Cooling down the garage

Hi all,

When we built our house, we kept costs low by putting cheap carpeting in the living room and bedrooms, doing our own landscaping, and not insulating the garage.   That was the only way we could afford to build our own home because we couldn't sell our old house, had to rent it out, had to get an home equity loan to avoid a jumbo loan, etc. etc.

However, we did put some energy saving features in the house when building it:  a radiant roof barrier that reflects heat, passive solar windows, and a geothermal heat pump (a 200 foot loop of pipe in the ground that uses the earth to heat and cool).  We love these features and have found that our energy bill is half of the local, smaller, Energy Star house that we finally sold!  And we're still waiting for the next electric bill that will show us how much energy we have saved by putting in the solar panels.

Since we moved in, my attention has been on improving the house, including cooling down the garage.  Since our mojave desert climate consists of regular temperatures over 100 degrees from late June through August, the garage doors face southeast, and the outside wall faces southwest, our garage cooked during these months.  If it was 100 degrees outside, it could also be 100 degrees inside.  It also doesn't help that all the approved home and garage colors in our HOA are dark ones!

For my first attempt at reducing the garage temperature, I had solar screens installed on the 3 square foot diameter windows.  I don't know if they did much good although solar screens are supposed to reduce 75% of the heat (or thereabouts) while still letting in light.

Second, I contracted an insulation company to blow in insulation into the outside walls.  That procedure resulted in about a 5-8 degree heat reduction compared to the outside temperature. One drawback--the garage doesn't cool down as much at night.  One other plus--the garage temperature is very comfortable in the winter.

Third, we planted some trees that will eventually shade the outside wall.  "Eventually" is the key word here, which can be translated into "the trees are still small."  

My last trick, just completed about a month ago, involved painting the garage doors with Hy-Tech insulating ceramic paint.  I found this paint on the internet when I was actually searching for sound insulating paint because--although I love our geothermal heat pump--it is mounted on the garage side of the second bedroom wall and pump noise travels through the wall.  More on that some other time.

Anyway, I bought a bag of Hy-Tech ceramic microspheres to stir into a gallon of flat outdoor paint for only $15--much cheaper than the blown in insulation, I must say.  From the brochure:  "Hy-Tech insulating ceramics are a result of the NASA technology developed to combat the extremely high temperatures that the Space Shuttle experiences during re-entry . . . ."  It is "a ceramic insulating additive, that when mixed with the paint creates a barrier to heat."  


The ceramic microspheres look like talcum powder but are in fact little hollow ceramic balls.  The additive should be stirred into paint that has been poured into a larger container because it expands a bit.  Also, the additive makes the paint thicker so I added about a cup of water to it.  I painted on 2 coats with a roller, which resulted in a suede-like surface.  So far it's holding up well.  The best part of all is that it reduced our garage temperature about 3-5 more degrees.  I tested the heat barrier theory by touching the garage door when the sun was shining on it--and it was extremely hot.  This stuff really works!!

Self-publishing--I'm finally doing it!

Hi all, I decided it's time to publish my third and best manuscript, Red Flag Warning.  Since my writing group, The Writers of Chantilly, has used Infinity Publishing to publish their anthologies and I am happy with their work, I downloaded their "how to" book last week and made an appointment to talk to a representative.  He called today and I gave him my credit number.  So here I go!

Below is a brief blurb, synopsis, biography (of me) and possible front page photo:

Title of Book:  Red Flag Warning

Author Name:  M. A. Florence

Blurb: 

An arsonist at large.  A coworker murdered.  A forest fire out of control.  What began as Sophia’s first field job in years quickly became an inferno of trickery and intrigue.

Synopsis:

Sophia Davis had trepidations about her new field job in a tinder-dry forest.  Add eccentric co-workers, wildfire, arson and murder to the mix, and her misgivings turn to alarm.  Increasing suspicion and distrust from her colleagues and the local community push Sophia to search for the real culprit.  As she uncovers secrets and traces clues, a strong storm system pushes through and a red flag warning, unknown until too late, puts Sophia’s life on the line.

Set in the precarious mountains and wide-open valleys of eastern Oregon, Red Flag Warning showcases the realities of wildfires in our western forests today.

Author Biography:

M. A. Florence has an MA in Biological Science and currently teaches classes for the University of Phoenix.  She has worked as a botanist on field crews for the Bureau of Land Management and Forest Service in Wyoming, Nevada, California and Oregon, as well as botanical contract work in New Mexico.  Her previous publishing credits include short stories and poems in numerous anthologies and literary journals.  She now lives in southwestern Utah with her husband and two cats.

