVC pipe as spacers. I also placed 1/2" shims between the collector frame and the container side wall. The spacers on the top and sides are to allow the rain water to run unobstructed around the collector and down the side wall of the container. Eventually, I'll also put a cap plate and a short metal roof over the brackets to protect the top frame members of the collectors. With the first section in place and looking successful, I built another on the ground and tilted it into place.The common frame member between each two sections can't be accessed from behind to attach the plywood, so I used pocket hole screws instead, from the front side. After another day of construction, the framing is done.

The cargo container gets an addition.

2010-08-22T19:40:00.006-05:00

As the barn project nears completion, I won't be able to use it for my workshop much longer- basically, I'm being evicted! So I built a shed off the north side of the cargo container using all the lumber salvaged from our recent deconstruction projects. To keep it qualified as a temporary structure (and I use that term rather loosely since it is likely to be here for several years), I secured the support posts with earth anchors, then built gabions (stone cribbing) around each one. All the framing was fastened with screws, as well as the metal roofing panels, so I can someday disassemble the whole structure and upcycle the materials yet again.

The shed is about 12 feet deep and nearly 40 feet long- large enough to use as a carport, outdoor workshop, and storage area...or just a nice spot to sit in the shade and watch the apple trees grow.

First flush.

2010-08-17T04:49:00.004-05:00

Installed our Toto Eco Whitney toilet in the silo and gave it the ceremonial 'first flush' yesterday. This Toto model is a 1.28 GPF water-saving toilet that seems to be the benchmark in the industry, based on all the research I've done (and I think I've spent far more time researching toilets than I've spent actually using them in the past year!). Hopefully, it will work better than the Caroma Sydney Smart dual-flush toilet I installed in the other bathroom, which we are not very happy with so far. Eventually, the Toto will be connected to an AQUS greywater recycling system to reduce the water usage to well under 1 gallon/flush. I also installed the tub/shower- a 1920 vintage claw foot tub that we bought on Craigslist for $75. I used a Tubby's refinishing kit to make it look new again, and we also had the claw feet professionally chrome plated.

We splurged on a rather expensive plumbing setup from Signature hardware, which looks like quality goods from what I can tell so far. With the curved wall of the silo, I couldn't make a standard vanity fit in the space. So I'm building a custom vanity using some leftover Skyblend sheeting, barn timbers and salvaged wainscotting. I'll probably fabricate a counter top for it from the Eccorok that I have leftover. Almost done....

Two beds.

2010-08-01T12:42:00.003-05:00

Built two queen sized frames for the hayloft bedrooms- check one more task off my list! For the first one, I used our salvaged barn timbers and mortise-and-tenon construction.

Now that I have a supply of wide slabs to work with, I decided to play with them for bed #2. The corner posts are salvaged barn timbers, and the head/foot boards are thick pine slabs cut with the chainsaw mill, about 20" wide. I left them with a 'live' edge on top to keep it rustic looking.

I put them together with structural screws, but pegged the holes to give it the timber-framed look. This was much easier and looks the same.

Solar Sundays- Part V

2010-07-29T17:34:00.005-05:00

The only bad thing about summer, besides the bugs, is that it ends too soon and often rather abruptly...it's time to be thinking about winter heating already. I've been running our prototype solar hot water heater continuously just to test it out, and it's all good, so am anxious to begin assembling the larger array that will provide in-floor heat to the barn this winter. The system will be mounted to the south-facing side of the cargo container, and I needed a way to secure the solar panels to the steel wall. To avoid drilling a bunch of holes through the otherwise waterproof box, I opted to hire a portable welder to attach some bolts to the exterior.

Working together, we were able to attach around 40 bolts to the container in a couple hours- a huge time savings for me! With my mom's help, we also removed all the decals, sanded down the rusty spots, and primed them for painting.

Using an airless sprayer, we sprayed the container with green tractor paint to make it look pretty (it's gonna be here for awhile, and we didn't want an eyesore in the yard). The sprayer was awesome- painted the whole thing in about an hour!

Here's the view from the south. With the old garage now gone, we have clear southern exposure for most of the day- great for solar heat gain this winter:

Tile. Work.

2010-07-27T17:09:00.004-05:00

After months of trials, tribulations and do-overs, the floor is finished. Rather than describing the ordeal in detail, let's just say that one should not choose natural slate stones for their very first tile job- I was too naive to realize what I was in for! But in the end, it turned out okay and should make for a stunning bathroom once the fixtures are in. The pillars are salvaged Douglas fir columns that we found at Better Homes and Garbage in Minneapolis. These are hollow, so in addition to looking cool they serve as chaseways for the plumbing vent stack and electrical wires going to the ceiling (A clever design element from our friends at Simply Green Design).

I cut the left over stones into smaller pieces for the base trim around the curved wall. Originally, I had envisioned an arched ceiling, but i took the easy way out and built a flat, dropped ceiling (and filled the space above with additional insulation). Who looks up, anyway?

Hay loft trim out.

2010-07-13T16:17:00.006-05:00

Last week, I got back to the interior finish work in the barn. The goal is to start on the upper floor (bedrooms and bathroom) and work my way down until everything is done. Putting up trim is a good sign, as it must mean the project is nearing completion. However, I quickly found out that curved walls + arched roofs = painstakingly slow progress, and I spent a solid week milling, finishing and installing all of the bedroom trim. The hayloft area is separated into two 'semi-private' bedrooms by a partition wall, so in addition to the baseboard trim, I had to cap the top of the wall and trim that as well. The curved sections of the wall were pretty tricky and required a lot of clamps and screws to make it work: But the finished product turned out pretty good, considering my limited skills. Finish carpentry is not my strong point.

The baseboard trim was also tedious, as I had to work my way around each of the vertical timbers. In all, it took around 125 pieces of trim, complete with curves and custom miter cuts, to finish the hayloft...yes, I'm really good at creating work for myself!

Ground zero.

2010-06-15T19:13:00.006-05:00

Between rain storms last week (why do the monsoons come when I need to be on top of a building!?), I plugged away on the garage to remove all the roof and wall sheathing.

Then cut the rafters out one by one and threw them to the ground. With little meat left holding it up, I tied a chain around the center support and pulled the the works down with my truck.

All that remains is to pull nails from all the salvageable lumber (which, thankfully is just about all of it) and stack it up to dry. Feels good to be back on solid ground again!

Compost happens.

2010-06-11T21:42:00.007-05:00

Soil quality appears to be one of the key factors in our struggle to become successful organic gardeners, and it seems as though the chickens are a big help in this area. I added last year's 'droppings' to the soil in some of our raised bed gardens and covered it with fresh topsoil before planting this spring and the results are looking great. Spinach has never flourished here- it usually comes up 'stalky' and goes to seed before the leaves have a chance to develop into anything substantial. But we both love spinach and so we keep trying. This year, our first crop is looking better than ever: ...and the kale has already grown tall enough to push against the lid of the cold frame:

To speed up the composting process, I've been tossing our weeds and clippings directly into the chicken pen- they go after it like a school of piranhas, and can devour a wheelbarrow-full of stuff in a day. This fall, I can shovel out their handiwork and turn it into the gardens. We also got got four more little 'composters' this week- Buff Orpington pullets. Here they are spending their days eating, sleeping and pooping in a little pen we set up in our office.

And since we haven't had much success with our compost bins, I decided to try building a tumbler to speed up the process. After perusing some examples of DIY compost tumblers at the Instructables site, I made one using an extra plastic barrel leftover from the rainwater project and a support frame built from barn timbers. The barrel turns on little plastic casters mounted to the frame. I made the frame open on the front side, and high enough so that the contents could be dumped directly into a wheelbarrow.

I cut out a door in the side of the barrel with a jigsaw, and secured it to the barrel with a piano hinge and some bolt latches.

Here it is after filling with some partially-composted scraps from our bins, weeds, grass clippings, etc.

If it works as planned, we should have usable compost in a few weeks...I'll believe it when I see it.

Loading the Evergreen

2010-06-09T22:35:00.004-05:00

I spent a few days building some shelving in the Evergreen, then transferring everything over from the garage. Compared to the garage (think dirt floor, rotted foundation, and a plethora of animals/insects/birds calling it 'home'), the storage container feels like the penthouse suite of mancaves by comparison. It is solid, dry, and does NOT reek of bat guano...ahhh, the good life!With the garage emptied out, demo ensued on the structure. The skin (siding, shingles and tarpaper) came off in a couple of days, with the help of Lisa and my parents (who thankfully, refuse to act their age and are more than happy to climb up on the roof and tear off shingles).

Other than the rotted wood around the base, everything is solid and will no doubt be useful for upcoming projects.

Landscaping and "The Evergreen".

2010-06-04T07:38:00.011-05:00

The unusually warm and dry spring provided an opportunity to get an early start on this year's outdoor projects. On the agenda is to remove the concrete foundation from the 2nd barn we deconstructed last year, move the fire pit, build some nice pathways between the remaining buildings, install some 'temporary' storage (and I use that term loosely), and finally deconstruct the dilapitated garage structure. Here's what the situation looked like in April: We hired Dan the landscaper for a day to do the bullwork with his Bobcat, and I helped out with the ground work and generally leaned on a shovel for most of the time.

We decided to dig a hole under the foundation and bury the old concrete on-site, rather than adding it to the local landfill. It was a pleasure to watch him work, tossing around big concrete boulders with surgeon-like precision...in a few hours the site was leveled off as if nothing had even been there.

I also had him skim away the sod and topsoil to form pathways across the yard. We piled up the topsoil for later use in the gardens, then replaced the material with gravel fill dug out of the foundation site. Then he drove away with his big machines- with a tear in my eye, I set out to finish the rest with a shovel, wheelbarrow, and several tons of stone.

But first, we had a 40 foot steel shipping container delivered (one benefit of America's pathetic trade deficit is an over-abundance of these huge shipping containers...so a big THANK YOU to Walmart for ours). It was plopped down behind the soon-to-be-deconstructed garage and in a matter of 15 minutes we had a 300 square foot water-tight, critter-proof building! This will satisfy our storage/workshop needs, and provide a solid surface for mounting the solar thermal panels this summer. Our container had the fitting "Evergreen" logo on it, so we named it "The Evergreen" (Lisa gave it an alternate name- the "Tunnel of Death", after we quickly discovered that it could double as a pizza oven inside on a hot, sunny day!).

Back to dirty work, I started laying down field stone around the house and along the pathways, then infilled with mulch and pea-rock.

One of the pathways passes by the entry doors to the shipping container, so I built up a little ramp for easy access. I also moved the pathway light posts to the new pathways and buried the low-voltage lines under the fieldstones. Here's a pic of the almost-finished paths between house, barn and shipping container:

Another shot, taken from the barn side of the yard:

A Little Break

2010-05-29T13:12:00.002-05:00

, We took a vacation to Whitefish, MT and Glacier National Park. We had a great time. It was beautiful the whole time we were there. Perfect for hiking, biking and just hanging out. The week before we got there, they had just gotten 3-4 feet of snow in Glacier. That made some of the hiking difficult and a lot of the park was still closed, but we found some great trails and saw some great sights.

