Minnesota Winter Test

by Paul...

ARC08, Our new home just faced another first.
Mid day on January first we turned off the lights, turned off the heat, and headed for the cities.
The temperature January second reached 32 below zero.
January third woke up to 31 below.

After more than two days of bitter cold weather with no heat, the house temperature was still 66 degrees.

I like my ARC!

ps... I have to remind myself that it will get better. This is an unfinished ARC that has no solar panels and no air exchanger, so we still have some windows open.

Boxed in

The NARC is all walled in. That means a fragile period is over. It is now much stronger and less likely to be blown over by an evil gust of wind.

Also the driveway is nicely shaped.

Narc progress

The Newbold ARC is getting the floor trusses installed.

ARCs and SPARCs and NARCs

HUG's long term project is to create Agricultural Resilient Communities. We have picked up the habit of calling the individual houses we build "ARCs".
The house that we started on campus in 2008 is called ARC08.

We intended to name ARCs by the year they were started, but now we are starting several per year. Then we noticed that almost any letters you put in front of ARC forms a word.
So...
ARC 09 is on campus and is Small and Practical, so we call it the SPARC.
Newbolds are building their NARC just off campus.
Dug's new cabin tends to be called the DARC.

Heating pipes in the foundation for the SPARC

The concrete was poured last Friday. The SPARC is now ready for walls.

ARC08 Landscape drainage

Shawn is digging in the drainage tile that will take water away from the roof without dumping ice on the walking paths.

New kitchen in ARC 08

The ARC without kitchen cabinets. Waiting for the new ones shortly.
ARC 08 was built with just a temporary kitchen at first. We had to get a feel for the place before we could design the real thing. This week it is coming together. Stay tuned for the outcome.

Leave those lights on!

It's weird! We have to (temporarily I hope) reverse a good habit our mothers tried to train into us. In our new house on campus (ARC08), people are being good and turning off lights behind them, and I am running around turning them back on. I am asking them to leave the lights on. It is our only source of heat.

So far, there is still no furnace, no solar panels, no other way to heat the house. This past week has been cold, cloudy, rainy and has averaged about 40 degrees F. Even though we have pretty efficient fluorescent lights, we found out we can keep the whole house at 70 degrees just by leaving the lights on about 12 hours per day.
I think I am going to love having a super insulated house.
Sign up to get yours today!

New solar panels

Wayne is working hard on the puttery business of installing our new experimental solar hot water panels on ARC08

Making solar panels

We are finally to the point of building the solar panels for the ARC. The trick is to make them so they look like they belong on the building. In our case, that means making panels. Of slightly different widths so they come out roughly even around and between windows.

Wayne has done several detailed drawings, but it's always a bit different when you really try it out. So we built this wall mockup to prove out the idea.

Here we see a shot of the "Table Saw of Death" that has 3 blades and can process the 6 foot by 19 foot sheets of the twin wall into more manageable pieces. In this case, we needed several different sizes and widths, so this saw is just for the rough cuts.

Wayne is stacking the rough cut pieces before he trims them to size for assembly.

Meanwhile, Marlin is making the mounting rails that will frame the panels.

Tune in next time to see them going on the wall of the ARC.