From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu Fri Nov 25 09:30:59 1994
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To: renew-energy@twosocks.ces.ncsu.edu
Date: 22 Nov 1994 06:05:07 -0500
From: nick@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu (Nick Pine)
Message-Id: <3asj93$f20@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu>
Organization: Villanova University
Sender: london
References: <5Q7X0hy.colorio@delphi.com>, <stephens.47.0028813D@rmii.com>
Subject: Re: batteries in cold climate
Status: RO
X-Status: 

David Stephens <stephens@rmii.com> wrote:
 
>I also have a cabin in Colorado at 9500 feet (world's highest known solar 
>answering machine?) which I use intermittently in the winter.  The batteries 
>are minimally insulated in their compartment inside the cabin.  It is my 
>understanding that a charged battery will not freeze, although the batteries 
>will not be as efficient.

Having just written a patent application on battery heating, I seem to
recall that a charged battery will have a lower freezing temp...

And batteries at low temperatures are difficult to charge, and have a
much lower available capacity (only 10% of the room temp capacity, at 32F?)
But this lost capacity will reappear when the batteries warm up.

Charging the battery does put some heat into it, since charging is
only about 90% efficient. You can calculate how much insulation you
have to add to a battery box, to keep it warm from the lost energy in
the charging process alone, which will heat the box from the inside.
Usually you need a little more heat than that to keep batteries warm, ie
a very small electric heater, unless you want to surround the battery box
with tons of foam, but if the batteries don't have to have full amp-hour
capacity before they warm up, eg to start an engine, that may not be
necessary. In fact, I think batteries hold their charge longer, and last
longer, in years, when they are kept cold.

Nick


From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu Fri Nov 25 09:33:07 1994
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To: renew-energy@twosocks.ces.ncsu.edu
Date: 22 Nov 1994 10:59:08 -0500
From: nick@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu (Nick Pine)
Message-Id: <3at4gc$hie@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu>
Organization: Villanova University
Sender: london
Subject: Another drumwall water heater?
Status: RO
X-Status: 

Here is another possible design for a drumwall that might be used
as a solar water heater.

It would use 30 drums, stacked up horizontally in a square array, 20'long x 6'
tall, perhaps behind 120 square feet of single pane glass, with a reflective
insulating shutter that lifts up from the top edge of the drums at a 45 degree
angle, and a reflective floor, inside a shed with a south wall made of,
eg Dynaglas.

It might look like this, not to scale:

.........................................      ...     .
.                                       .                . .
.                                       . south    east  . .   .
.                                       .               d.   .    .
.                                       .               y.  day.     .
......................................... ..   10'      n.      H...... . ..
. D . D .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .               a.      n.    . .
.........................................        <--S   g.      i...... .
.   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   . 6'            l.      g.    . . 6'
.........................................               a.      h...... .
.   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .               s.      t.    . .
............................................................................
|                  20'                  |

The D's are drums, H is a horizontal hinge... Day and night shutter positions
are shown...

The numbers below again indicate drum water temperatures in degrees F, from
a small simulation using average Philadelphia weather conditions in January
(ambient temp, 32 degrees, 1200 Btu/day of sun on a south-facing wall,
T^4 heat loss) while extracting 100K Btu/day of domestic hot water from
the wall, using some food-grade, *lined* drums plumbed in series, on
the top row, pressurized with cold water on the way to the input of an
electric hot water in a house. It looks like 4 heat exhanger drums are enough.

