Our Passive Solar home design has many different mini projects leading up to it. We first has to make a solar water heater, then we used passive solar techniques to light a house using only the “sun”. Then Finally we had to design and build a scale model of our Tiny House.
We had to build a water heater that had to be heated by the sun. Our Water heater we made a design that has water resting on top of copper tubing, the water was also on top of a long piece of plastic wrap. We put this all in a plastic box and covered the inside with tin foil to reflect light into the water to help heat it up. Next my group and I had to build our tiny house. We built a physical model and made a google slide to show of our tiny house. our house is one story tall and has 1 bedroom and 1 bath. It is an open concept and painted white on the inside. the exterior is brown shingles on the roof and blue shingles on the walls. We chose cork because its specific heat capacity is very low and it also can come in many colors. Specific heat capacity is how much and object can absorb heat. We made ourselves a budget of $25,000 and only spent $11,111. We also made a sheet of all the materials we used https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1pL3CZLGTBu4rKX42iwTxexwEN6fnrOyKjE6BfkXB6_w/edit#gid=0
Lastly we had to design blades of a windmill to see alternate energy sources. We made many designs but concluded that medium sized rounded blades at a small tilt work the best at all levels of wind. This is also on a horizontal axis.
We learned about radiation which is the emission of energy as electromagnetic waves. Convection is the movement caused within a fluid to make it hotter. Conduction is the process by which heat is directly transmitted. Insulation is the act of keeping something or someone hot. We'd want to make a energy efficient home because it wont pollute the air and cause damage to the environment. Also it wont produce anything that will harm humans. |
Next we built a passive solar house that used passive solar techniques to use light from the sun to light up the house during the day. We built a house with 2 bedrooms and 2 bath, it had a kitchen and a dinning room. It also has a living room and office. We used the following passive solar technics Clerestory window, light shelf's, a sun roof and two solar tubes. We were able to conclude that light shelf's provided the most light in our house.
Afterward the class had to design a lab that could determine what materials heated up the fasts. The materials that heated up the fasts would most likely not be used in our house. My group tested insulation we tested spray foam, rigid foam, and fiber glass. In our tests we concluded that fiber glass was the most successful in retaining its heat. Below is a picture of the data received from the class. |
This project was amazing and it was very fun to prepare and design. But I lacked in many areas because this project was very long and hard. I didn't collaborate as well with my team, we did not really listen to each others ideas. I also didn't really take a big leader part because I wasn't there the first week. But I did do my best to work to my fullest and I also tried to contribute as many ideas as possible.