![diagram, here enlarged,](javascript:win3s(557,658,20,"../engineer/images/!LARGE/","#ffffff","CR_schematic.jpg","Cortijo Romero heating system schematic overview - © Trev Val dolphin 1997","noblurb");){kind=link}
![02sprayrain_i.jpg](javascript:win3s(445,490,0,"p","#000000","Sprayplanerain.jpg","the spots on the can lid resulted from the plane's spraying","dimethoate");)
they even sprayed a can of paint
![03spraybelow_i.jpg](javascript:win3s(447,558,0,"p","#000000","Sprayplanebelow.jpg","lower down in the valley","dimethoate2");)
the valley to the east of the pool
if you came here from a link in a wavesculptor page...
this document will scroll to the linked paragraph when loaded
Intended to be viewed in a small, resizable pop-up leaving the window you came here from still visible, this window will hide behind any main window you next click on. If you're not using a browser with scripting, you'll have to size the window yourself. Unexplained text links embedded in any main window paragraph will be explained in this window. As long as it's left open, any adjustments you make to this window's size and position will be retained.
One persistent problem was eventually traced, with help from the manufacturers, to scaling of the boiler's heat exchangers, presumably caused by the extremely high calcium content of the local water further increased by contact, while hot, with the fresh cement lining of the heatstore... despite thorough dosing with corrosion and scale inhibitor....
As can be seen from the diagram, here enlarged, and on the page adjacent to the link to this paragraph, the heating system contains a lot of components. Multiple small pumps were chosen rather than motorised valves and a large pump to control the system, for their reliability and redundancy. The pumps were switched electronically from a remote, automatic control unit. Temperatures were sensed remotely using analogue "T to I" converters at strategic points in the panels, heat store, etc. A series of analogue integrated control circuits ensured most efficient use of the heat sources and resources available. The panel heat-transfer fluid could be circulated at two speeds, depending on the heat stored and available, and partially warm fluid from the middle of the store or cold water from the base fed to the panels to provide efficiency or get the most useful temperature water from them. The stored heat profile, indicating input/output and reserves of heat were shown on an instantly interpretable coloured graphic display.
The system of passive solar heating that I proposed for new rooms at Cortijo Romero was essentially two square metres of double glazing facing south, shaded externally such that as the sun passed from winter solstice to summer, progressively less direct sun would be admitted. As two out of the suite of three rooms had no southerly aspect, their solar gain was to be through roof-lights. The architect, however, reduced the specified glass area to half of one square metre, did away with the shading canopy to keep the heat out when it would be excessive, and respecified the roof-lights such that one shaded the other when the solar gain would be required.... And all on the grounds that their appearance would not have fitted in with tradition in the area. Nevertheless, in conjunction with a fraction of the insulation I specified, and the underfloor heating (which I fitted to make sure it got put in correctly), the rooms became amongst the most comfortable on offer.
Underfloor heating is by far the best way to background-heat a room. You shouldn't be able to sit mesmerised by the flicker of its flames as it roasts your brow, but it will make the room more comfortable than any other form of heating. Why? Some fundamental factors need declaring first.
External warmth can be gained by an isolated human body in a room from either warm air or radiant heat. The two are anything but similar. Radiant heat is emitted by hot objects: the air can be freezing cold between you and the hot object and you will still be warmed by the radiant heat - perhaps all the more for the cold! You are also a hot object: if you are surrounded by cold objects, irrespective of whether the air between you and the cold objects is warm, you will be warming the cold objects, often the walls and floor of the room. Warming other objects means you are loosing heat which your body has to replace, so you feel cold, even if you are surrounded by relatively warm air. For this reason, warm air, whilst more comfortable than damp, cold air to someone at rest, is not the best way to keep humans warm.
Small objects, like room-heating stoves, have to be very hot to directly give off enough heat to keep rooms, or whole houses, warm. Being near them therefore leaves the parts of the body facing them feeling scorched by the heat, whilst the opposite side may feel cold. Most heating appliances warm the air by convection as well as you, by direct radiation. Undisturbed hot air will rise to the upper part of a room, often leaving the floor uncomfortably cold. Having ones head in a blanket of warm air while ones feet are cold is not comfortable. The convection of air around small hot or cold objects (like windows) is experienced as cold draughts.