Nick

10 'Todd Hall drumwall solar water heater?
20 'est. water temps for rectangular drumwall with 45 degree upward shutter
30 NH=10'number of horizontal drums
40 NV=3'number of vertical drums
50 ND=NH*NV'total number of drums
60 PI=4*ATN(1)'pi...
70 AD=(2*(23/2)^2*PI+23*PI*35)/144'drum area in ft^2
80 DIM T(NV, NH)'array of drum water temperatures
90 OPEN "drumout" FOR OUTPUT AS #1
100 'find steady-state temps
110 FOR R=1 TO NV'1 is top row, nv is bottom row...
120 FOR D=1 TO NH'1 is west drum in row...
130 T(R,D)=150'initialize drum temps
140 NEXT:NEXT
150 AREA=4*NH*NV'effective area of drumwall surface
160 SUNH=1.85*AREA*1000/ND/24'hourly sun energy/drum, inc. by shutter refl.
170 ES=15*5*3*8*55'energy for 15 5 min, 3 gpm, 110 degree showers/day
180 UH=ES/24'useful hourly heat output of drumwall
190 GLOSSF=1.74E-09*6*AREA/ND/24'factor for heat lost thru glazing per drum
200 AMRADF=(32+459)^4'factor for radiation from surroundings to drumwall
210 CP=55*8'thermal mass of a drum full of water
220 CLS
230 HMAX=192
240 PRINT #1,"Charging mode, with sun..."
250 PRINT "Charging mode, with sun..."
260 DT=.1'simulation time step
270 FOR H=0 TO HMAX+.01 STEP DT'hours of use
280 TECON=0'initialize total convection heat from below
290 LB=UH*DT/(T(1,NH)-55)'water moved thru system per time step
300 GOSUB 740
310 'adjust top drum row temperatures
320 FOR D=1 TO NH'drum number in top row
330 TD=T(NV,1)-T(1,D)'temp diff between top drum and lower drums
340 IF TD>0 THEN ECON=TD*AD ELSE ECON=0'convection heat from below
350 TECON=TECON+ECON'accumulate total hourly convection heat
360 HEATFLOW=(SUNH+ECON-((T(1,D)+459)^4-AMRADF)*GLOSSF)*DT
370 T(1,D)=T(1,D)+HEATFLOW/CP'adjust top row drum temp
380 IF T(1,D)>T(NV,1) THEN T(1,D)=T(NV,1)'limit upper drum temp
390 NEXT D
400 ECONA=TECON/(NH*(NV-1))'heatflow to top row from average drum
410 FOR R=2 TO NV'adjust bottom row temps
420 FOR D=1 TO NH
430 HEATFLOW=(SUNH-ECONA-((T(R,D)+459)^4-AMRADF)*GLOSSF)*DT
440 T(R,D)=T(R,D)+HEATFLOW/CP
450 NEXT D
460 NEXT R
470 IF INT(10*H+.05) MOD 480= 0 THEN GOSUB 800'print drum temp array
480 NEXT H
490 PRINT #1,
500 PRINT
510 PRINT #1,"Storage mode, with no sun..."
520 PRINT "Storage mode, with no sun..."
530 FOR H=DT TO 168+.01 STEP DT'hours of use
540 TECON=0'initialize total convection heat from below
550 'adjust top drum row temperatures
560 LB=UH*DT/(T(1,NH)-55)'water moved thru system per time step
570 GOSUB 740
580 FOR D=1 TO NH'drum number in top row
590 TD=T(NV,1)-T(1,D)'temp diff between top drum and lower drums
600 IF TD>0 THEN ECON=TD*AD ELSE ECON=0'convection heat from below
610 TECON=TECON+ECON'accumulate total convection heat
620 T(1,D)=T(1,D)+ECON*DT/CP
630 IF T(1,D)>T(NV,1) THEN T(1,D)=T(NV,1)'limit upper drum temp
640 NEXT D
650 IF INT(10*H+.05) MOD 240= 0 THEN GOSUB 800'print drum temp array
660 ECONA=TECON/(NH*(NV-1))'heatflow to top row from average drum
670 FOR R=2 TO NV'adjust bottom row temps
680 FOR D=1 TO NH
690 T(R,D)=T(R,D)-ECONA*DT/CP
700 NEXT D
710 NEXT R
720 NEXT H
730 END
740 T(1,1)=(LB*55+(CP-LB)*T(1,1))/CP'move 55 degree water into top left drum
750 IF T(1,1)<55 THEN T(1,1)=55'limit lower drum temp to 55
760 FOR D=2 TO NH'move water across top row
770 T(1,D)=(LB*T(1,D-1)+(CP-LB)*T(1,D))/CP'move water from top drum d-1-->d
780 NEXT D
790 RETURN
800 PRINT #1,
810 PRINT
820 PRINT #1,"Day:";INT(H/24+.01)
830 PRINT"Day:";INT(H/24+.01)
840 FOR RS=1 TO NV'display drum temperatures
850 FOR P=1 TO NH-1
860 PRINT #1,INT(T(RS,P)+.5);TAB(6*P);
870 PRINT INT(T(RS,P)+.5);TAB(6*P);
880 NEXT P
890 PRINT #1,INT(T(RS,NH)+.5)
900 PRINT INT(T(RS,NH)+.5)
910 NEXT RS
920 RETURN

Charging mode, with sun...
 
Day: 0 
 149  150   150   150   150   150   150   150   150   150 
 150  150   150   150   150   150   150   150   150   150 
 150  150   150   150   150   150   150   150   150   150 
 
Day: 2 
 95   120   136   146   152   156   156   156   156   156 
 156  156   156   156   156   156   156   156   156   156 
 156  156   156   156   156   156   156   156   156   156 
 
Day: 4 
 96   121   137   146   153   156   156   156   156   156 
 156  156   156   156   156   156   156   156   156   156 
 156  156   156   156   156   156   156   156   156   156 
 
Day: 6 
 96   122   137   147   153   157   157   157   157   157 
 157  157   157   157   157   157   157   157   157   157 
 157  157   157   157   157   157   157   157   157   157 
 
Day: 8 
 97   122   138   148   154   158   158   158   158   158 
 158  158   158   158   158   158   158   158   158   158 
 158  158   158   158   158   158   158   158   158   158 
 
Storage mode, with no sun...
 
Day: 1 
 89   112   128   138   145   149   149   149   149   149 
 149  149   149   149   149   149   149   149   149   149 
 149  149   149   149   149   149   149   149   149   149 
 
Day: 2 
 84   104   118   128   135   139   141   141   141   141 
 141  141   141   141   141   141   141   141   141   141 
 141  141   141   141   141   141   141   141   141   141 
 
Day: 3 
 80   97    110   119   125   129   132   132   132   132 
 132  132   132   132   132   132   132   132   132   132 
 132  132   132   132   132   132   132   132   132   132 
 
Day: 4 
 75   90    101   109   115   120   123   124   124   124 
 124  124   124   124   124   124   124   124   124   124 
 124  124   124   124   124   124   124   124   124   124 
 
Day: 5 
 71   83    93    100   106   110   113   115   115   115 
 115  115   115   115   115   115   115   115   115   115 
 115  115   115   115   115   115   115   115   115   115 
 
