Iron Door -- IN!!

Ok, that's 2 less holes in the house in just a few days.  The hole they put the door in was a bit larger than that little 2x2 window I put in...this one was 9 feet tall and almost 6 feet wide.  Cuts down on the breeze through the house...

So, here it is...

We had to snap these shots before they covered everything back up in plastic.  Far from finished.  Some day I may take a picture of my daughter in front of this door on her way to the prom (with a shotgun in my other hand), or perhaps my son in a cap and gown...  Both of those scenarios seem miles away, and yet they will be upon us soon...

One of the doors sitting alone waiting to be installed.  The entire door assembly will weigh close to 1000 pounds.  It took 3 guys to carry one of these...  The scrollwork is hand forged from solid iron, and then welded in place into the door.  By the way, they sit on roller bearing hinges and you can open and close them easily with one little finger.  I would suggest you keep your fingers out of them when they are closing...

Some things to note...  First, the doors do not yet have the glass, which is actually mounted in another hinged assembly, and then attaches to the inside of the door behind the scroll iron.  These hinged panels have their own weatherstripping.  You can actually open the glass portion of the door without opening the door and have a conversation without opening the big door, or you can open them for ventilation.  I have not measured the cat to see if he will fit through the scrollwork ;-)  Anyway, the glass doors and weatherstripping will be added after all the other construction is complete.  They will also touch up any areas where the coating is chipped.

Another thing to notice... Where are the handles??  And why is there only one hole where the lock will go??  Well, the handles are actually welded on later, and are about 2 feet tall forged scroll iron, both inside and out.  There is no latch on the door.  NO LATCH, you say....  The right hand door is held in place by upper and lower recessed door bolt locks, but the left door is held steady to that door by pressurized rollers...friction.  That leaves the hole you see in the picture above to hold a traditional style deadbolt.  The door is either locked, and secure, or it is unlocked, and you just push it open and shut...

There were a lot of things to cover when we ordered the door...  Everything was thought out as best we could from flooring thickness, threshold and jamb thickness (remember we have 11 inch walls, so a traditional jamb thickness wouldn't work), exterior materials and thickness, door swing, lock style, and then finally, the actual door style and finish.  Even the way the door swings into the arches above the door had to be factored in.  The artwork is designed on CAD, and then once everyone is happy, the design goes off to our friends down in Mexico, where they actually make the door.

A shot from inside looking out.  Notice we still have to address the difference between the "rough" opening size and the actual door.  This will be filled with closed cell foam, with stone right up to the door on the outside, and the drywall will actually do a "bullnose" return from the interior wall back inbehind the door frame on the inside.  This makes it possible for us to not have to surround this door with a dorky piece of wooden trim, which would look great on a normal wooden door, but pretty out of place in this case...

To get these dimensions, I had to think a bit on the fly today.  Originally, they were going to mount the door interior frame flush with the interior wall, because we feared any recess more than that would cause the door to bind on the drywall return, but in reality, the door showed up with welded "tabs" which we didn't plan for... Well, the door remains more stable if you mount it with tabs, so I had the installers cut out a section of the door buck to match the tabs, and recessed the tabs all the way back to the first concrete surface in the ICF.  That left us with about 2 1/2 inches of frame protruding past the ICF buck on the outside, so we now have something to bring the stone up against on the outside, and the bullnose sheetrock return on the inside. OH, and the doors don't hit their own frame, rather they actually hit the arched detail above the doors way prior to their own frame, so by moving the door we didnt' really change anything functionally.  We will have to install a bumper stop on the floors to keep the doors from dinging the arches above, which we expected from the beginning. 

That is me, wondering if I am screwing up the dimensions by changing the door mount on the fly....

This is one of the doors, still sitting on the truck.  You should note that we choose a lot of energy effecient items for the house where we could.  This door is NOT one of those items.  I could hardly put my hand on it after it was sitting in the sun, it felt like 300 degrees.  So, they put expanded foam inside the metal panels in the door, and lead you to believe that insulation is going to help....well, it doesn't really do anything for heat or cold, because the heat just short circuits right around the metal frame to the other side.  BUT, the foam does serve a VERY important purpose.... it makes the interior of the door and frame unable to hold moist air, which can condense on the cold side of the door interior an then the door to rust from the inside... 

