<HTML><HEAD></HEAD>
<BODY dir=ltr>
<DIV dir=ltr>
<DIV style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; FONT-FAMILY: 'Arial'; COLOR: #000000">
<DIV
style='FONT-SIZE: small; TEXT-DECORATION: none; FONT-FAMILY: "Calibri"; FONT-WEIGHT: normal; COLOR: #000000; FONT-STYLE: normal; DISPLAY: inline'>
<DIV dir=ltr>
<DIV style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; FONT-FAMILY: 'Arial'; COLOR: #000000">
<DIV><FONT size=3>Many of us living on the East side of the Mississippi River,
have high humidity in summer and low humidity in winter inside our homes when
heated. The relative humidity can be high in the winter outside.
However, by heating the cold air, it becomes very dry inside. In the
summer, the common practice is to cool with refrigerant driven air
conditioner. Never mind that all the refrigerant will leak when the seals
break. We do not have air conditioning. In mountains of Virginia, we
are able to keep the house in 70sF all summer with night flushing and closing up
during the day with HRV running. </FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=3></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=3>Setting aside the issue of biochar, let me speak of increasing
the desiccant capacity of the house similar to the what was described in video
referenced below. I have observed that our house has an annual cycle of
humidity. After heating through the winter, the house is very dry.
In the spring as the humidity begins to rise, past the heating season, the house
will act as a desiccant and dehumidify the air coming in by aDsorbing the
humidity. As summer and early fall, continually adds moisture, the
capacity to aDsorb humidity out of the air becomes saturated. By late
summer and early fall, without active dehumidification, the house will have it’s
highest humidity. Then when heating season starts again, the heat will
begin to dry out the aDsorbed humidity. In the gradation from being too
high, to too low RH, there will be a time where humidity released by drying will
be a beneficial humidifying of the air, just as late spring, early summer the
house’s dehumidifying affect is a benefit. </FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=3></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=3>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. Living near a creek may be raising my ambient humidity above
normal. However, when I have done that with a wood stove, I am able to
cool house again by the following morning with RH reduced by 15%. Because
initially, my wife did not want me to do this, I waited until it was 90%RH in
late August. This brought it down to a still too high, 75%RH. On a
slightly cool day, I got permission to do a smaller fire to get RH to 65%.
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.
</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=3></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=3>Now if you could increase the desiccant capacity such that
describe in video, we can lower the peaks of dry and wet to achieve desirable
levels of humidity without the use of refrigerants. This assumes you can
maintain a suitable temperature by other means. Now if people use biochar
as the desiccant, they can prevent the readmission of half the carbon contained
in the wood it was created from for millennias. In addition to
sequestering the carbon from wood, it also reduces the carbon from manufacturing
and running refrigerant equipment to dehumidify. </FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=3></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT style="face: arial" size=3>This video about charcoal in Japan shows
its use as an annual cycle dehumidifier in a home. The relevant part of 28
minute video for this aspect comes at 21:28. Any thoughts? 4,500 kilograms
of charcoal were laid in what looked like a crawl space to absorb humidity
during the summer and give off humidity in the winter. Much information
was not included, like climate, size of house, thermal envelope construction,
ventilation, et. However, this application of a desiccant is relevant to
our core subject of greenbuilding. Does anybody on list have
experience using enough desiccant to absorb humidity in summer and release back
in the winter inside a thermal envelope? </FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT style="face: arial" size=3></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><A title=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jiVmKC8xXJ8 style="href: "
href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jiVmKC8xXJ8" https: www.youtube.com
watch?v='jiVmKC8xXJ8""'><FONT style="face: arial"
size=3>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jiVmKC8xXJ8</FONT></A></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Eli </DIV>
<DIV
style='FONT-SIZE: small; TEXT-DECORATION: none; FONT-FAMILY: "Calibri"; FONT-WEIGHT: normal; COLOR: #000000; FONT-STYLE: normal; DISPLAY: inline'>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt tahoma">
<DIV><FONT size=3 face=Arial></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV style="BACKGROUND: #f5f5f5">
<DIV style="font-color: black"><FONT size=3><B>From:</B> </FONT><A
title=9watts@gmail.com href="mailto:9watts@gmail.com"><FONT size=3>Reuben
Deumling</FONT></A><FONT size=3> </FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=3><B>Sent:</B> Sunday, June 28, 2015 8:59 PM</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=3><B>To:</B> </FONT><A
title=greenbuilding@lists.bioenergylists.org
href="mailto:greenbuilding@lists.bioenergylists.org"><FONT size=3>Green
Building</FONT></A><FONT size=3> </FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=3><B>Subject:</B> Re: [Greenbuilding] Fw: Biochar as Annual
Cycle BuildingDehumidifier</FONT></DIV></DIV></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV></DIV>
<DIV
style='FONT-SIZE: small; TEXT-DECORATION: none; FONT-FAMILY: "Calibri"; FONT-WEIGHT: normal; COLOR: #000000; FONT-STYLE: normal; DISPLAY: inline'>
<DIV dir=ltr>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV class=gmail_extra>
<DIV class=gmail_quote>
<BLOCKQUOTE class=gmail_quote
style="PADDING-LEFT: 1ex; MARGIN: 0px 0px 0px 0.8ex; BORDER-LEFT: #ccc 1px solid">
<DIV dir=ltr>
<DIV dir=ltr>
<DIV style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; FONT-FAMILY: 'Arial'; COLOR: #000000">
<DIV><FONT size=3></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt tahoma">
<DIV>
<DIV
style='FONT-SIZE: small; TEXT-DECORATION: none; FONT-FAMILY: "Calibri"; FONT-WEIGHT: normal; COLOR: #000000; FONT-STYLE: normal; DISPLAY: inline'>Does
anybody on list have experience using enough desiccant to absorb humidity in
summer and release back in the winter inside a thermal envelope?
</DIV></DIV></DIV></DIV></DIV></DIV></BLOCKQUOTE>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Some of us live in climates with low humidity in the summer and very high
humidity in the winter. I'm thinking this would not work for us,
eh?<BR> <BR></DIV></DIV></DIV></DIV>
<DIV><FONT
face=Arial></FONT> </DIV></DIV></DIV></DIV></DIV></DIV></DIV></BODY></HTML>