Timber pun prepared and deployed? Scientific apparatus built? Yes to both! Live from HomeLab, the Thermal Mass and Buoyancy Ventilation Research Project team is proud to present to you, the Wood Chimney Experiment! No science lessons today folks, just photos.
SPOILER ALERT! On the left, you see our tried and true, the one who taught us so much, the Concrete Chimney Experiment. On the right, the Thermal Mass and Buoyancy Ventilation family welcomes their newest member, the Wood Chimney Experiment. Now let’s look at the building process.
The top and bottom insulation blocks are created by adhering two 6″ x 3′ 7″ x 3′ 7″ to make them 1″ thick. If you would like a reminder on why this insulation is necessary for the experiment phase and not necessarily for an actualized building you can read this post. The airflow cones are carved out so that they align with the airflow opening of the chimney interior chamber.
Here we’ve got the chimney walls coming together! Four sandwiches of ZIP sheathing, GeoFoam, and Wood Thermal Mass Panels all attached to create an interior chamber.
Three walls up, the fourth needs its sensors! The TMBVRP team thinks it would be absolutely wonderful to be in a space surrounded by edge grain wood that is also naturally ventilated.
The Sensirion airflow sensors will also be in this experiment. Incorporating how sensors can be attached within the chimney and their cords can make it out of the chimney without being squished is a crucial part of the design.
Before the Wood Chimney Experiment interior chamber is sealed, the fourth wall containing the temperature signal sensors must be attached. The temperature signals, read about temperature signals here, will be sensed with thermocouples and heatflux sensors. Next step in the process will be building up the insulation surrounding the interior chamber.
Pre-Insulation 
Post-Insulation
The Thermal Mass and Buoyancy Ventilation team is aware they used to refer to these scientific apparatus as “Desktop Experiment’s”. Technically the inner chamber could stand on a desk, but a more appropriate name might be Carport Experiments or Taller than the Team Experiments. Let’s just call them the Chimney Experiments for clarity. These experiments are still the first and smallest experiments for the scalable Optimal Tuning Strategy. And look, the Wood Chimney Experiment is done! Batt insulation and 2″ GeoFoam walls encase the interior chamber and ZIP tape is used to seal the entire experiment.
Thank you to all who have encouraged and supported the Thermal Mass and Buoyancy Ventilation team! The team is very excited to have reached this point, but the work is no where near over. It will take time to learn a new data retrieval and analysis workflow for the new sensors. The team is excited to get to it, but first we are going to celebrate our Wood Chimney Experiment! Cheers y’all and STAY TUNED!