Fortunately, our door will NEVER see the sun again after it left the truck.  The front door is not in the line of the sun at any time of the day or year.  It's still an energy hole, though...  I would NOT suggest you mount one of these suckers in direct view of the sun if you live in a cooling dominant climate...

Sure is pretty, though...

Also met today with our Geothermal contractor, which there are actually two of....  One of the guys is responsible for installing the "loop field" or the "ground source", while the other guy handles all the matters inside, like zoning, ductwork, thermostat location, air returns, filtration, etc.  We have a lot of issues in both cases, because outside we are trying to stay clear of driveways, electrical service, water service, and easements... OH, and TREES.  The drilling rig is just that, a pretty big 18 wheel trailer size rig and they have to stand up a tower in amongst the trees to make it dig.

  Inside, we have to work around ceiling details, like the groins and barrels, as well as ceiling speakers, lighting, gluelams, decorative beams, etc.  It actually turns out to be quite a puzzle.  Even the air vents that vent out the soffits have to be planned not to interfere with the corbels...   Both contractors are acutely aware now of what our concerns are, so I am hopefull the whole project will go smoothly...

For the outside geothermal loops, I learned some things... the wells will be 250 feet deep each.  That number is the limit of the amount of head loss you can accept with a 3/4 inch polyethelene pipe going up and down at a particular flow velocity.  The holes are only about 4 inches around, and they have done a geotech survey and predict wet, sandy silt with clay.  That is good news for us, because it will have a very high thermal conductivity number, which means the heat will permeate through the soil very fast, and keep the loops temperatures closer to the average soil temperature around them, which is about 72 degrees.  The 5 loops will be fed by a manifold station, which will attach to the geothermal unit through 1 1/4 inch pipe buried 4 feet underground.  The whole assembly is permanently fusion welded together, and is warranted for 50 years.  From the prices I am seeing, and the way the contract is written, I am guessing the loop field is about 35 percent of the cost of the entire system, and I am getting 1/3 back from Uncle Sam for the entire cost of the system.  So essentially, with the federal tax rebate (credit), I am getting a geothermal heat pump with state of the art everything from a top notch certified installer at the same cost as a mid level air source air conditoner with a crappy warranty from a crappy installer...

The geothermal unit runs at about 1/2 of the amperage of the traditional system for the same amount of BTU output, gives us free hot water in the summer, heats our water in the winter for domestic use and radiant floor, and supplies backup hot air in the radiant floor can't keep up.  It will (or should) outlast a traditional air conditioner by a factor of 2 or 3, runs much quieter, and has the capability of dehumidifying the air much better than a traditional A/C unit, because the inside coil runs physically colder than a traditional unit.  I can also supplement the water heating with my solar water heater, and the electrical compressors and fans with photovoltaic solar (can't do that with propane heat...)  OH, and no outside unit making noise or taking up space...  I think these things are win win win win win... 

I was actually expecting the HVAC guys to go next, but today we decided to go ahead and have the electrical "boxed" out so they can make things more symetrical around can lights and such...  So, I have to switch gears again...

Hope all is well...

Have a good day!

Quatrefoil Window... IN!!

Don't have much time, so I will try to ramble much less than normal...

Long story short, our first meeting with the stucco/stone/cantera guys got cancelled this morning because some lunatic ran a red light and almost killed him and his crew... They were fine, but shaken up a bit.  We are happy to arrange that for a later date.

Ok, so I was tired of looking at the quatrefoil window in my garage, so I decided to install it today while we were waiting around doing other stuff.  I have no idea why I was waiting, and it's not  urgent, but I thought the time available in my day about matched the job.  For once I was right...

The window was cut from a material called AZEK, which is a cellular PVC material that is pretty much a soft workable plastic.  It was powder coated in Bahama Brown, and then fitted with a double pane tempered glass.

The opening is 11 inches deep, but the window is only 4 9/16" deep from the flange to the back frame of the window.  The idea here is to deep recess the window so that the stucco guys can form a 3 dimensional carved stucco return back to the window.  This I think will make a great feature on the front of the house.  It's really a cool shape. 

