I’ve done a lot of reading lately as I layout the plumbing for our home.

The funniest statement I read became the title of this post … let’s try not to kill ourselves while building our dream home!

Before I dive into the solar heated water I want to back up a bit … what I have been doing over the last few weeks is try to come up with a plumbing plan for this building.  This has proved far more complicated than I anticipated; I don’t have extensive experience in plumbing, and many of the systems going into this house are not typical.  Regardless, stuff happens and apparently it also flows down hill … how hard can it be?

The plumbing for this project includes:

• Domestic water supply,
• Grey water planters,
• Septic system and associated plumbing,
• Solar hot water heating,
• Radiant floor heat

Domestic water supply

The domestic water supply for our house includes the following fixtures:

1. kitchen (sink, dishwasher although we may not install one, we wanted to have the hook-ups)
2. main bathroom (tub, sink, washing machine, toilet)
3. ensuite bathroom (shower, sink, toilet)
4. Hot Water (tank?)

Grey water Planters

Here again not a lot of thought has gone into the final design of the planters.

We have chosen to set the highest point of the planters at the east edge of the building and slope them down to the west edge of the building.  This means the flow of grey water is set and we need to get all of the grey water from the plumbing fixtures to the east-most planter.  To accommodate this layout our bathrooms will probably be a step-up from the rest of the floor plan … this will (hopefully) give us the height we need to get the grey water to the east edge of the building.

The other choice was to set the lowest planter in the middle of the building and have the grey water run to this point from two directions … this seemed more complicated and frankly we did not plan for this early enough … the benefit of this layout would have been smaller elevation changes due to shorter travel distances (possibly no step-up into the bathrooms).

Septic System and Associated Plumbing

This is actually where I started thinking about the plumbing … unlike everything else in this building a septic system has well defined code requirements and is fairly straight forward to implement.

The waste pipe layout is complicated by the need to separate out the grey water flow from the flow from the black water fixtures and run it to the grey water planters.  In our layout the grey water flow will be valved; it will either flow to the grey water planters or out to the septic tank.  This means that we are compliant with the building code, and did not have to try and prove that we did not need a code compliant septic system for this building.  We had an existing septic tank and field on our site and to get a permit we just had to have a certified septic installer o.k. our system.

Solar Hot Water Heating

There are a lot of options to consider when using solar heat, and everybody seems to be pushing their design as the greatest thing since sliced bread.  Added to this, the BC Building code (I believe this is similar across Canada) places restrictions on what you can use … all of this makes specifying a system challenging.

For a good introduction on different solar options this article helped me.

I found the following questions (taken from the website that warns against making a solar bomb) to be helpful …

The Fundamental Questions

• Does the proposed system operate at low temperatures? Solar collectors are not very efficient at temperatures of 180°F.
• Has the need for storage of solar energy been considered?
• How will excess heat be handled?
• How will the need for freeze protection be handled?
• What will happen if the electric power fails in the middle of the day?
• What will happen when the power comes back on after a period of stagnation?
• If something goes wrong, will the system fail to a safe condition
  (fail safe)?
• How will the occupant know if the system is not working properly?

Keeping these questions in mind the first system that occurred to me was an open-loop system that relied on a thermosiphon to pump the water around.  Confused yet?  This compares to a closed-loop system with glycol (antifreeze) and an electrical pump.  Read on … it gets worse!

We have already identified the need to block at least the lower half of our bathroom windows … its a privacy thing.  It occurs to me that this window space could be ideal for solar collectors … I even picked out evacuated tube solar collectors … these babies would obscure the view without completely blocking the sunlight … sort of like frosted glass … only functional!

With those considerations in mind the system that is currently winning is shown in the following image.

The solar panels are on the roof so it is a close-looped system and would use an anti-freeze solution in the heat exchange loop.  The necessity for an electric pump is eliminated by using a bubble pump … a solar pump that pumps when the sun is out by establishing a thermosiphon loop.  This pump is passive in that it works when the collectors are heated by the sun and shuts down when the sun is gone … which is pretty much when you want to pump … eliminating the need for an electric pump and a controller.

The hot water tank is used for storing the solar heat.  The tank could have an electric backup element or be propane … meaning that you will always have hot water … I still have not figured out which is the better option.

Radiant Floor Heat

We plan to have radiant floor heat in the high-use floor spaces of the earthship.  My intention is to use the solar heated water for the heating loops.

I am still trying to work this out but will look something like:

This means that the hydronic heating loops will not be passive, an electric pump will be used to move the water.  I have read about using a thermosiphon loop for this, but they still had a backup pump in case bubbles blocked the thermosiphon … so I do not think making this an active loop is a bad idea.  Our intention is to use a wood gasifier to produce electricity … the gasifier will also generate a lot of heat and I see it being primarily responsible for providing heat for the radiant floor system.  I have not shown it in this diagram because I am still wrapping my head around how it will be implemented.

Still a lot more to figure out here but this is a start.

I am curious what other people have done or come up with …

I will try to keep posting my design as it evolves … I am currently overwhelmed by the slope of this task and writing about it helps to clarify my thoughts.