That is what I see when I look at the wall between the tiny cottage bedroom and bathroom. This is the wall by our bed which is also the wall where my work desk will be. Admittedly, I havea vivid imagination – the aquarium tank is not there yet and won’t be for years. Even when it is physically in place it will still be many months before it is ready for corals and a couple of fish – I’ll probably never have that many fish in the tank. For now I’ll dream a little marine dream and watch the fish go swish on my computer screen.
The real tank will be aqua-scaped such that it will be viewable from both the bedroom and the bathroom sides yet you can’t see through from one room to the other. This will put bright tank light into both rooms, thus reusing the same light of the tank for other functions such as my desk light and the bathroom light so as to conserve energy. Ideally I would have liked to have had a skylight over it but that didn’t work out. Other aquariums in the tiny cottage will have natural light.
Of note is the granite sill shelf below the tank, the granite beam above the window and the granite book shelf are all solidly in place. They’re wet in that photo because three times a day or so we spritz the mortar with water so that it will cure properly. Most of the time I also keep the cottage closed up tight which keeps the humidity inside very high – one more way of helping the concrete cure to maximum strength.
Outdoors: 84°F/60°F Sunny
Farm House: 79°F/69°F Swales in south field
Tiny Cottage: 72°F/69°F Form work for pour
Walter Jeffries Tinker, Tailor… A bit eclectic & a tad eccentric, polymath, quantum mechanic & Farmer. Also lucky at cards.
Nice work Walter. I have really enjoyed watching this projects progress. When your finished I cna find a long list of stuff to turn you loose on here.. Peace at ya
have you considered any solar tubes for natural lighting? i have installed a few of these and they are very cool.
i could see one following the flue and lighting the lower rooms.
Hi Karl, yes, I really like the idea of the solar tubes and wanted to do something like that, I still may. I had thought of putting a sky light from the roof down to the marine aquarium to bring in natural light. The problem is for four months of the year, when we most need the sunlight, our roof is often deeply buried in snow, often several feet of it. Meanwhile, during that same period the solar tube would be leaking heat out of the house. I haven’t satisfied myself with solutions to the problems yet so I decided to skip that for now. The roof is only concrete so I can always cut a hole in it later… :)
if you were to make a separate concrete chimney that was shiny inside that connected to solar tubes into the house i think that solve most of your issues. the tubes themselves are sealed at both ends and don’t loose much heat.
Yes, that was what I thought of. I would have to go with a very steeply pitched top to keep snow off it since there is no way I could regularly get up and clean the snow off in the winter. The resulting solar tube chimney would be 4’x18″ and then the height would need to be about 9′ or greater on the south edge and 12′ or greater on the north edge. The problem is it is just behind the fire chimney which puts out some soot no matter how clean the fire so the glazing would rapidly get darkened. That would also act as a heat loss path and I would lose valuable space in the attic where our water heater and other things are going. After much thought I reluctantly gave up on that idea. :(
Hey,
I had a coral tank and fragged a lot of corals. I’d even suggest just having one fish. Something will go wrong with the tank, at just the same time when there is a lot of work to be done on the farm. Good luck, and find some good liverock. There is always someone giving up their tank, and has some. You can make it too.
Has anyone ever installed a solartube through a wall instead of a roof? They tolerate some angles from what I’ve heard…