Here we go...  First, I added blocking all around the window accounting for the thickness of the plywood surrounds, so that the window would project into the room 1/2 inch, which is the thickness of the concrete backer board.  This will allow them to tile right up and around the window, and even inside the thing if we want.  This thing was a complete pain in the ....  to flash, so I won't even get into those details, but 3 steps gradually smaller, and the window is getting rain on the outside and a shower on the inside. 

I cut out some scrap 3/4 plywood, which was thicker than I needed, but free.  Scribed the window, and then cut out the quatrefoil.  Then I did this again.  Here is a test fit.

Now, I used window wrap to "face" the plywood on the exterior.  This stuff makes a mess out of a knife, it's like cutting partially dried glue.

Test fit the window...then walk away so you can take a picture, then realize you are really stupid for leaving the window up there attached to nothing... geez.

Caulk the window flange, caulk the plywood to the opening... heck, just caulk everything.  I used 2 entire tubes.  Flash the crap out of everything, and then caulk and flash some more.  Step back and take another picture.

From this picture you can see how deep the window is recessed.  I think it's 8 inches from the face of the ICF back to the window.

Cool shape and shadows on the inside. 

Finished shot on the inside. Only thing I am unhappy about is that the finished window only sits back 3/8 of an inch rather than 1/2 inch on the inside. I guess that will make a little crack that we can just caulk.

Now, for some nastiness...  Since I had the wheelbarrow out there (and a flat shovel), figured I would quickly scoop out the grime that had accumulated in the shower stalls.  They are the low point in the house during ICF and framing, and sawdust, nails, dirt, water, and all kinds of nastiness ends up in there.  I want them to dry out so we can clean them up.  2 entire loads of slop came from just 4 shower stalls.  It reminded me of growing up on a hog farm, where I shoveled this same consistency of material that smelled a lot worse, thousands of tons of it!!  (Ok, I maybe exaggerate a bit there, but it motivated me through college)

Glad to have that out of the house...but where do you put it??  It's watery slop that's full of nails...

One more thing.  I didn't give adequate credit to my lovely bride for shoveling out the remains of the concrete washout and hauling all that off.  They know her by name now at the dump.  Our board pile is starting to look realistic again...

Have a great week....  Aloha  ;-)

Some more plumbing...

Plumber ended up coming pretty late on Friday, and then again on Saturday.  They got the majority of the rough in work completed.  I didn't have the shower valves yet to rough in.

Here are a couple pictures of my manifold design, and their work...

The hot is red, cold is blue.  The whole assembly feeds from the left (from 1 inch lines), and the water passes through the manifolds and continues on to the other side of the house to the Master manifolds.  The small black manifold with the 4 blue lines is actually a return loop from a reverse osmosis system, which feeds to 4 places, both refrigerators and R/O faucets in each island.  The plastic manifold will hold up much better against the caustic effects of the R/O water, which is pretty corrosive.  The manifold doesn't have any valves, but I can shut down the entire R/O system from it's feed.

Any place you see a valve that is not in use is because we planned a couple of spares in case the valves fail or in case we need to add a fixture down the road.  I had not planned for a garage sink, but they plumbed one in, and fortunately I had the valves for that.

The gap from one hot manifold to the smaller hot manifold is designed to accept a Grundfos Hot water recirc pump, which I already own, but is in use in my current house.  I just measured the pump, and installed a blank section with a union so I can add the pump when we move in.  That pump "forwards" hot water to the far end of the house, and also to the island sinks, so that the water is already hot when you turn it on.  A side effect of this is that the manifolds themselves become precharged with hot water, so an individual user only has to wait for the hot water to come from the manifold, and not all the way from the hot water tanks (in the garage).  Most people run these pumps on a timer, so they don't consume energy and hot water all day long... BUT, my lighting control system will actually be in charge of that duty.  It will know when any bathroom or kitchen is in use by knowing the status of it's lighting.  So any time a bathroom or kitchen is in use, the lighting control system will activate a relay that powers the pump... Simple and efficient.