Day: 6 
 67   77    85    92    97    101   104   106   107   107 
 107  107   107   107   107   107   107   107   107   107 
 107  107   107   107   107   107   107   107   107   107 
 
Day: 7 
 64   72    78    84    88    91    94    97    99    99 <--hot water temp
 99   99    99    99    99    99    99    99    99    99    supplied to house
 99   99    99    99    99    99    99    99    99    99    after a week w/o
                                                            sun, in January


From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu Fri Nov 25 10:03:45 1994
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To: renew-energy@twosocks.ces.ncsu.edu
Date: 22 Nov 1994 16:24:01 GMT
From: cgood@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu (Charles W Good)
Message-Id: <3at5v1$ml8@charm.magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu>
Organization: The Ohio State University
Sender: london
Subject: Wood Heat
Status: RO
X-Status: 

I have seen wood heat flamed (excuse the pun) a lot on this newsgroup, and I 
would be interested in a discussion of the pros and cons.  I have been heating 
with wood for 17 years.  The fuel accounts for about 90% of my home heating.  
Consider the following:

1- Although wood smoke is polluting, it probably isn't as polluting in some 
ways as fossil fuel smoke.  Wood contains almost no sulphur and very little 
nitrogen.  Thus wood smoke has no sulphur dioxide and very little in the way of
nitrous oxides.  This means no acid rain.

2- Trees and other forms of biomass naturally decay slowly, releasing all their
carbon hydrogen and oxygen to the environment as carbon dioxide and water.  
Burning biomass fuels just speeds up this process, but the end result is the 
same.  There is no difference in the amount of carbon dioxide released to the 
atmosphere whether biomass burns or decays.  Burning fossil fuels adds EXTRA 
carbon dioxide to the atmosphere which can affect global warming.  Burning 
biomass fuels does not add extra carbon dioxide over and above what is 
naturally cycled between the atmosphere and biomass via photosynthesis (removes
carbon dioxide) and respiration (adds carbon dioxide).

3-  I know that deforestation is a big problem in many parts of the world and 
has been for hundreds of years.  I have read, however, that  currently forest 
land east of the Mississippi in the USA has been gradually increasing.  This is
due to the abandonment of marginal farmland that is difficult to farm with big 
machines.  An example is in southeast Ohio in the area that includes Wayne 
State Forest near Athens Ohio.  This is in spite of the increased use of fuel 
wood.  East of the Mississippi in general (there are local exceptions) I don't 
think deforestation is a problem.  WOOD IS A RENEWABLE FUEL!

4-  Money spent purchasing wood fuel goes into the local economy, not over to 
Saudi Arabia to make some rich person there even richer.

5-  Wood fuel costs less (if you have to buy it) than almost any other form of 
domestic heating fuel.  The only fuel that has a comparably low cost is *yuck* 
coal.  This cost factor is one of the main reasons I heat with wood.   If I had
a new house I would design it from the beginning to take advantage of solar for
much of its heat.  However, I own a nice old victorian house built in 1895, so 
my solar options are limited.

Regards,
Charles W. Good
cgood@lima.ohio-state.edu

P.S.  I have a PV system that powers everything in my bedroom, even though I 
live right next to grid power lines.  I have the PV system not because it is 
cheap but because "its the right thing to do" for the environment.

From london Fri Nov 25 11:57 EST 1994
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Date: Fri, 25 Nov 1994 11:57:37 -0500
From: Larry London <london>
Message-Id: <9411251657.AA15575@sunsite.oit.unc.edu>
To: london@sunsite.unc.edu
Subject: Announcing the Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy Network (fwd)
Newsgroups: alt.energy.renewable
In-Reply-To: <3at8of$c7e@nrel.nrel.gov>
Organization: SunSITE, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
Cc: 
Content-Type: text
Content-Length: 1523
Status: RO
X-Status: 

------- start of forwarded message -------
Path: bigblue.oit.unc.edu!concert!news.duke.edu!convex!cs.utexas.edu!howland.reston.ans.net!europa.eng.gtefsd.com!news.msfc.nasa.gov!news.larc.nasa.gov!lerc.nasa.gov!magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu!csn!nrel!usenet
From: Pam Lowe <pamela_lowe@nrel.gov>
Newsgroups: alt.energy.renewable
Subject: Announcing the Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy Network
Date: 22 Nov 1994 17:11:43 GMT
Organization: National Renewable Energy Laboratory
Lines: 16
Message-ID: <3at8of$c7e@nrel.nrel.gov>
NNTP-Posting-Host: plowe.nrel.gov

The Department of Energy's Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy is pleased to announce the Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy Network (EREN).  EREN is a WWW site that serves as a single point of access to qualitative information on energy 
efficiency and renewable energy technologies.  EREN is searchable by subject, an alphabetical listing of sites, type of service, and type of organization.

EREN's URL is http://www.eren.doe.gov.

EREN provides links to several discussion groups, including this list, as well as bulletin boards, databases, documents, FTP sites, gopher sites, and other WWW servers.

Suggestions, comments or questions about EREN can be directed to the following contacts:

General Contact:  Pam Lowe, lowep@tcplink.nrel.gov, (303) 275-4035.
Technical Contact:  Bob Baker, baker@dis.anl.gov, (708) 252-3608.


