[Strawbale] Moisture monitor, logger and alarm

[RT]

On Fri, 21 May 2010 04:23:42 -0300, equilibre <sven at equilibre...> wrote:


> I live in my Reedbale house for 2 years now and I'm also monitoring  
> Relative humidity and temperature inside the rooms, inside the wall and  
> outside. For the room I have right now digital measuring tool - Velleman  
> datalogger.

> For me it would be interesting, as to Eddy, to know what is the
> functionality and price?


I'm wondering if the European baleheads are familiar with the efforts by  
senior researcher Don Fugler at Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp (  
www.cmhc-schl.gc.ca ) back in the mid-late 1990's to develop reliable /  
effective /inexpensive means for SB homeowners to monitor the moisture  
scenario inside their bale walls ?

Basically, the outcome of that initiative was a moisture sensor that was  
cheap like borscht -- consisting of a short length of plastic water supply  
line (ie PEX) about the size of two segments of your index finger into  
which is inserted, a small wooden block with two screws connected to a  
couple of wires from telephone cable.

The above sensor is planted into the bales and the two wires run out to  
two screws mounted in a small coin-sized scrap of Lexan or PlexiGlas which  
serves as the reading station.

 From the above description, it should be apparent that a homeowner could  
make a few dozen of the above sensors and reading terminals for less than  
the cost of a cup of storebought coffee.

The report with instructions for fabricating the sensors should still be  
available at the CMHC website and instructions for making variations on  
the original design (provided by Habib Gonzalez and Rob Jolly, two  
baleheads who made a bunch, planted them into SB houses in British  
Columbia and Alberta and then collected the monitoring data into two  
reports which they wrote for CMHC) are stored in the FILES section at the  
SB-r-Us Yahoogroup.

Since the hygrothermal activity inside of properly designed/built  
plastered SB walls should be minimal, the monitoring data collected over  
the course of a month or two would be about as interesting as watching  
hair growing or paint drying .

Seasonal readings should suffice to alert the homeowner to any potential  
moisture problems that may need attention.

Those seasonal readings can be obtained with something as simple as a wood  
moisture meter .

      http://www.leevalley.com/en/wood/page.aspx?c=&p=32548&cat=1,43513,45788


It should be apparent that the biggest cost for this "system" is the wood  
moisture meter.
That cost can be minimised simply by sharing the meter amongst a group of  
SB homeowners, if desired.


-- 
=== * ===
Rob Tom
Kanata, Ontario, Canada
<  A r c h i L o g i c  at  Y a h o o  dot  c a  >
(manually winnow the chaff from my edress if you hit "Reply")
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