The manifold sits directly over the top of a glulam beam over the rec room, which otherwise would be in the way.  By being right on top of the beam, the plumbers could go either north or south of that beam without having to cut the beam, and also keeps things nice and tidy.  We are looking at the tubing headed North from the manifold.  My only problem here is that one of these bays I think gets a can light.  So we will probably have to move some things a little here...  I'm not sure how close a can light can be to plastic pipe, but I doubt the two get along very well...

Quiz time.  Anybody see a problem here??  I am going to give them the benefit of the doubt and assume they just didn't have the right connector to make the jog over.  This is the power room sink.  Also, when you are checking over your plumbing, make sure the drain and vent system has purple primer and glue at every joint.  Otherwise, it's not glued together...

By stubbing out all the sinks and toilets with the copper, we have a secure connection point that will (hopefully) never need to be serviced.  The supply valve itself will probably be a compression fitting to the copper with a 1/4 turn stop.  I may consider using a solder connection with a fitting to 1/2 inch pipe thread, but not sure.

This is how the islands are fed.  The PEX comes down through the kitchen wall, and into the conduit that they put in place prior to the concrete pour.  OH, the two blue lines there are R/O lines.  I put that conduit in myself just in case they needed the extra space.  I guess they did...  You can see the pipes sticking out of the concrete in the distance.

Pex manifold systems give you the advantage of being able to shut down any fixture that is giving you issues.  For example, your master shower valve has gone bad, so rather than shut down the whole house while waiting for a new valve, you can simply take that fixture out of service with a 1/4 turn of the appropriate manifold valve... 

Also, say your 16 year old daughter is taking an amazingly long shower.  Well, you don't have to "end" her shower, but you can certainly "end" her "hot" shower.  This is another reason to keep the master bathroom manifolds out of reach of your children, as eventually they will demand revenge.

OH, and never, under even emergency circumstances, attempt to cut short a wife's shower.  Her lack of hot water makes for too much hot water for you...

In the Master area now, actually right on the rear wall behind the master toilet.  There will be a cabinet there, and I figured we could just put a little access door in the cabinet to get to these manifold.  Well, they put the cold way over to one side from the hot, so now I am thinking two doors.  I swear if I'm not standing right there, this is the kind of stuff that happens.  The manifolds were supposed to be right next to each other.  Oh, the blank valves also need some pex run from them and up into the attic, and then terminated with a plug.  If somebody were to accidently open that little valve, the wall would get blasted with water.

This is one of the tricky things about working with ICF.  The foam has to be cut away to make access channels for plumbing and electrical.  In this case, you can see the drain for a sink, with it's vent above, and then the pex lines coming from the supply (left) to the two master shower valves, as well as another sink.

Picture above here... This is the master shower.  If you zoom in, you can see they crammed the pex around the corner there pretty good, and then jammed a nail guard pretty hard over the top of things.... hmmmm...

Ok, another quiz.  I debated showing this to you, but somebody out there needs to know...  You CAN NOT kink pex tubing and leave it that way.  It greatly weakens the wall of the tubing, and someday can burst.  The red pipe here has been kinked, and still is kinked.  Pex is amazingly tough, but the stress in a kinked joint is more than it can handle.  There are two ways to deal with this.  Heat it up with a heat gun and work it back to shape, or replace the line.  I want to replace this line with another section of red... But, that would require me to open the last box of red 1/2 inch (300 feet) just for this bitty thing.  You can use the blue instead, because the blue and red PEX is exactly the same, but I am OCD about things like that... red is hot, blue is cold...  But that's 100 dollars worth of pex... grrrrr.  Oh, the other option is to put a splice in the pex with an inline coupling, but I would like to keep the connections inside walls to an absolute minimum...

I'll say it again.... Grrrrrrrrr.

My opinion about PEX pipe, though... Amazing.  Way better than cpvc, which I wouldn't even consider in an outhouse.  Copper is pretty good, but I think pex wins in the end (without factoring cost) because it is quieter, more resistant to chemicals, and the connections are very good.  Copper connections can appear fine, but water hammer can actually work a poor connection loose.  When you factor in the advantages of a manifold, cost saving of pex over copper, and the ease of installation, then pex is the hands down winner.  Now, that all being said, there are some union plumbers up north that just ain't going to ever like pex, because they have been using copper, and they get paid by the hour...

