Shop New lean to shop

[PeterT]

The summer is spent pumping in gas at the maximum pipe capacity and then pumping the gas into huge storage caverns in SW Ontario. Those caverns were originally excavated salt domes from the Windsor salt company and others.
A pretty sweet solution to reusing old mine sites created by solution mining...

Alberta operates over a hundred salt caverns for variety of purposes, NatGas, level-loading, NGLs, refinery feed/storage, strategic reserves, certain regulated waste streams.... They are nothing new. Some of those were repurposed from the same era & companies or their peers you mentioned. Google tells me there are only 36 in USA. I thought there were more. They represent 7% of total gas capacity over other alternatives, likely due to cost. I don't know Ontario's history but I'm guessing it was the better option among fewer alternatives. The latest rage consideration is for hydrogen storage. The issue these days for new caverns is not access to salt formations, at least not here. We have extensive formations. The issue is water use regulations (as it should be) which drives economics. In the bad old days, fresh water was diverted because it has the highest capacity for solubility. Now I think brackish is mandated & even so, licensed/regulated. Which means source wells, aquifer studies & you still have transport & permanently dispose the wash brine into acceptable formations (more drilling, more pipe, more infrastructure).

Operating depleted/spent caverns at least for 'pressurized' purposes is not without risk either. Drilling, completion & monitoring practices have come a long way since when Grandpa drilled the legacy wash & brine production wells. If the casing rotted off, oh well. Its a subsurface liquid tank, no chickens harmed. Now inject compressible hydrocarbon at very high pressures into that tank volume. One wants to very certain about how those prior penetrations were abandoned & that integrity is maintained. And we haven't got to Mother Nature's cruel jokes yet. Another day LOL

PHMSA: Stakeholder Communications - Underground Storage Fact Sheet

Office of Pipeline Safety Communications

primis.phmsa.dot.gov

 

[kevin.decelles]

@Janger , my shop addition is similar to yours except I’m adding on to the gable end. I made the new part narrower so the trusses will slip under the existing . I pulled the permits here (sk) and if I physically attach in any way to the existing building then engineered drawings needed. But, if I leave 1 inch and don’t tie the slabs together (stand-alone) then no problem. So that is what I’m doing. I’ll insulate and seal the gap.

In Saskatchewan, they have an independent inspection group (PBI - professional building inspections) that work with the municipalities. Not all municipalities are implementing the same way. It is a very new process out here and I’ve found that it has only been taken seriously for about a year.

Local contractors aren’t happy because it adds cost and time to the process.

As for costs, 22x24 garage package, 10 foot walls, 2x6 studs, r20 insulation walls, r40 ceiling, shingled, facia, soffits, but no siding was 11k. No interior wall finish either

Slab is about 9k with rebar and 2” foam insulation

 

[kevin.decelles]

Compared to AB (rocky view county), I’ll take this process in SK any day of the week.

 

[historicalarms]

rates are regulated, and they are known and published regularly and consultants use them daily and the result is that cold climate heat pumps are cheaper to operate.


even in Alberta

The heat pumps might be cheaper to operate but when I was involved in residential land development in Calgary it was the cost of getting the pumps down where they were useful that killed the notion big time.
The clients we had in that part of Calgary were multi millionaires with deep pockets and every one of them backed out of the concept. Of the 200 or so lots that I built and clients built 2-12 million dollar homes on. not one used a heat pump.

 

[Janger]

Hey @TorontoBuilder nobody is trying to give you a hard time on the heat pump question - we're just trying to understand. There has been contradictory stuff in the press. One one hand recently there has been stuff in the press about heat pumps on the prairies not cutting it because it does get really cold from Winnipeg to the rockies as you know. Below -25C. And on the other hand I've also read about new heat pumps being more effective at lower temperatures.

When I was looking into it recently thinking about how to replace my old garage furnace you yourself said no don't do a heat pump! https://canadianhobbymetalworkers.com/threads/garage-furnace.2725/post-67545
People are allowed to change their minds when there is new information. Have heat pumps improved recently so much that they can still be effective and cost effective down at -30C -35C? I'm talking about air sourced heat pumps of course not ground geothermal types. My engineering friend at work says electricity is 5 times more expensive per joule than natural gas (around here) so it does have me scratching my head. I know the heat pumps are up to 3x more cost effective than baseboard heaters but that is when the temperature is more reasonable -5C or above. Temps way down low mean the heat pump is operating as just a heater because it can't pull much energy from the atmosphere as there is not enough temperature differential. So if you have more information I'd like to hear it.

 

[Chicken lights]

That's what happens around here. They ep zoned almost everything, so if you want an outbuilding you have to pay for a 4 season environmental study to get a permit. Even if it is a farm use building, on a working farm. All the farmers I know, just build it, and worry about it later. Our municipality has an identity crisis, and has forgot about it's rural roots and has it's fingers in it's ears about all the still working farms in the area. Too much big city migration.

I’m curious if they passed new legislation or are simply, now, enforcing existing rules. Seems to be a southern Ontario thing, from what I’m hearing

no politics

 

[Dan Dubeau]

I'd like to know too, but I'm not going to have this discussion here.....I don't think it's possible to do so, while remaining within the lines of the rules of the site.