Pam Lowe
Staff Information Scientist
National Renewable Energy Laboratory

------- end of forwarded message -------


From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Mon Feb 20 12:20:52 1995
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Date: 18 Feb 1995 04:49:00 -0500
From: nick@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu (Nick Pine)
Message-Id: <3i4fqc$d43@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu>
Organization: Villanova University
Sender: london@sunsite.unc.edu
Subject: On temperature control
content-length: 3705
Status: RO
X-Status: 

Here is a quote from Steve Baer's book, _Sunspots_:

  What is it like to live in houses where the temperature changes
  during the day? What is it like to do without a thermostat to
  control the temperature within a degree or two? It is only very
  recently that there have been thermostats for controlling the
  temperature in houses, and still today almost everyone alive in the
  USA has spent some time in buildings without automatic thermostats.

  I believe that it is perfectly satisfactory to have the temperature
  change during the course of each day, from a high in the afternoon
  to a low in the morning, and to have the temperature change from
  week to week according to how cloudy or sunny it is. The variations
  in temperature keep your blood circulating.

  What extremes of temperature within a house are comfortable? In a
  dry climate like Albuquerque, I believe yearly lows and highs of 55 F
  and 85 F are perfectly easy to live with inside a house--especially
  if you have warm spots such as fireplaces or stoves to stand next to
  when it is chilly. But what is the advantage of having temperature
  variation within the house? The advantage of _not_ going to great
  lengths--as most present day heating and colling systems do--to
  achieve something that you don't really need or enjoy that much. Now
  that all of us are plagued with the pollution resulting from the
  overabundance of devices we have purchased, perhaps government or
  church groups should sponsor a series of "you don't need it" commercials.
  Instead of the bright uniformed "service personnel" of the Ace Air-
  Conditioning Company briskly delivering and installing the latest gadgets,
  the commercials would show the expensive equipment misused: a bored
  housewife growing geraniums in her new dishwashing machine; a small child
  casually dismantling a TV-stereo combo with a claw hammer...

  Reptiles need mammal houses. The reptile is at a disadvantage because
  he cannot regulate his body temperature, but, instead, equilibrates
  near to the temperature of his surroundings. If it is cold he cannot
  move fast. The regulatory function of the mammal is a great advantage,
  since he can keep his body temperature constant.

  Does this apply to houses and temperature regulation? Is it the same
  kind of improvement when a thermostat and gas heating system are
  installed? If the temperature outside one's body--the temperature of
  the house--is regulated to within 1/2 degree F, of what use is the
  sophisticated temperature regulating metabolism of the mammal?
  Obsession with temperature control seems more like Reptile Technology
  than Mammal Technology. The reptile badly needs it--the mammal does not.

  This leads to the general question of what view one should take of
  equipment manufactured to do for you what your body is equipped and
  prepared to do for itself. Certainly we are all grateful for the
  discovery of fire, but the thermostat--I don't know. A person's body
  has already incorporated the muscles, organs, etc., to steer him
  through dangers and difficulties. Yet we cleverly make them
  unnecessary by an entirely new level of design and invention. What
  is the result of this? The now unnecessary organs are not removed
  from the body; instead they are simply unemployed--hanging around,
  so to speak, in one's body, talking to the brain, being fed by the
  heart and bloodstream.

  For the utmost in design I can imagine the equipment manufacturers'
  surgical teams removing now unnecessary organs with the installation
  of their automatic control systems. Perhaps the now outdated glands
  and organs could be sold to reptiles on another planet.

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Mon Feb 20 12:20:57 1995
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To: renew-energy@ces.ncsu.edu
Date: 18 Feb 1995 04:39:27 -0500
From: nick@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu (Nick Pine)
Message-Id: <3i4f8f$d2d@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu>
Organization: Villanova University
Sender: london@sunsite.unc.edu
Subject: Affordable Comfort Conference
content-length: 284
Status: RO
X-Status: 

Would anyone know when the Affordable Comfort Conference is in PA this year?
April? Howard Reichmuth will be speaking there on instrumentation for energy
conservation in houses. Howard is an engineer, and one of the designers of
the Ecotope concentrating greenhouse...

Thanks,

Nick

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Mon Feb 20 15:19:21 1995
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Date: 18 Feb 1995 07:52:53 -0500
From: nick@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu (Nick Pine)
Message-Id: <3i4qj5$dik@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu>
Organization: Villanova University
Sender: london@sunsite.unc.edu
Subject: Indirect-fired, electric-backup water heater?
content-length: 308
Status: RO
X-Status: 

Would anyone know who manufactures a nice, inexpensive, standard, reliable,
indirect-fired water heater (ie a 60 gallon insulated tank with a some
copper tubing in the bottom, to put boiler water through to heat the tank) 
that also has some built-in 220V electric heaters for backup heating?

Thanks,

Nick

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Wed Feb 22 16:55:53 1995
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To: renew-energy@ces.ncsu.edu
Date: 21 Feb 1995 02:18:57 -0500
From: nick@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu (Nick Pine)
Message-Id: <3ic451$cpr@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu>
Organization: Villanova University
Sender: london@sunsite.unc.edu
References: <toponos-2002951856080001@slip858.rmii.com>
Subject: Re: STEVE BAUER
content-length: 2322
Status: RO
X-Status: 

John Nicholson <toponos@rmii.com> wrote:

>Many years ago I read about Steve in The Mother Earth News - Steve was the
>driving force behind a company called Zomeworks. Is Steve still out there
>- and is Zomeworks still in business?