Tomorrow we are meeting with a painter, and also a stone/stucco/cantera guy.  I need to get some sleep.

One of our local Road Runners.  We love these guys because they eat snakes.... copperheads in our case are plentiful...

Plumbing and waiting

Well, my plumber has had a bad week.  A family emergency and a mechanical problem. 

Gave us a day to go look at shower fixtures, though.  Plumber likes Moen, Delta, and Kohler.  We don't really want to spend a whole ton of money on these things, but get decent ones at the same time.  Wife doesn't like the Delta ones that offer a separate temperature set knob...but Delta has made their products better in some regards, and offer a very wide variety of price range.  Moen... rock solid valves but I have medium confidence in the spray pattern.  Kohler has great valves, but even Kohler has some pretty cheap trim now so you have to watch what you are getting.  Anyway, if you spend a bunch of money on these things, you are essentially paying for a better, heavier piece of trim...  And since the jury is out on the actual pattern of the heads...  who knows if you will like the thing, and then you can't really change brands because the valve dictates what trim will fit it...

OH, and add the expense of a adjustable shower bar for the kids and guest...  Holy fish oil!!  I think instead we will just use normal shower systems with a simple head, and then use a drop ell extension to get the actual heads down at their altitude...

My soldering skills have improved... Check this out...

So, from left to right, the water comes up the wall in 1 inch PEX, then into the brass ProPex fitting, and through a Union-valve-filter-union around another corner, and then one last valve before turning up into the next wall to supply the entire house.

I have the copper going slightly downhill here... Why, because it just is, that's why...stop being so critical.  I tried to be really careful, because as you assemble the different parts, you have to plan ahead on which joints get soldered and in what order and in relation to the ones that need pipe dope and screwed...  I used the heavier gage copper pipe for all this mess.  It's pretty easy to see why the world is fast switching away from the use of copper... This process is a pain in the butt.  Pex is much faster, and simpler, and probably better in most regards down the road.  There will be some more copper in the house, as basically all the plumbing surrounding the 3 water tanks have the potential to get north of 200 degrees with the solar, so I am staying away from Pex there...  The supply manifolds are all copper 1/4 turn shutoff valves, and any stubouts will transition from pex back into copper.

The Bluebonnets are out all over Texas.  They are just everywhere all over the roads.  A very nice time to be in Texas and the weather has been stunning.

But, the fireants and copperheads are thick.

This is a Longhorn cow that lives over by the subdivision entrance.  My wife took this picture and he turned around to look at her, and made a face at her to indicate his disgust with her acting like a tourist with a camera...  I think he voted for Obama (cows are socialists and they want free veterinarian care, higher taxes, and a better union), but with Acorn out of the picture for the next election...watch out cows!

OK, hopefully more progress tomorrow.  If anybody has a brand name shower system that they do NOT like...chime in.  Need to get those ordered...

More Tile -- and More Solar

Today started out with the usual, trying to find the right supplies for another strange issue.  One would THINK, that you could walk into a roofing supply company (that means that ALL they sell is roofing supplies) and ask for a flashing to go over a 3/4 inch copper pipe.  One's conversation may go something like this...

One - "Good Morning"

Guy sitting at desk of roofing supply company -- ...............silence

One - "Would you have a roof flashing for a 3/4 inch pipe

Guy -- Yes ...  for a 2 inch pipe, right

One -- No, 3/4 inch copper, it's for a water pipe through the roof

Guy -- "those are normally a 2 inch vent pipe

One -- No, I'm putting up a solar collector. (explanation... yada yada)

Guy -- I can probably order something like that

One -- ah, how long would it take to get here

Guy -- probably a couple of weeks...

What!! You've got to be kidding me.  This pretty much describes the normal expectations of people when it comes to the building trades.  I can get on eBay and within two days have just about anything I want.  BUT, if you don't know exactly what you want in advance, it would be nice to be able to actually buy something like this.  The kicker is that he can order it, wait 2 weeks, another trip into town to pick it up, and then it costs twice as much as the internet. 

