Garden Update: An Invention and Fruitful Abundance

End of a Hot Week; Grumpy's Castle --
The warm weather this past week was very good for Grumpy's upside-down tomatoes. And also for his Raspberry Row! But the hot weather (103o on Wednesday!) brought a problem: keeping the tomatoes properly watered. Once or twice a day, Grumpy poured two or three cups of water into the upside-down "pots" from which the tomatoes hung. This still did not keep the plants from showing some wilting toward the end of the very hot days. The necessity to provide plenty of water gave rise to the mothering of an invention: A heat-powered watering system (see photo at right.)

Each one-liter-sized bottle is filled approximately 3/4 full and then capped. A 5mm hole is punched through each bottle cap. The bottles are turned cap-side down into the watering hole at the top of the upside-down planter. When the daytime temperature warms the water and the air pocket above the water, the air expands and pushes out the water. The warmer it gets, the more water is pushed out. The result is that the water is supplied to the roots of the tomatoes in proportion to the amount of heat that is experienced during the day. Grumpy has found out that just about the entire 3/4 liter of water is emptied during the hottest day. On a relatively cool day, less water is expelled and so during the cooler night, air is sucked into the bottle and is available for the next day.

While we are on the subject of tomatoes, Grumpy is proud to show off his first "Yellow Pear" that is finally showing signs of ripening! Grumpy will give it a few days before he samples this hopefully delicious fruit. In the meantime, the reader is directed to note the abundance of the cherry-sized fruit developing on the "Sun Gold" vine on the right. The Sun Gold is by far the most prolific tomato vine of the four Grumpy has.

Perhaps the second most prolific is the one he thinks is an Early Girl, shown here in the photo on the left. Grumpy and the Grand Mother have had five ripe tomatoes off of this vine already. The Glacier tomato vine has produced one ripe tomato which Grumpy sampled and concluded that it wasn't nearly as flavorful as the Early Girl. Grumpy is concerned that the size of these two varieties is much smaller than he would like. Perhaps the soil in which they are growing does not have the right pH -- he heard today that lime is needed in the soil to grow good tomatoes. Maybe next year.

Finally, the Raspberry Row! In an earlier post, Grumpy stated that no one had harvested raspberries while Grand Mother and he were gone to Florida. I was wrong! We were honored this week with a visit from Nancy Nurse and husband, Paul, from up Norske way. Paul mentioned that he had picked a half gallon or so of the raspberries while we were gone. Grumpy is glad that someone was able to benefit from ripe berries rather than let them be ravaged by Starlings or Clark's Jays -- or attract an itinerant Black Bear!! Oh no!!

Since returning, Grumpy has picked about three gallons of raspberries, resulting in one pie, three batches of freezer jam and enough frozen raspberries for a half-dozen more pies. Grumpy believes that he will be able to pick enough berries in the next week or so to enable the Grand Mother to make one or two more batches of freezer jam.

So much for Grumpy's weight loss goals!!

Custom Modification of Heat Pump Installation

Somewhere in King County, 25 September 2008: --

This is the tale of an old retired Mechanical Engineer, who was not completely happy with the installation of his new Heat Pump. The problem wasn't with the Heat Pump itself, but rather the way in which it was integrated with the existing oil furnace -- or should I say, NOT integrated with said furnace.

The story starts with the initial requirement that the Heat Pump (a very sophisticated, two-stage hummer) be installed to be compatible with the existing (50 year old) oil-burning furnace, exploiting the capabilities of that furnace's three-speed blower. The three-speed blower is an update that Grumpy had installed a few years back -- the original blower was a single speed. To make matters even worse, the schematics for the new three-speed blower motor were not available and the schematics on the blower door of the furnace were virtually unreadable.

To make matters very interesting, if not really worse, the problem of hooking up this three-speed blower with the fancy Heat Pump and even fancier electronic thermostat interface adapter unit, involved electrical wiring and relay logic. Now if it was just plain logic, Grumpy could have called in his philosophically-inclined logical Grandson Lief and the problem would have been solved in a trice. But, knowing he was on his own, Grumpy put his mechanically-inclined mind to work and after several trying hours and innumerable cups of the Grand Mother's coffee, he determined that he had found a solution. (Note: "a solution", not "the solution"; it is a well-known fact that if you ask two Mechanical Engineers to solve a problem, they will come up with at least four "known solutions", none of which either of them will give you a guarantee in writing that any of them will work.)

