Sunday, June 22, 2008

JUNE 22 UPDATE: Finn Fest finale

Well, you might say the last day of Finn Fest was unfortunately a bigger success than we expected.

The church was full for the church service in the morning, and even more people showed up at Savo Hall to eat the Finnish stew (mojakka) for lunch -- so much so that the last three people who came in the door got only Finn bread to eat. And Mom, the most Finnish of all the Finns in attendance, didn't get any stew, either.

We (meaning the Savo Hall Association, of which I am a member but not a board member, though I attended the board's planning meeting for Finn Fest because I knew what the Horizons group had been planning) had figured that we should have been able to serve 120 people, and we counted some over 100 people eating, so we suspect some people toward the front of the line might have gotten overly generous servings.

Oh, well. The last people in the door came quite late, anyway. And the people who did get stew thought it was very good (Mom and I had made two gallons of it).

About 40 or so people stayed for the program as well, which received applause at the end, too.

I didn't bring my camera to the church or hall today, so no pictures of that.

Dave did come to the hall for the food, and he stayed to watch Sofia and her cousins during the program, since my sister and I were helping Mom with that. But other than that, Dave was hard at work again for most of the day.


Well, there's progress in this photo, but it's hard to see -- there is flooring now from the front door all the way to the back wall, and for quite a few feet east along the back wall.

And Dave put in the rest of the floor joists in the center section. They are closer together than they are in the western third because the plan is that this area will be covered with tile, which needs extra support below. Part of it needs to be tile because we need some nonflammable substance below the stove, and the rest of it will be tile because we need to increase the amount of thermal mass in the house to make our passive solar design work.

Apparently, this is one of the reasons many people tried passive solar designs in the 1970s and '80s but then gave up on them -- they did not include enough thermal mass in the design and they overheated in the summer.

Unfortunately, we still have a problem. Even with all this tile on the floor, we still won't have enough thermal mass, according to the calculations I've read. Eventually that won't be a problem, as we're planning on having a sun porch or greenhouse along the south side, and we can add more thermal mass with that, but in the meantime, our passive solar design might not be as effective as it could be. We'll just have to see what happens, as I don't think we can add much more thermal mass to our plans at this point.

... I took some new pictures of items for Mom's online store this evening. Sofia was helping me take pictures, too.

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