It seems like the construction hasn’t made major strides as the crew continues to install the last of the exterior insulation on the C-wing, but so many other pieces have been progressing. I wish I had pictures for everything, but some things just don’t work well without being there…you’ll see what I mean when you read the list.
- Commissioning of our ERV, this was a huge accomplishment that started many months ago. This unit is our whole house fresh air ventilation system that couldn’t be completed until the major dust creating tasks were completed (and all the missing parts were delivered). we now have 24×7 fresh air being brought into the house and stale air being removed, yeah!
- Water pump plumbing and wiring is now complete.
- Water tank storage sensors installed.
- The apartment concrete floor has finally been sealed.
- We have HOT water! Once we had enough solar panels installed and the heat diversion wiring all setup, we were able to send excess power to the water heating elements everything worked as expected.
There were many parts for this project and the complexity wasn’t well understood until the install really began. To give you an idea, the pump turns on automatically and powered completely by solar. There is a system of floats inside the cistern and storage tanks that determine when the pump should turn off, i.e. no water in the cistern or the storage is full. We also had a valve that opens to drain the line to the storage tanks when the pump turns off so the line won’t freeze in winter.
These were a bit tricky as I developed them almost 2 years ago in anticipation for our off-grid water system. I have since found reasonable water tank level sensors in the market, but not really what I was looking for. With a micro controller, some resistors, and little code and an industrial depth sensor, we now have two wifi connected tank sensors that report our water depth in each tank. Why do I so often take pictures before I finish? This picture shows about 75% complete, but it’s actually finished.
This was a long time coming as there was a massive clean-up effort after construction and painting was completed. The whole family had their hands in sweeping, mopping, and scrubbing the floor until it was clean enough to treat with a pre-sealer and finally the sealing. we also tried something fun and used colored epoxy to fill pits and cracks. It turned out really well.