Hiking in the snow to Avalanche Lake.

We found some trails without snow. And some snow the higher you went. That's Shawn looking

for the trail. We were on the Whitefish Ski Resort hiking trail

and wanted to get to get to the top. No such luck.

Back in Glacier. We wanted to see as much as we could. The Going-to-the-Sun road was closed to cars at Avalanche Lake. But, open to bikes. We took out the bikes and went up.Shawn made it a little higher up than I did. Near the pass, until the snow on the road made him turn around. It was beautiful.

It was a great relaxing vacation. Time to gear up and get back to work.

The Living Green Expo

2010-05-27T13:08:00.005-05:00

We participated in our first Expo the first weekend in May. We went to the Living Green Expo in St. Paul. This is the largest Green Expo in MN. It is the Expo's 12th year and it had a little over 250 exhibitors. Exhibitors came from all parts of the state. There was a little something for everyone from green architects, organic cleaners, re-used rain barrels, various environmental causes and gigantic sunflowers made from old trucks (bought one for my dad). It was a great experience to be part of such a great event. Shawn spent hours making the booth. The table was made from our timbers for the legs and one of our slabs hand cut by Shawn. The picture frames, benches and larger frame were all made from wood from the old barn. The glass for the pictures came from old windows that were left in the barn. My cousin, Linda was nice enough to paint our Green Gate sign for us. Which I must say, turned out exactly how we wanted it. Thank you Linda.

That's us having a super fun time. We met some great people, had some good conversations, saw some old friends, and had super people in the booths around us. All contributed to make the weekend very successful.

Solar Sundays- Part IV

2010-05-24T20:45:00.003-05:00

Okay, my "Solar Sunday" idea didn't work out so well. Other more pressing projects got in the way, along with seminars, expos, holidays and a great vacation trip to Glacier. Once I got back on it, Spring had passed, the days were getting hot and we were already eating salad greens with dinner. I decided to add another dump loop to the solar system to avoid the risk of overheating the raised beds. For this, I dug 40 feet of trench, put down a loop of pex, and covered it with topsoil. Then I extended the main line to the first two of our four raised bed gardens. The dump loop and each of the raised bed loops have their own shutoff valve so I can direct the heat wherever it is needed.

On a steamy day with the temp in the high 80s, I finally charged the system with fluid and flipped the switch- the heat is pumping through the soil and everything seems to be working well so far!

Lincoln Logs for grown-ups.

2010-04-26T11:26:00.000-05:00

We'll be exhibiting at the Living Green Expo In St. Paul this weekend and I wanted to make some unique (and sustainable) eye candy for our booth. I decided to build a table, working with one of our maple slabs cut with the Alaskan mill and a reclaimed timber. Here's the rough slab after being kiln dried.

I don't have the proper tools for working with material this large, so it took a lot of hours with the planer and sander to smooth it up. After about 10 coats of shellac, it looked pretty good.

I cut mortises in the table top and legs to mate them together like the Lincoln Logs we played with as kids. The fit was tight enough that the table is surprising stable without any fasteners. Here's the finished product, ready for a trip to the big city.

If you're in St. Paul this weekend, come check out the expo at the state fairgrounds, and stop by to say "hi" if you do!

2010-04-14T20:59:00.005-05:00

If you're in northern Minnesota this weekend, come check out our 2nd annual Iron Range Earth Fest in Mountain Iron on Saturday. Lots of exhibitors, vendors, and presentations on a variety of sustainability topics- should be a blast!

Solar Sunday- Part III

2010-04-12T18:59:00.002-05:00

It's been a couple weeks since working on the solar experiment, as other projects came up. I built some simple wood brackets to fasten the collector to the south wall of our rainwater tank 'shed'. I had planned to mount the pumping station outside on the west wall of the shed, but decided at the last minute to instead put it inside, sheltered from the rain. Access is obviously more difficult (I have to crawl underneath and through a hatch in the raised floor to get at it!), but it'll work for now. The outlet end of the collector passes through the wall to the pumping station- I made the connection using a flexible water heater connector. The inlet pipe to the collector (bottom right) also has a flexible connector. I have gauges at both the inlet and outlet ends of the collector so I can measure the temperature gain, and knowing the pump flow rate, calculate the BTU output of the system. We're using this collector to pump heat through tubing lines buried under our raised bed gardens. All that's left is to run the supply and return lines to the gardens and it should be ready to make heat...maybe this week :)

Homegrown furniture.

2010-04-01T13:55:00.005-05:00

I don't yet have the skills to build furniture, but i'm not too bad at timber framing and we still have piles of barn timbers...so I upcycled them into this post-and-beam bed frame. The joints are all mortise and tenon and it is quite solid, but I decided to add metal brackets on the inside corners for good measure- so total project cost was about $5!

Additions to the 'recycled' staircase.

2010-03-29T20:36:00.010-05:00

While waiting for the treads & risers to return from the kiln, I built a series of curved shelves along the outside edge of the staircase. Since the wall is less than 3 feet tall, I was able to use a variety of short studs salvaged from other buildings, and scrap plywood pieces I saved just for this project. I also scored a pile of tongue & groove wainscotting removed from a friends turn-of-the-century garage (yes, I said garage- from back when construction was considered a 'craft').

I was able to salvage more than enough to complete the wall, so I may use the rest to build cabinet doors in the kitchen....

I hit it with the palm sander to remove the surface residue and gave it a seal coat of shellac, then my mom came over and put on several coats of our Bioshield clay paint and AFM Polyureseal to match the ceiling upstairs- nice! The top shelf will be a built-in storage cabinet. While researching lighting options, I stumbled across a really cool LED step light kit from somebody far more intelligent than me. The little LED bulbs are flush-mounted into holes drilled through the back of each step riser, and the whole system is motion activated by infared beams at the top and bottom steps. It only took me couple hours to install the whole system, and at night it looks something like this:

The lights automatically fade out one-by-one after about 20 seconds, then are reactivated whenever motion is detected. After playing with them every night for a week now, I'd say the lights are about 50% safety feature and 50% pure geek bling :)

Solar Sundays- Part II

2010-03-22T21:49:00.002-05:00

The plumbing and controls parts arrived by the end of the week, so I was able to finish up the assembly yesterday. Before attaching the glazing, I installed a snap switch inside the collector- this will control the circulating pump as the collector's temperature changes.Here's the finished collector, with twinwall polycarbonate glazing fastened down.

I soldered together a pumping station and mounted the assembly to some home-made wood brackets. I was able to borrow the expansion tank from a friend, and I used the pressure relief valve off a spare water heater we have. The rest of the components (temp gauge, Taco pump, and fill/purge valving) were purchased new. The parts cost around $130, so together with the collector parts we are at about $250...a small price to pay for a lifetime of heat (and the satisfaction of watching the bottom fall out of Exxon stock someday).

Ready for installation next weekend!

Counter-production.

2010-03-19T04:03:00.017-05:00

It wasn't supposed to happen like this. I don't like failure, and I generally do an excessive amount of research and testing to make sure projects go as planned. So when I learned of a very new 'green' concrete counter top mix called Eccorok, I was excited, but cautious. This product consists of 98% fly ash (a byproduct of coal-fired power plants), which exhibits the same chemical properties of Portland cement. I was aware of fly ash being used as an additive to Portland-based cement (it makes for harder, stronger and more chemically-resistant concrete), but this new Eccorok product actually replaces all of the Portland cement in the mix. Since traditional Portland cement is extremely energy-intensive to produce, replacing it with an industrial waste product like fly ash is a double bonus for the environment...very exciting stuff.

I ordered a small quantity of the Eccorok and cast a couple of sample pieces to test the formula and develop the color tint that I was after. It seemed to be easier to work with, stronger, and more dense than Portland-based product I had used in the past, so I was sold! We purchased enough for casting the barn kitchen counter tops and back splashes, and I got started making the templates and forms. The forms were made at a friend's shop, on his steel casting table. The counters are formed face-down and the mix is contained by the melamine borders glued to the table. Since I couldn't fit all the forms on the table, I made one of them (shown in the foreground) on a base of our particleboard material coated with polyurethane, and let it overhang the edges of the casting table. Also shown is the steel rebar pieces that are suspended in the form to reinforce the concrete.

With the forms prepared, we were ready for 'casting day'. On the advice of the distributor, I made one little change to the mix formula by adding a set retarder this time- a product used to slow the rate at which the concrete hardens, thereby increasing the "work time" available. Seemed like a good idea, and the casting process went well, or so we thought.

But that seemingly innocent little additive was a BIG mistake! In the cool, low-humidity northern Minnesota conditions, the last thing we needed was a set retarder. Instead of 'curing' in the forms, the chemical hardening process was so much retarded by the additive that a reaction took place between the mix and the surfaces of the casting forms and table. When they were removed several days later, we had to forcefully pry the counter tops off the casting table, and parts of the counter tops literally delaminated in the process. Instead of the crisp edges and dense hard surfaces I was expecting, they were crumbly and porous. At first sight, I thought they were ruined and I'd be starting the whole process over the next day...not a good feeling.

Not wanting to toss them in the landfill and start over, I set out on a long process of damage control. The voids were filled with a 'slurry' paste of Eccorok and cenospheres (extremely small ceramic particles reclaimed as a by-product of coal-fired power plants), tinted to match the counter top color. The slurry was rubbed onto the surfaces, allowed to set up for a day or two, then wet-polished with a disc sander. But the counter tops were so soft, that the polishing process would just pull the 'grout' right off, leaving the same voids that I started with. This process was repeated several times with no success. As I dumped more time into the project, the situation improved little. Then a friend had the great idea of applying a densifying agent to the surface, which made all the difference in the world- the counter tops hardened up, the next slurry application held on better, and they began to smooth up. Shown below is the counter top after wet polishing (the wet surface makes it look shiny). The lighter brown areas are the grout-filled voids, while the darker brown is the original material. With the pieces looking hopeful, they were finally moved into the barn. Each section weighed several hundred pounds, so the process required some careful choreography and ample horsepower.

Here's the pieces set in place in their rough form.

Satisfied with the fit (and happy they didn't crack or break on moving day), I continued the slurry/grout process several more times, trying to fill the voids and get a smooth surface prior to sealing. Not able to wet polish inside the barn, I did my 'polishing' using a palm sander and a vacuum cleaner to contain the dust. It was still a mess!