Underfloor heating neatly resolves all these issues by providing a large area of gentle, barely perceptible warmth where most spaces would feel coldest without it. The floor never actually feels warm, just comfortable to bare feet, but is actually several degrees warmer than it would be if it were not heated. Because the temperature of the floor is so low, the air temperature in the room rises much less than it would with most other forms of heating. The room occupants absorb their heat directly by radiation from the warm surface and less is wasted. Because the floor area of a room is large, it heats the room sufficiently without needing to be hot.
The obvious snag with underfloor heating is, of course, the installation. The effects can be mimicked to some extent by radiators, but I mean radiators used as their name suggests, not as most modern devices sold as "radiators" actually are: convectors. Convectors heat your head and the ceiling, leaving your feet cold. Convectors are any "radiators" that have more than one panel, like sandwiches, especially those having fins. They are promoted as compact, or having large heat outputs, which is true: heat outputs at the ceiling! To design or redesign your heating system around true radiators, you will need to think of larger panels. They are not a lot more expensive than the equivalent output convectors, but "use" a lot more wall space. If you have sufficient wall space, you can make them even larger and reduce the circulating water temperature, from 80°C to 70°C. This has the spin-off benefit - if your boiler is of the condensing type - of actually enabling it to run as a condensing boiler all the time, thus operating at maximum efficiency - wasting some 10-15% less heat via the flue than it would if your heating water was circulating at 80°C. Another spin-off benefit is that if the large panel is not so hot, furnishings may be placed near it with less likelihood of damage from the heat.
I woke to find the temperature inside my well insulated camper van was less than -10°C... the minimum my thermometer went down to. Outside, water froze in a bump on the ground as it landed. The butane for the van cooker would not vaporise; five very large, very well charged batteries in parallel would not turn the van diesel engine and the antifreeze in the radiator had frozen. In the trailer with the CHP unit was a bottle of more freeze-resistant propane. I connected the bottle and pulled the cord and the CHP started first time. I had designed the exhaust and engine waste-heat reclamation systems on the CHP such that they could be run without any heat needing dissipation externally for twenty minutes to enable the unit to be used just as a generator for quick jobs such as this - the system simply venting its heat to the external air. Back in my camper, I set about with an electric fan heater to try and thaw myself and a few essentials, while the batteries got up enough voltage to start the van engine. By the time I was warm enough to go back outside, I found to my horror, steam and water issuing from the CHP unit's case. The heat transfer system in it had also frozen, along with its antifreeze, under a blanket and a tarp, during the night. The heat exchangers were ruptured. Luckily, having plastic ends, the van radiator survived with weepy seals that healed, and the block had not cooled enough to crack. As soon as the sun came over the mountains, the solar panels got the batteries up. With a propane blowlamp played over the van engine injectors and injector pump, the van eventually coughed and misfired itself back to life, but the CHP unit needed major repairs....
In the village near where I live, I still see elderly people burning a pan of twigs outside their front door. When most of the poisonous volatile combustion by-products have burned-off, the charcoal is brought in and placed in a space under a table, around which the room occupants sit with their legs under a draping table-cloth retaining some of the heat.
The book by Chris Stewart Published by Sort Of Books, Summer 2002. The sequel to Driving Over Lemons. The book includes a couple of chapters which sketch and/or parody me and the pool. It suggests I am the agent provocateur solely responsible for cold selling him the swimming pool. Actually, Chris had already had a pretty impressive hole excavated with a JCB months before I took his job!
Literally, I suppose, an adze. A heavy hoe for cutting into the ground, used by any worker of the soil except an English one at home who prefers to break his or her back with more dignity, using a spade. Imagine a spade head threaded cross-wise at more or less ninety degrees onto an axe handle and you have it.
In southern Spain, a gully, carved by water run-off, usually on a steep mountainside composed of easily eroded soft rocks. Many become shady havens for wildlife. An almost omnipresent feature of the landscape in the area this document relates to.
