Cheaper option for a shop building?

[Frosty]

Here's a funny for you. If you build double wall and direct a small swamp cooler between the walls evaporation will cool the house without making things sticky wet. What I'd like to figure out is how to draw air into the house between evaporative layers without exposing it directly to water vapor. 

Monsoon season sucks, it usually hits us just before July 4th. and rains till it turns to snow. Oh well at least it's a dry . . . wet.

Frosty The Lucky.

[Glenn]

A swamp cooler is directly dependent on the relative humidity, how high the ambient temperature is, and how much water goes across the cooler.

[ThomasPowers]

When we have single digit humidities, a swamp cooler will really chill things down. Starting at about 30% humidity it's basically a fan blowing warm moist air around.

Frosty sounds like you are talking about a heat exchanger.  Out there folks sometimes use a duplex system: a swamp cooler blowing into an air conditioner to make the AC more efficient.

For dry hot areas there is a lot of really interesting cooling methods to be found in the old vernacular architecture of the middle east and as I recall one old place in Death Valley had water trickling down the walls. I was also amazed at how well the Alhambra in Granada "worked".

[Charles R. Stevens]

Supper adobe/earth bag domes are acualy code approved for earthquakes. Standard sand bags to 16’ wile 50# Polynsead bags or double layers can go bigger. They can be earth buried, but some kind of insulation is recommended such as having a foam roof contractor spray it. 

I wouldn’t look to close at other earth building techniques, exept maybe earth filled tires for round houses in earthquake zones, as they take a lot of reinforcement.

i grew up with swamp coolers and the newer ones made of plastic and using the single thick industrial style pad are exelent. There are systems that use heat exchangers (either air to air, air to water or air to refrigerant) that address the humidity isue (not a big deal in single digit humidities coupled with triple digit temps. They have also built units that use dehumidifiers as well. 

With the growing exeptance of poly, post and shoring and wooden basements, retrofitting a standard stick built structure may be possible using tires to form a Gambian wall and even using them to cantain soil for green roves on steep pitches. This is infact the approach I am looking at for my new house.

lastly for cooling, earth tubes have proven effective and when combined with earth burning one dosnt have to bury them 8’ below the natural grade as one is raising the grade. Were I live the soil temp 8’ down is 60f. That is a comfortable temp for me year around. Understand the inside temp won’t be 60f, but even with a 10f diffrence I will be comfortable.

now my work space is an open to the east shed, the east consisting of 3 power poles set 16’ apart and topped with a third. Roof framing is the salvaged flore of a 14’ wide mobile home decked with 3/4” OSB salvaged from a temporary  dance floor and the walls are salvaged PT fence panels. Around here they don’t use ground rated posts so every few years the storms blow down their fences. So if you call around to a few fence contractors you can enter pet them in the way to the dump. Usually they are happy to deliver as it saves them the dump fees. So I built a 16x32’ on a low budget.

 

 

[Frosty]

On 6/4/2019 at 6:59 AM, ThomasPowers said:

Frosty sounds like you are talking about a heat exchanger.  Out there folks sometimes use a duplex system: a swamp cooler blowing into an air conditioner to make the AC more efficient.

Yeah, but my experiences with swamp coolers are from the time that earned them the name. A place would feel nice and cool when you walked in from outside but inside a few minutes you were sicky sweaty and I grew up in S. Cal, high desert. 

I'm not surprised modern swamp coolers have come a long way and since the Shingles I can REALLY appreciate a little humidity. The Mat Su Valley has an average humidity not much greater than high desert and boy does dry shingle skin feel crinkly painful. 

Frosty The Lucky.

[ThomasPowers]

How high is the high desert out there?

[Frosty]

We're at about 460' last I checked. Humidity inland is typically pretty low though things are a little different on any given day. Once you get above Fairbanks rainfall averages put it high desert to hard desert. 

It takes a little getting used to, walking ankle deep through water in the desert. They don't calculate desert the same way anymore, things here give them too  much pause I think.

Frosty The Lucky.

[ThomasPowers]

<9" precip was the definition I remember.  We're down in the valley near the river and at about 4642' above sea level---though I can see 10600' from my front door---the bump of the Magdalena Ridge Observatory on the mountains.

[Frosty]

<9" is what I recall too. Before the trees leafed out I could see THE 20,320' peak from the living room window.  There are 4 mountain ranges visible from here too but we're in plate collision central here. Right HERE. Got volcanoes too though it's been a more than a decade since we got ashed. Geology in action. 

The day's heat broke a little while ago, it finally dropped below 60 f. Whew, I can breath!

Frosty The Lucky.

[ThomasPowers]

Yup highest I've ever stood on the ground was 16400' down in Chile and the mountains were going up higher on the sides; sometimes they smoke too.