After a total of 7 slurry applications over a several week span, I realized the counter tops were about as good as they were going to get- not at all what I had initially expected, but nevertheless good enough. The final step was to apply the sealer- in this case we went with a water-based zero-VOC epoxy called Eco-Tuff, which had held up pretty well to staining and water in my earlier sample testing. After one coat of the Eco-Tuff primer, and 3 coats of the epoxy, here is the finished product.

That's the end of my Eccorok experience for now. Start to finish, this project took around 2 months! Despite my troubles, I'd recommend the product to others and would definately use it again myself- but would omit the set retarder next time!

Solar Sundays- Part I

2010-03-15T20:44:00.005-05:00

My interest in solar projects has been growing for a few years, and I've been researching solar water heating hoping to someday install our own system here at Green Gate. While the government tax rebates for solar projects sounded attractive, we found they would only cover a small system- basically enough for domestic hot water heating, but not for winter space heating. Purchasing a multi-panel solar thermal system would be cost prohibitive. So once again, I came to realize if you want to get something done, you have to learn to do it yourself! Having spent many a night perusing websites and solar forums all winter, I thought it was time to dive in and actually build something myself. With an enthusiastic 'okay' from my wonderful wife, I decided to start dedicating a day every week towards getting a 'prototype' system online and tested. Here is our first solar collector, inspired by designs on the Build it Solar website (one of my favorite resources for a variety of sustainability projects, by the way). Basically, I started by making a 4X8 'box of 2x6 lumber and a plywood bottom.

Then I added 1.5" of polyiso insulation over the plywood.

Next, I soldered together the copper piping that will carry water through the collector- basically 1/2" 'risers' connected to 3/4" manifolds, with an inlet on one end and outlet in the opposite corner. This copper is the expensive part of the project, but I managed to get a pile of tubing for less than scrap prices off Craigslist about a month ago! The photo shows the copper assembly as I was pressure testing it prior to the next step.

To make the 'fins', I took my leftover aluminum heat transfer plates (these are the ones I was using for the in-wall hydronic system installed in the bedrooms recently) and expanded them to 7/8" dia using a pipe, a simple wooden jig, and several blows from a sledgehammer. Good exercise. The fins were then clamped around the tubing using some special vice grip clamps made by a friend of ours for this project. With the clamps forcing the aluminum fins tightly around the copper, I put in several screws through to the plywood base to hold everything in place. This system seemed to work very well once I got the hang of it. Here's a close-up of the fins installed over the tubing.

Then I gave the assembly a coat of black paint.

and finally cut a piece of twinwall polycarbonate for glazing (this is the same stuff I used for our raised bed garden covers). Other than trim pieces over the glazing, it is basically done...next weekend I'll work on the pump and controls.....

Zone 3 and the heat is on!

2010-03-13T18:05:00.006-06:00

The last area calling for heat is the soon-to-be master bathroom in the upper level of the silo. Before tiling the floor, I installed a serpentine of hydronic tubing over the subfloor- basically 1/2" pex tubing pressed into Thermofin-U heat transfer plates, surrounded by 'sleepers' of 3/4" plywood to keep the floor at a consistent level. Schluter Ditra (the orange colored uncoupling membrane) was mortared over the subfloor assembly, and then our local slate cleftstone was mortared over the Ditra. By nature, this slate is not perfectly flat like manufactured tiles, so there was some resulting variability in the pieces. I did my best to maintain smooth transitions from stone to stone. After setting the stones, I put down the last few planks in the entryway, scribing the final board to fit the curve of the stones. The stones still need to be cleaned, sealed and grouted once the mortar has fully cured, but you get the idea. In the boiler room, I connected the lines for the bedroom and bathroom hydronic loops and installed electronic zone valves so they can be regulated separately from the in-slab heat. I also extended the supply and return branches that will run outside to the solar thermal panels we'll be installing this summer. Everything went back together and I fired the system back up this morning without any leaks. The barn is now fully heated and solar-ready!

Six months plus six minutes.

2010-02-28T18:33:00.005-06:00

The alternate title for this post would be "Why it is taking me FOREVER to build a house." I haven't posted anything in almost two months because despite a lot of hard work, nothing has actually been completed. Case in point would be the Alaskan chainsaw mill, which was purchased for cutting the large wood slabs for stair treads and a bar top. We originally bought a used chainsaw for this job, happy to be saving several hundred dollars off the price of a new one (pro-sized chainsaws are not cheap!)...the used engine lasted for a very short time before I blew the piston and cylinder last fall. Faced with a $300 repair, we decided to buy a new saw which includes some peace-of-mind from a factory warranty. The new saw took almost 2 months to arrive, then didn't run well from the get-go. After two trips to the dealer for repairs, over the course of another 3 weeks, they finally corrected the problem (under warranty, thanks!). So, after nearly 6 months of 'issues', the Alaskan mill is finally on line- and thanks to a little more horsepower and a sharp chain, it ripped through the first log in only 6 minutes.

The 2 foot wide x 3" thick x 10 foot long slab is on its way to the kiln (which will take another month) before reaching its final destination at Green Gate.

I also milled two more of our 'salvaged' maple logs into pieces for the stair treads and risers. I used the Alaskan mill to whittle the logs down to a size that would fit into the band mill. Since we don't have a team of horses to do the hauling, I improvised with a furniture dolly. The timber weighed several hundred pounds, but was manageable for me and my two-wheeler.

All the stair pieces, on their way to the kiln.

Zone 2- the hydronic wall.

2009-12-13T09:57:00.000-06:00

Winter arrived hard and fast, bringing the issue of heat to the forefront. The in-slab hydronic system is working fabulously on the main floor, but the hayloft is usually 5-10 degrees cooler and in need of supplemental heat. Since our future plans call for solar-thermal hydronic heating, I want our system to be able to run at the lowest possible temperatures. That said, I opted for a 'hydronic wall' in the hayloft, instead of underfloor heating that requires somewhat higher fluid temps. To get started, I framed in a partition wall to divide the hayloft into two semi-private bedrooms (we decided not to extend the wall all the way up to keep the architecture of the high arched ceiling visible).

Then I built a "hydronic sandwich" using aluminum heat transfer plates between 'sleepers' of 3/4" foil-faced isocyanurate insulation.

With Lisa's help, we routed 1/2" pex tubing in a serpentine pattern through the wall, across the doorway framing, through the smaller side wall, then back to the starting point...then we repeated it in the second bedroom with a separate run of pex...whew!

Here is a closeup of the assembly:

Finally, ready for drywall, which is screwed into the studs being VERY CAREFUL not to puncture the tubing runs.... The aluminum plates help conduct the heat out of the pex tubing and into the drywall surface. The insulation 'sleepers' act as spacers between the drywall and studs, and help direct the heat out outward to the room. The drywall surface readily conducts the heat and radiates it outward to the room. By using this method rather than the more tradition underfloor hydronic installation, more BTUs can be delivered to the room at lower water temps...and it was a much easier and less expensive method in this case. The obvious downside to this method is the risk of puncturing the tubing with fasteners. I took a lot of pictures of the assembly and documented the pex locations so if we ever need to hang a picture on the wall, I'll know where not to pound a nail!

Night lights

2009-12-09T22:38:00.000-06:00

The lack of light pollution is generally welcomed in our rural setting, except when trying to walk around the yard in the middle of the night. Without moonlight (or a flashlight), it is black. Some landscape lighting was in order, so I dabbled with a couple versions of solar lights during the summer. They were all dismal in performance, providing little more than a flicker for a few hours after dusk. What we need is reliable pathway lighting strong enough to get our guests from building to building without wandering into the woods or falling into random barn foundations (which happen to be located smack dab in the middle of our yard). Fortunately I found a low-voltage lighting kit on clearance (80% off!), which had everything we needed for the job. With winter almost here, I scrambled to build some mounting posts that would elevate the lights above the snow cover we're about to get. I built a dozen posts from some cedar barn timbers, boring holes in the top for the lights to press in to: I set them up along the path from the house to the barn, and piled field stone around each post to hold them in place. This started out as a temporary fix to get us safely through the winter, but we think they look good enough to be permanent.

The light kit came with a programmable timer and 20W halogen lights, which meant our 11 lights were putting out 220 watts for several hours every night. That's crazy! I replaced them all with 2W LED lights, which are working just as well and cut the power consumption by 90%.

December Salad.

2009-12-09T08:54:00.003-06:00

One of my gardening goals this year was to pick a fresh salad out of the yard in December, and we barely made it! I planted a fall crop of carrots, chard, mustard greens, spinach and lettuce in September- a little later than I should've, but most of it grew to an edible form. Protected by the cold frames covering a raised bed garden, they survived the frosty weather into the winter. Last week, we enjoyed our last fresh salad of the year- a variety of greens, radish, carrot and tomato (picked green in september and ripened in our basement). Then the true Minnesota cold moved in and took the rest- here is the remaining lettuce breathing its last breath. Next season I hope to pipe solar-heated water under the beds to extend the season a little further...

The kitchen takes shape.

2009-11-29T09:36:00.004-06:00

With all the 'winter preparedness' tasks completed outside, I've been able to spend more time working in the barn lately. The kitchen is the focus right now, although I always seem to have several big projects going at the same time. We purchased new appliances during the summer, so I would know exact sizes/locations before starting to build anything. I made the cabinets from 3/4" Skyblend particle board- an FSC-certified, formaldehyde-free material we got from Certified Wood Products. The cabinet fronts and timber posts were milled from our old barn beams. The horizontal paneling is 30 year-old material I found at an estate sale (this is the leftovers from the hayloft flooring project in July). With help from Lisa and my mom, we got everything painted and put back in place.

This paneled wall that hides the cabinet backs will support a pine bar top (still working on that, though). The opening on the left provides access to the utility lines that come up through the slab under the cabinets).

I also finished the ceiling by attaching drywall to the subfloor in each joist bay, leaving the timbers exposed from below. We painted it with Bioshield clay paint to match the walls. Time to build some countertops!

On The Run

2009-11-01T16:17:00.014-06:00

We took time away this fall to play a little. In early October we went to the cities and we both completed the Twin Cities Marathon. It was a little chilly, but a good day to run. It was my first long distance run and my goal was to just finish. This was Shawn's 2nd marathon of the summer and he set out to run under 3 hours and to qualify for the Boston Marathon. All goals attained!

No pain here! Oh, the pain! I think I can, I think I can... After passing our cheering section...

and a little pep talk from my sister... I did it!

Last weekend, we went to Door County, WI where Shawn did the Fall 50.

Yes, the 50 means 50 miles. It was an absolutely gorgeous course. The leaves were still brilliant and it was mostly on sparse roads next to the water. I was signed up to do the race as a team, but got sick that week and was unable to run. Luckily, I had a very understanding team that did very well without their 5th person. So, instead I was able to follow Shawn. He did terrific! Made it look very easy!

Rounding the corner to the finish line!

He did it!

The hen house.

