SUNSHINE POWER
(Page 2 of 5)
May/June 1971
By the Mother Earth News editors
T here are ways to change this situation for the better, however. Insulated glass has solved the reversal problem and interior shutters which close over the windows at night provide an additional barrier against heat loss. Even in a normal house, with regular single-pane windows, interior shutters can cut heating bills by thirty percent. This was shown in a number of test houses situated between latitudes 40-43 degrees (e.g. New York-Nebraska) . . . not the warmest of winter's zones. Incidentally, well-sealed double-pane windows or insulated glass can reduce heat loss by an additional 20 percent (same ordinary homes, same area).
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Our first design principle then, is: USE LARGE SOUTH FACING WINDOWS WITH SOLID INTERIOR SHUTTERS TO BE CLOSED AT NIGHT.
These windows need not be conventional, or expensive. As Rex Reed points out in his very useful "Your Engineered House"—(J. P. Lippincott 1964) a window does not also have to be a ventilator (it needn't open), so a simple homemade unit can offer large windows at low prices. Reed points out that you can make a wall out of glass as easily as from anything else. A simple design from his book is shown with this article (See fig. 3).
The framework is a simple box of 1" boards as wide as the thickness of the wall. Narrow strips are nailed on to form channels for the glass, which is set in at an angle. These holding channels can be made fairly tight, so that a little caulking rather than a lot of putty will make a windproof seal. An added advantage is that the sills are now on the outside, and so is the dust that settles on them. One less chore to do!
You could use insulated glass for the angled sun catcher panels . . . but a cheaper and quite adequate solution would be to hang a sheet of heavy duty clear plastic over the entire window wall for the winter.
You will need ventilation, but not through the windows. Reed suggests simple screened openings, fitted with solid (heat barrier) doors that can be closed when needed. Unlike windows, these vents can be located solely to take advantage of the best cool air flows in the summertime. (Take a look at Reed's book—his ideas on door construction alone seem worth the price.)
So, once the sun has shone in, it CAN be locked up for the night. The problem remaining is what to do in a cloud-ridden area that receives no sun at all for a week at a time. Somehow you must capture the heat when you can get it . . . to use when and where you need it. And these three requirements are the key to true solar house design.
A modern solar heating plant consists of three parts: a collector of solar energy, a storage capacity, and a distribution system . . . big windows alone can't do the job.
Solar plants have proved most efficient in areas below 45 degrees latitude (e.g. south of New York-Nebraska) but the incidence of clear, sunny days is the real criterion. Local cloudiness makes nonsense of any hard and fast rule; so even if you're in the north, don't give up on the idea of solar heat yet. Cutting the use of traditional fuels by 75% in, say, northern New York state is not an unreasonable goal.
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