RE: [ATM] Stone observatory foundation?

["Richard Klappal" <klappal@xnet.com>]

Stone, or stone & concrete, are excellent for providing 'thermal mass' in
solar homes and similar solar construction. In those cases, warm air is
circulated thru/over the stone to warm them; the heat is returned at night.
If you kept the base painted white and shaded and did not circulate the air,
it wouldn't be as bad. You may get a bit of equilibrium earlier, as the
daytime temperature dropped, but I think you'd have problems later in the
evening.

It might work OK to build the stone foundation, then insulate it and shield
it with wood or vinyl siding.

The observatory at our local community college (suburban Chicago) is brick
(traditional color) and the heat waves off of it make you expect to see
trout swimming by.

-----Original Message-----
From: atm-bounces@atmlist.net [mailto:atm-bounces@atmlist.net]On Behalf
Of Michael Burr
Sent: Saturday, 19 March, 2005 09:19
To: ATM list
Subject: [ATM] Stone observatory foundation?


Greetings:

I haven't posted in a long time; my ATMing has been dormant over the past
year while I have concentrated on building our new house. But in the wake of
a recent visit by John Dobson, I'm inspired to take up the task again.

One of the projects I have planned is to build an observatory. I'm
considering raising the observatory up, maybe 6 feet or more, to get a
little more clearance over some trees that border my location. There are a
lot of small boulders strewn around, and I am considering building the
raised "base" of the observatory from stone and concrete. I am unsure,
however, of the thermal properties of stone. I would not want to create a
radiative nightmare.

I've searched the ATM list archives and done some poking around on the web,
but thus far haven't found any useful guidance. Does anyone on the list know
whether stone soaks up and radiates a lot of heat? I'm guessing it does and
I am out of luck with it.

Unfortunately I don't know what kind of stone it is. We have a lot of
granite around here (central Minnesota) and if I had to guess I'd say maybe
it's granite. Definitely it's not a sedimentary rock. It looks metamorphic
to me.

Any thoughts would be welcome.

Best Regards,
Michael Burr
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