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help save the evansburg solar cabin!
15 nov 1998
dear folks,
i'd like to ask a favor...
as you may know, i've been working part time for 2 years on instrumenting
and 100%-solar heating a cabin at the evansburg state park youth hostel and
sustainable living center near philadelphia, pa, one of 20 such centers in
the us. so far, i've spent about $8,000 on materials and 800 hours of my
time. the cabin was a rickety 10x12' shed when i started. you could push
on the sides and tilt the whole building by several inches in several
directions. it had a badly cracked concrete floor with standing pools of
water, rotting beams, roof leaks, and so on.
now it's a well-insulated airtight 18x24' well-drained structure with
carpeting over an insulated floor, knotty pine paneling, thermal shutters,
skylights with 4 layers of glazing, temperature sensors, electronic
controls, a digital anemometer, a pyroheliometer, a data logger, a modem,
two phone lines, electrical wiring, lights, power consumption monitors,
occupancy sensors, etc. so far the performance looks good, even though
the structure faces southeast, with lots of afternoon shading. last
december we recorded sunspace air temperatures of 120-130 f. the solar
closet is not yet finished. about a dozen volunteers have helped, a day
or two at a time, including some science professors and students.
the hostel has provided minimal labor and no money for this project. i
raised $650 from a local group to help pay for the materials, but the
hostel manager simply deposited that check in the hostel's bank account.
the hostel manager often spoke of her role as "providing the audience,"
a curator or impresario role which involved no action on her part. this
seemed fine to me, as i invested time and money in my professional future.
physics professor paul bashus and i had been planning to write another
solar closet paper describing the cabin design and performance for the
solar '99 ases conference, and i looked forward to being able to offer
prospective customers for solar house heating engineering consulting work
a chance to stay in the cabin and see how it works and see that it works,
even after a few cloudy days in december.
last month, the hostel manager decided to end our personal relationship,
and then sent me a certified letter ordering that all work on the cabin
project be stopped, for what seem to be emotional reasons wrapped in the
cloak of safety and aesthetic concerns ("the cabin has lost its charm.")
i wrote back, as she suggested, including a letter from a lawyer, but
that letter was her last communication. she has been unwilling to discuss
the consequences of her decision with me. after a total of two 5-second
phone calls in the last 41 days ("are you still unwilling to talk?"), she
wrote my lawyer saying that i was harassing her. the board of directors of
the delaware valley council of the american youth hostel section of hosteling
international, the people in charge of this hostel, among others, who were
well-aware of this project and placed notices in their newsletter asking
for volunteers to help with it, have also been unwilling to talk with me.
i was a board member until recently, and used to pass around cabin pictures
to smiling board members at meetings.
i would like to finish this cabin, but we seem stuck now. if you are so
inclined, gentle readers, i'd like your help in persuading some of these
people to sit down and talk with me. i went to the last board meeting on
october 28, and the president asked me to leave, even though ayh is a
501 c(3) non-profit charity organization whose board meetings are required
by law to be open to any member of the public. i left. the president is a
computer-literate architect who has often expressed a desire to animate a
cabin web site. his name is eric horowitz, at
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