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Posted to Tanglewood by Steven in Colorado Springs, CO
on 11/13/2008 9:01:09 PM
Or at least starting the process, anyway.
For the purposes of the construction loan (as most of you know) there's a lot of info needed, one of which is the approximate window cost. Since there are something like 70 windows in Tanglewood as designed that's a lot of glass, and so we were curious about what we might find when we began venturing out for some numbers.
So today Colleen ventured over to Home Depot (beloved by many here I know) and sat down to talk to one of their window people. She went in as our GC and spent a quality couple of hours learning all about windows and whittling down the choices.
There was a lot to learn! Cost is mostly a factor of construction and features, as on might expect. There are tons of kinds of window materials--wood, aluminum, steel, vinyl, various fiberglass/vinyl/wood mixes, wood-clad aluminum, etc. Generally the fancier the material the more expensive the window, with some exceptions--aluminum is relatively cheap but has so many bad thermal properties that they simply weren't on our list at all.
Features is the other biggie, of course. Solid windows are the cheapest, with sliding (vertical or horizontal) about the same. Casement windows (our favorite) run more, and of course adding various locks or lites (dividers in the middle of the window) or interior shades added all kinds of prices to the mix. One can easily get lost in the various combination of features, and it seems as if each manufacturer has some one thing that is "really cool" that none of the others have.
Surprisingly expensive are the "glass block" windows, that have glass (or plastic for weight) blocks instead of regular glass. I wouldn't have thought these would be all that much more, but it turns out the overall weight of the item plus its extra thickness (for the blocks, which are thinner than the "normal" glass blocks you might see at a big box store) adds a lot. Custom-shaped windows could easily get ridiculous but weren't as bad as I had thought they might be.
It'll take us a copy of days to put the prices and such together, and then Colleen will give Lowes and a couple of other places a try. As I mentioned earlier we're mostly trying to just get an estimate for the loan paperwork not going after an actual bid at this time. I'm also curious what prices Colleen might have if she went to another local Home Depot and told them these were for her house, rather than her "I'm acting as the GC" approach...
We're learning a lot though, and it sure is fun!
Steve
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Posted to Tanglewood by Steven in Colorado Springs, CO
on 11/5/2008
Some folks who have been regularly dropping by know of my particular fondness for a wind turbine solution as Tanglewood's off-grid energy solution. Unfortunately, as I've been collecting data over the past few months the numbers to date say I don't have enough sustained wind power to make a turbine work reliably or provide much energy. My high wind speeds are quite impressive, but they are more than balanced out by very low averages over sustained periods of time.
Now to be clear my eyes tell me something different, as does the testimony of folks who have lived up there off and on over several seasons. They are all astonished that the numbers seem to indicate that a turbine isn't feasible, as they all report heavy, sustained winds at ground level irregularly.
But numbers are numbers, and the time has come (as I've mentioned before) to pull the trigger and make a decision, so for the moment I'm going with a solar-panel solution. I know that will work and provide plenty of power using panels mounted up on the ridge (where I wanted to put the wind turbine). There's plenty of sunlight up there for a couple of hours more than at the house site and I should be able to get them up there one at a time (ugh!) if I can't find an easy way to haul them up on an ATV or pulley.
So there we go. Architect Scott has put together what's called a "one-line drawing" for the solar system that can power the house at approximately the same draw as our house in town does right now. The attached drawing (which I've now figured out is incomplete and have removed. - Steve) shows only 12 panels, basically what will be mounted to the wellhouse--there are an additional 30 located on the ridge above the house--but the idea is correct. (I fully believe that Tanglewood will need significantly less power--we're designing efficiency into everything and many 'optional' features will be on DC power--but since I don't really know that I've only got the local house numbers to work from at present. Besides, I can always reduce the number of panels down the road as I get a better handle on what's going into the house--the Planning Department doesn't much care if there are tweaks of that nature to the overall design, they just want something to check and make sure you won't fry yourself with.) This is a fairly robust system intended to allow for expansion (such as for a future wind turbine) down the road.
