Energy Efficient Housing : Passive Solar Home
Driving Questions
1. How can we design a home that is comfortable in all conditions without the use of electricity?
2. What is the most efficient way to heat and cool a home?
Steps to complete project
1. Design a solar water heater.
2. Solar angles and how they change during the season.
3.Build a model home using day lighting ideas and techniques.
4. Site Selection. Choosing a place for your house.
5. Testing the materials for our home.
6. Designing our home.
7. Explain why you want a energy efficient house.
8. Design a turbine.
My group and what we did
My group was Gabby Bitton, Ronan Shaffer and Jack Duffin. For the first step we built a solar water heater, or I should say we tried to build one. Ours didn't really work, at all. We made three different designs and none of them worked. First our seals were not tight enough and the water leaked into the cardboard box. We also had other problems with seals too. Since ours didn't work we used Emily's, Sarah's, Max's and Poh's groups heater. Their heater heated up the water ten degrees, which is really good. Next we learned about solar angles. In the summer the sun maximum angle is at 75 degrees. During winter the sun angle is much lower, and that is 27.5 degrees. This is important to know how long to make our over hangs on our house.
Solar Angles in San Marin High School
Driving Questions
1. How can we design a home that is comfortable in all conditions without the use of electricity?
2. What is the most efficient way to heat and cool a home?
Steps to complete project
1. Design a solar water heater.
2. Solar angles and how they change during the season.
3.Build a model home using day lighting ideas and techniques.
4. Site Selection. Choosing a place for your house.
5. Testing the materials for our home.
6. Designing our home.
7. Explain why you want a energy efficient house.
8. Design a turbine.
My group and what we did
My group was Gabby Bitton, Ronan Shaffer and Jack Duffin. For the first step we built a solar water heater, or I should say we tried to build one. Ours didn't really work, at all. We made three different designs and none of them worked. First our seals were not tight enough and the water leaked into the cardboard box. We also had other problems with seals too. Since ours didn't work we used Emily's, Sarah's, Max's and Poh's groups heater. Their heater heated up the water ten degrees, which is really good. Next we learned about solar angles. In the summer the sun maximum angle is at 75 degrees. During winter the sun angle is much lower, and that is 27.5 degrees. This is important to know how long to make our over hangs on our house.
Solar Angles in San Marin High School
The third step in this project is to build a cardboard model home using daylighting techniques and ideas. When we built our model home we used the correct measurements. Since I had a picture but my phone broke so I can't use it so I will explain what it looked liked. Our model was a scaled down version of a 15 by 10 house. This model included solar tubes, skylights, clearestory windows, normal windows, and light shelves. Our house included a kitchen, a living room, two bedrooms and two bathrooms.
The next step in our process was choosing our site. The site we chose was the site along Novato Blvd. This site is where we are building our house now. It is a flat spot that gets a lot of sun. It is quite near the STEM room so it has easy access.
Our next step was to test the materials we could use for our house. We wanted to see how these materials could absorb and hold heat. We did this by placing a 57-watt lightbulb 12 inches above the material. Below there is a list of materials we used.
Insulation- coconut fiber, foam, fiberglass batting
Exterior Wall- stucco, redwood, brick, PVC siding
Interior Walls- black/white textured and flat drywall, rock
Flooring- carpet, bamboo, hardwood, ceramic, linoleum, cork
Roof- shingles, turf, sod, tar, tin
Next came explaining why we wanted to use the solar powered ideas in a house. We did this using a power point and a poster. We also showed our model through Sketch-Up. We all worked together and during our presentation we all had our separate parts.
Concepts:
Conduction: the transfer of heat through a material
Convection: the transfer of heat through a fluid
Radiation: energy transmitted as rays, waves, particles
Heat: a form of energy (Q)
Fluid: a substance, liquid, or gas, that is capable of flowing and that changes its shape to fit its container.
Specific Heat: a physical property of matter that states the heat capacity of a certain object. Object with high specific heat take longer to heat up and hold heat better than something with low specific heat
Pressure: the exertion of force upon a surface by an object, fluid. The deeper you go, the more pressure there is. Every 10.3 meters you go there is twice as less air.
The next step in our process was choosing our site. The site we chose was the site along Novato Blvd. This site is where we are building our house now. It is a flat spot that gets a lot of sun. It is quite near the STEM room so it has easy access.
Our next step was to test the materials we could use for our house. We wanted to see how these materials could absorb and hold heat. We did this by placing a 57-watt lightbulb 12 inches above the material. Below there is a list of materials we used.
Insulation- coconut fiber, foam, fiberglass batting
Exterior Wall- stucco, redwood, brick, PVC siding
Interior Walls- black/white textured and flat drywall, rock
Flooring- carpet, bamboo, hardwood, ceramic, linoleum, cork
Roof- shingles, turf, sod, tar, tin
Next came explaining why we wanted to use the solar powered ideas in a house. We did this using a power point and a poster. We also showed our model through Sketch-Up. We all worked together and during our presentation we all had our separate parts.
Concepts:
Conduction: the transfer of heat through a material
Convection: the transfer of heat through a fluid
Radiation: energy transmitted as rays, waves, particles
Heat: a form of energy (Q)
Fluid: a substance, liquid, or gas, that is capable of flowing and that changes its shape to fit its container.
Specific Heat: a physical property of matter that states the heat capacity of a certain object. Object with high specific heat take longer to heat up and hold heat better than something with low specific heat
Pressure: the exertion of force upon a surface by an object, fluid. The deeper you go, the more pressure there is. Every 10.3 meters you go there is twice as less air.
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Reflection:
This project was very hard. Probably the hardest we have ever had in STEM. This was a very long project and contained many steps. My group and I did have our differences, but we overall did work well together. My favorite part of this project was probably learning about the pressure when you go down 10.3 meters and how the air gets twice as less each time you reach another 10.3 meters. My group had many peaks and pits. One peak was when we got our wind turbine to work. Another peak was when our group was presenting our power point and poster. One pit was when we couldn't get our water heater to work. Another pit was when we had to change all of our blueprints and our whole house size from 15 by 10 to 12 by 10. Overall I really liked this project, it was probably my second favorite. Behind the Rube Goldberg project.
This project was very hard. Probably the hardest we have ever had in STEM. This was a very long project and contained many steps. My group and I did have our differences, but we overall did work well together. My favorite part of this project was probably learning about the pressure when you go down 10.3 meters and how the air gets twice as less each time you reach another 10.3 meters. My group had many peaks and pits. One peak was when we got our wind turbine to work. Another peak was when our group was presenting our power point and poster. One pit was when we couldn't get our water heater to work. Another pit was when we had to change all of our blueprints and our whole house size from 15 by 10 to 12 by 10. Overall I really liked this project, it was probably my second favorite. Behind the Rube Goldberg project.