2009-10-26T08:59:00.007-05:00

Winter is coming! We got our first accumulation of snow in early October and the girls did NOT like it. They wouldn't come out of their portable coop until it all melted later that day, so I knew it was time to get crackin' on their winter coop.

When I built our second wood shelter earlier this summer, I left a space between it and the first one. I wish I could say this area was intentionally designed for a chicken coop, but I wasn't even thinking about it at the time. Nevertheless, it seemed like an good spot to build- it is close to the house and we'd have easy access to it all winter without having to shovel paths through the snow. I could use the corner posts of the sheds to support the coop framing, and the wood piles on either side would provide some wind protection. Plus, there's plenty of field on the back side for the chickens to free-range.

Here's the finished product on moving day (I finished just as another batch of snow was falling).

Because of the orientation of the wood sheds to one another, the coop is shaped like a trapezoid. The raised roof line provided a little more headroom and allowed me to blend the three structures together without too much difficulty. Other than the pressure treated lumber I purchased for the floor framing, the entire coop was built with salvaged wood from the other buildings we have deconstructed on the farm (and whatever I can pull out of the debris piles at our local landfill!).The two little doors on the front provide access to the nest boxes, so we can gather eggs without going inside. All the doors were built with foam board interiors, and weatherstripped to keep the cold drafts off the chickens.

The walls were insulated with fiberglass batting and foam board, then covered with salvaged barn boards. The roosting bars are round floor joists from one of the barns, and the chickens know just what to do with them. I put a window (actually, I sandwiched together three old storm windows to make one triple-paned version) on the south wall so they can spend the winter watching the snow pile up outside. I also trenched a power line to the coop and installed lights, a heat lamp, and an outlet so we can use a heated water dish this winter.

On the back side of the coop, I built a sky walk that leads to their new 'run'. With it up off the ground, we won't have to deal with snow shoveling or roof runoff. The side door is to let them outside to free range when we are around.

We decided to spend a little money for enough wire hardware cloth to fence in their run. We buried the fencing a foot deep and piled field stone around the perimeter so the predators can't dig their way in. I also covered the top and framed in a hinged access door so we can get inside when necessary.

It was a lot of work, but at least now we know the kids are safe and comfy for the winter. Besides, we owe it to them since they make us breakfast every morning!

Chainsaws...not just for firewood anymore.

2009-10-17T18:41:00.006-05:00

Some very old maple trees harvested from city property found their way to our yard recently, and I had to figure out what to do with them. At nearly 3 feet in diameter, they were far too big for our sawmill and too heavy to move. Cutting them into firewood would be criminal. So after a little research, I invested in a used pro-sized chainsaw and an attachment called an "Alaskan Mill", which combine to make a simple, portable sawmill. The Alaskan Mill has been around for decades- I remember seeing their ads in Mother Earth News magazine when I was a kid and thinking they were cool. I never thought I'd actually own one someday, but then I never expected to be building a barn at the North Pole, either. So, today I went to work on one of the smaller logs (!). I started by screwing an aluminum ladder to the log to guide my first cut across the top. It worked great, leaving me with a surprising flat, smooth surface. With the ladder removed, I set the mill for a 3" cut and started making slabs. The excitement dwindled after about an hour when my forearms were burning and I was getting dizzy from the chainsaw's exhaust. These slabs will be used for stair treads in the barn, as well as some table tops and who-knows-what-else. It took me all afternoon to whittle one log down into 16" square timber- just small enough to fit onto the Hudson sawmill where I can finish the cutting without so much effort. I've got six more logs to go, so looks like this will become a winter project...

The factory tour.

2009-08-27T14:19:00.010-05:00

Here's some photos of our solar-powered sugar factory as we approach the harvest season: Five of our six-member Fertilization Department took a pause in their busy day for a company photo: While Lisa's family was here for a visit, we made an very important discovery: small tomato plants appear much larger when photographed next to a 2 year-old: and who says kids don't like vegetables...

Oh, and the egg-citing news around here is that the chickens have been slowly ramping up their production...we now get 2-3 eggs for breakfast every morning:

Life is good!

Wildflowers

2009-08-26T20:18:00.004-05:00

After tearing down the old pumphouse, we decided to leave it's foundation in the ground and use it as a flowerbed. I built a little shelter to cover the well casing, and some steps with the leftover slate flagstones. I put in some fresh soil and Lisa planted wildflower seeds in June, then we waited to see what would happen. After they grew up, she filled in with some purchased perennials as well as transplants from around our property. The view from both directions is definately improving!

A heat wave, and how we beat it.

2009-08-15T15:52:00.008-05:00

About 70 years ago, a channel was dug to divert water from a nearby open-pit iron mine. From the pictures we have seen, it was a project of epic proportions that pretty much desecrated the land in its path. Unfortunately that path went right through the farmstead that we now call home, splitting the field in two and no doubt leaving behind quite a mess.

But that was then, and Nature has an incredible way of winning back her territory. Today, we are gifted with a beautiful 'river' that is just a stones-throw from the barn. With lakes in either direction, it is a perfect starting point for some local paddling adventures. We've also found it to be a great place to sit and watch the world go by on a hot summer day.

Here's to enjoying summer!

Authentic travel.

2009-08-07T11:39:00.003-05:00

We are excited to have been listed on Green routes, a guide to help eco-conscious travelers find one-of-a-kind places to eat, play, shop, sleep, and learn. We're the very first destination for the iron range area of northern Minnesota, but we plan to help other local businesses join us soon. Check it out next time you are planning a trip!

Overburden.

2009-08-02T11:12:00.004-05:00

The mild weather (is it really summer?) has been great and I've taken advantage of it by finishing off some outdoor projects this week. The big job was to extend the urbanite pathway that I started building last fall (I ran out of concrete chunks and ambition at about the same time, so put it off for a season). Instead of collecting more urbanite, I stumbled across a local source for slate flagstone to use instead. This material is overburden from the nearby iron mining operations- basically the surface material that must be excavated to get to the iron-rich ore below. A company has set up shop only 2 miles from Green Gate, splitting the slate boulders into various sizes of slabs for landscaping projects. We got a few crates like this:

With the larger pieces pushing 200 pounds each, I stood no chance of moving them by hand. So, I bought a 2-wheeled dolly and used it to transport and position each stone in its new home (this worked great!). I filled in the remainder of the site with some hardwood bark mulch. The finished path, including a little buggy-bench sitting area, turned out like this:

Next year we'll plant some greenery....

Smart chickens.

2009-07-17T17:58:00.002-05:00

Not only have they managed to survive outside for two months (shattering the previous record by...two months), but our chickens suddenly learned to fly... ...and they've invited, albeit cautiously, some new friends over to play in their sandbox.Now if they would just make us some eggs!

The new barn gets an old floor.

2009-07-11T11:20:00.008-05:00

I had intended to mill the wood flooring from our salvaged barn timbers, but that was before I found the deal-of-the-century at a local estate sale. I lucked into some wide plank paneling that had been drying in an old-timer's shed for 30 years. These were all 'character' boards, complete with the knots, staining and wormholes that tell a much more interesting story than flawless premium lumber. They look right at home in the rustic barn. By installing them upside down, the square edges were up, and it looks just like regular flooring. I was able to get enough to do the whole loft of the barn for about 25 cents per square foot! After two days of planing and shimming to get the timber floor joists leveled, I put down 3/4" plywood subfloor using screws and Mean Green Adhesive, followed by a soundbarrier layer of Homasote 440, then finally the plank flooring. The board widths varied from 6" to 11", so I alternated each row between narrow and wide boards. I toenailed them with a finishing nailer just to hold them in place for now. Here is the rough product:After the whole floor was down, I went back and face-screwed through all the boards and into the joists. Then, plugged the counterbored screwholes with 1/2" mahogany plugs. Finally, rented a floor sander to clean and smooth out the surface, then applied 3 coats of shellac (diluted 2:1 with denatured alcohol). Here is the finished product: And a close-up of the plugged holes. The darker mahogany is a nice contrast to the lighter pine boards:

Goodbye greenhouse.

2009-07-07T08:29:00.008-05:00

We had a greenhouse along the edge of our field. Built a half-century ago, it started out as an impressive structure with glass walls and a nice barrel stove inside. At some point the glass was replaced with fiberglass panels, which eventually weakened and started caving in. Had I intervened 7 years ago when I bought the farm, it might've been salvageable. But I was more interested in working on the house back then (heat, running water and a dry roof all seemed like higher priorities at the time). ...So we emptied it out and tore it down, saving whatever lumber was still solid. All that remains is the foundation and the old barrel stove, still ready for business. I put the lumber scraps to work immediately, framing in a shelter for our rainwater tanks. Here's a closeup of the plumbing. The garden hose at the bottom is the where the water feeds into the containers from the rain barrels around the barn. The rest of the system is plumbed with 2" plastic pipe, and attached to the tanks with Fernco flexible couplings. I covered it with leftover siding from the barn, and some salvaged metal roofing (the entire roof is actually a separate, removable framework so I can access the tanks from the top if necessary). The wood was all treated with Lifetime Wood Treatment, a new product we are trying around the farm.

Hot sun and cool ideas at the MREA fair

2009-06-28T05:42:00.000-05:00

Lisa and I attended the Midwest Renewable Energy Association Fair in Custer Wisconsin this past weekend. This is an annual event that began 20 years ago for the hardcore solar power enthusiasts, but has since diversified into "all things sustainable." With hundreds of workshops and exhibitors (not to mention AWESOME food and live music venues), there is definitely something for everyone here. We took in all three days, learning about everything from medicinal herbs to straw bale construction to bio diesel engine conversions...lots of ideas to keep us busy back at Green Gate! Here are a few pics. Note the solar panels and wind towers in the background. Here is the alternative fuel/vehicle area. They had a variety of rigs converted to electric, veggie oil, bio diesel, etc.

I, of course, spent a lot of time in the natural construction area, where they were demonstrating straw bale, cord wood, straw-clay, earth block, and whole tree methods...

...Our next guest house is already taking shape in my mind.

Back inside the barn.

2009-06-26T12:43:00.005-05:00

The last task prior to the upper floor installation was to frame off the stairwell. For this I installed a 4X10 header, supported by a post on one end and the ledger/joist at the other. I also added a center post, which seemed more aesthetically pleasing and will provide a sturdy attachment point for the future stair railing. The floor joists were notched and set into the mortised header. I used a housed mortise where the header met the post for additional strength. It also looks cool! A pair of angle iron pieces (dug out of a friend's pile of scrap iron) and some huge bolts connect the header to the wall- the only mechanical fasteners used in the timber joinery. finally, ready to put in a floor...

Project no-mow.

