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Way back during the summer we hanged insulation in the fab-lab, making it a more consistent temperature and opening up the way to eventually creating another properly air conditioned space at the shop. Once finished, there was still a pretty large amount of insulation strip left over; it was subsequently buried under a table upstairs.

This past weekend it snowed in Alabama, and I more or less intentionally got snowed in at the shop. During the resulting impromptu movie night, I had a chance to discuss just how damn cold it was with other shop members. We eventually landed on a concern that the shop water heater was left running in near-outdoor temperatures 24/7. Recalling the leftover insulation, we shuffled out of the warm office and began wrapping the magic hot water provider in fiberglass insulation.

First up was to apply a few feet of regular pipe insulation to the copper piping. This is mostly a for-the-hell-of-it measure, since we can’t insulate the hot water pipe already installed in the walls.

Installing pipe insulation on the water heater.
Installing pipe insulation on the water heater.

Next we cut squares from the insulation and placed them around the heater core. The system is located poorly in a too-small alcove, so insulation only fit around four of the six sides of the heater.

Ta-Da!
Ta-Da!

Ideally we’d want to create a large blanket around the heater and secure it with twine, but this will hopefully provide us with somewhat better temperature retention anyway.

Next up on the list is installing an electronic timer so that the heater doesn’t spend half of the week creating hot water that no one is around to use.

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I am happy to announce that we have completed reinforcing the floor in the “Art Area” of our loft. This marks the 4th and final section of the loft floor to be upgraded.

When we moved in to this space, the loft floor was a patchwork of saggy 1/2 inch plywood. Now the entire area is topped with 3/4 inch, tongue in grove, OSB. Now members can stomp around without fear of falling through holes.

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With the exit of the glass show case, one of our newer members was able to appropriate space to bring more tools to Makers Local! This stuff can be used to make beautiful nouns and we are excited about the prospect of learning how to Make with it.

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The floor in the loft at 414 Stevens has always been rather questionable, so over the years we’ve been improving it bit by bit. Thanks to our Tuesday Night Feast fundraisers, the facilities committee has spent funds to improve the “Textiles” and “A/V” areas in the loft.

While Punxsutawney Phil was staring at his shadow, our Phil helped Tim, Kinsey, Jake, and Tyler (also Lowell) put down new sub-floor and Tardis colored paint for the last 25′ of the loft. This, of course, displaced a lot of stuff, so all of the loft will be mostly unusable for the next week or two. Thanks again to all that helped worked and helped make this possible.

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