Some folks might look at this and be aghast that I'm specifying such a large system, then email me about the virtues of a more reserved lifestyle with lesser energy needs. Please don't. This diagram is purely an estimate based on the only solid numbers I have at the moment--once I get more of the Tanglewood electrical infrastructure figured out I have no doubt that the number of panels (and hence the cost) will come down. Remember too that I've never had the philosophy of building a system that enables me to "get by"--I'm a firm believer in machines working for me and not the other way around. I've no interest in having to balance when I run the washer/dryer and when I turn on the TV. (There's nothing wrong with that philosophy, it's just not my way.) Again, the Planning Department won't mind at all if I end up modifying the plan--they just need to know that the basic design is solid.
If anybody has done something similar and/or has any suggestions regarding what I should watch out for, please drop me a line!
Dang this is fun stuff!
Steve
11/11/08 Update: I've no idea why the line drawing is missing some parts; it may be that our architect was only trying to specify the wellhouse portion. Gotta go find out what's going on there....
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Posted to Tanglewood by Steven in Colorado Springs, CO
on 11/4/2008
Just got a note from Davis Weather that they've fixed my anemometer and it's on its way back to me! Yay!
Soon I'll be able to get back to measuring wind up on that ridge and deciding that (someday) I'll be supplementing my solar-panel system with a nice little wind turbine, if the numbers bear out.
(Must put cable into protective wrapping next time. Must put cable into protective pipes wrapping next time. Must put cable into protective wrapping next time....)
Steve
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Posted to Tanglewood by Steven in Colorado Springs, CO
on 11/3/2008
Sigh.
Okay. I've mentioned in a previous posting about how we're going to drop the well pump down another 40 feet to help avoid a problem I ran into this summer, when the pump was drawing water faster than the well was recharging. The pump right now is set relatively shallow at only 20 feet down in a 220 foot well--the water in the well has actually been very high the whole time we've owned the place. This worked very nicely until this summer when, during a somewhat longish dry spell I ran the pump and was astonished to find the water being pulled down below the 20 foot level.
This weekend I started (finally) had the time and nice weather to get up there to start to drop the pump to about the 60 foot level. I got the piping and the various fittings and a fresh PVC knife in case I had to do any trimming. We also were very careful to extend our safety rope (a poly rope attached to the pump so that if I should drop the pump it won't plummet to the bottom of the well.) Even though I'm only planning to drop the pump to about the 60 foot mark, I went ahead bought another 60 feet of well pump wiring (boy was that expensive) so I'd have some "extra" wiring in case I had to do this again down the road. I picked the target 60 foot depth since according to the manual the pump puts out virtually the same volume of water at that level as it does at 20 feet (its current depth), and that appealed to me.
Since the old wiring is already attached and all I wasn't about to replace the stuff, I just spliced and waterproofed the new wiring to the old. The fitting I bought for this has a very sturdy four-way junction over which a large electrical "shrink wrap" (the kind that shrinks to fit when heat is applied) over it. Once this is in place I apply a bead or two of rubberized electrical sealant and we have a nice, clean, watertight fitting.
Putting the whole thing together was no particular problem--the splicing went okay and I made sure to test connectivity (by simply running the pump) for a few minutes before proceeding to seal the connections up. That's when I ran into my "read the instructions, dummy" moment.
Turns out that the electrical shrink wrap that fits over the junction can't be made to "shrink" with the handy-dandy blow dryer I'd thoughtfully brought with me. It's thick enough that it needs more heat--a fact which I would have realized if I'd simply read the stupid package. It says right there in good, clean English "Use heat gun or soft propane torch to shrink to fit".
Grumble. Grrrr. Snarl. Sigh.
So now I'm off in search of a nice new heat gun. Both Ace and Harbor Freight carry them; amazingly it seems that neither the local Lowe's or Home Depot have them at all.
I take grim comfort in the fact that I'm buying another new tool, at least.
A fun but annoying lesson. Read. The. Instructions.
Steve
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Posted to Tanglewood by Steven in Colorado Springs, CO
on 10/28/2008 8:24:07 PM
Been a couple of weeks since I posted anything and while progress has been somewhat slower than I would have preferred, there's been progress. Thought I might do an update.
The anemometer has been shipped off to Davis Weather for repair. Folks might recall from a previous posting that it had become intermittently reliable due to critters taking bites out of the data cable. Since I had bought the thing primarily for the purpose of collecting wind data (beyond the basic Geek Factor, of course) this was understandably annoying to me. I have hopes that they can repair it quickly and get it back to me before Winter really comes in for an extended stay--I really want to gather those numbers if possible!