2009-06-15T17:39:00.006-05:00

I do not like mowing the lawn. Ours is actually more of a weed and dandelion patch than it is grass, and requires considerably more care and attention than either of us want to give. And this is unfortunate, because we have quite a lot of it. So in conjunction with our gardening effort, we are aiming to get rid of as much of the lawn as possible- what we don't turn into vegetable and flower gardens will eventually get converted to no-mow turf or wildflowers... and yes, this will definitely be a long term project. We started last week by renting a "sod cutter" from our local hardware store. This machine quickly became my new best friend, and by the end of one afternoon a big chunk of the yard had evaporated. After putting down some fresh soil, Lisa got to work planting all the vegetables that have been growing in our house for the past 2 months. In this photo, she is working on squash, zucchini, cukes, and THIRTY SIX tomato plants (this is not a typo, the girl likes her 'maters). Our sod removal project continued up to and around the old pump house foundation. On this end of the new garden space, I put in raised beds (made from cedar slabs given to us by our local sawyer friend) and surrounded them with wood chip mulch. Then we planted them with every vegetable we could think of, and a few we've never heard of (anyone tried claytonia?).Yum.

And the Deer Will Play...

2009-06-15T10:37:00.005-05:00

What... ...the garden is finished?

Wahoo!

Dinnertime!!!

Let it rain.

2009-05-31T12:04:00.008-05:00

With showers in the forecast, I installed the remainder of the rainwater collection system so we could see it in action. As I worked on this project last summer, I was stuck with the dilemma of how to divert the snow melt away from the rain barrels during the winter months (there are several diverters on the market, but they are expensive and none of them were compatible with my design or our over sized classic round downspouts). But while browsing at Menards recently, I found some flexible downspout adapters and knew they would do the trick. They were only $7 each, so I got 4 of them and went to work. First, I dug a trench along the foundation wall and buried a section of 3" DWV pipe with inlet stub outs at each rain barrel location. The outlet of this pipe terminated at grade (in the forefront of the photo below) and was covered with a cap that I drilled several small holes in. Then I installed the Galvalume gutter downspouts to the walls of the barn, terminating each one a foot or so above the height of the rain barrel. A white flexible downspout adapter was then attached to each gutter downspout and bent in the direction of the rain barrel inlet. In the Fall, I can simply extend the flexible adapter down to the in-ground drainpipe stub out to divert the snow melt around the rain barrel and away from the barn foundation. The next photo shows the two collection barrels on the south side. Holes were tapped on the bottom of each and fitted with 2" irrigation pipe and shutoff valves. Each barrel is plumbed in series to a common irrigation pipe that travels around the perimeter of the building (you can see the black pipe on the ground between the two barrels, which will eventually be covered with wood chip mulch). Eventually this "trunk" line will extend about 100 feet towards our vegetable garden and connect with larger capacity storage tanks, but I cannot complete that until we finish some site excavation this summer. So just to get the system up and running, I setup the storage tanks nearby and connected them to the rain barrels with an ordinary garden hose. This was done by tapping a hose bib into the bottom of one of the rain barrels and running a garden hose from it... ...to the storage tanks about 20 feet away, as shown below. The garden hose was adapted back to the 2" irrigation pipe fittings which connect the two large storage tanks to one another. These storage tanks are 250 gallons each, so together with the four collector barrels we have about 700 gallons of capacity. There is room on the stand for a third tank in case we want more capacity. The vertical section of pipe to the right of the barrel is the overflow for the entire system- when the water level reaches max capacity, it can spill out of the vertical pipe and drain back into the ground. It had already rained for awhile when this photo was taken, and you can see the water level rising (it had collected 200 gallons in a short time). Here is the south view of the system. There are two more rain barrels on the north side of the barn, connected to these via the 2" irrigation pipe. Since I installed all of the rain barrels and the storage tanks at the same elevation, the entire system will fill and discharge at the same rate, using gravity. No well, no pump, no electricity required- just rainfall and gravity! When building the gardens last summer, I installed a branch line that tee'd off the irrigation pipe with a stub out terminating inside each raised bed garden. With the system now ready for water, I clamped hose bibs to each stub out and laid down a short length of soaker hose. Our gardens can be watered anytime with a just twist of the hand valve :) I will still need to cover the large storage tanks to protect them from sunlight (which can allow algae growth), but for now we can see the system works. The rain barrels are opaque, so they will not need to be covered. Since I often see single 55 gallon rain barrels advertised for over $100 each, I am happy to say our entire system only cost about $400, which includes all 6 of the recycled tanks and barrels (bought off Craigslist), and all the pipe fittings, clamps, valves and paint. For another $50, we can add another large storage tank and have about 1000 gallons of total capacity. I built this system around the irrigation pipe because I had most of what I needed lying in the field from the previous owners. But the fittings, clamps and valves for this large pipe got to be very expensive and I could've simplified the system and reduced the price by about 1/3 by designing it differently...ahhh, the cost of R&D!

Our Website

2009-05-25T22:45:00.006-05:00

Our website is up and running. We are very excited! It was designed by Jennifer Gordon of Idun Design. She is excellent to work with, very creative. It's official! Check it out and let us know what you think!

Moving Day.

2009-05-22T22:03:00.009-05:00

Back in 2003, my first attempt at chicken-rearing was a dismal failure. After raising the little chicks inside the house, I moved them out to one of the barns where I had fashioned a nice little coop for them with some 2x4s and chicken wire. The chickens looked content in their new home, until a weasel got in a few hours later. The death toll included all the chickens and the weasel, and I suddenly became a Norwegian bachelor farmer with no farm animals. Trust me, dead chickens are not much fun. Hoping to increase their life expectancy this time, I made the chickens a new and improved portable coop. They get a sheltered area up above for roosting and laying, and a screened-in space on the ground where they can pick for food all day long. It's not as good as free-ranging, but hopefully it will keep them alive beyond our previous record of 3 hours! Here are the photos from moving day. The side panels are removable so we can clean the roosting area. The nesting boxes on either end are accessible via hinged doors. I also made a little ramp that can be raised and lowered from the outside via a rope and pulley system...pretty slick, and I built the whole contraption using reclaimed barn boards from last weeks deconstruction project. Getting the lay of the land. Here's Lisa teaching them what a door is all about... But you know how kids are- they insisted on doing it "their way": Finally...they figured it out on their own.

More unbuilding happens

2009-05-12T07:55:00.005-05:00

Our five-year plan includes deconstructing one structure each year- We took apart the big barn in '07, the pumphouse last summer, so 2009 called for the other barn to be put to rest. With the help of family and friends, we dismantled the whole building in a refreshingly quick 3 days...if only all my projects could go this well.

So here's how it looked just before the prybars and sledgehammers came out:

Day 1- removing shingles (there were 3 layers) and roof boards:

By the end of day 2, only the brittle skeleton remained...

...and we were happy about that:

Day 3 involved knocking down the walls and pulling apart the timbers, saving what we could for later use:

In the end, we're left with a crumbly foundation and a much improved view of the new barn:

Growth happens.

2009-05-06T22:28:00.003-05:00

With a little heat and alot of light, our seeds sprouted and took right off. After a week, we were transplanting them into larger pots. Note the wire cover on the chicken box- the little girls learned how to fly on day #2, and had to be restrained! When you remove the chicken wire, they do this:

They love to fly up to the ledge and see what's outside, but none have gotten up the nerve to leave home just yet.

Our cucumber plants on the heat mat, growing at about the same rate as the chickens.

Earth Day, every day.

2009-04-22T21:11:00.005-05:00

After several years of dabbling with the simpler life (actually, being whipped and beaten by it), Lisa and I decided to put forth a more serious effort at growing our own food this season. Purely by coincidence, we kicked off our "keepin' it local" project on Earth Day by picking up our first batch of chicks. We got six little peepers, half of them Brown Leghorns and the other half Gold Star Browns. The photo below was taken at naptime...they often segregate, but can also play nice when they are all awake. We also started a variety of seeds for our expanded garden. I built a stand for the seed trays, complete with grow lights (which we found out in the barn) and heated pan underneath. The heat lamp for the chicks also seems to be keeping the seed trays warmer too. We have all this setup in our office/guest bedroom, which is now the warmest room in the house and smells like pine shavings...happy Earth Day!

3 granola bars, 2 water bottles, and a passport.

2009-04-10T12:20:00.005-05:00

The die-hards around here know that the best time of year starts after most of us have shoved our skis in the basement closet. Its called crust-skiing, and I was fortunate to get an invite to make a loop across several lakes in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area along the US-Canadian border near Ely. Over a smooth layer of packed snow, it was a day of fast, blissful, wide-open skiing, with occasional stops for photos, portages (we had to walk them), and snacks. A cool rock on Moose Lake.

Elton, the speck on the shoreline, making a run (er, ski) for the border.

Some rapids along one of our several portages...walk across this log and you're in Canada.

Refueling stop, somewhere on Basswood Lake. 30-something degrees and sunny...what a way to cap off the 2009 ski season!

A fine mistake.

2009-04-07T17:37:00.006-05:00

When designing the floor plan, I allowed enough space to build a simple L-shaped staircase in the corner of the barn. Despite my compulsive tendency to check my calculations repeatedly, somehow I made a critical error- When it came time to build the staircase, I didn't have the space needed and didn't want to cut through floor joists to make up the deficit. To further complicate the design, I needed the steps to move away from the wall to allow adequate headroom when you reach the top landing (where the arched ceiling meets the knee wall). So, my original design was thrown out and I started sketching layouts that might fit in the space, meet building code requirements, and satisfy the headroom issues at the top landing. After a couple days of drawing various scenarios, the only good way to solve both problems seemed to be a winding staircase with a dual radius. A sharp curve near the bottom would turn the corner in the least amount of linear space and a more gradual sweep along the upper section would gradually drift away from the wall to provide the needed headroom at the top. But how to build it?Conventional stair building methods (using stringers) wouldn't work with my curved design, so I decided to support the staircase with a stud wall on the inside and ledger boards, attached to the building's wall, on the outside. I established the path of the steps by tracing out the radii on pieces of plywood, then laminating them to some treated boards that would form the sill plate of the stud wall. This assembly, which looked strikingly similar to the Nike Swoosh (maybe my subconscious would rather be out trail running...), was anchored to the foundation with concrete screws.

I'm one of the few people that goes shopping at the dump. Last summer, I amassed a sizable collection of reclaimed lumber by scrounging through the demolition pile at our local landfill. Most of what I usually find are shorter length boards perfect for a project like this one, so I was able to frame almost the entire staircase using somebody else's trash.

I needed to terminate my stud wall before reaching the top, as it was encroaching on the yellow brick road below. So I cut stringers to support the final two steps. This also allowed enough headroom to frame in a standard sized door so we can use the area underneath the steps for a storage closet. I had enough cutoffs from my previous drywalling projects to skin the whole stud wall without having to buy any new material. Here is a sneak peek at the roughed-in stairs. Eventually I will install thick pine slabs for the treads and build a nice curving handrail and skirting, but for now it is usable- no more ladder climbing to get to the second story!