I guess I'll be paying shipping, then...  eh??

Roof progress, it's beautiful!  And it's the only finished surface on the whole place except for the garage floor.

The other day I showed you the frame supports for the solar collector.  I painted them, and then had to go up on the roof and lay them out and attach them.  This was accomplished by determining the location, then drilling a hole through the roof so my wife could figure out where I was from below, then, while she held a 2x6 in position, I put 4 giant lag screws through everything to sandwich the roof deck between the board and the flange.  Also put roofing sealant everywhere to keep things watertight. 

Today, the roofers came back, and in additon to a million other things, they installed the roof tile around all the brackets and flashed everything with giant sheets of lead.  I wasn't there, but it looks like they pound the lead over another tile to copy it's shape, and then place it similar to a tile over any holes they have cut.  Pretty cool system, actually.  The lead is not cheap...

Another thing the tile guys did was show me how to walk on the tile roof.  The other day I broke a tile getting up there, which is obviously a bummer.   Anyway, you walk on the peaks of the tile, with your foot spanning the valley, so your weight is distributed over two tiles.   AND, you have to walk on the bottom edge of the tile, because that is the spot on the tile that connects directly to the next tile below it, and thus distributes your weight to the roof deck rather than making a tile bridge, which breaks the tile. 

So, I had so much confidence with my training that I hand carried the collector frame right up into position. 

What you MAY notice is that the copper connectors do not GO anywhere...  That is because I had some holes drilled into the roof deck where the copper pipe comes out from the attic, but the roofers saw those holes and promptly fixed them....  So, one more thing to ask them to redo.  It's easy to make the hole, but it bumms me out to have the guys rework stuff. 

BUT, if the roofing supply company would have had the dang pipe flashing... We wouldn't have this problem....

The other thing that had to be figured out was how to get the sensor wires from the thermistor down through the tile and roof deck.  After some thought, I decided I would just drill a hole in the frame pipe, and another through the deck directly under the pipe flange (through the mount), and push the wire straight down...  Which I did... Should have taken a picture... It was cool.

OH, to enable me to HAVE this thermistor, I had to buy the entire Solar Pumping Station... Why??  because, of course, nobody keeps a thermistor like this in stock.  They can order it, though, which goes from the plumbing supply store, to the distributor, back to the factory, and then has to repeat the return trip...  Since I eventually needed the pump station I just bit my lip...

Here is a picture of the Taco Solar Pumping Station...

Na, that's the cat infestation....  There is an idea...  Use cats as a packing material...  How about this...

I also learned to solder (or sweat) copper pipe.  There are many things that need to be sweat fitted together. 

Here is an example of my soldering, this is the left end of the solar collector.  This is where the collector sensor also goes.  The 3/4 inch threaded hole is for the "air elimination valve" will go.  The male pipe end will act to hold the water heater pipe connection (my choice for connection) which will connect to the roof penetrations...

The leg bones connected to the thigh bone...
The thigh bones connected to the hip bone...

etc...

Goodnight...

Ok, that's it for now...  We will soon talk plumbing again...  Goodnight...

Solar Hot Water Collector

Evacuated tube, that is...  There are two basic kinds of solar hot water heaters out there (besides your typical garden hose in the sun), a flat panel collector, where you have a circuit of copper tubing running inside an insulated flat chamber, and evacuated tube.  The whole tube is not in a vacuum, but actually the outer shell of the tube is a double walled tube, and between those walls is an evacuated tube.  In the middle, there is a fin mechanismn that picks up the heat (trapped by the vacuum and the fact the glass is thermally opaque, so it can't effeciently radiate its heat back through the glass).  The fins transfer the heat to the copper tube in the middle, which contains a little bit of a working medium, which boils and evaporates, becomes superheated, and then transfers the heat to the top of the tube, where the copper tube is exposed to the insulated manifold header, where the water runs across, picks up the heat, and takes it back to the storage tank. 

No, I didn't invent this thing... I just bought it, and I think it's really cool.

There is, of course, a raging debate over which type of panel is better, but bottom line, the flat panel is normally cheaper, and the tubes are more...not for me, though, because I don't buy anything the normal way.  In our climate, we could have easily used either, but we chose the tubes for these reasons...

