Friday, October 24, 2008
Passive Solar Water Wall and Daylighting System
This system not only heats but provides very soft daylighting of my living room and dinning room.
This is the Same system we built for MIT's Solar Decathlon house. It is installed in Framingham MA and cuts about almost 20-25% off of my heating costs for my 1300 square foot home.
This system which is patented is made up of Aerogel as an external glazing insulation and water as a thermal mass.
Dan
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
6 comments:
That is seriously cool. Nice back lighting for portraits with amazing natural light.
or...
Stick a strobe/pocket wizard or two outside, crank up your shutter to kill the ambient light and have an awesome ultra customizable back-lit back drop. Gel for effect, gobo shapes to project for framing, etc. Easy to knock out in PS...oh man I am jealous
Aaaahhhhhhrrrggghhh...free goooo
I don't get it. I thought the thermal mass was to be placed BEHIND the Aerogel facing the room to heat. Why is the water caught in sandwich between the two Aerogel surfaces ? There must be a good reason for this.
By the way your setup is great. I'm sure Aerogel is the next big thing in passive solar applications.
The Answer is you are right you would not want a sandwich the white that is on the inside is just a white lens for daylighting diffusion. the water is 3.9" deep in that design and in a single cell made of multiple types of plastics welded together! Aerogel is only on the exterior surface
This can best be shown in Photo 8 if you look close you will see the Aerogel at the top of the photo and the water in the middle and bottom.
OK.
Did you notice any sensible reduction on your heating bill since your aerogel wall is installed ? Where can I get these bricks ? Are they expensive ?
Thank you for your answer.
Luke
Our house is a 1357 square foot (126 sqmeter) home. We use Steam heat with Oil as the fuel. Our heating usage dropped 200 gallons (750l) per year. We use a total of about 1200 gallons of oil for heat and hot water per year and the house is not very well insulated (yet)!
Post a Comment