The other numbers have certainly been interesting though. It's definitely getting colder; we had one day when the temps never crested about the mid-20's up there, and I spotted snow in some of the darker recesses of rocks and brush on my trip up the canyon. (I didn't see squat on the way down since it was past sunset.) No particular precipitation to speak of though, so the snow must have only been a dusting relatively speaking. There wasn't any new water in the creek either, but the larger pools at the crossings were still deep (and cold).
I spent part of Saturday up at Tanglewood doing a variety of chores. A couple of piles of brush got chipped and the chips distributed around the "stump dump" area where the pond will eventually go. Some trees cut down and left lying around by the previous owners (so around 10 years ago) were cut up and turned into firewood, and then I spent some quality time huffing and puffing up and down the hillside collecting firewood and stacking it all nice and neat (okay, stacking it anyway) with the previously-created fireplace products. That was a lot of work and made me note again to look more seriously at getting an ATV sometime this winter.
Architect Scott is just about ready to resubmit his finished/final plans for the solar power system to the Planning Department; that should happen sometime this week. Once he's got that in the queue he and I will sit down to layout the basic electrical inside the house (switches, outlets, ceiling lights, accent lights, ceiling fans, that kind of thing). We might go ahead and do plumbing and propane at the same time, though that all depends on how long it takes. I plan to run a DC circuit throughout the house (at least one outlet per room) and set up all of the accent lighting to use L.E.D. lights on that circuit; that will work great and be way more efficient than those strings of lights with a wall-wart one can buy at Lowes or Home Depot.
And really that's about it. Lots of fun, though sometimes I wish we were moving faster! I know I'll be thinking it's all a blur soon enough though, so....
Steve
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Posted to Tanglewood by Steven in Colorado Springs, CO
on 10/12/2008
Okay, on the list of annoying things this is right up there. Grrrrrrr.
I noticed on Sunday when I pulled down my weather readings for the week that the wind data was erratic. Not erratic as in "the wind varies", but erratic in existence--some readings looked normal (it's been very windy here as Autumn takes over) and some were just zero. A suspicious number of readings were zero in fact--too many to seem right. When I doubled checked the readings that the console was receiving "right that second" (zero wind) with what my eyes were seeing (treetops moving back and forth) I knew something wasn't right.
Since the anemometer is mounted way up high on the ridge over the site I figured the best thing to do was to just take the console up there. That way I could fiddle with it, spin the cups and see if I got data at certain speeds, etc. My thought on the way up there was that I'd find that either the anemometer was stuck or that maybe the battery wasn't charging properly.
It didn't take me long to figure out that I didn't really have a hardware problem--I apparently had a critter problem. The cable coming down from my anemometer to the wireless transmitter had a number of bite marks--when I jiggled the cables I would get data, other times I wouldn't. That explained why the data was cutting in and out. Judging from the height it probably wasn't a mouse; I'm thinking it was one of the rock chipmunks or maybe a squirrel.
Danged critters.
So anyway, I'm checking around now to see if I can simply replace the cable or if I can get a new one from Davis. After I get it replaced it will definitely get enclosed in a nice bit of PVC or something.
Grrrrrr.......
Steve
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Posted to Tanglewood by Steven in Colorado Springs, CO
on 10/10/2008
One of the sub-bullets in the various bids I received from the ICF contractors was one for the flooring at Tanglewood, specifically between the first floor and the second floor. For reasons of strength, insulation, sound-proofing, etc. I had decided early on that I wanted to use a concrete product such as LiteDeck or InsulDeck for this part of the job.
As it turned out (and I thought this was interesting) most of the bidders provided me with a bid on one or the other, but only one bidder (Buildblock) provided me with a bid on both. A bit of digging tended to reveal that all of the companies seem to have a "preferred" product that they work with.
Taking a gander at the two was interesting but ultimately a bit frustrating for me. They look pretty much alike. InsulDeck looks like it is slightly stronger with the metal beams embedded within the forms, while LiteDeck looks like it's simpler to create varying thicknesses by changing out the "cap". InsulDeck appears to use slightly less concrete and has built-in runs for piping and electrical lines, while LiteDeck might (to my untrained eye anyway) be slightly simpler to install. Both are built to be ready to handle radiant heat systems and will provide solid insulation beneath the tubes to help minimize waste.