Grumpy took his "solution" to that famous local company known as BIC, Inc. Now this company's claim to fame is that they can fabricate anything made of electrical wires, complete with connectors on each end of each wire and loomed together to form an apparently fully-engineered end product. Typically, these products are custom-tailored to meet customer requirements. The company has customers who are lined up in a considerable backlog for these custom products.

After a hard negotiating session with the Chief Engineer of BIC, Inc., as well as its hard-nosed CFO, Grumpy was able to obtain a "promise to perform" in fabricating the product which is called, "Relay Logic Module" (RLM, for short). This module consists of four relays, one of which is a double-pole, double throw type. The function of the RLM will be to interface between the electronic thermostat interface unit and the oil-furnace with its three-speed blower, and to allow exploitation by the Heat Pump of the full capabilities of the three-speed blower.

The finished product is pictured here; it measures about 3"wide by 6.5" long and stands 2" high. This is well within Grumpy's stated maximum dimensions of 4.5" by 7.5" long and 2.75 " high. As soon as it is hooked up and the system is checked out, the Grand Mother and Grumpy will be able to enjoy the full capabilities of their sophisticated new two-stage Heat Pump with its ultra fancy automatic thermostat and the full capabilities of the three-speed blower!

Ah! Automatic heat in the Fall, Winter and Spring, and automatic cooling when ever necessary or desired!! No more of Grumpy's previous annual edict of "First of October, furnace ON; First of May, furnace OFF".

Don't the readers think Grumpy deserves a Lemon Meringue Pie for this? Huh?!

Vote here, vote now: (click on "Comments" and say "YES"!!)

Vote often.

Heat Pump Trade Study and Conclusions

Monday & Tuesday, 25 & 26 August 2008:

The Grand Mother and Grumpy have been able to get by with just 500 gallons of fuel oil to keep the Castle at an arguably comfortable temperature during the "winter" months here in King County. Usually Grumpy has kept the furnace turned "OFF" until the first of October and then turns it back to "OFF" when the first of May rolls around the next Spring. This past heating season seemed to be longer and colder (where is Al Gore when you need him!?) so the furnace remained "ON" well past the first of May. But the morning of May 15th found the Grand Mother and Grumpy shivering in bed: no heat today! We were out of fuel!!

Now the Grand Mother is adept at circumventing the frugal (stingy!?) habits of the Master of the Castle, however, and on those mornings was usually found in the kitchen, leisurely reading the morning paper -- with the oven door wide open and the oven turned to "toasty warm". Grumpy knew better than to start an argument about how this was defeating the purpose of our conservative heating lifestyle. He is still visualizing Lemon Meringue Pies in his future.

When the Grand Mother and Grumpy arrived home in mid-July, we found a fuel delivery statement on the door. The total cost for 500 gallons of fuel oil: $2505!! A review of the heat pump trade study was mandated!

Grumpy has been enamored of heat pump technology since he studied Mechanical Engineering at the School of Mines in South Dakota. He realized that, by "extracting" the heat from ordinary outside air (or, even better, from a lake or from ground water!) the effectiveness of the energy used to operate the compressor of the heat pump would be multiplied many times (This multiplying factor is called Heating Specific Performance Factor -- HSPF. Indeed, modern air-to-air heat pumps produce more than nine times the heat energy available in the home compared to the electrical energy they expend.

Grumpy's updated trade study for the Castle revealed the following:
1) Total heat energy used during typical year (500 gallons of fuel oil @ 128,50 Btu/gal.) in 85% efficiency furnace: 54,591,250 Btu. Cost: $2500 per year (and probably going higher!).
2) Cost of electricity@$0.08/kwh to operated heat pump: $143 per year (assuming HSPF of 9.0). Cost of electricity to operate heat pump for 120% of "typical" year: $772 per year (assuming HSPF of 2.0).
3) Initial cost of heat pump installed: $8,000 (includes factory rebate and IRS energy credit).
4) Years to "break even": 3.76 years ("typical" heating year, assuming cost of capital @ 8% APR).
5) Years to "break even" @ 120% "typical" year: 5.46 years.