Yes :-) Steve BAER still seems to be alive and well and very busy, and even
answers mail sometimes. Altho Zomeworks mostly makes PV-related stuff
these days, which Steve attributes to the fact that "energy is just too
cheap." Or perhaps it's that PV's are trendy or glamorous. (This is
fiddling while the middle-east burns, I think.) Steve's drumwall steel
drums wore out after 20 years, so he has now replaced them with plastic
ones, which he expects will last longer. 

Speaking of which, yesterday I saw an ad in a free ad paper around
here that read "Plastic 55 gallon drums, $5 each. Used once to contain
aloe product." And a local meat packing plant called me, in response
to my "drums wanted" ad in the paper. They are now saving me some (free :-)
plastic-coated steel drums, which they use (~40 a month) for soap,
vegetable oil and glycol...

A couple of interesting phone numbers are: (215) 945-0444 for the $144
Cuppson "Lazer level," a low-power semiconductor laser attached to a
carpenter's level, that shoots a 1/8" red dot at least 60' (500' or so
indoors or at night), that can be used to adjust parabolic reflectors
for solar ovens, etc, made from 3M SA-85 film, and 3M's Solar Optical
Products number, (612) 733-1898, for the SA-85 reflective film itself
(when is Real Goods going to carry this stuff?) 3M's address is
3M Center/St. Paul, Minnesota 54144-1000. Their general phone number
seems to be (612) 733-1110.

To adjust your oven, etc. reflector, you might put it in a darkish room and
move the laser level along to make parallel rays, where you want the sun to
be, and look to see where the reflection spot ends up, and how big and how
bright the spot is (the brightness/reflectivity might be measured with a
digital lightmeter, I suppose, eg the $100 Grainger version.) I've noticed
that the 3M film makes a much smaller spot, than say, foil-covered foamboard,
alumimum foil or Thermo-Ply. Yesterday I managed to boil some water in
a pepsi bottle at the focus of a 3M reflector a foot away from my 10K
Btu/hour radiant kerosene solar simulator...

Nicholson Pine

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Thu Feb 23 05:50:49 1995
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To: renew-energy@ces.ncsu.edu
Date: 21 Feb 1995 11:19:38 -0500
From: nick@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu (Nick Pine)
Message-Id: <3id3qq$fm6@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu>
Organization: Villanova University
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Subject: Re: Ammonia Absorption Refrigeration
content-length: 352
Status: RO
X-Status: 

Andy Carter <acarter@primenet> wrote:
 
>>>The permafrost under the Alaska pipeline is kept cold by using above ground 
>>>radiator coils with what I believe is a passive ammonia system.

>>I think of that as a heat-pipe system, not a solar refrigerator...

>So they are refrigerating the ground....

Yes, but this works with cold air, not sun.
 
Nick

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Mon Feb 27 17:07:57 1995
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To: renew-energy@ces.ncsu.edu
Date: 22 Feb 1995 06:23:29 -0500
From: nick@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu (Nick Pine)
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Subject: Re: Ammonia Absorption Refrigeration
content-length: 555
Status: RO
X-Status: 

Hi Andy,

This attempted email to you bounced, so I'll post it here...

To: acarter@primenet
In-Reply-To: <acarter.223.00174C15@primenet>
References: <6250.usenet@merckx.graphics.cornell.edu>
Organization: Villanova University

>So what is your point?   I didn't say anything about solar now did I?

I thought you did, but maybe I was wrong. I've only been half-following this
thread, and I thought I heard someone say something about "marrying
concentrating collectors with absorption chillers."  Sorry. Let's not start
a flame war over this...:-)

Nick

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Tue Feb 28 09:42:31 1995
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To: renew-energy@ces.ncsu.edu
Date: 25 Feb 1995 18:10:32 -0500
From: nick@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu (Nick Pine)
Message-Id: <3iodd8$4ld@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu>
Organization: Villanova University
Sender: london@sunsite.unc.edu
Subject: Call for postings: alt.solar.thermal
content-length: 1913
Status: RO
X-Status: 

I've never created a newsgroup before, but as I understand it, from
our sysadmin here, you have to post to it in order to make it grow and
take hold. So let's go gang! Even the stupidist postings will be
welcome for the moment. ("I want to heat my gazebo by moonlight..." :-)

Quoting Nick Pine,
  
> I guess it'll take a while to propagate, or something?

The newgroup control message has propagated, but as I said before,
will be ignored at most places all over the world.  Even though
our upstream site, dsinc.myxa.com, via Syd, has created the group
on his system, his upstream sites may choose not to...

If a lot of people in a lot of places create the newsgroup, and
people there start using it, then those places without it may notice
the unwanted postings in their logs, and maybe they'll create it.
That's how I do it here... 

If I saw a line in this log file for a group with a lot of rejected
postings, say 20 or 50 over a week, then I would just create it
locally.  I think other admins do the same thing.

