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enough: a flexible standard
Thursday, April 23 2009
The ultimate plan for the greenhouse sees it buried nearly to the top of its concrete walls so it sits like a bunker in the ground. Most of the landscaping will happen on the west and north walls where there are no windows (unless one counts the glass blocks atop the west wall). On the south wall and to a lesser degree on the east wall, where there are things like windows and doors, the walls will have to be buried less deeply. On the south wall, the glass starts only about a foot or so above the level of the existing ground, so that ground cannot be raised by much. This means that the styrofoam on that wall is perhaps too shallow to keep back "enough" of the chill from adjacent winter soil. By "enough," I am referring to a flexible standard that depends on how many styrofoam panels I happen to have in stock. Originally I only had enough to insulate the concrete block walls down to the existing topography, but since then I've acquired more (mostly from a recent yard sale) and have been looking for more places to install it. Today I decided to begin addressing the south wall, the least-effectively insulated of the four.
So I started digging a two foot wide trench just south of the south wall into which I can lay a pieces of rectangular styrofoam. The plan is to make a little skirt (or tutu) of styrofoam jutting out somewhat horizontally (but sloping downward) to isolate a footing of soil around the base of the concrete wall. In addition to blocking an avenue of conductive heat loss to the coldest (surface) layer of soil, the thermally semi-isolated footing will contribute to the building's already substantial thermal mass.
Digging is hard work, particularly in pebble-rich soil that must be attacked with a mattock. Happily, the weather cooperated, with temperatures never venturing above the 50s.
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