In this video Tom talks about how he built a metal wood stove to help heat his shop area. The welding/fabrication shop is a six thousand square foot metal building. The new wood stove does a good job of efficiently heating the space.
Tom came up with the design after careful research. It has an air intake at the bottom of the wood stove, that may someday be hooked to an outside air source to prevent recirculation of conditioned air.
Tom built a removable ash drawer to help reduce ash in the stove.
The metal stove is built out of five eights inch plate.
Tom welded in smoke shelves and pipes to help facilitate movement of the fire and heat. One of the tubes holds a thermostat from an attached thermostat motor. As the air gets warmer in the tube, it fires up a blower. Once the fire has died down, say in the middle of the night, the blower will switch off.
Tom also fabricated two pieces of rectangle tube to hold a water/antifreeze mix. A heat exchanger will be added to carry heat from one area of the shop to the shop addition.
One thing that Tom would change on the design is installing fewer smoke shelves on the inside of the wood stove. Having lots of smoke shelves allows for too much ash build up on the inside of the stove. Tom had to drill in several extra holes so that he could blow out the smoke shelves two or three times per year.

We have been busy. It has taken us forever to rough in the electrical work. To date we have run well over 2000 feet of 14-2 wire, 500′ of 12-2 wire, 150′ of 8 gauge wire, 100′ of 10 gauge wire, 750′ of CAT 5 communications cable, 500′ and counting of plenum rated speaker wire, and some 400′ of HVAC thermostat and control wire. We are wired for the eventual addition of solar photovoltaics and wind, along with a transfer panel for a diesel generator. A few years ago an engineer for IdaTech – a fuel cell manufacturer in Bend, told me that the average French farmhouse got by on wiring for less than 1k power. With the National Electrical Code, and insurance regulations, this is entirely not possible here in the USA. When we see the price of copper, we sure wish it was possible to get by with less. We also recently installed a 16′ garage door, – something akin to putting together a life size erector set. Now only three more garage doors to go on the “barn”.

Saturday we sprayed 1″ of foam insulation on all of the exterior walls in the house. We used a product called “Foam it Green”. We are truely impressed with the results, not only did the foam seal up the walls, it also tightened up the structure. I would recommend this DIY foam kit to anyone. Today, we placed R19 insulation on all of the second floor exterior walls, this week Chip will work away on doing R19 insulation on the remaining exterior walls after work each night. Our finished iusulation package calls 1″ of foam board beneath stucco on the exterior walls for something like an R29 in the exterior walls.

Peggy has been learning to do western landscape painting from M.C. Poulson at the Buffallo Bill Historical Center Friday afternoons and every other Saturday. She sits with her easel before millions of dollars of art in the Whitney Gallery ( I tell her not to splash her colors). We are proud of her work to date. This and our other activities have kept us occupied in Cody’s “slow season”.

We hope that you all have a great week.

-Chip, Peg, Dan, Katie,

The Millers continue to plug away at building their new energy efficient home themselves. Visit our last two posts here and here to catch up on the progress.

Greetings to All,
First, we want to wish everyone a superb Thanksgiving. We hope that you can all gather around with family and friends. We know that the English clan out in Eugene will have a house full, and know that the Gabriels down in Laramie will be cooking up a huge meal.

Daylight has become scarce, and our weeks have filled up with other activities. Katie is on the Middle School Swim Team, Dan is in Boy Scouts over in Powell, and this week Dan decided (after being encouraged by the coach), that he should start swimming as well. So both kids are swimming M-F. Katie keeps improving her times at the meets.

We have been trying ever so hard to finish up that pesky metal roof on the house. We are up to the skylights that we have cut into the roof. The flashing kit that came with the skylights requires that you perform delicate maneuvers with tin snips and other sharp objects while tethered to the roof with your life line. Kind of like trimming your toenails sitting on the edge of the Grand Canyon.

In addition to the wind and weather not cooperating, yours truely took a pretty good fall from a ladder about ten days ago. I cowboyed things out for a few days until Peggy insisted that I go to the doctor. -A sprained left ankle, and a small radial fracture in my right elbow. So I have been slowed but not stopped. About the only thing that really hurts to do is pound with a hammer with my right arm.

We lost some sleep, planning strategy for placing the large front door unit (w / two side lights and a transom) and large bedroom exterior french door and transom unit. Both are large, heavy, expensive, and full of glass. So we rigged up a contraption to move these things so that they could be edged into place. We had success, no broken glass, no more broken bones. The house is now locked, and sealed from the elements. We have moved all the rough electrical and rough plumbing supplies into the house in anticipation of doing some of this work over Thanksgiving.

From the photos, you can see about where we are with the roof. We have also installed the porch rafters and completed the framing of all the second floor walls. Dan did a great job of securing the door units while riding on the front of the tractor forks. Less, you think that we are in violation of international child labor laws, I was close by walking alongside the tractor to secure the load.

So Happy Thanksgiving to All.

-Chip, Peg, Dan and Katie

-Our Holiday Break has just ended. We put some 9 days of work into the house and have accomplished a lot. The kids have been great between working hard and playing around with their Christmas gifts. Most of our days have ended in sheer exhaustion.

We have run several thousand feet of electrical wire in the house, and a lesser amount of low voltage Cat5, and speaker wire, installed some 50 can lights. A big accomplishment was the installation of all the R49 fiberglass insulation in the main body of the house ceiling (the great room vault, and over the second floor rooms). Chip and Dan donned hazmat suits for this task.

It is hope that all had a great holiday. We tried to get some Christmas cards in the mail. To those of you who missed one, we applologize for the lack luster replacement of an email greeting.