As far as I know, a term used to describe a curve that follows precise geometrical constraints. When I was young, before computers, they came as fluorescent green plastic shapes reminiscent of dinosaurs and amoebae. Now, much graphics software comes with them as part of the package. The essence of a Bezier curve seems to be sharpness which increases or decreases smoothly between points along its path. But whatever they are, the mind behind the sensitive human eye enjoys them in a way that potatoes fail to excite.... Why Bezier? After a citizen or town of France? Tell me if you know the answer.
In southern Spain, an estate that was originally a peasant farm, or the assemblage of buildings upon it. Now often converted into an up-or-not-so-up-market establishment bearing the same name but with little resemblance to its original form or function, for instance Cortijo Romero, below.
The word cortijo is explained above. Romero means rosemary.... “Rosemary Farm” is a holiday centre much
patronised by middle-class, middle-aged English folk seeking the meaning of life or if not, at least instant alternative Spain.
I will place my prejudices on the table here, and admit that it is too “packaged” for me,
these days, but tailored to what busy English “alternative” types want to spend their holiday pay on.
CR (as we now call it without even noticing the abbreviation) has been going many years, and is certainly more authentic than “Costa-del-Sol-on-Sea” —
just about twice the time from The City of London as Brighton if you time your connections right.
Many tens, perhaps hundreds, of English have settled in the mountains and villages around CR as a direct result of their initial venture to the funny farm (as the locals see it)....
Spread over the middle part of the 1990s, I spent many months installing my usual kind of unusual but environmentally friendly technology in the place,
which I figured ought to include energy efficiency in its holistic outlook. My exploits there are revealed in notable technical works link on the welcome page.
An organophosphate insecticide banned in many countries including the US and UK. Sooner or later I will add a link to a site describing it - email it to me if you get there first. Used here in an attempt to limit the occasional excesses of a small beetle which lays its eggs on olives, the grubs of which cause the olives to spoil and become commercially worthless.
Here are a couple more images relating to the spray plane.
Click them for enlargements.
|
they even sprayed a can of paint |
| The spray was easily visible on the clean matt black surface of the lid of this paint can, standing outside the house. Though an achievement in aerobatics to cover the mountainous area in this way, and even quite visually inspiring as the image below shows, the environmental and human side effects of the spraying are unacceptable to most foreigners. |
|
the valley to the east of the pool |
| The pilot who was photographed flying here did not last many more years, and his replacement was not so exuberant. But the spraying continues, as the native locals support it, as for many the oil olive crop is a substantial part of their livelihood, and they regard such things as 'progress'. The current pilot is however more respectful of the views of those who do not wish to be sprayed but it is difficult to spray some small farms and not others from the air as their boundaries are typically intermingled like jigsaws. Peter is thus under considerable pressure from his native neighbours to accept the spray plane. |
Used in this context to refer to one of the tendencies observed in physics which is that highly organised structure tends to be broken down when the ambient levels of energy become more chaotic. Biological life being a system that tends to focus energy and create more order, it is constantly in equilibrium with entropy. Examples of the fundamental fluctuations in energy which make life here a struggle with entropy include the wide variations in altitude, temperature, moisture and wind. These in turn influence local human nature, which itself reflects on the levels of chaos in the area.
Victorians were suckers for intentional follies - stone ruins, arches, towers and other devices - with which to enliven their esteemed landscapes. Perhaps if awareness of ecology had been as prominent then as it is now, many of them might have been Eco-follies. To my way of thinking, something that survives a long time, carrying an otherwise inaccessible sense of that time with it, creating enjoyment in the process, is less of a folly than shorter lived a architectural frippery, even if it may make more demands on the Earth's resources to produce it.
Plumbing. I have found it revealing to observe the difference between big, rich-country plumbing - like in North America - where all the pipe sizes and fittings are overspecified, and poorer, southern European countries where pipework is eye-of-a-needle and fittings often feeble and easily broken. The rush for northern european material standards of living in the South has resulted in many lavish-looking bathrooms and kitchens but with fontaneria unable to deliver - or dispose properly of! - the goods.... A fact for nerds like us, concerning european plumbing, is that most threaded coupling sizes used are still British Standard Pipe - cos the Brits started it - though the pipe sizes, including those used in England, are now metric.
