[Greenbuilding] (not really) Re: Biochar as Annual Cycle Building Dehumidifier

RT ArchiLogic at yahoo.ca
Fri Jul 3 14:26:57 CDT 2015


On Fri, 03 Jul 2015 13:32:25 -0400, Norbert Senf <norbert.senf at gmail.com>  
wrote:


> There is a workshop next week near Kingston (ON), with some  
> international cookstove experts:
> http://mha-net.org/docs/15052201.pdf
>

I was just heading out the door when Norbert's post came in and in looking  
at the PDF mentioned above,  the author of the announcement contained  
therein mentioned that the site of the workshop (Odessa ON) was near  
Napanee ON and "that's where Avril Lavigne is from, don't you know".

Me ? I'm from an older generation than that which would have mentioned a  
skateboarder/pop music personality as a community's claim to fame.

Point Anne is also just up the road from Odessa and it is the village  
where Bobby Hull (aka "The Golden Jet") of 1960's NHL hockey fame is from.

In fact, I would venture that Point Anne would be an ideal spot for a  
gathering of Green masonry  stovebuilders.

It is the site of the ruins of an old cement plant complex.  (Visible in  
GoogleMaps "satellite" view around co-ordinates  44.155387, -77.304755 )


 From the water,  in the Bay of Qunite, one catches glimpses through the  
trees on shore of  what looks like a gable end left standing after a bomb  
attack, like some WWII village in Europe.

Approaching the site from land, one first comes across small mountains of  
huge limestone blocks  haphazardly stacked, as if a Brobdignagian giant  
had rampaged through the site of Stonehenge in a drunken rage. 44.157161,  
-77310197

  In the late 1950s was a great place for little boys (like myself) to play.
In the 2010's , I suspect that it'd be a great place for a gang of  
grown-up stone masons to play.

                                                     *

On Fri, 03 Jul 2015 10:14:43 -0400, conservation architect  
<elitalking at rockbridge.net> wrote:

>>
> For the past 3 years, I have been reducing the humidity in my house in  
> the summer by temporarily heating >to 100F+ temperature for a few hours.  
> ... my wife did not want me to do this

>> The second year, I pointed to the mold forming to convince here it was  
>> a problem, also in August.  Similar >results to first year.  This year,  
>> I convinced my wife to proactively dehumidify by drying the house when  
>> I >first saw it get to 80%RH temporarily.  I did this last week to get  
>> down to 64%RH.


>> Also, on select days where RH is in 50s%, I ventilate the house with  
>> fans.  I was able to reduce by 5% the >last time this way.


I'm with t'missus on this one.

I think that the strategy of actively heating up a house to 100+ degF in  
summer as a means of cooking off moisture from envelope materials that  
were used to passively dehumidify a space seems ... [insert your choice of  
descriptors that you imagine Eli's wife would have used in discussions on  
the matter].

I think that  the strategy is akin to holding one's breath and staying  
underwater in a swimming pool as a "passive cooling" strategy, emerging  
 from underwater only when on the verge of passing out due to lack of  
oxygen, to gasp for air briefly before going under again.  As a means of  
keeping cool, it would work but there are collateral deleterious  
consequences .

In both cases, (dehumidification and cooling)  proper ventilation would be  
beneficial.

Again, rather than placing bio-char in a crawl-space to function as a  
desiccant, plain old clay,  as an earthen plaster on walls, say 2 to 3  
inches thick (or even as sun-dried blocks stacked up to serve as  
partitions replacing stud-framed partitions throughout the actual living  
space would likely perform as well or better than an equal mass of  
bio-char with far lower embodied-energy consequences.

And rather than heating up the entire house to 100+ degF to dry out the  
desiccant materials when mould activity becomes imminent, perhaps the clay  
could be configured as something like a Trombe wall  in each room, and  
venting the moisture-laden super-heated air outdoors (if possible) rather  
than the winter mode of directing it to the adjacent living spaces.

                                                     *

Lynelle Hamilton <lynelle at lahamilton.com> wrote:

> ... 67 Electra 225.  Mine with the 430-4bbl (inherited from my parents  
> in 73) routinely held 9 people(!). On a mpg per person, it probably was  
> a lot >friendlier than many vehicles


When I was in high school in the late 1960s, a relative tried to unload a  
1960 Buick Electra  225 "Microsoft Excel Green" convertible (think Big  
Fins" fore and aft) onto me when I first got my driver's license. I didn't  
bite.  But pretty much all  of the vehicles that we drove back then  
regularly accommodated  surprisingly large numbers of bodies ...  
frequently  even when the vehicle wasn't moving come to think of it.




-- 
=== * ===
Rob Tom DT7-64
Kanata, Ontario, Canada
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