-Chip, Peg, Dan, Katie

-What a wild weekend! -We had high winds Friday and Saturday preventing us from starting on the install of the standing seam metal roof. So Friday and Saturday we switched gears and installed windows on the house. Most windows are in – except the West wall (prevailing winds), and the kids second floor bedrooms. Sunday the weather cooperated, consequently we were able to start roofing. About 1/3 of the South face of the house roof is done.

-Cheers! -Chip

-This weekend we rented a Squirt Boom, thus allowing us to place the 600lb green 8 x 16 green Spruce beam at the ridge of the porch peak. Next comes the framing for the porch roof. We made good use of this wonderful machine to finish up the Tyvek Stucco Wrap, install all of the west wall windows, start the scary installation of the gable end metal roof pieces on the house and garage. The lifting rig we used was certainly quite a bit safer than our last contraption.

The wind blew pretty good (out of the West) on Sat. so installing the windows on the West wall was akin to having magnets stick to metal. -Hold up the windows…..and whoosh……they stuck right to the wall!

After a busy day Sat. Peggy and I found the opportunity to make it to a Halloween Party dressed as our favorite movie characters – James Bond and the Bond Girl “Camile” from “A Quantum of Solstice”. I think that Peggy made quite a remarkable transition from construction grubbies to glam for this event. I sure am a lucky guy to be able to pal around with such a beautiful gal!

We are just about weathered in. Coming up we have a three day weekend, that we may extend to four days. All of the roof metal is delivered, so we may make a big push to install all the roofing on both buildings as well as the skylights.

Best to all.

-Chip

We are destined to have Wind Power in our future. Seems like that greater Yellowstone Plateau just West of us, keeps throwing high winds our way. We had a three day weekend, and planned to put the roof on the house. Friday saw gust up to 60 mph. Saturday we did a half day and about 40′ of metal roof before the winds kicked in. Sunday brought turbulent winds all day.

Not to loose any time, we switched gears and installed two skylights over the loft area that will become Pegs botanical painting area, and put a skylight in each of the kids bedrooms. The two skylights in the loft painting are have a sweet view of Carter Mountain. We also just about licked the second floor framing of two kids bedrooms, two walk in closets and a large second floor bathroom.

The second floor now appears to be a labyrinth of wood. The photo with Dan shows the partially completed bathroom with the ladder in it. Next in line other than the roof – second floor rail partition, stair cutout, fire blocking, fireplace chase, then finally rough electrical and plumbing. We anticipate the garage doors and exterior doors arriving this week.

A great week to all!

-Chip

When traveling in the northern New Mexico area, one stop along the way that you won’t want to miss is the Visitors Center for Earthship homes. These structures are very interesting.
Earthships are buildings that are designed to be built with recycled materials. These structures take green living to it’s extreme. Each structure is basically old tires packed with earth and stacked on top of one another to form walls. The tires are surrounded by concrete or cement filler interspersed with old beverage cans and bottles. The bottles make a nice addition when light is allowed to flow through. One example we saw was an outside lamp post using what appeared to be the bottom of an old pickle jar.
The entire structure can then be coated with a mud or adobe mixture to give it a more polished look. Most Earthships are either fully or partially burned into the ground. The surrounding earth also acts as an insulation, keeping the building cool in the summer and warm in the winter.
Earthship builders place large windows on the south facing wall in order to capture solar light and heat.
Each Earthship is designed to house an entirely independent water system. The Earthship captures rain or snow, usually on the roof, and then the water is funneled through a silt screen. The screened water is then stored in a cistern for further use. The Earthship Visitors Center near Taos has an indoor tank. The builders had incorporated a small waterfall that created a nice sound in the adobe structure.

From the cistern the water would be used for washing and bathing. That water would then be used as gray water to fill toilet tanks and water indoor gardens.

Each Earthship home is built with independent sustainability in mind.  Power is harnessed through solar and/or wind collection.  Energy enters the Earthship into a bank of battaries at twelve volts.  The battery bank feeds an inverter that in turn produces one hundred fifteen volts and sixty hertz that is used to power the appliances in the Earthship.  Earthships usually have special refrigerators called “Thermal Mass Refrigerator”.  Thermal Mass Refrigerators are designed utilizing a type of alcohol as insulation and can therefore hold temperature better. Earthship power systems are capable of sustaining all kinds of modern conviences. Earthships are built to incorporate a central mechanical room to house renewable energy equipment.

Earthships are springing up in various areas of the country and world.  Watch for one in your neighborhood.

Tom looks at an electrical control panel in an Earthship Home.

Tom chose to put 8, 4 foot by 4 foot  windows on the south side of the new addition.  The solid steel framed windows will allow the southern sun to come in and heat this part of the building.  Tom also included two slide windows with built in screens on the west and north walls as well.

The first step was to frame out he windows with framing that came with the building package.  They were pre cut and needed bolting and squaring prior to attachment to the main structure.  Trim the came with the building package was used to trim out the inside of the window frame for a smoother look. 

Tom used a standard vinyl fixed windows that can be found at any local building supply store.  The south facing windows were energy star rated.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                          Tips By Tom is proud to bring you information on alternative energy.  To kick things off, here is a video shot and edited by our friend at www.solardave.com, Dave Dugdale. 

This massave solar energy site is located in southern Colorado. 

In future articles, we will be exploring various ways to heat, cool, move, and generate things we use everyday.

Replacing a wind powered device with solar device can be tricky.  In this video, Tom explains to Dave Dugdale (www.solardave.com) how he put solar panels on an old windmill.  The device powers a pump for water.

The solar panels can be unplugged to allow for a generator to take over on cloudy days.  Tom explains why the windmill is replaced by three solar panels.  The pasture holds 1000 cows and the pump and solar panels help in keeping up with the thirsty bovines.

The video was shot on a ranch just outside of Laramie, Wyoming where there is plenty of sun and wind!