Sneaky how some of the Californians are dealing with possible warming by moving northwest at a couple of inches a year...

[Ohio]

I have a 16x16 with 10' high walls metal shed called the Wonder Hut for metal working activities. I'm finishing the interior now, which includes insulation, FSK paper, and nonflammable interior siding. Electrical is already onsite as I had my dome with the lap pool in the same spot---dome and pool are gone with half as much swearing as I estimated. Insulation includes the ground as well as vapor/water barrier. We deal with a lot of water and this is a useful way of keeping moisture out. I got some reclaimed mineral wool batts in the walls and I'll be stuffing more of those in the ceiling to go along with the some leftover polyiso sheets from a commercial cooler factory in the next town over.

I have worked with rammed earth, cob, and lechthelm (light clay-straw rammed between forms) and our house is loadbearing strawbale with exterior walls 2' thick and rounded to create a waterfall effect with natural light. I designed and built it with help from various tradespeople. Strawbale is not hard to build and if designed and built correctly can be viable. But it isn't cheap---contrary to what people say---to build it to be fire and water resistant.

I helped build a tire and earth wall for an earthship-style structure. It's not hard, but the trick is to get those tires completely covered either with earth/clay or some kind of plaster. I didn't really enjoy it as much as other types of building.

Lechthelm is pretty interesting. Essentially, you have post-and-beam (or something similar) structural members and then build forms. You mix straw with a clay mix and then fill the form and ram in the mix with a 4x4 or something similar, moving the forms up as you go. I did this on the north wall of a stone chicken coop I built years ago and it was pretty easy. It takes some time for the moisture to evaporate out of the rammed walls, but it eventually does, especially if you don't go overboard with the water. I left the wall bare in the coop, but as I recall (but don't quote me), the walls can be plastered---lime plaster is VERY easy to work with if you're good at troweling. 

I suck at troweling. And I can't back up a trailer. My only two flaws.

The walls end up thick, and they dampen sound and don't burn. I can't remember how well the walls insulate, but because of the straw, lechthelm insulates better than the clay/rammed earth, but not as well as bales.

I didn't do a lechthelm structure for the Wonder Hut because I had a limited area for the structure, but I seriously considered it. I may still do such a structure in the back beeyard to store stuff because I'd like to see how it would do in this climate. I'd make sure the lechthelm wall is off grade, well-drained, and protected from rain, and would have to pre-install window/door bucks and nailing members if I want to put in shelves or hooks, but that's all do-able.

So there's another option.

Edited to add: And swamp coolers are the worst.

[ThomasPowers]

What is this "rain" you mention?  Out here's the first place I have lived where the backyard is rated for direct pour of concrete.  Basically no topsoil.  My retired Pastor build a straw bale house; bamboo rods and traditional lime plaster and it works very well out here but the earthships are too hot; gotta go north/higher to use them.

The casita I rent would be perfect if it just had 4-8" of insulation applied to the outside allowing the masonry walls to be a heat sink.  Now the inside is heating up about the time I get home from work.

And I love swamp coolers; there are 3 different stores in town that sell everything you need to rebuild one even on a Sunday! (Town of about 10K people---when the university is in Session!)

[Irondragon Forge ClayWorks]

We have an old swamp cooler in the blacksmith shop but haven't hooked up the water in ages. It still cools the shop when put on fan though. That dates back to when the shop was a bunny barn and we raised show bunnies (mid 80s). It's more trouble to hook up the water now than it's worth.

[ThomasPowers]

Too humid in Arkansas anyway; it's just a big fan when the humidity gets above around 30%

[rockstar.esq]

It's difficult to give a concise answer because there are factors that favor one material over the other. 

One of the least difficult ways to approximate the difference in your area is to visit a home center that sells a variety of sheds.  In most cases, the home center won't bother to even stock a shed that isn't appropriate for the local conditions and codes.  

Be sure to look at things that are sized appropriately.  Economies of scale play a huge role when it comes to dimensional thresholds.  A Shed that's 15% larger might cost equal to one that's 50% larger simply because the bigger one uses standard sized panels.

 

[Frosty]

4 hours ago, ThomasPowers said:

Sneaky how some of the Californians are dealing with possible warming by moving northwest at a couple of inches a year...

It's a pretty shaky plan the Californian creeps. 

3 hours ago, Ohio said:

I suck at troweling. And I can't back up a trailer. My only two flaws.

Don't do them at the same time.   <sheesh!>

30"+ of compressed straw is good insulation and structural. Were I building this way I'd cupric sulphate the bales, pin and shotcrete them in. Mask the windows first.

I think I'll stick with my lumber frame urethane grossly over insulated place. 

Frosty The Lucky.