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re: advice sought on passive solar design
13 feb 2003
news wrote:
>> then again, it's hard to store much overnight heat in a typical house,
>> if the source is warm air from a sunspace. an extra layer of drywall or
>> some thermal mass in a wall or ceiling can help.
>or direct the warm air through a hollow block wall, as per kachadorian.
no. he uses a fan to store heat in the floor. only a very small fraction
of the wall's surface is exposed to warm air. storing heat in the wall
would work much better, imo. air could move vertically through a hollow
block wall or column with no fans, charging and discharging the heat
battery, the wall could support the roof, and the house could have
a basement. chiras says:
...some designers are concerned that moisture can build up in the
passageways. the cool moist environment, they assert, could serve
as a breeding ground for mold and mildew. spores could become
entrained in the air flowing through the system, contaminating
indoor air and causing potentially serious health problems. fans
require a fair amount of energy, too.
concerned about problems such as these, passive solar designer and
builder bruce brownell of adirondack alternative energy in edinburg,
new york, circulates warm air through a slab, a 70- 100-ton mass
storage system [a foot or two of dry sand, as i recall], under the
lowest floor. [mostly woodstove heated] warm air is delivered to
the slab via air shafts that syphon heat from the ceilings [using
fans.] the pipes are easier to clean and less prone to mold and
mildew than the cement block labyrinth...
but the pipes have a lot less heat transfer area, and the sand has
a large thermal resistance.
nick
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