Still on the skinny skis

2009-03-24T14:36:00.003-05:00

For most of the frigid winter, it is best to 'time' your ski workouts for the warmest part of the day. Then comes March... Ahhh, March. Longer days, abundant snow, and warmer temps- so much warmer that now it pays to get out there at dawn before the sun turns the trails to mush. And if you're lucky, the groomer just laid down fresh cords.

The view from the top of the alpine runs.Admittedly these pics were taken on a frosty morning about a week ago, before we got several days of rain. But with more snow in the forecast this week, we could be back in business for a little while longer.

Full circle.

2009-03-24T13:58:00.003-05:00

The last wall went up today. This is the corner where the staircase will someday carry guests to the upper floor. Yeah, someday. I put in the top beam just to hold the posts in place and see how it looks. Once the flooring is installed in the haymow, I can continue with the second level of timbers.

If you're following the progress, then you're likely bored with the timber framing photos. Now that i've circumnavigated the barn with posts and beams, it's time to put down the chisel, sweep up the shavings and move on to something different for awhile.

The south wall.

2009-03-22T13:23:00.003-05:00

With the walls and one of the cornerposts already fixed in place, this one was the trickiest. But I'm getting the hang of timber framing and the process is getting much easier with experience.

The beam spans about 28 feet, supported by the 5 posts centered between the windows.

My longest timbers won't span the room, so I had to splice two shorter beams over the center support post. Normally, a "scarf" joint would be used here, due to its greater strength. Since it wasn't necessary here (AND since I didn't feel confident that I could cut my first scarf joint without destroying several timbers), I opted to go with a simple lap joint.

Puttin' up the big beam.

2009-03-15T18:59:00.003-05:00

Wall #2, test fit on the ground: With Lisa's help, the big beam was hoisted into place one end at a time and temporarily suspended by ropes and ratchet straps. Posts installed:

Pegged together at the joints. Everything fit great!

March in Northern Minnesota

2009-03-13T12:08:00.006-05:00

While the rest of the country is looking forward to spring thaw, we are gearing up for March snow. It can be the prettiest time of year. It also prolongs the ski season.

I use a sled to haul the firewood into the house. During the latest snowstorm on Tuesday, I couldn't seem to find the sled... ............Found it!

Shawn was in Duluth on Tuesday and our friend who plows the driveway is in

Mexico. Being afraid that my car would not be able to make it, I parked at the end

of the driveway and walked in. Shawn made a path for me with his truck when he got

home. The car made it in just fine, thanks to Shawn's fine tracking job.

Measure sixteen times...cut once.

2009-03-09T20:06:00.007-05:00

Due to my novice timberframing skills, it takes the better part of a day to mill, plane, measure, scribe, cut and fit a single timber. This is a craft of precision- joints should be cut within tolerances of 1/16" tops- anything more and you're making firewood. It's definately a job well suited for perfectionists, so I'm slowing down (yes, apparently it *is* possible for me to work even slower than before), finding my zen and "becoming one with the wood." Over the course of several days, I completed the first section of one wall- 5 posts and a beam that frame the faux barn door opening and end joist for the second story floor. After a little fine tuning with the chisel to get it all to fit, I pinned all the pieces except for the outermost posts. With the end posts still loose, the whole assembly (called a "bent" in the timberframer's world) can be tilted away from the wall so I can patch and paint the remaining exposed drywall seams before fastening everything to the stud wall.

The posts continue up into the second story, terminating at the top of the knee wall, ready to accept a top plate and another course of timbers that will extend up to the ceiling. One wall down, three more to go....

Minnesota, without the bugs.

2009-03-04T17:45:00.005-06:00

Lisa and I jetted down to Mexico for our Yucatan honeymoon last week. We started out in Tulum, biking and baking on the beach for a couple days.

Then we detoured off the 'gringo trail' and worked our way down the coast to the town of Bacalar, just short of the Belize border. The quiet little town overlooks Laguna Bacalar, a 30 mile long freshwater lake that was a piece of heaven.

We stayed at a cozy little resort at the edge of town and right on the water.

We found a tandem kayak to paddled across the lake so we could explore the endless supply of uninhabited mangroves and beaches.

With a week of sun, sand and all the fresh food we could eat, we are back home to reality (frozen lakes and long underwear). Back to work...

My first joint.

2009-02-22T15:14:00.004-06:00

After considerable delay, I've finally dug into the timber framing this week. I hoped to have all this done before the wedding a month ago, until I discovered the pile of timbers that were milled and planed last fall had bowed and twisted as they dried...so I had to take a step back and decide how to fix them. Lesson #1 in timber framing- cut all your wood oversized if you don't plan to use it "green", so that you can true them up once dry. In my case, I altered the plans to use smaller timbers and slightly different joinery methods, then ran them back through the sawmill to make them square again. Starting with just 3 timbers to see how it would go, I cut the joinery for a barn door header and support posts that will go on the east wall.

After a little 'tweaking" with the chisel, they fit together tight on the ground, so I put them up and pegged the joints with oak dowels.

My first mortise-and-tenon joint...a good fit:

My cubicle.

2009-02-17T23:12:00.005-06:00

Ran into some problems with the next couple projects, which has forced me back to the drawing board for awhile. So, I arranged a nice little office space in the barn, right next to the pellet stove of course- I get all the tea I can drink, great radio stations, private bathroom, and a multi-window view out of my 600+ square foot "office"...and my commute takes only about 30 seconds at a brisk walk. Did i mention the ski trails out the back door? Now, if only I could pull a salary for this gig.

Housework

2009-02-08T21:49:00.004-06:00

Needing a little break from the barn, I decided to dig into insulating the basement of our house- a project I've been putting off for several years now. The first step was to insulate and air seal the rim joist. But first I had to tear out the existing material, which was tightly-packed fiberglass insulation covered with rockwool insulation boards covered with 1X8 wood boards, all the way around the perimeter of the basement ceiling. Those old farmers did an outstanding job of precisely fitting every piece and securely fastening the cover boards with what felt like barn spikes when trying to remove them...perhaps this was the best craftsmanship in the entire house! Every so often, I was 'gifted' with a mouse nest or ladybug colony just to keep it real. Definitely not the glory job, but important nonetheless. Once the history was removed, I insulated the empty rim joist spaces using leftover pieces of XPS from the barn project, then air sealed the edges using spray foam. Stopping all the air leakage alone made a dramatic difference in the basement temperature as well as the floor temp upstairs- if I had known how much cold air was sneaking in through the rim joist, I'd have tackled this a long time ago... Next, i cleared everything off the concrete foundation walls and put down a sill board spaced off the floor with strips of 2" EPS foam. A top plate was screwed to the ceiling joists above.

Next, sheets of 2" EPS foam were adhered to the wall with spray foam and a stud wall was built inside of it. (I used EPS here for its vapor permeance, to dry out any moisture that may come through the foundation and prevent any possibility of mold). I worked on a 4 ft. section at a time, and short cutoffs were screwed horizontally to the stud wall to temporarily hold the EPS in place while the spray foam cured. All the joints were sealed with additional spray foam, so that no air can get behind the EPS and form condensation. Finally, done for now. Eventually, we will add blown-in cellulose to the stud cavities then cover the works with drywall...but for now, I've got my workout room back (and it's a lot warmer down there!).

Our deep winter wedding

2009-01-31T18:31:00.010-06:00

After a long engagement, Lisa and I finally set a wedding date last summer. Neither of us wanted a 'typical' wedding (in theme or in cost), and we felt we could put together something romantic and unique for our special day, without driving ourselves into deep debt. We knew the barn would not be finished by January, but it would be far enough along to provide an intimate venue right here in our back yard. Thanks to the collective efforts of our families and friends, we turned the place into a fine little wedding chapel for one day. My original plan was to have the staircase and 2nd story flooring installed so that we could hold the ceremony on the upper floor and the reception on the main level. But delays and difficulties prevented it, so we shifted to "plan B". After painting the arched ceiling above and mounting the ceiling fans, we removed the plywood subfloor to give the building a cathedral feel. We also strung some LED Christmas lights from the fans and wrapped them around the massive exposed timbers. The silo was outfitted with our friends' leftover christmas tree and decorated with a variety of homemade treasures.

Our only 'splurge' item for the wedding was to hire a professional photographer, and she did a fantastic job capturing the event (even though the pics can never do it justice). We took some outdoor photos before it got dark...wearing our mukluks, of course.

With all my lumber, tools and sawdust removed, Lisa and company did an amazing job of bringing the barn to life.

After the wedding ceremony was over, we set up for dinner and enjoyed a fine ethnic meal, music and socializing without having to leave the barn (which was nice, since it was another cold day in northern Minnesota). The day was magical, and we couldn't have enjoyed our wedding more! Lisa is posting more details at http://www.lisaandshawnwedding.blogspot.com so you can go there to see it all.

Betty Crocker would be proud.

2009-01-20T10:19:00.003-06:00

Last year, our parents gave us an antique oven that sits on top of the woodstove. The heat from the stove radiates through the open bottom of the oven, and the temp is regulated by how much wood we put in the stove. There is a thermometer inside to let you know how warm it is getting. It isn't very large, but we can fit our smaller baking dishes inside. This morning, we cranked out a couple batches of gluten-free banana walnut muffins for breakfast. Yum!

A barn bathroom.

2009-01-16T14:12:00.002-06:00

I hussled hard to finish the bathroom for a family gathering we are having this weekend. One room in the barn is basically DONE, and we like it! I salvaged and reused as much material as I could- the lights are vintage pieces that I rewired with new parts. The mirror glass came out of an old piece found in the garage (I made a new frame for it with barnboards). The vanity was a $25 garage sale find that I had to refinish to bring it back to life. the sink and toilet were purchased new. all of the woodwork/trim came from the old barn timbers, milled into boards with our backyard sawmill. After considerable research (I have probably spent far more time researching toilet performance than most people spend looking for a new car), we decided to go with a Caroma Sydney Smart dual flush toilet. This is probably the lowest water usage model on the market (not counting composting toilets, of course). Hopefully it will perform as expected... Future plans call for a japanese soaking tub in the corner of the room, but it will be a year or two before I get to that. So for now, I built a little storage chest (from leftover lumber scraps) to cover the plumbing stubs and fill the space. The woodsy floral arrangements are Lisa's handiwork. A friend helped me build the barn-style doors for the bathroom entry and the utility closet (this one is actually a pocket door) using wood that I milled from the old barn timbers. The crossmembers were given an oak-colored stain for aesthetics.

How does it look?

Hot water.

