Good stuff, thanks. They’re just temp shelves to quickly make some space for some of our summer projects. We’ll try to do our permanent shelves much better.
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If you are working with steel structures, spray foam has a significant advantage. The inside of the building will usually be relatively hot and humid (55f and 20%), and condense on the cold thing ie steel structure which is below freezing.
Spray foam will bond instead, and the new vapor barrier will hopefully be warm enough that liquid does not condense out of the air.
The plan is to do some closed cell polyurethane on the metal. Have to use the canisters you buy and mix yourself because can’t get the equipment the pros use up to our place though.
Working on the new battery shelves and wall for the culvert. Going to have our solar components down there along with the computer lab and all that generated heat should keep the batteries nice and warm especially in their insulated shelves. Shouldn’t need any supplemental heat even in winter.
Other half will be a computer desk and the computer and GPUs once I get settled on what to buy. Going to be a fun little place once I get the milling and building done.
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I can’t be the only one who suddenly wants their own underground server room culvert complete with racks and desk.
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It’s pretty fun. Feels kind of like that capsule in Lost although much smaller, like it shouldn’t be there. Underground in the middle of a huge forest with bears up top.
Of course, while low risk with LifePo4 chemistry, if the 80KWh of lithium were ever to go blazing while down there it would look like a different movie scene.
On the topic of things that shouldn’t be there, one of the distant projects I’m looking forward to is trenching power out to a remote little patch of forest and building a wardrobe and putting up an electric lamp post made to look like an old oil lamp post. In the winter, walking along there to see a lone lamppost in the middle of a forest with a wardrobe will be magical. This place looks like Narnia in the winter.
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Adding the final nail into the FlyCart 30 purchase, apparently you have to register the drone first before you can ask the federal government for permission to fly it. Yeah, no thanks. I’m not spending 30 grand just to ask government pretty please to fly this thing over my own property.
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That’s just a complicated way of saying spray foam doesn’t need a separate/additional vapor barrier installed. True for any type of structure. Except be sure to note that is only true of closed-cell spray foam.
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Yeah, I used a “froth pak” when doing the corners of my containers. I later switched to canned foam with a reusable tip. They are 2.5x the price and 4x the quantity of the ones with the nozzle built in. But the nozzle is reusable, and there is an effective cleaner. I have 2 nozzles. 1 for foamed construction adhesive. 1 for window and door foam, which stays flexible, and good for expansion joint type situations.
A froth pak is about 1/3 the price of the high capacity single cans for a given volume.
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You should get a froth pak or something similar. Even adding 1/2 inch of foam to bare metal makes an enormous difference. The froth pak has a wide nozzle which is great for area coverage. If you start doing that, select some old clothing that you will ruin as you apply it, if it gets on the skin it burns off the top layer, and removes all of the hair. petroleum jelly may soften it so it can be removed later. You will want more than the squeeze packs to coat all of the parts before starting. I used a hat and a full face mask. I also wore a long sleeve shirt.
Oh yeah, I installed construction adhesive on 50F metal and 2 weeks later it fell off. I will check later the recommended application temperature, but it does matter.
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Finally got around to firing up the forge for the first time and testing out melting aluminum. Learned a few things. Tongs for pulling the crucible out of the furnace are NOT for pouring, need another set of tongs for that. As it was my pour was not very good and my bar wasn’t full or quite square. But still cool. Been collecting cans for quite some time and so we’re looking forward to turning our sizable stash into a collection of nice aluminum bars for use in all kinds of future projects. And we’ll start keeping an eye out for copper and other metals we can start saving.
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Spent yesterday rigging up almost 30 tons of stuff to sling load up to the homestead this morning. I’m about to leave the wife and head up there ready to receive everything while she hooks each load up to the bird.
Then we’ll have the beams and concrete to install our five new solar arrays.