Book Excerpt:

With growing apprehension, I stared at the wispy, caramel-brown smoke column surging up from deep within the Dragon Mountains.  I hoped it was not another arson, like the one we had in these same mountains a few weeks back.  Fire investigators had traced that fire’s origins to a campfire deliberately set at the edge of a forest thicket.  Upslope winds, or perhaps the arsonist’s own breath, had fanned the flames into the bone-dry forest, burning over two hundred acres of pine, a few squirrels and at least one fawn before it was brought under control.

Today the smoke appeared to be coming from the Rock Creek area, where we worked last week.   The forest there was also dry and thick as dog-hair, and the narrow meadow straddling the creek had already turned to straw.  Rock Creek itself barely trickled.  It wouldn’t produce enough water to put out a campfire, much less a forest fire.

This summer comprised eastern Oregon’s seventh year of drought.  Our normally lengthy growing season had consisted of a dozen weeks in early spring and now, in early July, the parched meadows and heavily littered forests had become tinder-dry, primed for a spark. Under conditions like these, a stiff breeze could turn even a tiny blaze into a raging inferno.

I called out to our crew leader, “Hey Debra, it looks like there’s a fire over by Rock Creek.”

“That’s nice,” she said, hunkered over her foot square study plot.  Without pausing, she plucked out a grass-like plant from the cracked earth and examined it.  I watched her identify the plant, write down its abbreviation on the data sheet she had secured by a clasp on her clipboard, and then calmly reach for another plant.

Irritated with her dismissive attitude, I thought again about how much I didn’t want to deal with Debra on top of all the problems arson and a possible early fire season would entail, and added to it my new burden:  Jackie. Jackie had been hired to replace our crew’s soil scientist, Tom.  Today was Jackie’s first day and she already seemed to be rubbing everyone the wrong way. 

I glanced at the smoke column again, noting how much it had thickened and darkened. The fire was growing.  I sniffed.  Yes, wood smoke was definitely beginning to overpower the usual fresh pine-scented breeze.

I called out again, louder this time.  “Debra, I don’t think we should wait on this fire.  If you’re not going to call it in, I will.”

She expelled a long, exaggerated sigh and then squinted up at me.  Her stiff, wide-brimmed straw hat hid her slanted, dark brown, East Asian eyes and most of her short, thick black hair.  But it didn’t hide her frown.

“All right, Sophia,” she said, speaking with a slight lisp on the letter ‘s.’  She could never pronounce my name quite right.  ‘Sophia Davis’ came out ‘Thopia Davith.’  

“I get the message,” she continued.  “I’ll make sure it gets called it in as soon as I finish this section.  It’s almost time for lunch, anyway.”

“Good,” I said, happy to have at least that settled.  Bending down to count plants again, I tried to push out the fretting that had been casting a shadow upon my thoughts all day.  I was working on a soil-vegetation inventory crew miles away from my two teenage children and a husband who loved to fight fires.  What if he was called away to fight this one?  How would I manage everything then?

As the familiar feeling of dread crept over me, I told myself to stop it right there.  This was just a solitary smoke column, for gosh sakes.  And it might be a natural fire, not arson. 

I visualized a single lightning strike on the talus slope above the creek, a fire that wouldn’t go anywhere, and I consoled myself with such platitudes as ‘you’re making good money, you can finally be a botanist again, you should be grateful you even have a job.’ Then I forced myself to focus on the reason I was out here to begin with.

On hands and knees now, I baked under the unrelenting sun and swatted at biting insects while classifying, counting and tabulating the meadow vegetation before me.  But my task couldn’t keep that growing fire far from my thoughts.  When was Debra going to call it in?

Finally, Debra stood up, dropped her equipment into a tidy little pile, and stomped over to me across the brown grass. I sat back on my feet and looked up at her.

With a scowl on her face, she snapped, “Okay, I’m done.  As soon as you reach a stopping point, get Tom and Jackie and meet the rest of us at the road for lunch.  I’ll tell Luna about the fire on the way up.”

Relieved, I nodded my acknowledgement and took a brief break to watch slender, long-waisted Debra stomp off through vegetation so dry that it crackled with each step.

I soon completed my last entry and laid down my clipboard and pencil.  Standing up, I stretched the kinks out of my back.  It’s no fun getting old!

Possible front cover photo:

Image from the website article:  http://dels-old.nas.edu/climatechange/mountains.shtml

Title:  A wildfire sweeps through Bitterroot National Forest in Montana.

Image courtesy of John McColgan, USDA Forest Service.