After a few days in which the details of the various products started to blur together I finally got smart and gave the problem to Architect Scott. Figuring this stuff out is what he's getting paid for, after all!
At the end Scott's recommendation was slightly in favor of InsulDeck. He looks at both of them favorably but the InsulDeck bid was slightly less and has the piping/electrical runs built in, so it looks simpler to build with to him.
Sometimes the best decision is to just let the pro do it.
But it sure was fun learning all those neat things about concrete flooring!
Steve
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Posted to Tanglewood by Steven in Colorado Springs, CO
on 10/1/2008
Not "power planning" as in a huge mega session that decided a zillion things--I mean "power planning" as in "what will be the power infrastruture for Tanglewood?".
Anyway,
we met with Architect Scott yesterday for a couple of hours. The purpose of
this particular tag-up was to discuss the power source for Tanglewood. As it turns out, the Planning Department
wants a swag of not just "roughly where things might go so we know it all
fits", but they also want details--what kind of solar panel and/or wind
turbine? will you be setting up your system for multiple strings or just
one? will there be hydro or wind
involved? what kind of batteries and how many? wiring up to code? conduit or
open-air? how many inverters? AC, DC, or both to the house? how will that wiring be run, by the way?
Etc. Etc.
Now,
they're not hard-over on this being "the final answer period"--they
just want to know that you've thought this out, that you'll have sufficient
power for the house, and that it'll all fit where you think it will fit. I can change out the inverter from, say, a
Xantrex to an Outback later if I want--they don't really care.
Since the
wind measures to date aren't looking promising, I went ahead and spec'd a
hybrid system (allowing for wind or hydro down the road) but focused on solar
PV for now. I ended up using a couple of online calculators to get some rough recommendations (since that seemed to be what they wanted, finally settling down on pulling numbers from the Alternative Energy Store's calculator for the purposes of these calculations (there are plenty of other good ones out there; this is just the one I chose).
The way I figure it we're going to have basically three clusters of solar panels, one string on the roof of the wellhouse (receiving about 4 to 4 1/2 hours of sunlight a day because of location) and two more strings up on the ridge (where they should get 6 hours/day easy). The wellhouse will be easy since those are just roof mounts, but the ridge emplacements will require fancier mounting on "sunflowers" of 4-6 panels each and there will be a long line run down the ridge and through the creek valley to the wellhouse. That long run means that I need to step up the amperage to 80A to minimize losses on the run, and of course I'll have to have good-sized wiring for that to work properly (Architect Scott is estimating either 2-gauge or 1-gauge at this point). I'll also need controllers for each string and an automatic cut-in for the backup propane generator (hate to have such a thing but it seems a wise investment when you're off-grid).
By the end of the session we'd hammered together some basics for the Planning Department. I have some homework to do in terms of listing all the specs which I hope to get back to Scott by the end of the week.
Next up we've still got to place the outlets, switches, and whatnot around both the wellhouse and the main house. Since I'm planning both DC and AC lines that will make things more interesting, to be sure.
Dang this is fun!
Steve
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Posted to Tanglewood by Steven in Colorado Springs, CO
on 9/21/2008
This was a big month for us. Our plans got past the Planning Department with no changes, we narrowed down the options for our power generation, and last but not least I've selected my ICF supplier.
I would imagine I spent way too much time on this, analyzing the various products that we'd sent out bids for. There was a lot of "back and forth" between myself, my contractor, and the various suppliers as well--I learned all kinds of things I never knew about settling, reversing blocks, R-values, etc. I finally (like most folks here I suspect) built myself a fancy spreadsheet to hold all the information I had; when a particular element was missing from a given supplier (for example, the Greenblock guys didn't give me a concrete estimate), I averaged the values I got from everybody else and plugged those in instead. I then added the numbers that seemed to be missing (such as nobody saying I'd need any of that fancy-expensive spray foam stuff when I know I'll probably need it around the V-bucks and special cuts) and took a look at the bottom lines. Then, just for good measure, I divided the R-value of each system into its estimated cost to get (effectively) a "dollar cost per point of R-value" measure.