So... post, post, post, post, post, post, post, post, ... and
encourage others to do the same.  It's tough, I know.  If you
only post to alt.solar.thermal, then it might not get too far
upstream.  If you cross-post, it will propagate all over, but
miss the point of specifying the correct group.  In other words,
a message posted to both alt.newsgroup.that.we.get and
alt.newsgroup.that.we.dont.get, will be accepted, and show up
only in alt.newsgroup.that.we.get, with no error or log message
like those shown above for posting only to groups that we don't get.

Think of it like having a baby.  It may take 9 months before it
really appears, but then it will stick around to haunt you for
the rest of your life.  So just keep pushing.

...Rick			perry@ece.vill.edu

Dr. Rick Perry, ECE Department, Villanova University, Villanova, PA 19085
610-519-4969, fax: 610-519-4436, hm: 610-259-8734

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Tue Mar  7 06:44:34 1995
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To: london@sunsite.unc.edu
Date: 3 Mar 1995 12:39:35 -0500
From: nick@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu (Nick Pine)
Message-Id: <3j7k8n$o57@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu>
Organization: Villanova University
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Subject: Re: Nick's lecture
content-length: 2556
Status: RO
X-Status: 

I'm posting this bounced email to Bob from Melbourne, Florida...

Date: Fri, 3 Mar 95 12:10:29 EST
From: Mailer-Daemon@rayleigh.AFTAC.GOV (Mail Delivery Subsystem)
Subject: Returned mail: Service unavailable
To: <nick@nfs.ee.vill.edu>

   ----- Transcript of session follows -----
Connected to tt:
>>> HELO AFTAC.GOV
<<< 553 AFTAC.GOV host name configuration error
554 <bob@tt.AFTAC.GOV>... Service unavailable

   ----- Unsent message follows -----
Date: Fri, 3 Mar 95 12:13:48 EST
From: nick@nfs.ee.vill.edu (Nick Pine)
Message-Id: <9503031713.AA12147@nfs.ee.vill.edu>
To: bob@tt.AFTAC.GOV
Subject: Re:  Your Lecture

Hi boB :-)

>I would be interested in finding out more about your lecture and designs, 
>I don't suppose that you'll be in the Melbourne FL area at all?

I might get down that way some time. Would you like me to lecture there?
I've only been to Florida a couple of times, once for a business meeting
in a posh Naples hotel (nice sailing :-) and once to visit my aunt in
Homestead, who has since moved closer to Miami. If you paid me to come,
I'd be a lot more likely to show up :-)

>Would it be possible to get copies of your lecture and slides?

Maybe. Most of my lecture is comments on slides of local buildings,
with green film pen markings on the back of each slide to show how they
might be improved with solar and insulation retrofits, and comments
about the costs of materials and numerical estimates of the amount of
energy each retrofit would save. I hand out a few copies of postings,
and tape a few large architectural drawings of my designs on the wall,
and I bring along 3 empty 55 gallon drums, a K-mart radiant kerosene
heater used as an infra-red solar simulator and 3 linear parabolic
reflectors made of Thermo-Ply, foil-faced foam and 3M SA-85 solar
reflective film, to aim at the simulator to make a sort of infra-red
whispering gallery, boiling water in a coke bottle at the focus, a
high temp fan and speed control, a bimetallic-coil-spring-operated
automatic foundation vent and a hair dryer to make it work, after I
adjust it for a higher temp range, 200 ft^2 of shadecloth, 140 slides,
12 viewgraphs, 50 lbs of books, some 1 x 3s, large pieces of Thermo-Ply,
various kinds of thermometers and light meters, a laser level, some 12'
pieces of Dynaglas, etc., etc. So this is not a very portable show,
as I have done it so far. I'll be doing a small and different version
again in Dallas, TX next week, at the Monolithic Dome convention, 
and then at 3 or 4 local schools and universities soon after that...

Nick

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Fri Mar 10 07:20:06 1995
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Date: 8 Mar 1995 05:09:23 -0500
From: nick@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu (Nick Pine)
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Subject: Re: Alt Energy Discussion (How subscribe?)
content-length: 591
Status: RO
X-Status: 

Russell McGinnis <mack2@gate.net> wrote:

>Dear Gentle Eversowhomst:
>
>     How does one subscribe to the Alt Energy Discussion group/list?

One types g alt.solar.thermal in rn :-) If that does not work, one
writes one's gentle news admin to ask that the group be created
locally, so that its postings from dsinc and uunet, among other feeds,
are accepted rather than refused by one's site.

I seem to be almost the only one posting to alt.solar.thermal so far.
Let's go gang! Post, post, post to alt.solar.thermal! Or if that won't
work, crosspost to it and write your news admin...

Nick

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Fri Mar 10 07:20:10 1995
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To: london@sunsite.unc.edu
Date: 8 Mar 1995 04:49:57 -0500
From: nick@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu (Nick Pine)
Message-Id: <3jjuk5$c07@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu>
Organization: Villanova University
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Subject: Re: Nick's lecture
content-length: 1633
Status: RO
X-Status: 

DAN JOHNSON  <dan.johnson@contrail.com> wrote:
 
>I ... would appreciate any info you can forward [re Monolithic domes.]

