Solar Heat!
Anrahyah left a phone message this evening...her soon-to-be finished house was now "toasty warm" inside! The creator of her solar heating system had turned it on a couple of days earlier.
So it works! This was an exciting occasion for us both.
There had been one cloudy day and one sunny day with the system on. I do not know what part the propane backup system played in getting the rather large volume of water up to temperature, but it must have had a part. From now on, solar energy should be doing the trick most of the time.
But however the water got warmed, heat is radiating out through the basement floor, and through the adobe mass of the warm walls inside.
Simply stated, Anrahyah's solar system is a way of collecting solar energy in the eight solar panels that are mounted on her roof, and re-radiating that energy inside her house. A large tank stores warm water so that heating continues through the night, and on cloudy days. If there are several cloudy days, the aforementioned propane backup system will warm the water.
There will be much monitoring of the amazing system, but this is a milestone!
Labels: solar heating
posted by Tom Rampton @ 12:55 AM
3 Comments:
The 100 gallon backup tank is for domestic hot water storage only. It is heated through a heat exchanger during the hottest hours of the day--11am to 1pm--and then will be warmed if needed by an electric on demand water heater. This should seldom be necessary, as we can heat the water to a very high temp with the solar panels which are running at a high temp of around 211 degrees farenheit midday now. The specially insulated tank will keep this water almost to whatever temp we heat it to, which I believe is set at 120F now.
The propane back up is for the heating hot water, and this does not appear to have been used since the temps are up. There is a differential in temps between what we ask the solar system to heat the water to, and the temps that we set the thermostats to, so that there is more heat available than demand. It is so gratifying to have it working after over a year in planning! And I am very conscious of the sun/cloud arrangement of the sky suddenly!
Anrahyah
Thanks for the corrections and clarifications, Anrahyah! Some of that I should have known but got wrong, and some I didn't know at all--like how hot the solar panels actually run, and whether the backup system had actually come on.
I'll certainly be down so that you can teach me more about it. I share your gratification, and your new-found awareness of sunlight and cloud shadows!
Where is this Adobe? I've been watching the performance of an earthship near Mancos--it's solar performance is almost too good, need to open windows in the PM on even cold days.
I'm wanting to buy some land and build a pumice-crete adobe (see Fine Homebuilding from about 20 years ago) with many solar features. That's next after the Pipestrel Sinus project...
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