Imagine my surprise when I discovered that, on balance, there wasn't all that much difference in price between the various systems.
Oh there was some, to be sure, and it was more evident when I used the $$$ per R-value measure. The various systems (I compared seven) broke out three rough groupings of "high" to "low", though to be fair the high value and the low value were only $764.00 apart. Looking at bottom-line cost they varied from ~ $87K to ~$105K (this is for the walls, floors, rebar, foam, concrete and concrete trucks, bracing, V-buck, etc.). This seems more significant than it is, given that all concrete estimates were purely estimates only--there's really no good way to tell until the day you place the concrete order.
I also kicked around the various system differences. As systems the seven broke into two main categories--those that used a "tongue and groove" connection system between blocks and those that used a "Lego-like" interface. I decided after much research that the "steel vs. plastic" issue (where most systems use plastic webbing and a few use steel) was basically a wash--while there used to be issues with thermal bridging with the steel systems they'd rectified that years ago and the newer studies didn't indicate any issues.
So after I built this spreadsheet and fiddled with the numbers, I gave myself two weeks to let it simmer--and then I selected Buildblock for our ICFs. I like their Lego-style connection system, I like their more closely-spaced webbing than most systems have, I like their plethora of measuring marks on the forms themselves (which makes cuts much simpler), I like the fact that the shipping is more efficient, I like the fact that they have a plant local to me, I like their prompt replies to my questions--in short, I just plain liked them more. Using the $$$-per-R-value measure they came in at the high end of the low group, which indicates good value. It just "feels" like it will be an easy product to work with. Last but not least, the couple of local O-Bs I'd talked to who built with this system had nothing but praise for it--that's a big plus in my book.
This was probably the single most significant decision I'd have to make since we're going to build this monster ourselves, so I wanted to make sure it was as easy as possible. There will be other hard ones (I don't look forward to picking out the windows) but this is the one that would probably annoy me most if I got it wrong. I think I made a good choice--at least I hope so!
Dang this is fun!
Steve
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Posted to Tanglewood by Steven in Colorado Springs, CO
on 9/16/2008
I got up to the site again this evening and downloaded some more data. It's definitely interesting.
We've recently had a ton of rain here in Colorado Springs, with over 3" up there over a 24 hour period. The average wind speeds and high wind speeds dropped slightly, to 5.78 mph and 10.18 mph respectively. The wind run also dropped a bit, from .98 minutes to .79 minutes.
What does this tell me? Well, my guess is that the rain settling in and going nice and steady meant that fronts were not moving through/in during that timeframe, and so atmospheric disturbances (which cause wind) just weren't as prevalent. We're still at the bare-bottom end for wind though, which I dare say surprises me.
I'm thinking about buying another anemometer for the other wind site I'm considering, up towards the edge of the property overlooking the valley to the south. This spot isn't ideal as I'd have to set any tower back from the nearby property line (so it doesn't fall over onto somebody else's property--county code) and so I'd have to take down several trees for this to work. I also have serious doubts that the wind here would be more than up on the ridge, but it's worth measuring.
And all these numbers finally blew up Excel! Wimpy program....
Steve
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Posted to Tanglewood by Steven in Colorado Springs, CO
on 9/9/2008
Today my GC became worth absolutely every penny I've been paying her to date. Our building permit was approved!
Okay, it's technically not the building permit per se, but probably the most important hurdle we had to jump. Anybody who's been following this blog will remember that a few days ago I posted about some problems we were having getting our plans approved. The Planning Department had balked at the size of the mother-in-law apartment; apparently El Paso County has a restriction that it must weigh in at 850 square feet or less. While that is indeed a decent-sized apartment (I think my very first apartment up in Denver was only 640 square feet), their internal policy was that "the garage obviously associated with the apartment" had to be counted as part of the total. Since the associated garage is around 400 square feet in size--that was a problem.
After much discussion and attempts to accommodate the rules, we were just about ready to throw in the towel. Then A Miracle Occurred.
Turns out that they didn't quite realize that the garage in question supported a second floor bedroom. Shrinking or redesigning the garage would have caused huge problems to the layout of the upstairs. They pondered that for a bit--and waived the rule!
