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WHIA goal achieved

jason — Fri, 18 Jun 2010 02:55:49 +0000

Right as I started rebuilding WHIA, I realized my goal had been achieved. My loft was now within 2 degrees of my main floor at all times and humidity was flat across the house, excluding the basement! What was the magic bullet you ask? I killed all of the return vents on the main floor forcing return air to only come from upstairs and then installed a 70 inch (!) ceiling fan on the main floor pushing air up into the upstairs. That took care of it, WHIA is still doing it’s thing, but it’s pretty much just running all vents wide open all of the time now. Somewhat of a let down to be real honest. I still have all of the parts and would still like to move on to v2, but it’s hard to say when that is going to happen now.

New project and updates

jason — Sat, 08 May 2010 20:28:50 +0000

WHIA V2 has anemometeres, current transformers, a seeduino mega and a bunch of other goodies coming together. The new baby has slowed things down pretty dramatically, but I had enough time to put together another little project I’m calling Vroomba. It’s not a toy, it’s a labor saving device. I’ll have that page up later on tonight. In the meantime, check out the Dune Bug-E.

Problems and complications

jason — Tue, 13 Apr 2010 03:44:08 +0000

I may have run into a small issue with getting the loft temperature in line with the rest of the house. It comes down to vacuum. I’m just not getting enough return suction upstairs to recirculate the air that I need. I’ve actually got WHIA disabled right now and we’re feeling the pain. The loft was 82 degrees tonight with almost 40% humidity, while the main floor was 77F and 35%, not happy Bob. I’ve also noticed that I have a fairly strong suction in the basement when the HVAC is running. This means that I either don’t have enough total return air available in the ducts or I need to have more vents in the basement. I’ve tried doing some rough measurements, closing off returns etc, but I have some hotwire anemometers in route that will allow me to get some real data. My suspicion is that I just don’t have enough return, but I’m drawing a blank on how to get additional where I need it. So the plan is that when my anemometers arrive I’m going to hook them up in the basement first to an arduino and my laptop and run some tests, opening and closing vents and returns, until I get that system equalized. Then we’ll move back to trying to get air upstairs.

Teaser

jason — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 02:12:09 +0000

While I’m not dead yet, it feels like I’m not too far off. The baby will be here soon, as in hours to days, so not much is going on besides getting ready for said baby. But I did manage to get a little time in the lab to come up with this. I have a friend that wants WHIA in his home but has a finished basement, so I’m thinking of doing this sort of design but with microservos, jeenodes and some LiPo batteries. As always more to come.

Updates and process

jason — Sun, 07 Feb 2010 13:59:53 +0000

Whia has been working like a champ and has been able to keep the rooms with 2 % humidity and 2f at the hottest. The pressure sensor on the main plenum didn’t work out at all, but pre and post manifold temperature sensors do fine.
Internet in a box worked great, but o had to turn in my data card, so I rooted my phone and I’m using WiFi tether on it. Works awesome.