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RE: How to use thermal mass to harness the incredible power of the SUN and to grow food year round!
Loving what you're sharing here! This is such a great use of resources, I really value your repair and reuse ethics and the great design idea to fill the tunnel with mass. Long live heat sinks!
We're getting ready to erect a 30x48 tunnel and we're chewing on non thermal mass options. I like the water tank, we're also thinking of gabion end wall (hella rocky here). Lots to consider but this post was inspiring.
Happy to see you winning with thermal mass heating. Look forward to seeing all the great things to come from this tunnel.
I couldn't agree more about aligning with nature and growing good plants and living a good life!!! Thanks for sharing.
Awesome! That is excisting. Just FYI .. if you don't already know this... I don't know the exact percentage but water retains much more heat / coolness than rock does.. I think maybe twice as much? So it's usually a better option than rock. Like for instance if there is already a rock or dirt south wall in place it makes sense to build on to it, but if you are starting from scratch, maybe consider the idea of tanks or just filling 55 gallon drums and painting them black for an end wall or something similar... Just a suggestion of course... there are so many different opinions and ways to do things especially with farming and maybe a gabion end wall makes the most sense for you and I'm sure it will also work great. :) Anyway thanks for the comment and I'm glad you enjoyed the post :)
Oh one other thing... In the fall this year, I'm going to hook in an on demand hot water heater that runs off of a propane tank. This is replacing the janky 'Mr. Buddy' heater I run. That way, the heat goes straight to the water and is retained for even more efficiency. When I was running the Mr. Buddy I would place it as close to the large tank as possible to achieve this same effect, but using an on demand hot water heater is going to be alot more efficient. I may also add worm bins in the greenhouse. Hoping to see more of a decrease in heating costs and eventually I'd like to break free from the propane and be fully off grid.