We're good. Plans were accepted as is! No changes, no tweaks, all the stamps stamped and the marks marked and the files filed--the architect picked up the plans yesterday.
Wow. So this is how clean and virtuous living pays off....
Boy is this fun!
Steve
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Posted to Tanglewood by Steven in Colorado Springs, CO
on 9/8/2008
Got a call that the driveway permit has been approved! Colleen's going to swing by to pick it up tomorrow.
Making progress, making progress.....
Steve
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Posted to Tanglewood by Steven in Colorado Springs, CO
on 9/4/2008
A while back we got up to Tanglewood and staked out (roughly) where the house was going to go. This wasn't a terribly precise job--I just worked off the plans the architects had and used a ruler to estimate a couple of things--but it was good enough to let us "get a feel" for the house itself.
I've attached some pics of the outline, though I'm not sure if they're all that useful. We used orange marking tape for this particular task, and in the pics I work my way from the northern "apartment" end down the garages and towards the "Y" at the south end of the house. You can't really see everything from these pics (to do that I'd need to be up in the air a few dozen feet) but it gives interested folks an idea, anyway. They'll make way more sense once the excavator does his magic.
All the trees in this area need to come down (that's a task for the Near Future, actually), and I hope we can get the excavator to do his work before we lose the warm weather this fall. In some of the pics a yellow "CAUTION" tape can be seen in the background; this marks a rough 20' "area of disturbance" around the house which needs to be cleared out as part of the excavation. This is mostly only applicable in the uphill areas where the excavator will have to cut a swale for drainage though--on the downhill side nothing is that close and we're not going to need to engineer any drainage to get water away from the house. The zone itself can actually be divided into two sub-zones--we have to cut out everything within 10' since the excavator will dump dirt there and (eventually) dig the swale, and then there's a 20' zone in which we want to clear things out mostly for fire and machine movement reasons. There are a handful of trees right on the edge of the 20' zone that I should be able to keep, which is good--I'm not adverse to cutting down trees but definitely want to minimize it as much as possible!
This weekend I'm headed up to explicitly mark the trees to be saved, probably with green marking tape (note: Ace Hardware is an awesome place to get this kind of tape in many different colors!) so it will be clearly different from the orange and pink we've been using to outline other areas (the house and the log dump areas, respectively). All of this will of course be carefully explained to the excavator when the time comes, and Colleen will be riding herd on him when the time comes.
Progress, slow but sure!
Steve
Photos
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| The end of the house, roughly where the apartment will be. |
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| More or less in the driveway facing the garages. |
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| Looking "down" from the driveway towards the "Y" of the house. |
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| The living room and kitchen area of the house. |
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| Standing more or less where the masonry fireplace will go, looking down towards the master bedroom. |
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Posted to Tanglewood by Steven in Colorado Springs, CO
on 9/2/2008
Well, I had hopes that this kind of thing wouldn't happen after hearing all the horror stories that others have had, but it did. The initial draft of our plans had a couple of minor redlines (no big deal) and one big roadblock.
Turns out that in El Paso County any "mother in law" apartment, which is how they're viewing the apartment at the north end of the house, has to be 850 square feet or less in size. By itself that's not so bad--our architect works it out as somewhere around 836 square feet--but there's a hitch. The planner whom Colleen talked to said that the associated garage also had to count against this footage.
Now of course this doesn't make a lot of sense to us or our architect, since the garage isn't livable space. So we had a strategy meeting to figure out how to approach this and kick around some ideas. The overall logic seems to be that the county doesn't want people building a duplex "under the table" and then renting out half of it, so they set things up to make such an arrangement unattractive. Okay, that kinda makes sense I guess. However, a careful combing of the building code (so far) has only uncovered the 850 square foot requirement, with no mention of the garage needing to be part of that, so this seems to be very much a matter of interpretation.
We discussed a couple of ways to handle this dilemma. On Monday Colleen is going to go in to deliver the plans with the redlines addressed and then sit down with one of the reviewers to explain what we're after. Being non-livable space seems to be the biggest reason not to count the garage, and there are extenuating circumstances in any event--that being the bears that live in the canyon (cars simply must be parked inside or they'll be mauled by the bears in search of food--there are no reasonable options otherwise). We think that a carefully reasoned explanation together with an offer to put the no-duplex pledge into the property deed, if necessary, might do the trick.
