How To Build a Climate Battery - Day 1 - Construction In Passive Solar Greenhouse
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- Опубліковано 9 лип 2024
- In this video we start the process of building the climate battery for our new passive solar greenhouse. Climate batteries also called GAHTS and subteranean heating and cooling systems store energy in the earth when there is a surplus of heat in the greenhouse for later use.
We spent most of the summer performing thermodynamic analysis on our greenhouse to determine if they even worked and to our amazement they do. In fact our analysis showed that they have the ability to store energy seasonally which was better than I was expecting.
Our model anticipates that we should be able to keep our greenhouse above zero until January 15th of most years without any fossil fuels to keep it heated. This should provide us with 3 seasons of robust food production with minimal costs.
See the videos for all 3 days of climate battery construction:
Day 1 - you are here!
Day 2 - • How To Build a Climate...
Day 3 - • How To Build a Climate...
#growyourownfood #permaculture #regenerativeagriculture
If you're ready to build a life changing greenhouse, Register for the course at: vergepermaculture.ca/passive-...
Links to topics in this video:
Chapters:
0:00 Intro
0:57 The most asked question about building a passive solar greenhouse
1:23 Do Climate batteries work?
3:34 Anecdotal evidence that climate batteries work - Hull Services Greenhouse
3:53What the model predicts for our new greenhouse
4:41 Iterative design process and refine the greenhouse design course and tools
5:19 Distributing air
6:27 A lot of other greenhouse systems make a common mistake, and what we will do instead
What we’ve been learning so far with this greenhouse:
8:58 Energy can be transferred to the next season, not just the next day
10:09 Solar heater for when sun is low in sky
10:32 Longer pipes between manifolds are better than shorter ones
11:01 work plan for day 1
11:15 Doing the math, how many holes; what is the third pipe for?
12:20 Caution re drilling with. 4 inch hole saw
13:10 Caps & Elbows on the ends
13:33 Moving air
14:51 cutting the pipes and installing the caps
17:35 Hole saw pain and difficulties, Let’s try a jig saw!
18:49 Swiss cheese - holes cut, now . . .
About Rob Avis and Verge Permaculture:
In less than 10 years, Rob & Michelle Avis left Calgary’s oil fields and retooled his engineering career to help clients and students design integrated systems for shelter, energy, water, waste and food, all while supporting local economy and regenerating the land. He’s now leading the next wave of permaculture education, teaching career-changing professionals to become eco-entrepreneurs with successful regenerative businesses. Learn more and connect with Rob & Michelle at vergepermaculture.ca/
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That's so cool. I'm a civil engineer, so I'm used to calculating water. About 20 years ago I wrote a finite-element program to simulate rainwater being stored in a crushed stone base then percolating into perforated drains. This was to design drainage systems for sports fields. As to the season being shifted, that makes sense. I guess as a student you must have taken System Analysis or Signal Theory. The course may be called various things, but it's when you have a black box with an input signal and an output signal and the black box is the "system" that can be represented by a mathematical formula. The system could be electrical, mechanical, hydraulic or thermal. If the input signal is sinusoidal and the system is essentially a storage system such as a capacitor, a spring, a reservoir or a mass heat storage unit, then the output signal will also be sinusoidal, but the amplitude will be reduced and the phase will be shifted when compared with the input signal. So when you observe the seasonal effect of the heat being stored by a quarter year, that's the phase shift of the temperature signal. You'll probably see something similar with the daily temperature changes, not only will the difference between daily high and low be reduced, but the time at which the highs and lows occur will be shifted by a few hours.
Once we get the empirical data we should be able to see this phenomena. I will share with YT once we have it.
Civil Engineers rule! I went a different way and kick myself for choosing electrical over civil. Civil Engineers built the world!
@@VergePermaculture Next time you need to pound those fittings into place? A lil bit of dish soap saves a lot of headache.
for future reference, when you connect gasketed pipes, a little lubrication will make the connection much easier to accomplish and subsequently more reliable
Who's going to be the first to make curved connectors for all the popular manifold sizes?
