Blower

My blower was manufactured by the Kinetic Blower Company of Hagerstown, Maryland.  If I'm interpreting the tag correctly, it puts out 5" static wind pressure and delivers 500 cubic feet per minute.  By all my calculations that should be plenty.  It has a 3/4 h.p., 110 v., single phase motor.

I built a rack for holding both the blower and reservoir, the reservoir above and the blower below.  The reservoir is as close to the ceiling as possible so the wind trunk can be as short as possible.  (Reservoir details in the next post).  The blower is as close to the reservoir as possible to avoid drawing in cold basement floor air.  It also prevents any dampness from getting to the blower.  The blower is mounted on rubber vibration isolating grommets and the connection to the reservoir is padded with thick foam rubber.  I don't want any vibrations coming up from the blower to the living room.  Probably overkill, but I wanted to be sure.

I became a bit concerned about it though when I had it set up for testing.  It seemed to get rather hot, and it had a heck of a time recovering after I played a big chord.  The motor and impellers are both enclosed inside a shell with just a little access panel.  It was hard to read anything on the motor itself or get in there to service it.  I asked about the overheating on the DIYapason list and someone suggested I make sure the motor is turning the right direction.  I thought it odd that it might be in there backwards, but that would explain the lack of wind and over heating.  I opened the access door and turned it on momentarily.  Sure enough, it was going backwards!  This particular motor has a shaft going out each end, so it was an understandable mistake.  I tried finding the little electrical box so I could switch the wires and turn it the other way, but I couldn't find it.  So, I took the whole thing apart to turn the motor 180 degrees.  (It turns out the electrical box was covered by the impeller).  Once I had the motor out of the housing and removed the impellers, I noticed it was turning really hard by hand- it felt like a bearing was going out.  Since I had it apart, I decided it was time to take it in.  Fuller Electric Motor Service in Lincoln quickly determined that yes, there was a bearing going out and that was the real reason for the overheating.  They replaced both bearings, installed a new capacitor, replaced a broken safety switch, and replaced a rubber mount.  They also gave it a good cleaning.  They said the motor is probably over 50 years old, but built like a tank.  Definitely worth repairing.  Now it is ready for another 50 years of service.  I put it all back together and now it can run for an hour and barely gets warm.

Blower Album

Blower Room

The blower and wind reservoir will be located in their own room in the basement immediately below the organ.  Unfortunately, that space had been my wood shop all this time!  Now that the vast majority of cutting and sanding is finished, I am willing to clean out the wood shop, move most of the equipment into the assembly room, and start remodeling.

I began by removing two tiles from in front of the fake fireplace and cut through the sub-flooring.  There is a narrow gap about 4" wide that I will bring the wind trunk up through.  It will take a little more engineering than I had planned on, but I can make it work!  The basement walls are sound in spite of the cracks and gaps, but I had water in the basement on a regular basis until I had a new driveway poured a few years ago.  All the old drywall had to go.  I also replaced the window in that room with a new energy efficient window to match the windows I installed shortly after buying the house.  I then began framing up the new walls.  I also installed a beam under the organ and supported it with screw type support posts.  I don't know how much the organ will weigh, but I don't want to take any chances.  I can now park a semi tractor in the living room if I want!  I put a plastic vapor barrier between the studs and the cement block wall too.

After framing came the electrical.  I hired an electrician to install a sub-panel in the blower room so all of the organ will be on its own dedicated circuit from the main breaker.  Then I ran all the wiring out from the sub-panel myself.  There is a switched outlet that is controlled by the power switch in the console.  That turns on the rectifier and the blower.  I ran another switched circuit to the console to turn on the console lights.  I could have wired them to the main switch, but I think I will want to be able to turn the lights on without turning on the organ sometimes.  I will loose some lighting in the living room after the installation, so the music and pedal light might need to serve as accent lighting.  Other circuits are for lights in the ceiling of the blower room and the new adjacent walk-in pantry, and I put in plenty of wall outlets.  There never was enough power in that room back when it was a wood shop.  There is also a 220v circuit for the baseboard heater.  Being in the northwest corner of the basement and having a window, and no furnace vent, I am afraid that the room will get really cold in the winter.  Baseboard heater will take care of that.