Wish us luck!
Steve
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Posted to Tanglewood by Steven in Colorado Springs, CO
on 9/2/2008
Well now, the seasons are changing and I'm definitely seeing this reflected in the weather station results.
I download the latest set of data (408 pages, 80% of RAM) on Labor Day and just finished running them through the spreadsheet to get some new averages. As I expected everything (Wind Speed, Wind Run, and High Wind Speed) have all increased from the last reading:
- Wind Speed - Was 5.65 mph, is now 5.98 mph
- Wind Run - Was .40 minutes, now .98 minutes
- High Wind Speed - Was 9.40 mph, now 10.34 mph
What this tells me is what I'd thought--the winds are getting stronger as the season changes, they're reaching higher overall speeds, and they're lasting longer. Looking at the individual numbers I'm seeing a lot of 15s, 17s, and 20s for the wind speed, and a lot of high speeds in the 30+ mph range.
On a related note, I think I've given up getting the anemometer to the proper altitude. Turns out that's not particularly cheap to do (you might as well go ahead and put up a real wind turbine tower) and when your site is professionally evaluated they don't really do much more than I've already been doing (some don't even put out anemometers!). There's also the small fact that I tried to put up the pole again this past weekend myself and very nearly fell off the side of the cliff in the process (rope broke), so I figured taht was more or less a sign. So I'll just make this call based on my own data and extrapolations for what the numbers might be at altitude (using that formula I talked about before).
What I really need to do now is to get the numbers into a proper turbine spreadsheet so I can get a feel for what they might generate.
What a fun, geeky thing to play with!
Steve
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Posted to Tanglewood by Steven in Colorado Springs, CO
on 8/27/2008
I am beginning to understand why some folks give up on the whole O-B process when they run into their local Planning Department. I know that these guys are there to help but sometimes it's very easy to think the whole process is just to slow you down with arbitrary arbitrariness....
Colleen trundled down to the local Planning Department with our final, approved plans (we'd looked them over closely for about two weeks after we got them) and started The Process. Our county is simpler than many in that it seems there are only a few steps, but some of them (of course) have "loose" definitions of "done". She found somebody who took pity on her obvious confusion and helped her walk through the steps, taking copious notes as she went:
- The first step was to actually turn over a copy of the plans to be approved by the Planning Department. These are the guys who basically look at the huge former-tree sized stack of paper we got from the architects and make sure that this thing won't fall down when you slam a door, or when the snow piles up on the roof, or whatever. Good thing to check, I figure. It'll take them "between four and six weeks" to do this, and that assumes there aren't any delays or problems (which we're told by Architect Scott that there almost always are). We can check progress online which is kinda cool.
Cost for this service: $295.12 (it's based on the livable area of the house, apparently).
- The next steps can happen while the Planning Department are mulling things over, since that takes some time. The Fire Marshall has to approve the building layout and lay on some conditions (if he feels it's necessary) about the location. I was worried about this since we're in what is essentially a Wet European Pine Forest--there are a lot of trees around the area (even after we started taking some down for the 20 foot setback) and he could have gone nuts, but everything worked out pretty good. He studied the plans for a couple of days and ended up with two recommendations (which means we don't have to do them)--clear a 30 foot setback (rather than the 20 driven by the excavation) and make sure the driveway is a hard surface of some kind (so his trucks don't sink in mud or something). I'm considering the first and planned on the second anyway, so this was easy.
Cost for this service: Zero (how'd they miss that?).
- Next up is a Driveway Permit. The Driveway Permit most involves analysis of what your driveway will do to the local drainage, and makes sure there aren't going to be any problems with the county's drains and such. Since we're W-A-Y up high in the mountains and the only thing downhill from us is Little Turkey Creek itself, I doubt this will be much of a problem.
Cost for this service: $222.50.
- After that we need to get a Site Permit. Now, you might think that we'd already be getting one of those with the afore-mentioned Planning Department review--you silly, silly goose. Ya see (as the kind folks at the county carefully explained), the Planning Department review lets you build this house, while the Site Permit lets you build it here. They basically make sure there aren't any endangered species listed for that area, mines planned to go in the week after you start, that kind of thing.