Tip, please put a tarp or something under the pipe before cutting to catch the shavings so they don't go into the ground and thus into the water. Thanks.
Great idea. Thanks for the tip.
Here is a tip on using the holesaw I picked up from Rob Bob's aquaponics channel: Run it backwards!
The reason the holesaw is so heavy on your arms and body is that the cutting teeth are eating away at the plastic whilst you are trying to keep the drill steady. However if you run it backwards the teeth are still effecting the plastic, they are just not so eager to bite into the material. Less friction reduces the amount of torque the drill pushes back through your arms.
It really works, try it out some time!
Came hear to say the same thing. Learned this from my father in the trades, when cutting into plastic siding. Going forwards it can literally crack even 5 yr old vinyl siding!
Also makes it take longer. To cut through some depth of material l it's going to take some amount of work J. If you spread J out over a longer time t, the power required W is lower, which you feel as torque, but you're resisting it for longer.
Better to do it at the max power of the tool/human combo and get it over with.
@@Asdayasman Blowing out the hole makes the fit worse meaning you spend more time having to plug the holes with tape. So, no time saved at all.
@@crazycdn8327 Why are you replying to me?
@@Asdayasman Pretty self explanatory... I disagree completely with your comment, hence I replied with why it's not a good idea to do what you said. Running it backwards, in plastic adds at best a couple seconds to cutting the holes, verses your idea of going full boar and blowing them out by going forward with the bit.
Awesome job, thank you. Funny one liners Mitch, you’re very clever!
awesome video series start!
Great channel my friend! So glad I found it, thanks to Curtis Stone. I am incorporating a GAHT system into my greenhouse that my knacked friend of mine and I are designing. I am aiming for it to be operating as environmentally friendly as possible, so finding you is a blessing.
Props for the wheat/ glyphosate disclosure
This guy knows his shit and he’s kindly letting us know. I am watching this a few times
Long tubes are not better because they limit the amount of air you can run. Without airflow you cant move heat.
Sounds like it would be much cheaper 3d printing some of these parts
Great to see someone trying to apply some modeling to the airflow. And very happy to see you using smooth pipe for the manifolds. I've seen a lot of really bad 'manifold' situations in other videos, where they try to cram a dozen or more feeder pipes into a 'manifold' of the same diameter of the feeders. But here you're collecting twenty 4" pipes (sum cross-section of about 250 square inches) to one 10" pipe (cross-section of 78.5 inches). Since you modeled this, does this mean the model showed about 2/3 friction loss in the feeder tubes, so that you needed 3x the cross-section in feeders, vs the manifold? It's what the math suggests to me but so far you haven't really explicitly addressed the friction loss. If so that'd be twice the friction loss that I've been guessing. If having 3x the cross-section in feeder pipes vs manifold is a good rule of thumb, it'd be really good to put that out there.
idc how old i am "bell end" still makes me chuckle lol. i want a passive system i think. tho this seems awesome. new sub and thumbs for you VP
Years ago I had an idea for a irrigation controller that data logged from all the sensors you could put in it. Soil moisture, temperature, photocells for logging daylight. All could be setup respective to the zones so you could irrigate different areas in your yard. Lawn zones could be irrigated off soil moisture levels instead of just a set watering time. You would be able to add any sensor to a zone. It would be more than a controller but like a data collection and monitor system. You could track your daylight hours in a zone or the average daily temperature.. Greenhouses could be zones too and you could use that controller to monitor your greenhouse temp, hours of light, humidity ect.. I'm just not a technical guy like that but it's a product I still haven't seen invented
Neat idea!
@@VergePermaculture I trust you'll show us how you're going to gather information from this greenhouse
15:37 - hit that some more - it's nice and bassy!
Is it possible to install a concrete slab over the battery? I'm worried about subsidence. I need a concrete floor in the greenhouse for accessibility of wheelchairs.
