It's been nearly a month since the last update of these pages ... I haven't been building this room, I've been using it! Most of the carving work, and all of the printing work of the most recent print have been done down here, and I've enjoyed every minute of it!
I dropped an ethernet cable down through the B1 walls, pulled an old computer out of the closet, dug a video digitizer board out of the 'junkbox', and set up the webcam, so that people watching can finally get a glimpse of what the new working environment looks like, sometimes turning the camera to point out the window. But no sooner did I do that than Tamura-san - who lives on the other side of the stream - started his autumn tree trimming. And this guy really goes to town on that job ... nothing left but bare trunks ...
The room is turning out to be quite useable, although with no shelves for pigments and tools, I have to keep running upstairs for things I have forgotten to bring downstairs. It has turned out to be a good 'test run' for the room, as I have already learned that I am going to have to make changes in the size and position of the openings in the platform (none of the parts have been permanently screwed together yet ...)
I like working down here a lot, and have no desire at all to move back upstairs, but day by day the weather is getting colder. The back three walls and the ceiling are still uninsulated, and there is no question that if I don't get more progress made, I will get 'chased' upstairs next month.
So the next logical step seems to be to build the main air duct - not the one to ventilate the space behind the rear wall, but the one to bring warm attic air down to this room. I took some time off the carving this weekend and - after a false start that wasted most of Saturday - got it done! Let's follow it from top to bottom ...
It all starts up in the attic, with the air blower, which is a standard 'box' fan, modified to blow into the tube. There was no useable electrical supply up here of course, but wires were visible running all over the place, so I tapped into one of the circuits and added an outlet box.
The fan connects to a length of flexible-type ducting, which bends over and burrows down through the ceiling panelling ...
... where it connects to a length of 'free-standing' plastic ducting ...
... which drops straight down - though my 2nd floor woodblock storage area - and heads down through the landing floor. (This landing space is an excellent place to keep some of those woodblocks - airy and quite dry ...)
Now if we run down the stairs to the first floor, and look back upward, we see where that straight section connects to a flexible length, which drops down through the 'between floors' space. Many Japanese houses are built with nearly a full meter of empty space between the first and second floors ... I could never quite understand why ... The switch visible on the left is one of two controlling the fan in the attic (the other is down in B2); I want to be able to turn it on or off from here without making the long trek downstairs. Up to this point the wire has run inside the duct, but from here on, it will be side-by-side with it ...
Looking down, we see that the straight duct passes down through the floor once again ...
... and connects with an accordion section in the crawl-space under the first floor. That is taped to the top end of a long (4 meter) section of aluminum ducting that drops straight down inside one of the B1 walls ...
If we run down the stairs and move to the bottom end of that cavity, we see the lower end of the long section, taped to another short accordion piece of ducting. This curls around and then drops through a hole into ...
B2 at last! For the present, the duct will just hang from the ceiling. Once the stairs are in place, there will be a proper 'vent' grill tucked under the topmost step. Among the jumble of wires also visible (ethernet, intercom, electricity) is a wire with a switch for the fan, 12 meters away - back up in the attic.
So Part 1 - the duct itself - is in place, roughly along this red route ...
How is it working? So far, so good. A nice gentle stream of air does actually come out the bottom end ... But nearly all of the heat is being lost along the long journey, so next step will be to wrap as much of the ductwork as possible with insulation ...