The conclusion to which the Grand Mother and Grumpy arrived was to have a four ton capacity heat pump installed (~49,000 Btu/hr.). Pictured at right is the main unit, with other needed parts stacked on the left. This installation should provide all of our heat requirements on all days except those when the outside air temperature is at or below 32 degrees Fahrenheit; then the oil furnace will "kick in" to supply the additional heat needed.

Grumpy wired a new 35 ampere, 240 volt AC circuit to an outside weather proof disconnect, shown next to the door above the main unit, and had cleared a "path" for the liquid refrigerant lines and system control wires to be run between the heat pump compressor (located on the lower-level patio) to the existing oil furnace where the condensor (heating)/evaporator (cooling) heat exchanger would be mounted inside the existing (or modified) hot air bonnet.

Six HVAC (Heating, Ventilation and Air Conditioning) contractors were contacted to bid on the project. Ultimately only one put in a reasonable bid (two or three quickly concluded that their proposed units could not be fit inside the bonnet on the existing oil furnace (a definite "must" to validate the trade study); one of the contractors, [name withheld to protect the guilty!], bid a choice of adding a gas- or oil-burning furnace in order to "fit" their 3-ton unit into the headroom available.

The winning contractor (Hayes Heating and Cooling of Renton) was given a contract to install their proposed 4-ton heat pump. [When he was clearing the pathway for the electrical and refrigerant lines, Grumpy noticed a magnetic "sticker" placed on the furnace. It had been placed there by the Hayes Heating & Cooling salesman, Tim, when he was checking dimensions for the proposal. Grumpy joked that he thinks that this sticker "frightened" away the other would-be bidders!] The installers, Kirtan and Ryan (see photo at left), arrived with the equipment early Monday morning and went right to work. Soon they were drilling holes for the electrical and refrigerant lines to pass between the floor joists from the outside of the house to ceiling space in the furnace room.

Drilling through the outside triple-joist, the big 3 or 4 inch hole cutter ran into a nail -- or ten!! -- emitting a loud, rumbling chatter that shook the house and elicited the facial expression of horror seen on the Grand Mother's face in the photo to the right. "They are destroying my house!!" she moaned.

Where other contractors' salesmen couldn't conceive of the possibilities for innovative modifications that could be used to accommodate the evaporator/condenser unit within the constraints of the existing bonnet, Hayes' installers made quick [well, it turned out to be "not-so-quick"!] and neat work of fashioning this modified bonnet for our existing furnace. Although, as the photo at left indicates, some detail work remains to be done. This two-day job turned into a four day job, so Grumpy has decided to go ahead and post this now as a status report rather than wait another day.

We look forward to a more comfortably warm home starting before the first of October this Fall and continuing past the first of May next Spring. And no more "suffering" from the too-hot days and nights like we experienced this past Summer -- in between the colder-than-usual days and nights, that is!

Watch for subsequent posts as the coming heating season proceeds, with actual electrical and oil consumption data, as Grumpy boasts of the cost savings supporting his engineering trade study summarized above. His crowing may be almost tolerable!

Adventures in Flight; the Last Four Days

Well, I intended to post the story of the final four legs of our flight from Brazil to Alabama. To make sure I had my spelling and grammar correct, I decided to write it up in MS WORD first and then copy it to my BLOG.

Guess what? By the time I finished with all the gory details of this subject, intended for this BLOG, it was over four pages! So I decided to make a suitable summary (give me a day or two) and to disclose the full story -- with pictures -- in some more suitable venue.

Like during a cross-country hike in the wilderness or over a couple of beers -- either place being where everyone wouldn't have to hear everything and those that did wouldn't have to listen. Besides, it is almost unbelievable anyway.

So, if authorized by Mother/Grandma and not censored by Uncle Bob, I will let anyone interested read the full story of the final four days "on the road" from Boa Vista to Moontown, Alabama. Just ask.