2009-01-15T06:08:00.003-06:00

Reinventing the wheel is sometimes a good thing- like with tanked hot water heaters. I am not a fan of tankless water heaters (they are either terribly inefficient or prohibitively expensive) and I wanted to have a storage tank so that we could add solar-heated water as a future project. However, traditional tanked water heaters are usually poorly insulated and have a limited lifespan (I hate seeing the pile of hot water heaters at our local landfill). There are some well-built models on the market, but they are crazy expensive. Then I found the HH20 water heater (www.howardharrisbuilders.com) and just installed ours this week. While it looks like the same old tanked water heater, it actually uses a heater exchanger (the finned copper coil) to transfer heat from the tank to the plumbing. Since this design keeps the water in the tank separated from the water you actually use, the tank is not pressurized and (in theory) should never burst or leak. So the unit can be built inexpensively using a plastic tank and 2.5" thick insulated walls- very efficient and very durable.

Once the lid is put on, a single 3500W electric heating element extends down the center of the coil to heat the tank water. We also purchased a heat pump retrofit kit (www.airgenerate.com), which will be installed in the spring so that we can heat the water more efficiently and use the exhaust air for home cooling...more on that later. Since the tank is not pressurized, I can also modify it to accept solar heated water when we get to that phase in the future. We paid $350 for the heater- a little more than buying a conventional tanked electric heater, but a great price for the benefits of this design.

Energy Independence

2009-01-05T09:11:00.005-06:00

After running for about a month, the electric boiler in the barn failed- three times. It started with a problem in the circuit board that caused it to stop working on the coldest night of the year (as the temp bottomed out at -32F). But not to worry, we have the wood pellet stove that can put out more than enough BTUs to keep the building toasty warm on the coldest of cold days. Not knowing how long the boiler would out of commission, I went to town to get a supply of wood pellets. Ironically, the dealer was out-of-stock! One of their suppliers couldn't keep up with demand, and the other had shutdown due to a fire at their manufacturing plant (I'm guessing a wood pellet plant is NOT a good place to have a fire!). Bummer for them. And bummer for us, as we were nearly out of fuel and the weather has been C-O-L-D. Luckily, I was able to debug the boiler's problem with some help from the the manufacturer over the phone and get it running again. A week later, one of the two heating elements blew out, followed shortly by the second one doing the same. As luck would have it, though, the wood pellets were back in stock locally and so we had the pellet stove to fall back on once again. As I wait for replacement parts to be shipped up here to the North Pole, the nightly temps frequent the well-below-zero mark (last night was -28F)...all this leaves me thinking, even more than usual, about just how much we rely on our fuel source and how little we understand about them. In sub-zero weather, the argument is really no longer about global climate change or monthly energy costs, even though these are big issues. The bottom line is really about survival- how long could we stay alive in the dead of winter if the gas stopped flowing or the power plants shut down? It hurts to think about it, but I do. Alot. Really, shouldn't we all? With all the troubles I am having in the barn, it is nice to know that our house, 200 feet away, is about as energy-independent as we can be right now. One out of two ain't bad! Even though I may complain at times about preparing firewood every year, I couldn't be more thankful that we have this as our one and only source of free, local and sustainable heat. "He who cuts his own wood is twice warmed"...amen to that.

Finally, some visible progress.

2008-12-24T08:00:00.007-06:00

When I have the rare opportunity to get out in public and converse with other humans, I usually get asked, "are you done with that barn/guesthouse/Bed & Breakfast thing yet?" Almost embarrassingly (because I've been working on it for a year and a half now), I have to reply "not yet." The other day somebody followed up my usual response with "...well, what's taking so long?!" Around the time of this most recent encounter, my days- and sometime nights- were being occupied with the sawmill and planer, turning the old timbers into useful lumber in below-zero weather. Even though there is a perfectly good lumber yard only 3 miles from home, I prefer to do it the hard, but meaningful way. Since construction has long since gone the route of mass-produced cookie cutter "houses", it is hard for most people to understand why the process should take longer than a few months anymore. I saw a quote once that read something like "houses shelter the body, but architecture shelters the soul." So we are aiming for good architecture, no matter how long it takes. In preparation for the interior trimwork, Lisa put the final coat of paint on the walls. We choose a soft, antique white Bioshield Clay Paint for the lower level of the barn. It's a zero-VOC, odorless finish that's probably safe enough to drink. After re-sawing the old barn timbers into fresh pieces, I trimmed out the milkhouse (the entryway into the barn, which has a coatroom, bathroom and utility closet).

I dropped the roof joists down from the high finished ceiling to give them a nice exposed look. I cut square holes in the drywall to slide the timbers through and attached them to the studs inside.

And the south-facing windows in the main barn are all trimmed out. Now it is time to start on that pile of timbers that we've been stepping around...

A New Tool!

2008-12-13T01:47:00.005-06:00

In over a year of housebuilding, I finally got to purchase a new power tool- a Makita Beam Planer. That's the good news. However, the excitement of playing with a new tool quickly wore off as I spent the better part of three days trying to "pretty up" the already-installed ceiling joists. Normally, this job is done on the ground, prior to installing the beams. Since my original plan was to maintain a rustic look to the interior of the barn, I decided to leave the beams with their freshly-sawn finish. But plans change, and clearly they needed to be cleaned up to match the other woodwork I was installing. So I removed the second floor decking, setup the scaffolding, and created the new sport of Upside-down Blind Beam Planing.

The other reason this should be done prior to installation is the MESS- By the time I had finished the first few beams, the floor was covered in a layer of wood shavings and sawdust. But the look of the finished beams is dramatically better and I'm glad I took the time to do it.

Ventilation.

2008-12-05T10:09:00.010-06:00

After bringing in a load of fresh timbers to start the post-and-beam framing, the humidy inside the barn went off the charts. The building is so airtight, there is virtually zero natural air exchange and the moisture coming out of the drying timbers had no means of escape. So I hurried and got the Venmar HRV (which has been sitting in a box for over a year now!) hooked up and running. Here is the unit hanging from the ceiling in the utility closet. I connected some temporary ductwork through the wall, just to get the fresh air into the main area of the barn.

The HRV works by means of a counterflow heat exchanger, which maximizes the transfer of heat from the stale exhaust air to the fresh supply air from outside. With claims of 92% efficiency, it seemed to defy the laws of thermodynamics in my mind, so I was skeptical at first. But it works great! Inside the unit, the outgoing air flows one direction and the incoming air flows the opposite direction, so that the coolest outgoing air just barely warms the cold incoming air, and the warmest outgoing air warms the already-sorta-warm incoming air. By arranging the airflows in this way, the incoming air captures nearly all of the heat from the outgoing air before it leaves the house. Of course, I had to put a thermometer in the fresh air duct to see how well it was doing- On a day when the outside temp was around 10F, and the building was at 58F, the fresh incoming air was being 'preheated' to about 53 degrees. At this rate, the HRV will pay for itself in no time!

Yankee Ingenuity

2008-11-28T14:16:00.010-06:00

Over the course of the last century, A family of 13 developed the farmstead that Lisa and I now call home. Only a few of the siblings are still alive today, and we are fortunate to have gotten to know them. Last year, one of the daughters (now almost 90 years old) shared some of her photos showing life on the farm. One of my favorites is this shot of the sawmill they built on the property, which was used to mill all the wood for the original barn. The description on the back of this photo simply stated, "Yankee Ingenuity". The summer house in the background still stands today, now hidden in a grove of trees about 100 feet behind the barn. A couple years ago, my dad and I bought a small sawmill and have used it to turn dying trees into useful lumber rather than the usual firewood. A few weeks ago, we set it up next to the new barn so I can start reincarnating the 70 year-old barn timbers into their new forms (posts, beams, kitchen cabinets, flooring, tabletops, doors, stairs, furniture and trim!). Our sawmill is setup only about 50 feet from where the old one had been. My dad also borrowed me his bench planer, so along with my table saw and router I am now setup to produce just about anything I could possibly need to finish the project...Green Gate Lumber Company is born!

Painting party

2008-11-19T06:02:00.003-06:00

The family came over for a day of volunteer painting. We coated all the drywall with AFM HPV Primecoat to provide the code-required vapor retarder and act as a basecoat for the Bioshield Clay Paint that will go on next. It's starting to look like a home! THANK YOU for the help, everyone!

Heat on!

2008-11-16T12:41:00.004-06:00

Someday, we will have a central heating system (perhaps solar, geothermal, or a wood pellet boiler) that feeds hot water to the barn, house and any other buildings we have by then. But that 'someday' is a long time from today, and it is getting cold outside. So I bought a electric micro boiler and related plumbing to put together a heating system for our in-floor hydronics. Midway through the assembly process, my workspace looked like this: I clamped all the plumbing components to a board that was screwed to the wall of the utility closet, directly over the stub-outs of the in-floor hydronic tubes. I also added two branch lines to feed the upper floor bedrooms and bathroom this winter. The system was fired up yesterday (surprisingly, leak-free!) and is slowly pumping heat into the cold concrete floor...

The New White House (just in time for election day!)

2008-11-03T17:38:00.011-06:00

Since our deconstruction of the White House left the well casing exposed, I needed to make something to cover it up before winter. It only needed to be about the size of a doghouse- just enough to cover the well pipe and provide shelter for the pump's electrical control. I was able to build a framework using lumber scraps that were salvaged from shipping pallets (got them from the local lumberyard). I dressed it up with leftover barn siding, and covered the removable roof with the leftover metal shingles.

Despite it's rich and noble history, the old White House had seen better days. It was too large and full of holes. It no longer fit our needs and was little more than a source of embarrassment when anyone looked our way. The new White House is a much better fit for us. It is small, efficient, and respectable. It fits in with the big picture here at Green Gate, a fine replacement to the old White House. And of course, no lumber died to make our new White House!

More of the same.

2008-11-02T06:18:00.002-06:00

Using the same raw materials as before, I continued the landscaping around the raised bed gardens on the back side of the barn. Sorry, we harvested all the kale, lettuces, mustard greens, radishes and carrots before the photo was taken.

Recycled landscaping.

2008-10-18T13:42:00.006-05:00

Not wanting to waste resources for the landscaping, I came up with a design that used as many local and recycled materials as possible. Starting with the entryway, I built a platform out of treated lumber (leftover from the barn framing) and covered it with old concrete slabs that we unearthed during the site excavation last year. The platform was skirted with more of the old bricks from the original barn. Next I dug a curved pathway leading around the silo, and partially filled it with 'fines' from the nearby iron mining operations (I believe it is created during the blasting operations, but not sure). Then I finished the pathway using Urbanite (concrete pieces from old sidewalks) that I've been collecting over the summer from various places. The spaces between the 'stones' were filled with more of the mining sand. Due to the irregular thickness and shapes of the urbanite, it took a tremendous amount of time to build it, but the end result has a nice look. Finally, the ground was covered with a layer of wood chips that came from the city work crews (they run the branches of cleared trees through a wood chipper, then haul them to the burn pile). Other than the roll of landscaping fabric that went under the mulch, everything for this project has been recycled and locally-collected. I figured that I used about 2 cubic yards of recycled urbanite to make this pathway, which helps to offset the 15 cubic yards of concrete required to pour the barn slab last year. The ground will remain pervious and we won't have any more grass to mow than we did before. In the spring, we can plant some flowers and schrubs in the mulched area, but for now this will have to do (winter is coming!).