1.  Cool factor (yup, vanity)

2.  Higher operating output

3.  Much higher temperature output (not more heat, but more "temperature voltage")

4.  Higher resistance to hail

5.  Modular... Broken tube, change it out.

6.  Easier installation (perhaps)

7 Higher resistance to freeze

8.  Availability

I could go on...

Anyway, 30 tubes in all, have the potential to produce about 38,000 BTU/Day, or the same as 11.3 kWh per day, which at our utility rate of about 12 cents/kWh that translates to about 41 dollars per month...average.  Payback in my opinion is instant, especially if we ever had to sell the house.  There are other advantages, with tricky accounting, and I would never go into those here ;-)  Suffice it to say I have a 1.2 million pound heat storage device ;-)

OK, so here is a little experiment, moring haze, with no load on the panel, so the pipe can't get rid of it's heat, hooked up a thermistor to my non contact temp gun.  The big number, 67F, is the temperature of the grass, and the little temperature is the heat pipe, 200F and climbing fast.

Then off to check out the progress on the tile.  Most of which is now laid in the "fields", mainly they have to do the ridges and then tidy up around plumbing and flashed walls, neither of which is going to happen anytime soon, as I need to line those guys up...

You can click on these, which make them big, for much better color...  It rained in the night a little bit, which washed away a lot of the tile dust, so the color was even better than before without all the "dusty rose" powder color on things.

Starting the Master Bath tile, which was about the last thing to go.

Then, off to my regular warehouse hardware store for something to build a frame to hold the solar collector.  Of course, with a normal house, and a normal person, you could have just mounted the thing on a 5/12 pitch and about averaged out the use between summer and winter at this latitude, and on a shingle roof you wouldn't have to do much for flashing other than a little silicone...  But, we are on a tile roof, so the collector doesn't sit on the tile, it sits on the deck below, and has to be suspended up above the tile.  So here is my solution...  1/2 inch pipe fittings.  I have also decided I want to optimize the panel only for the winter season... Why??  Because the rest of the year I am trying to maximize the use of the desuperheater (which makes the GSHP run more effeciently).  To make a short story long, the solar panel with run us a chance of overheating things in the summer, because between the desuperheater, the solar collector, and low demand for hot water, we could easily cook the water past the boiling point (at atmospheric pressure, anyway, which of course we have in excess of 50 PSI which significantly raises the boiling point)...  regardless, by optimizing the panel at a higher angle in winter, there is less angle of incidence in summer, and the panel can't produce as much heat as it otherwise would in the summer....hopefully causing us to not have a boiling event which causes the pressure relief valve to let go.  In addition, it gives me more effeciency (though with less sun) in the winter, when I need the heat more.  Additionally, in the middle seasons, I am also closer to optimum when there is less chance of the desuperheater being in operaiton... Bored YET???

This is a closer look at the header, which is an extruded aluminum piece that holds the copper manifold and accepts the evacuated tubes, as shown...  They just sit in there, nothing magic.

Nifty little plastic widgets at the bottom pop onto the rail, and then allow you to tighten and push up on the tubes, holding them in position on the collector.

Another view down the row of 30 holes... 

Any why the upside down and backwards h shape?   Because I wanted the frame to have some resistance to the shear effect of having the collector being fairly heavy, and the pipe brackets being fairly small.  This makes the thing much harder to "twist" and makes it a lot stronger.  I honestly don't think you will see any of this from the ground, which is all under the collector tubes, but, I painted them anyway... brown.

So, my strategy for installation...  Tomorrow I am hoping to get the vertical supports actually mounted to the roof deck (the only place not tiled in) and then they can actualy drill holes in the appropriate place for the tile to slide over the pipes.  Then, I will have them tile the field under the collector completely, but leave a perimeter at the sides and bottom.  The copper lines coming through the roof have to wait for a special piece of flashing I ordered (later in the week), but after than happens, I can pierce the roof with the copper and then solder on all the fittings, as well as run the wire to the thermistor (temperature sensor for the controller).  I can then mount the collector frame and header.  If you mount the tubes dry, repeated heat cycles aren't good for their health...