Cost for this service: Variable (based on size of house; didn't have an estimate yet; approximately $250).
- Health Department Well Water Test. This is where they check the well water for all kinds of nasty bugs, heavy metals, and assorted other things that can mess up your drinking plans. The well was on the property when we bought it; it was drilled in 1994 and is about 200 feet deep. It's a fantastic well--sometimes it actually bubbles up out of the pipe, and normally the water is very high in the pipe (only about 20 feet down). In order to do this, we have to run the well pump for a period of time and then take a sample in a container that they provide.
Cost for this service: Unknown (we just haven't checked yet).
I'm 100% sure there will be other opportunities to contribute to the local tax base during this phase, but we just don't know about them yet.
We had a bit of a scare early on with the Planning Department. When they took the plans from Colleen they asked about the platting. We didn't have a clue so they helped us do a search. Turns out the county rules are that any parcel created after 1972 that is more than 20 acres has to be platted--and since there's no plat on file I'd get the happy opportunity to pay for it. As it happens the parcel was platted out to 30-ish acres (it's 30 and some change) on 3/04/1964--handily avoiding the new rules.
So at any rate, the process has begun! Architect Scott tells me there are a ton of things coming down the road (and we haven't even really started yet) but we're ready for it.
This sure is fun!
Steve
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Posted to Tanglewood by Steven in Colorado Springs, CO
on 8/26/2008
It's been a bit since I updated the weather station results, and since then I've done a bit more analysis.
After a bit of fiddling I have the weather capture rate down to once every five (5) minutes, which works out fairly well. A week of data runs about 398 "pages" (a page is five entries) and fills the weather console's flash RAM to about 78% of capacity. That's just about what the Davis geeky manual said I would have and so I was happy enough, and now I know I can run an extra day without gathering data if I have to for some reason. Good to know.
The numbers are interesting and I've changed my basic analysis of them a bit. I decided to throw out the earlier data that was collected on the 2-hour intervals, simply because it didn't have the resolution I was looking for. I did that, and then ran averages on Wind Speed, Wind Run (how long the wind blows at a given speed), and Hi Wind Speed, to get values of 4.66 mph, .33 minutes (about 20 seconds), and 8.37 mph respectively. Not very good numbers, but bear in mind we're still in the summer doldrums (despite some hefty thunderstorms in the afternoons and evenings).
After a bit of thought it occurred to me that I was just taking an average over time, and that was probably given too much weight to the zero values--that is, the time when no wind was blowing at all. There are some odd outages in the data during several days in the past week especially that look like the weather station wasn't receiving any wind data for an hour or so. Several things can cause that--maybe the atmosphere was messing up the wireless. When I took those values out, I got new numbers of 5.65 mph for Wind Speed, .40 minutes (about 20 seconds) for Wind Run, and 9.40 mph for Hi Wind Speed--still not enough to really rely on power wise, but probably closer to accurate.
Looking at the numbers more directly I can see some definite patterns. As expected wind speed really picks up in the evening hours, jumping from around 1-3 mph to 12-13 mph. The Hi Wind Speeds really jump to numbers like 20, 25, and 28 mph (one day last week we had a 33 mph gust that lasted a minute and a half)...this tells me that the air is very turbulent and gusty, and might indicate (as I'd suspected) that I really need to get the anemometer on a taller pole. I can also see that the are slowing angling up, which backs my thinking that we're in the summer doldrums right now and that we'll get heavier winds as the seasons change.
In case there are any geeks out there I'm attaching the Excel spreadsheet with all the latest numbers in it, just for fun. Let me know if you find anything awesome.
Overall it still feels to me that there's enough wind up there to get some decent power though. I really need to get the anemometer up at altitude where it belongs, and I need to spend an evening plugging the numbers I've gathered so far into a Bergey turbine model to see what it might do.
Dang this is fun stuff!
Steve
Filestanglewood_finer_results.xls
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Posted to Tanglewood by Steven in Colorado Springs, CO
on 8/21/2008
As usual conditional on the permit and construction loan (I guess I'd really better get started on that paperwork too...sigh), but we accepted our second bid today. This one's for the trusses, but the "normal" ones and the exposed timber trusses that will domin |