I've heard of people running the pilot holes forward, then running the hole backwards for an easier and smoother cut
We discovered this tactic on a later build! Thanks :)
Why did you not use only one intake (fan) manifold, then use the exhaust ends of the small tubes to evenly distribute the warm air more around the space like a group of organ pipes. Are you using sand for extra conductivity in the base fill before adding other medium. Do you have a drain and vapor barrier under pipe network?
Yes!! This is awesome!! Do you have test results yet? Would love to see the white paper!!
have you seen ADS arch chambers?
will they work instead of all the 6” pipe?
Having done a lot of large hole drilling, I was scared for you when you said you were going to use a 4" hole saw... I'd have built a jig, even if it had taken me most of the day. A jig to hold the pipe, and a Jet drill press - an ever useful shop tool.
18:53 - those were cut with a jig saw? They look perfect to my level of view.
Not that you’re living in this structure, but given it is in Alberta, would radon be able to seep in easier or the same as a concrete basement?
Where did you get the 4" manifolds at?
I think you should have tried it with pex water pipes running in the ground to an air to water radiator instead. No mold concerns, easier to install, probably much cheaper and simpler
do you have a design for this?
What company did you use to supply the corrugated drain pipe with the fabric? I am in BC and I looking for best prices
Since I have a high water table from the 75” of rain here thus I can’t use geothermal storage, especially with perf pipe. The subsurface water also migrates downhill which would wash away the collected ground heat… (sigh).
15:19 Then I’m back to designing the needed 15:41 thermal mass above grade. I’m hesitant to give up ground area for barrels of water so that leaves me to use a concrete or masonry wall on the north side with insulation on the outside.
Great work!
However I believe that you wont get uniform airflow in all pipes with that manifold. A manifold like that should taiper off in order to get even air distribution in all pipes. This is because the air pressure drops as you get closer to the blocked end of the manifold.
I would consider cutting the connector, so that it is fluch aginst the big pipe, in the blocked end. Then gradually increase how much the connector intude in to the large pipe as you get cloaser to the fan end of the manifold.
But i don't know how big effect this will have, you are probably quite close to uniform airflow with the setup you have now.
Nice build, locking forward to see the next video!
This is why we have a reverse return system ie. the outlets is kidie corner to the inlet.
Okey, that is probably a smartar way to solve that problem ;) 👍
Great work! :)
I would consider not using perforated pipe cuz eventually it will take on water. You want to try and keep the water out. I spoke with a local drain tile installer who has also built a couple of these and was told to use solid pipe, no holes and seal everything up tight. He also recommend not using manifolds just one long pipe snaked underground with a pusher and puller fan on each end. So the air can't take the shortest/easiest route and bypass some of the other piping. Good luck
Seeing the news in the past few months about sand batteries for heating like the one in Finland, I had a thought. As a climate battery is really the same thing configured differently, I wondered if I could combine the 2. Climate batteries work great but can be expensive and for a small home grower, quite a large expense. If I had a say 12x8ft greenhouse and wanted to convert it. If I were to dig a pit say 4ft square and 8-10ft deep.insulated the hole then filled it with pipes and sand could this work the same as the (normal way) a climate battery is usually constructed?
I thinking it is super exciting, I follow with a lot of enthusiasm, but I think a large air fan uses a lot of power, why do not use concrete with underfloor heating just like in the houses, what are the advantages and disadvantages of each system
Thank you for the very interesting and educational series of videos. One BIG question on my mind is whether there could be alternatives to using all that plastic? All the climate battery designs out there (that I can find) bury so much plastic piping that it seems counter to the principles of permaculture. I love the concepts that seek to harness solar energy in anyway that we can, but the idea of leaving plastic in the ground for many, many generations to deal with later just does not feel right. Have you come across other materials (and perhaps ancient methods) that use natural materials such as stone, ceramic or even concrete that could be used instead of plastic? Seems like a worthy challenge for an engineer. Thank you for any additional info and insights you may have.
Good point. We just recently found aircrete. Domegaia, Aircrete Harry, Honeydo Carpenter, Man About Tools all use it for building structures/grow boxes and have various tests on it they have performed. Most recently, Stephen Williams has taken all their wisdom and added his own using the otherwise awful styrofoam that fills up landfills. So maybe someone can check on that and see if it is financially feasible to use to make a pipe with? or something. I have a feeling it would not be economical though.
