Aansorge
As I've searched for answers on different problems this building has been seen on multiple sites, and people call me a lot of things.
daleeper
He left 2 radiators, both appear to be 60's vintage, one in the bathroom, its a ceiling mounted forced air job, and another wall mounted unit on the 2nd floor. Beyond a few pieces of pipe that were too hard to remove, its all gone.
On the additives front, think of radiation as primarily a surface effect, so mixing a bunch of hollow beads into a plaster is pretty much going to result in the performance being equivalent to the plaster itself (plaster is coating all the beads). What will happen is the thermal conductivity of the plaster will likely be improved due to the addition of a filler that has some insulating value relative to conduction. Easy way to gauge the impact is by doing the math on a weighted volume basis. Just take the thermal conductivity of the plaster times the volume fraction it occupies in the finished dry product, and add the thermal conductivity of the beads multiplied by the volume fraction it occupies in the finished product. For example: (0.17W/mK X 0.2) + (0.1W/mK X 0.8) = 0.114W/mK. Lower is better for thermal conductivity, so you can see an improvement over the base plaster at 0.17W/mK. The reason why aerogel is so attractive as an additive is that is has a much lower thermal conductivity that ceramic or glass. Using the same math, but putting in aerogel instead of ceramic is: (0.17 X 0.2) + (0.012 X 0.8) = 0.044W/mK, about 3X better for resistance to heat transfer. These are just estimates, but it comes pretty close to actual test results, and are quite conservative compared to commercially available plaster/aerogel combinations that are now commercially available.
begreen
I was thinking something more like this
http://www.ebay.com/itm/NEW-automat...694?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item4d12ee57ae
I'm just not sure how many btu's I need.
Bluerubi
Thanks for that link, any insights on glass/ceramic microspheres as an admix for plasters?
rideau
I have visually inspected the chimney after each fire, I remove cleanout on the bottom and look thru from the top, after a fire it looks pretty clean. I believe the main problem is the 2 90 degree bends at base of chimney, and I cannot access those to clean them. Chimney is a stainless steel metalbestos, not sure if its double or triple wall design. Cleaning the chimney is a 2 person job, and getting help out here can be difficult, and in the dead of winter the roof can be icey. Insulating the floor above me is on the to-do list (along with 100+ other jobs), but I need to get 1 room finished and heated so I can stay here full-time so that I can get more work done. And before any work can be done on upper 3 floors, the building needs a new roof. There is no floor under me, just earth. The swimming pool is north end of basement, my living area is in the south end of basement. Solar heating for the pool is a possibility, panels would go on the roof, as soon as I have a new roof.
I'm thinking the heat loss is not quite as bad as you would think it would be, night time temps are already down in the 20's. I did load the wood stove twice last night, and my room is 70 right now, but I also have 3 of the electric oil filled radiator heaters running 24/7, one in kitchen, one in bathroom, and one in main room. With no heat at all in the winter I do not think my room ever hits freezing, every year when I leave in mid december I leave a sealed mason jar full of water in the sink, it has never broken. Temps last winter got as low as -40, I did have one pipe above kitchen with a low spot that held water freeze and split.