THE HELIO THERMICS SOLAR-HEATED AND -COOLED HOUSE

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you can adapt some of the
helio thermics concepts to your own house

Can you adapt any of the Helio Thermics ideas to your own house? "You betcha," say the Granger brothers. "We haven't really done anything that is beyond the reach of any reasonably handy family."

Even though the pitch of your home's roof is probably far from optimum and even if its southern-most oriented slope doesn't face exactly south, you can most likely use the attic to capture enough of the sun's warmth to be worthwhile.

Just remove the roofing material from the rafters on the roof's southern slope (and if it doesn't have one, a western slope is a distant second choice). If you do have a southern slope to work with and you can handle the extra investment in labor and expense, you can dramatically increase the efficiency of the finished conversion by reframing that face of the roof to make its angle equal to your house's latitude plus 15 degrees.

Then replace the removed roofing with two layers (cross-laminated) of tedlar-coated, corrugated fiberglass (Filon) panels as described in the accompanying article. If you use the sheeting that is trade named "Filon", you'll find that it's guaranteed for 20 years ...which is probably about as long as you could have expected the original roofing to last when it was new.

Additional insulation should then be added to the floor, the ends, and the north-facing slope of the attic (to hold the Btu's you'll trap once they're caught), and the whole attic—except, of course, for the Filon-topped slope-finished inside with a lining of plywood that is painted flat black.

As heat is collected in this trap, it can be transferred (when desired) to your home's living area through a sheet metal duct. An ordinary fan mounted in the ducting and controlled with a manual switch is all you'll actually need to do the job . . . but a "semi-automated" system turned on and off by a double set of thermostats is much to be desired. Place one of the "stats" in the attic/collector and set it so that it will only allow the fan to kick on when there are "surplus" Btu's in the attic. The second thermostat is then mounted in a cool corner of the living area and set to "tell" the fan when additional heat is needed in that part of the house.

Of course, if you have the time and money and inclination, you can always take the next logical (though very big) step by tearing out the basement or crawl space under your house, installing a heat storage pit, and otherwise completely duplicating the sophisticated solar-heating and -cooling system built into the Helio Thermics prototype. But that would be ridiculous because such extensive remodeling of an old building would probably cost more than the price of a brand new Helio Thermics structure . . . complete!

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