All four walls and the ceiling are well insulated not only for temperature, but also for sound.  I want the blower to be inaudible while playing.  I used mold-resistant drywall knowing the history of moisture problems.  Even though the new driveway fixed most of the problem, if we have a real gully washer the gutters overflow and a little moisture comes in.  I have done a little drywall work before, and this went pretty well.  The trickiest thing was getting neat corners where two walls meet the ceiling.  I installed an insulated exterior door into the room.  My thought was to keep the room airtight except for the one opening covered with a furnace filter.  I know this is probably overkill, but in the future when I'm doing woodworking in the basement I want to be sure to keep the air in the organ clean.  I primed and then put on two coats of paint and allowed it to cure pretty well before installing the light fixture and heater.

 Blower Room Album

Front Panel

Since the organ is going to be the focal point of my living room and I went to all the trouble to refinish the console and build the swell box out of oak, I wanted to dress up the main wind chest to match.  I also wanted to hide all the wind lines and wiring under it.  I decided to make a panel that could be removed for tuning access but looks like it is part of the wind chest.  The console is not ornate, and my house is also not ornate so I didn't have much for inspiration.  But there is one notable feature in the house.  My house was built in 1940 by a prolific contractor named Roger Brown.  Virtually all "Brown-built" homes have at least one arched doorway somewhere in them.  I have an arch between foyer and living room, living room and dining room, and kitchen and breakfast nook.  I have already repeated this arch in the details of the dining table I chose and in the light fixture in the dining room.  I also carried it out into the garden making the outer edge of my brick patio the same arch.  It made sense to apply that to the organ as well.

I designed the panel to have two arches since one would have been disproportionate and three would have been too busy.  I used pocket screws to assemble it.  There is a base board identical to the baseboard in the living room and the trim at the top is the same trim I used on the swell box and the chimes.  It is finished to match.  The album doesn't have any photos of the final product because the finish is rather dark and the details didn't show up well.  Beside that, I don't want to give away too much of how it will all look after the final installation!

Front Panel Album

2 2/3' Nasat Pipes & Chest

My plan is to tune the organ in some slightly unequal temperament.  If I am practicing for hours with a limited number of ranks, I would at least like to have the color and spice of an unequal temperament to liven things up.  Nothing drastic, probably Bach/Lehman 1722 or maybe Vallotti.  If I do this, the unified mutation will not sound very good, so I opted to have an independent 2 2/3' Nasat.  To do this, I had to trick the console into playing the new rank.  First, I disconnected the jumper wire in the relay connecting middle C with soprano G, etc.  Then I connected a new cable so that the contacts in the 2 2/3' relay now go to their own junction and ultimately their own chest.

I considered several options for the pipes themselves.  Possibly a tapered rank, or maybe an open flute?  Do I want it more flutey or more principal?  All I knew is that I wanted something that would compliment my existing ranks and provide a spicy solo registration with the 8' Gedeckt.  I found a 1 1/3' mutation that had been cut-down and revoiced from a string rank.  The tone was described as a flute-principal hybrid, not too loud, perfect for a home organ.  I wanted it to be 2 2/3', so I thought if I got these and put a few pipes with it from a spare, damaged principal rank I had, I could take it down to about bottom G and let the very bottom of the compass remain unified.  I decided to go that route and will figure out the voicing issues later.

When the pipes arrived, I set about designing the windchest.  The only place left for more pipes is on the fake mantel over the fake fireplace behind the Bourdon.  Rather than try to find the prefect chest for this tight application, I decided to design and build my own.  Since the two-rank chest I built earlier worked  alright, I decided to design this in the same style- vinyl tubing connecting the magnets to the pouch boards.  It is much more compact though, with three rows of pipes, chromatically.  There will be just enough space to reach around the Bourdon and tune the Nasat.  Construction of the chest went as expected and it worked fine when I tested it.  My only concern is that this rank is rather far from the reservoir, so if the wind gets bouncy on this, I may have to add a concussion bellows to the chest.  That remains to be seen.

Below is a link to a Picasa Web Album with more photos.  If you have been following this project, you will remember that I promised to include a video of laying the pneumatic pouches after I forgot to make one when I was building the two-rank chest.  Well, the video is in this album, so check it out!

Nasat Chest Album