Put the whole saw in reverse for break through
What may of work is heat pipe than drill it.
What air velocities are you aiming for in the piping? Our modeling suggested that faster speeds (achieving turbulent flow) may be better, but your study would seem to show (based on the number of pipes and the size of the piping) that lower velocities are desirable. Looking to sort that out in my mind. Also, are you planning to balance airflow across the piping so that air velocities relatively equal across all piping runs? If so, how will you achieve that?
I am going to measure that, because it is so rough inside I have no idea what my centre velocity is going to be. Lots more study to do.
Curtis Stone stated that the performance of his greenhouse was much better in the second year. Did you simulate 24 months with the model?
I'm going to throw out an idea. what if around the air tubes you ran 1000 feet of 1/2' pex? maybe $300... you can then later attach that pex in 3 ruins of 333 feet to three evacuated tube arrays where the pump is run by solar. what I just suggested is how to inject heat - and a lot of heat, to the ground so you can go ALL winter. what I suggested will add 10-20' to the ground temperature around where your GHAT system is drawing heat from the ground. the evacuated tubes will add WAY WAY more heat than any air transfer but you can draw it back out by air transfer... anyway - it's about $300 to add 1000 feet of pex NOW if you understand what I just said...
That's a brilliant idea. Try this idea out and run a study on it. I'm interested to hear how well it works out.
anyone know any contacts in the uk for this??
Where did they build this?
So did it work? Is it helpful enough to make it worth the work and cost?
2 years later... no video on the website reviewing how it worked. I suspect that the perforated corrugated pipe is the wrong material.
run hole saw backwords
Any problems with Radon ? 🤔
Viva Christo Rey
9:20 No f'ing way. You're moving thermal energy between quarters of the year. So we can use spring to cool summer? And fall to warm winter? That's what I'm talkin' about! Now we're done. Perfect smoothing of energy.
Good thing you live in Canada. In the USA you made numerous OSHA safety violations. In Canada you're OK and don't need to worry about USA safety like eye protection.
This is great, but maybe lay down some cloth or plywood so you're not putting out so much micro plastic
Thanks for the idea. I copied Your system you will be surprised my cost
Use the hole saw in reverse.
Thanks for the tips!
You could secure the pipe quite easily - lash either end to something that's not going to move, like a tree. But then if the drill binds up, you might be breaking your wrist. Or breaking the drill. Maybe if it has fine toothed hole saw. Not sure if that's helpful. You're the engineer. I've drilling a lot of crap like trees and logs. I've discovered it's far better to use a paddle bit that doesn't have that aggressive threading to try to force it through faster - too much torques. I like the flat ones that shave a bit at a time. I've bent enough bits to come to that conclusion.
Oh, I see. It's not that the pipe moved. It's that the drill bit in to hard and tried to break your wrist. But I thought you said the pipe flew around?
"Always cut in reverse only" when cutting pipe and using hole saws
a very good lesson we learned the hard way!
is this guy talking in celsius? also when i see you putting on those fittings i keep telling myself to put on some lube. Lube it up!
how can i consult with you?
Hi Rob, txs for another great video. Maybe a stupid question, but this manifold seems like quite an inefficient, expensive and potentially problematic way to divide the air between the different pipes. Why not let the pipes of the same length simply come out of the ground in one place, like this guy did (ua-cam.com/video/Ibaf_rkW_30/v-deo.html)? Curious for your expert opinion as an engineer. Txs!
too bad you cut on the grass and put all that plastic waste into the ground, otherwise good stuff.
So, let me get this right. Your giving us information on a subject you've be studying and teaching for a number of years and you don't know if it works. I just watched a video on a greenhouse with this system you said you studied for seven years, but you don't know if it works. Make a video when you figure it out and let me know.
jfc... 21 minutes of video for something that could be entirely conveyed with 3 still images.
👎too much babble. Shame you have good info.