The company is called Monolithic Constructors, Inc., of Italy, Texas,
which is about an hour from Dallas, I'm told. They make concrete/foam
domes, up to 400' in diameter and 200' tall, by blowing up a vinyl
balloon ("airform"), spraying an inch or so of polyurethane foam
inside that from the inside of the bubble, placing small metal plates
("skyhooks") with wires attached to them on the foam, spraying some
more foam on top of that, wiring up reinforcing rods to the skyhooks,
and then spraying 2-3" of concrete onto the rebar, all from the inside
of the bubble. They have plans for domes up to 800' in diameter.
Monolithic's phone number is (214) 483-7423.

They are having the First Annual Monolithic Domebuilder's Convention in
Dallas, TX from this Friday morning, 3/10, till Saturday afternoon, 3/11.
There should be at least 100 people there, including most of the Monolithic
staff and customers, along with some exhibitors, architects and engineers.
The convention costs $45, including a banquet and a bus ticket for a field
trip to Italy (TX :-) Saturday afternoon. Most of the conference will be at
the Dallas Holiday Inn Airport North ($65/night--(214) 929-8181.)

Monolithic is an exciting new little company with lots of spirit and a
willingness to try new things, from what I can tell. They also sell T-shirts,
slides, videos, jackets, "Nature's Perfect Shape" ball caps, and a $6/year
bi-monthly newsprint periodical called "Roundup." The number for
ordering this stuff is (800) 608-0001.

Nick

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Fri Mar 10 07:20:08 1995
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Date: 8 Mar 1995 05:05:31 -0500
From: nick@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu (Nick Pine)
Message-Id: <3jjvhb$c2j@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu>
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Subject: Re: An insulated ceiling pond house -Reply
content-length: 1213
Status: RO
X-Status: 

Robert Sanders  <AE%SJSUVM1.BITNET@cmsa.Berkeley.EDU> wrote:
 
>>So here's a more conventional house with an insulated pond in the ceiling...
 
>  There is a major problem with this in earthquake areas (most of the
>U.S.).  A ceiling and/or roof needs to be light weight and act as a
>membrane to hold the walls together.  Adding a pond overhead would
>make a dangerous situation as it would add to the forces trying to tear
>the walls apart and, if it fell, would crush those under it.

Thanks for the thought, Robert. I didn't think about that at all. There
is probably some solution, though, like putting the water under the floor,
thus sacrificing natural convection and heat trapping with overhead water,
or designing the building to take earthquakes, eg as a concrete/foam dome
with an integral ferro-cement lenticular diaphram tank above, or putting in
some sort of giant rip cord, like the ones in hot air balloons, that opened up
to let the water out quickly when an earthquake happened...

At the moment, I like the idea of hot water, sewage and rainwater under the
floor, in EPDM rubber/Thermo-Ply tank sandwiches, with a high-temp, low-power
fan to heat it by flowing 500 lfm air underneath... 

Nick

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Fri Mar 10 07:20:06 1995
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Date: 8 Mar 1995 05:09:23 -0500
From: nick@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu (Nick Pine)
Message-Id: <3jjvoj$c38@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu>
Organization: Villanova University
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Subject: Re: Alt Energy Discussion (How subscribe?)
content-length: 591
Status: RO
X-Status: 

Russell McGinnis <mack2@gate.net> wrote:

>Dear Gentle Eversowhomst:
>
>     How does one subscribe to the Alt Energy Discussion group/list?

One types g alt.solar.thermal in rn :-) If that does not work, one
writes one's gentle news admin to ask that the group be created
locally, so that its postings from dsinc and uunet, among other feeds,
are accepted rather than refused by one's site.

I seem to be almost the only one posting to alt.solar.thermal so far.
Let's go gang! Post, post, post to alt.solar.thermal! Or if that won't
work, crosspost to it and write your news admin...

Nick

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Fri Mar 10 07:20:10 1995
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To: london@sunsite.unc.edu
Date: 8 Mar 1995 04:49:57 -0500
From: nick@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu (Nick Pine)
Message-Id: <3jjuk5$c07@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu>
Organization: Villanova University
Sender: london@sunsite.unc.edu
References: <27970.usenet@merckx.graphics.cornell.edu>
Subject: Re: Nick's lecture
content-length: 1633
Status: RO
X-Status: 

DAN JOHNSON  <dan.johnson@contrail.com> wrote:
 
>I ... would appreciate any info you can forward [re Monolithic domes.]

The company is called Monolithic Constructors, Inc., of Italy, Texas,
which is about an hour from Dallas, I'm told. They make concrete/foam
domes, up to 400' in diameter and 200' tall, by blowing up a vinyl
balloon ("airform"), spraying an inch or so of polyurethane foam
inside that from the inside of the bubble, placing small metal plates
("skyhooks") with wires attached to them on the foam, spraying some
more foam on top of that, wiring up reinforcing rods to the skyhooks,
and then spraying 2-3" of concrete onto the rebar, all from the inside
of the bubble. They have plans for domes up to 800' in diameter.
Monolithic's phone number is (214) 483-7423.

They are having the First Annual Monolithic Domebuilder's Convention in
Dallas, TX from this Friday morning, 3/10, till Saturday afternoon, 3/11.
There should be at least 100 people there, including most of the Monolithic
staff and customers, along with some exhibitors, architects and engineers.
The convention costs $45, including a banquet and a bus ticket for a field
trip to Italy (TX :-) Saturday afternoon. Most of the conference will be at
the Dallas Holiday Inn Airport North ($65/night--(214) 929-8181.)

