honey house

doug_10

i have a customer who wants to put radiant in their honey house(beekeeper-i know what you were thinking!). They are putting the radiant in slab on grade. The room needs to be 105 degrees to extract the honey. The design temp only needs to be 20 degrees. There are three rooms(zones) each 30' x 45' w/ 12' ceilings. heat load shows surface temp of 117 degrees (ouch). any ideas?

Alan(CaliforniaRadiant)Forbes

When I was

a beekeeper, we extracted our first, light honey crop in late spring and the darker honey came later in the fall. It was warm outside and the honey flowed out of the combs pretty well unless it was crystalized.

It sounds as though temperatures get cooler where you are and the apiarist wants it as warm as possible. That floor temp. sounds hot enough to damage the floor, even if it's only for a short time.

Supplemental heating is an option, but any kind of exposed convector is going to get pretty messy in a honey house.

Can you tighten the place up a bit? More insulation?

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G Averill_2

Honey house heating

We designed such a system this summer for a processor in southern South Dakota, and encountered the same concerns. We dropped the radiant floor option, and went with Burnham Baseray cast iron baseboard and a Independence PV steam boiler. The owner is thrilled with the response of this combination, plus being able to work around and clean the cast iron baseboard so easily.

JimGPE_3

Okay, NOW I'm impressed....

Is there NO application of hydronic heat that at LEAST three Wallies haven't had tons of experience with????

I'd bet someone on this site was heavilly involved in the hydronic heating of the Space Shuttle!

GaryDidier

Space shuttle

Well thankyou, How'd you know!

Gary from Granville

jerry scharf

water is heavy

Lifting water 270 miles into orbit would be really expensive, so I doubt that's how they are doing the heating. Gives new meaning to "high head pump."

Anyone know who did the design job in the antartic that warmboard talks about? Makes design temperatures in Fairbanks look balmy.

jerry

Mark Eatherton1

I think...

Dennis Bellante did that one. I know he had something to do with the Antartic. I was driving down from teh mountains today, crusing along about 70 MPH in the right hand lane, and a truck in the fast lane next to me honks. I look over and it's Dennis Bellanti! I was on the phone talking to Gregg Gibbs about HIM (Dennis)!! Pretty freaky eh...

So I get off the phone with Gregg and call Dennis on his cell phone and we hold conversation at 70 MPH! 'Course, Dennis is used to going a lot faster than that...in his race car that is:-)

It was like a hydronic happening on east bound Interstate 70...

One of my former student/employees spent some time down there working on the heating/plumbing systems. He said you had to get used to the smell of urine and stuff due to forzen and broken drain lines under the buildings. Glycol at 200 degrees F, EVERYWHERE.

NO Thanks, I'll stay in Denver.

ME

Mark Eatherton1

Oh Honey...

If I were to try it, and I haven't, I take some 2" thick polished granite and super glue some extruded aluminum heat transmission plates to the bottom of the slab as tight as I cold get it. THen I'd run the water through the plates parallel reverse return, and insulate the crap out of the bottom of the slab with like 6" XPS Then I'd run whatever water temp that would be necessary to maintain the comb at the perfect temperature. You could have a large copper funnel underneath the slab to receive the warm honey.

Oh, honey...

I've got a brother in law whose in the business of cutting marble slabs. He's already told me he's ready when I am to build some granite baseboard radiators. With constant circ and 2 tiers of XHTP (Extruded Heat Transmission Plate, new acronym, 5 points...) I think I could make his house much more comfortable than his baseboard.

I'd even do Ken proud and use copper on everything but the plates. That would kick some serious bee butt...

ME

Mark Eatherton1

I think...

the Space Shuttle is old and archaic and has a force error heating/cooling system. The Space Station on the other hand...

Temperature Control

Outer space is an extremely cold environment, and temperatures will vary drastically in different parts of the ISS. You might think that heating the ISS would be a problem. However, the electronic equipment generates more than enough heat for the station. The problem is getting rid of the excess heat. So the temperature control system has to carry out two major functions -- distributing heat where it is needed on the station and getting rid of the excess. To do this, the ISS has two methods to handle temperature control:

Passive methods - generally simple; handle small heat loads and require little maintenance
insulating materials, surface coatings, paints - reduce heat loss through the walls of the various modules, just like your home insulation
electrical heaters - use electrically-heated wires like a toaster to heat various areas
heat pipes - use liquid ammonia in a pipe to transfer heat from a warm area to a cold area over short distances. The ammonia evaporates at the warm end of the pipe, travels to the cold end and condenses, giving up heat; then the liquid travels back to the warm end along the walls of the pipe (capillary action).

Active methods - more complex; use fluid to handle large heat loads; require maintenance
cold plates - metal plates that collect heat by direct contact with equipment or conduction
heat exchangers - collect heat from equipment using fluid. The equipment radiates heat to a fluid (ammonia), which in turn passes heat on to water. Both fluids are pumped and recirculated to remove heat.
pumps, lines, valves - transport the collected heat from one area to another
heat rejection units - large, winged structures, similar to solar panels, that radiate the collected heat to outer space

For cabin air, the temperature and humidity control system circulates and filters air, removes water (humidity) and maintains a constant temperature range. Any collected water goes to the water recovery and management system.

Thanks Google!

ME

TLS_8

105???

105 to extract honey? It needs to be warm, but I would never want it to be 105 when I extract my honey. Unfortunately, I have never been able to build a dedicated honey house, we use my dad's basement, but if I did I would certainly have radiant in the floor. But designed for a space temp of 105. No, I don't think so. We have steam kettles attached to a wood boiler that we warm the extracted honey to 105 before straining. But I wouldn't want that for a space temperature. Are you sure their not looking for a storage area to preheat before straining or bottling? If so, design the floor for a typical 80's temp and supplement with radiation to increase to 105.

tom