As Slarty Bartfast must have enjoyed detailing the coastline of Norway, in Douglas Adam's classic, The Hitch-hikers Guide To The Galaxy.
A technique for creating shell-like vessels and structures from mortar, using extensive light steel work as reinforcement. The light steelwork limits the cracking of the mortar as it sets, the main factor otherwise limiting its strength and water resistance. The reinforcement often used is galvanised steel netting, sometimes known as chicken wire. Greater strength can be achieved at cost by using welded mesh with straight wires. The mortar is usually trowelled through the steel mesh onto some kind of support. Mortar shrinks much more than concrete as it hardens, and it is the non-shrinking aggregate in concrete that limits cracking and thus gives it its watertightness. Concrete, however, because of the aggregate, is not workable over thin structures. The effect of the mesh in ferrocement is to limit the length of the cracks that form in the mortar as it dries; they tend to be limited to within the cells of the mesh. Because increasing the content of cement increases the shrinkage of a mortar as well as its strength and imperviousness, and the steel mesh counteracts the undesirable effects of the shrinkage, ferrocement can be can be made stronger and more impervious than unreinforced mortar. With ferrocement, it is still advisable to use mortar as dry as lends itself to workability. See Trevor's pools, in this document.
Did you think I was going to give them a plug? Mitsubishi's parent company are actually one of the most environmentally destructive of all the Japanese Giants, with fingers in many controversial activities. I would advise anyone considering buying a product with a Mitsubishi label on it to check out Mitsubishi's environmental record and consider other ways of fulfilling their needs.
Negotiating can be intensely frustrating for me, as the moment I become aware of many a technical task, I intuitively know how I want to approach it. I am then faced with the more arduous task, which is negotiating the way in which we will proceed with whoever wants control of the job. My experience that it is arduous may be because the beacon by which I prefer to navigate tends to be best performance rather than lowest cost or simplest or quickest construction, which many favour. And my idea of performance tends to include factors such as appearance, environmental impact and durability.
A Cambridge graduate, Peter pursued a life as a site carpenter rather than one of the professions more often associated with such folk. Since I have known him he has taught himself astrology by ploughing through tome after tome of arcane literature. He attributes my wallowings in creative complexity and precision to my astrological lot. And before astrology, he taught himself homeopathy in a similar manner to supplement an inadequate course. Though he enjoys constructing things, Peter has difficulty with an arthritic hip, and so allows others to do much that he might otherwise attempt himself.
The shape of many pools in the Alpujarras.... Pools like potatoes gnawed by desperately dry invertebrates. Potatoes struggling to develop between obstreperous stones. Potato shaped means aspiring to satisfyingly curved but achieving an unsettling compromise somewhere between regularity and irregularity. The potato is one of the minority of structures I notice in nature, that hangs between chaotic and regular. Humans seem to manage to construct such hybrid forms by default, very chaotic or regular forms requiring considerable application for most to achieve. And as for both at the same time... strong contrasts of regularity and chaos, but with very little uncertainty between... that's what turns me on! I cite as an example the river whose sinuous course or flatening in response to gravity I call regular, but whose chaos at the level of its tumbling over boulders is in complete contrast. Not the perfect example because it does blend between these extremes, but I have illustrated my point. For another human perspective, may I also recommend the work of artist Chris Drury? A link when I can come up with it.
Though steel heating radiators can make cheap solar collectors, they have the disadvantage of being slow to heat and cool in areas where cloud cover can be very intermittent; however, where I used them, clouds are usually absent altogether, or cover the sky. Another problem turned out to be the need to maintain corrosion inhibitor concentration in the system. After I had passed on responsibility for the system to a local engineer, who was not used to the importance of this, several partial drainings and refillings for maintenance and modifications led to enough dilution that the panels eventually corroded and had to be replaced.
