Staying warm

An important consideration to working in a garage powered by renewable energy is keeping warm. Construction methods used to build Chicago bungalows and its garages revolved around quickly erecting walls on the cheap. The garage has barely any insulation in the walls and none on the ceiling which makes for very cold winters. The garage door is a significant culprit, as its seal around the entrance leaves much to be desired.

It was obvious the garage was not meant for anything more than a place to park cars, but now it needs to be much more. First order of business was to start insulating. As of now, the insulation project is at 80%. The cost is at around $320 for 16 of 1.5 inch thick pink foam board plus hardware (screws and liquid nails) from Home Depot. These are for the garage door and the ceiling.



The door was a giant aluminum heat sink to the windy alley so that was first to be insulated. We first put fiberglass insulation against the door. Then cut foam board and press fitted them in between the rectangles. Liquid nails was used on the edges to keep it in place. Since the temperature was very low, the glue took more than 30 hours to dry and we had to keep them steady with braces.



After doing all this, I realized there are garage door sealing kits sold, but I think our solution creates a better barrier.



Now that we added all this insulation to the door, the 1/2 horsepower door opener motor is no longer powerful enough to lift it. That's okay as it can be easily lifted by hand if necessary.

Here are some shots of the ceiling.





Other projects currently in progress are using an electric water heater tank to store extra solar power via a third diversion controller, more design work and actual wiring of the electric system (24V off-grid with battery backup). That post won't appear until we have some nice diagrams and explanations for the things we did... for science!

In the meantime, check out the new video section, compliments of Nick's new Flip camera.