Honey, where'd the towels go?

2008-10-15T19:39:00.003-05:00

Since I was determined to use 1/2" material in the upper story of the silo, my final drywall bending challenge was the most difficult. To get the radius just right, and keep the sheet from breaking, I built a form out of leftover drywall and lumber scraps. Then I robbed the house of several bath towels and used them to saturate the drywall sheets with water. After sitting for an hour or so, they easily sank into the shape of the form. Next, I screwed some crossmembers into the form to hold the drywall in place while it dried.

A perfect fit...now that I've become an expert at this, I should never need to do it again.

Almost airtight.

2008-10-15T06:56:00.003-05:00

Because the barn was too tight to produce accurate readings when they were here the first time, Minnesota Power returned to complete the air infiltration testing with a more precise blower door assembly- the results were as good as we could've hoped for. The magic number measured in this test is referred to as CFM50, which represent the amount of air leaking through all the gaps in the building when it is under a negative pressure of 50 pascals. The smaller the number, the better. Most houses today, being of older stock built before we knew much about air sealing, are very leaky, so CFM50 values of 1.0 or larger are common. A "Code" house built today should be .50 or less. To meet the minimum Energy Star requirements, we needed to be .25 or better. The more stringent Energy Star Tier III requirement is .15 or better. To satisfy the even stricter PassiveHaus standards (arguably the most stringent energy-efficient building standards on the planet), the barn's CFM50 would need to be under .08. That said, I was thrilled when our building measured .05 in this test- one of the tightest buildings they have ever measured...we did it! Since the CFM50 value represents the air infiltration per square foot of building size (in other words, the barn was .05 cubic feet per minute airflow per square foot at 50 Pascals pressure), it can then be converted to the ACH50 (Air Changes per Hour) number, which takes into account the total size of the building. This number represents how often the air is exchanged through the building due to uncontrolled leakage. Obviously, when you are trying to conserve precious heated air in our brutally-cold winter climate, the lower the number the better. the ACH50 value for the barn was 0.4, so we bettered the PassivHaus requirement of 0.6 ACH by 33%. This is exponentially better than many of the older homes in this area, and a substantial improvement over even the well-built new homes today. So what does all this math mean? Minimal heating system requirements, low heating costs, and a comfortable indoor environment...we'll take it.

Harvesting the rain.

2008-10-03T07:02:00.001-05:00

I spent the last couple of days working on our rainwater collection system- a great Spring project that happens to be about 5 months behind schedule- just in time for freeze-up. The big delay was finishing the silo exterior so that the rain gutters could be installed. Fitting the gutters around the silo proved to be a challenge- nothing seems to come easy in the life of a bad-boy barn builder. A couple months ago, while prepping the silo for stucco, I needed to find a way to divert the water away from the roof-wall interface and keep it from working its way under the stucco. After pondering it for quite awhile, I modified a section downspout and attached it to the silo wall. Then I lapped the step flashing, housewrap and foamboard over the top of diverter piece to make it waterproof. Once the stucco was applied and the scaffolding moved out of the way, I was finally able to install the gutters and downspouts, which look like this: Now how to collect the rainwater? Actually, collecting the water is the easy part- the problem is dealing with our 6 months of freezing weather that has me worried. Usually I can find alot of useful problem-solving information via our good friend Google, so I spent several sessions searching for examples of rainwater cachment in cold climates. No luck. The only suggestion I came across was to "drain and remove the rain barrel in the fall." The system I have designed aims to collect and store 100% of the available rainwater, which means we'll have ALOT of barrels by the time this is all done. Removing them all at the end of each season would be a nightmare- not just the work, but also the logistics of storage and dealing with downspout extensions, etc. Call me lazy, but I want to make a system that can stay in place year round. So, without any good examples to work from, I'm just going to experiment. Using recycled plastic barrels that we repainted to match the barn, I started by cutting a hole in the lid and covering it with window screen (held in place using a metal stovepipe flange). I terminated the downspout directly over the barrel here.

Each barrel will sit on a stand to keep the collected water high enough for gravity-feeding to all the gardens. The stand also gives me room for the plumbing connections below the barrel. I drilled a hole in the bottom of the barrel and threaded a 2" fitting in place. Using PVC fittings, I installed a "tee" leading to a faucet that I mounted off the front of the stand, then below that a shutoff valve before the pipe goes underground. Below grade, I transitioned to ABS pipe, which will continue around the perimeter of the barn and connect all of the rain barrels in series. By maintaining the same height across all of the barrels in the system, they should fill equally regardless of where the water is coming from...

With the first two barrels installed, I decided to quit for the season. I can drain the underground line and close the hand valve to keep them from re-filling during the winter. I plan to remove the hose from the tee fitting so that the barrel can self-drain should it rain anymore before winter. I'm not sure what will happen during the snow season- will melting snow from the roof fill the barrels with water, causing them to freeze and rupture? Or will they survive here at the North Pole? I'm not sure. Any suggestions????

Time for a Silobration

2008-09-22T21:05:00.003-05:00

As (bad) luck would have it, I was ready to start the stucco job just as the monsoon season arrived in northern Minnesota. It seemed to be raining- or threatening to do so every day, so I decided not to fight it and took the time to cover the entire silo with a big giant tarp. Way to be proactive for once, Self.

Over the course of two days, I applied the cement basecoat of Parex to the walls. Is is basically troweled onto the EPS foamboard in a thin layer, covered with a reinforcing mesh, then troweled again to embed the mesh in the basecoat. After the basecoat cured, Keith came over and helped trowel on the finish coat of Parex, which is like a thick gritty paint. This layer went on much faster, and we were done in only a few hours this time.

After another day of touch-up work, caulking windows, and installing the vents, I was FINALLY ready to climb down the ladder for the last time. It's been almost 2 years since I sketched out this crazy idea on some graph paper, and about a year since I first buckled up the tool belt and started building the big upside-down test tube. No doubt there have been several hundred (if not more) labor hours invested and likely a hundred more spent lying awake at night wondering how to actually finish it. As I started to disassemble the scaffolding, a friend stopped over and the first words out of his mouth were, "Now do you know why people make square buildings?" I think I get it...

The pot of gold?

2008-09-07T07:27:00.002-05:00

After a day of rain showers, we got this.

The Silo.

2008-09-07T07:06:00.004-05:00

The last task before the stucco goes on the silo was to install a 'skirt' around the base of the roof to divert the rainwater out and away from the wall. After spending several days talking to every sheet-metal fabricator within a 60 mile radius of The North Pole, Minnesota, I finally gave up on the hopes of getting something custom formed to fit the curved wall. So, on to my backup plan. Using the leftover flashing from the milkhouse roof, I formed my own 'curved' skirt by lapping short pieces and screwing them together. I also added several vents around the perimeter to flush out the airspace above the 2nd floor ceiling of the silo. It's not as pretty as I wanted, but when you are standing on the ground, 20 feet below, it looks just fine. The silo is now ready for stucco!

Bending drywall- 2nd attempt

2008-09-07T06:23:00.005-05:00

To finish the arched ceiling of the barn meant that I'd have to force drywall to bend beyond its theoretical limits. Since my previous method of using 2 layers of 1/4" drywall added alot of cost and time to the job, I was determined to find a better way. So I fashioned a very simple station to elevate and wet the concave face of the sheet using a couple of water-soaked towels. After sitting for an hour or so, the sheet turned into a noodle and slowly sagged to the floor. I removed the towels and let the fan blow on it for another hour, which "set" the sheet into its new taco shape. Since this seemed to work so well, I cut and formed all 14 sheets needed for the ceiling so they were ready to go up when help arrived. My dad came over and we double-teamed the installation. With the sheets pre-curved, we just needed to screw down a couple of cross bars to pull them into the exact shape of the ceiling, then secure with ALOT of drywall screws. The last sheet ready to go up. Now if I could just find a crew to tape and mud all these seams!

Pictures from above

2008-08-21T18:00:00.000-05:00

I have a co-worker who is an avid pilot. She and her husband fly and restore vintage planes. It is quite amazing what they do and how many hours they log flying. I had mentioned taking aerial photos and to my delight she agreed to fly over our property. So, one early morning "Yellow-Bird" came flying overhead. These are a few of the photos they took. We are hoping to use them in advertising for Green Gate. Aren't they great? Thank you Yellow Bird and her companions!!!

Judgement Day.

2008-08-20T19:02:00.000-05:00

In addition to the LEED certification program, we also enrolled our project in the Triple E Construction/Energy Star program through our utility provider Minnesota Power. This program rewards energy efficient construction techniques by verifying the thermal performance of the house and awarding cash rebates when certain levels are achieved. To verify the energy efficiency of the barn, a blower-door test was conducted. This procedure consists of sealing off the doorway with an expandable frame and fan assembly that depressurizes the building by blowing air out of the house. As the building is depressurized, air will rush in through the various "leaks" in the walls, penetrations, windows, etc. Sensors on the blower unit measure the amount of airflow required to achieve a given pressure level- the "tighter" the house, the lower the flow. While the blower door test was running, I got to walk around with the thermal imaging camera, which displays the temperature variation in the surfaces of the building. If any air was finding its way into the house, it would show up as a "hotspot" on the camera. Pretty slick tool! I have been anxiously awaiting this test for months, and can now say the results were even better than I had hoped for. The little white barn was super tight- the air infiltration was so low that we could not get an accurate reading with the blower door test! He will need to come back to retest it with a more precise blower setup before we can know for sure, but for now it looks like we may be building the most energy efficient "barn" in the world...and a rebate check is on the way (finally, greenbuilding pays!).

New uses for old trees.

2008-08-19T19:05:00.002-05:00

In keeping with the circular theme of the project, we found a tree trunk table base for the silo's dining room. This cedar piece was made by Ryan's Rustic Railings in Orr, MN (check out their work, wow!). Ordinarily, it would've been too expensive for our budget, but we found this one for sale on Craigslist and picked it up for a deal. It came with a tabletop that was too small for our needs, so I will build a new one from the wood salvaged from the old barn...

Is this a funnel cloud?

2008-08-13T10:47:00.000-05:00

Okay, weather aficionado's. Is this a funnel cloud? The day after I took this picture, I heard a funnel cloud was spotted in the Aurora area. Even if it's not a funnel cloud, it was pretty amazing. I was taking pictures and the cloud just dropped.