An attempt by the author to effect the process of artificial ultraviolet light water disinfection using sunlight. The main problems with using sunlight seem to be as follows. Sunlight contains a high proportion of growth stimulative energy that penetrates far deeper into water than the hard ultraviolet which kills microorganisms. Attempts to get around this involved creating stone decks in which the film of water was uniformly of the order of about 2 mm in thickness so that all the water passing over it would be exposed to the non-penetrative hard ultraviolet. Such precise surfaces are difficult to achieve with the rustic materials favoured by the consumers of natural swimming pools. Growth of hard-UV resistant algae is also a problem with such thin films, if the nutrient content of the water is not first dealt with, as it was not in my earlier attempts. In retrospect, therefore, not a successful strategy compared with biological methods of water treatment. Responsible, however, for satisfying architectural features of my first and second pools.
I love staircases, particularly dignified, baroque arpeggios of steps sweeping into halls, creating about them a feeling of expectation of the arrival of a great person at any moment. Staircases that are sets for epics films and places were lovers meet (and of additional practical value for lovers of different heights). Thus I give my pools steps, and the bather may choose the dignity of a stately or an abrupt entry to the water.
The following is an extract from the pool manual...
1. The two pools are filled with irrigating water supplied to the site by acequia.
Water from the domestic tank may be used to top-up at any time.
2. Water to be improved in quality is drawn from the swimming pool by three means:
(1) skimmers which remove floating debris;
(2) a bottom outlet towards which sinking debris and cooler, staler water will tend to migrate, and
(3) a suction port, to which a manually operated vacuuming tool may be connected or a self-propelled cleaning robot may be left connected while the pool is in use.
3. Before entering the pump, water from the above sources is passed through a Pre-strainer,
in an enclosed chamber integral with the pump, which must be routinely checked and emptied.
4. Strained water is pumped up to the Bio-pool by an electrical pump, powered by solar photovoltaic panels.
Should the pool not be used in winter, some of the output from the pool panels may be used to boost the charge to the domestic storage batteries.
5. Algae and nutrients which would otherwise rapidly lead to algae growth,
clouding and possibly unhygienic conditions are consumed in the Bio-pool by plants and fish.
6. Water flows under gravity from the Bio-pool, through a submersed charcoal filter which removes macroscopic particles and taints,
including that introduced by the flora and fauna, and out to the Copper-solvator.
7. In the Copper-solvator, copper ions are dissolved by electrolysis into the water,
providing a bactericidal and algicidal action that is relatively harmless compared to chlorination;
they also cause microscopic particles to coagulate so they are more easily trapped by the following sand filter.
8. The sand filter is of a gravity flow type, which is easily back-washed as part of the pool maintenance procedure.
9. Finally the water flows uniformly over a thin-film trickle area of slates, of approx. 10 square metres,
where the ultraviolet solar radiation further conditions the water and warms it, before it re-enters the swimming pool either via the waterfall or jets.
10. Alternatively, water from the sand filter bed may be returned to the swimming-pool by means of jets in the pool wall,
for the purpose of stirring the pool to obtain more even temperature and water quality distribution.
The water may be circulated in several different ways.
This link is just going to point you at Suzanne's pool page. That page will replace the page you were on but you can get back to it by clicking the back button on the browser of the new page when it opens. The paragraph entitled "Pondering" at this link.
Originally a member of Wwoof: Working Weekends On Organic Farms, an organisation formed in the UK among the youth of the current older generation, with the intention of matching the shortage of workers in remote places with idealistic city folk with a desire to do something creatively different. Now an international but still anglocentric not-for-profit organisation involving tens if not 100's of thousands of volunteers mainly of the younger generation, who use it as a way of productively travelling the world. The movement passed through a phase of calling itself Willing Workers On Organic Farms, and now seems to be calling itself World-Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms. I expect it offers initiatives and solutions and a variety of other current buzzwords too. It's really many independent organisations, but you could have at look at this site claiming some sort of umbrella capacity. The URL is http://www.wwoof.org. But many of the young folks that travel around doing it these days do so making contact through the grapevine rather than any membership organisation... and what the hell, most of them are folk that are pleasant to have around. Anarchic old twat that I am.
Anyway, that's the end of the Asides....
(back)
to this
site's
index &
contact
page
All text and images on this site ©2004 Trev Val dolphin.
generous copyright statement
First Edition: 2002 January 18-27th
Edition 1.2: 2002 August 19th
Edition 1.3: 2004 January 10th