TechniColour Fun Times

Here are some fun shots from the infraRed camera!

Guess who?

Baseboard heater in the reiki room.

I was here.

Can you tell the hot/cold water lines?

Reflection of the tree behind me in the window!

Corrugated metal is beautiful.

Our neighbours to the south.

distant skyline.

home.

Testing Continues!

Robert was over for our monthly colour testing for the carbonized wood.  And it seems we keep on creating more things to test! So, the latest is a vertical panel that I'm hanging from the kitchen balcony. It has the same coatings as the roof decking, but the panel will be exposed to full, direct sun.

Rob testing our new panel that will hang from the kitchen balcony.

Can you believe this was taken on Jan. 7th? No snow and +5 C. 

Pantry, Take Two. or, "Happy Wife, Happy Life."

Lots of lessons learned on this house adventure. One of which is what not to use for a shelf with a 78.25" wide span. It seems like the wire mesh shelving, even with a mid support bowed too much for Serena's liking. So, I rebuilt the pantry with 3/4" wood shelves. Now I can sit on it without deflecting. Yay! Happy wife = happy life.

Sunny days make me so happy.

Sunny days make me ever so happy. Why?  Because every day it is sunny, I get an email at the end of the day from the SunnyBoy inverter that tells me how much energy our PV system generated.  Every overcast, cloudy day, I get a lousy, depressing number. So, go SUN go!

So, here are the monthly utility bills- not as brilliant as $3.26 from September.  Especially now as we kick in some electric baseboard heaters.

September 20, 2011 to October 19, 2011

Consumption: 505.19 kWh

Production: 389.0 kWh

Net use: + 116.19 kWh

Cost: $52.92

October 19, 2011 to November 18, 2011

Consumption: 713.00 kWh

Production: 300.0 kWh

Net use: 413 kWh

Cost: $95.23

Notes: November had a few -20 C days.  We started turning on baseboard heaters this month too.  And we fired up our wood stove.

If you want to track our production on the SunnyBoy website, click this link!

Xmas Dinner and window blinds!

We had my family over for a Christmas lunch. It was the first time some

of them actually visited our house!  [They all live south fo the river, so 

convincing them to make the journey is like asking them to drive to

Fort Mac.  

And for Christmas, I got my dad to help me install the
cellular blinds on our living room windows!

House numbers and canopy decking installed!

With Rob's help, I was able to get all the carbonized wood for the main door canopy cut and installed!  And after the decking was in place, I was able to screw our house numbers down!  Yay!  We are now a known location in the world!

They even look great from the inside!

Carbonized Wood Colour Testing!

We have been using carbonized wood on our house with the help of Alberta Innovates Technology Futures. So, we are in full swing with the testing of workability, durability, and colour change over time. I made a couple of test-bed wood decking squares to see how certain finishes will take to the wood over the course of the year.  Robert from AITF has been extremely helpful in pulling all of this together and coming by to test the colours with a light spectrometer.  It only runs on Windows 95- and we only have a large, honkin' CPU and have to haul it all over the house where we are testing different locations for colour.  I think I sourced a laptop- which will hopefully make this a whole lot easier...

I used four different types of finish on the test bed.

From left to right: acrylic latex paint, Behr Super Spar clear varnish,
a board left natural, polyurethan, varathane finishes.

So far, I think I like the Behr finish.

Here's our testing set-up. It ain't fun haulin' this around the house.

Robert in action.

It's a tight squeeze on one of our stair landings.
We used carbonized wood for the landing since
construction and it hasvbeen in place for almost a year!

Robert in action, again!

Exterior wood decking - this one will see direct
sunlight.

This wood decking square will not see direct sunlight,
as it is shaded by the guardrail.

One of my new chores: brushing off the PV modules when the snow
sticks to it!