Monolithic is an exciting new little company with lots of spirit and a
willingness to try new things, from what I can tell. They also sell T-shirts,
slides, videos, jackets, "Nature's Perfect Shape" ball caps, and a $6/year
bi-monthly newsprint periodical called "Roundup." The number for
ordering this stuff is (800) 608-0001.

Nick

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Fri Mar 10 07:20:08 1995
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Subject: Re: An insulated ceiling pond house -Reply
content-length: 1213
Status: RO
X-Status: 

Robert Sanders  <AE%SJSUVM1.BITNET@cmsa.Berkeley.EDU> wrote:
 
>>So here's a more conventional house with an insulated pond in the ceiling...
 
>  There is a major problem with this in earthquake areas (most of the
>U.S.).  A ceiling and/or roof needs to be light weight and act as a
>membrane to hold the walls together.  Adding a pond overhead would
>make a dangerous situation as it would add to the forces trying to tear
>the walls apart and, if it fell, would crush those under it.

Thanks for the thought, Robert. I didn't think about that at all. There
is probably some solution, though, like putting the water under the floor,
thus sacrificing natural convection and heat trapping with overhead water,
or designing the building to take earthquakes, eg as a concrete/foam dome
with an integral ferro-cement lenticular diaphram tank above, or putting in
some sort of giant rip cord, like the ones in hot air balloons, that opened up
to let the water out quickly when an earthquake happened...

At the moment, I like the idea of hot water, sewage and rainwater under the
floor, in EPDM rubber/Thermo-Ply tank sandwiches, with a high-temp, low-power
fan to heat it by flowing 500 lfm air underneath... 

Nick

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Fri Mar 10 07:20:11 1995
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Date: 8 Mar 1995 05:14:39 -0500
From: nick@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu (Nick Pine)
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Subject: Re: Oil crisis coming up according to Barrons
content-length: 2073
Status: RO
X-Status: 

Steen H Hviid <shviid@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu> wrote:

>In the current issue of Barrons (March 6, 1995), their "Up & Down Wall Street"
>column (the most prominent column in the paper) deals with the coming oil 
>crises. The writers see an oil shortage coming up soon, with major prices
>increases to follow.

Amory Lovins said in his 12/94 Atlantic article that we probably would not
have invaded Iraq had they only grown broccoli. As I recall, for years, we
shamelessly funded both Iran and Iraq in their war with each other, supplying
weapons and money to both, in an attempt to create a "balance" that would
ensure cheap oil for our wasteful energy habits and make Exxon rich. Kuwait
was more or less created entirely by Standard Oil, setting up some sheiks
to sell us oil cheap in the 50s, no? WE are the international terrorists now,
not the arabs... We walk up to the arabs and point a gun at their heads
and say "You don't REALLY want to raise the price of your oil, do you?"

In private life this would be called extortion or robbery. Imagine going down
to the supermarket with a gun and telling the checkout clerk that the oranges
are too expensive. You would like to pay a bit less... Imagine walking into
the bursar's office with a gun, and saying you don't want to pay more than
$500 for the linear systems course, because the professor is so dull. Even
before George Bush, the five previous presidents, including gentle, Christian,
blessed, peacemaking Jimmy Carter, had publicly threatened war in the middle
east if they "cut off our vital supply of oil," and I believe that included
raising the price significantly... We are addicted to oil in this country,
as well as cocaine.

It's  their  oil, not ours, and they have a basic right to sell it for any
price that they want to sell it for. We have been bullying them into selling
it to us cheaply for years. And killing them, lately, en masse. This is not
a good thing. Killing people is bad, and it cannot go on. For one thing,
there is only a finite amount of oil in the world. It WILL run out...

Nick

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Fri Mar 10 07:20:09 1995
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To: london@sunsite.unc.edu
Date: 8 Mar 1995 05:34:06 -0500
From: nick@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu (Nick Pine)
Message-Id: <3jk16u$c59@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu>
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Subject: Re: How much glass for solar gain?
content-length: 1269
Status: RO
X-Status: 

Ross M Donald  <AE%SJSUVM1.BITNET@cmsa.Berkeley.EDU> wrote:

>     Guidelines for South facing glass:
>
>     Radical:  as much as possible

I agree. Well, enough to heat the house 100%, anyway, as a low-thermal-mass
sunspace, with a smaller glazed area inside in front of a high-thermal-mass
solar closet/sauna for cloudy days. And not just glass. Alternative sunspace
glazing include polycarbonate plastic (Dynaglas or Replex) or even good old
5 cent per square foot, 3-year greenhouse poly film...
 
>     Now, forget the guidelines.

Good idea...
 
>     Consider 5-20 gallons water in direct gain per
>square foot of glazing.  Too hot, too much temp flux -
>add more mass;  too cold - reduce mass, add movable
>insulation.  Get Mazria:  The Passive Solar Energy Book.

This works pretty well in the southwest, but I'm fairly convinced that
in places with a few cloudy days in a row, direct gain is bad, unless
there is movable insulation. Or at least it is much better to use passive
or low-power active air heaters on the south walls, with a good insulated
wall behind them, and a higher-than-living-space temperature heat battery,
inside the house, that can be well-insulated, vs a masonry floor behind
a big uninsulated picture window in the living room.

Nick

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Fri Mar 10 17:50:25 1995
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Date: 8 Mar 1995 08:58:52 -0500
From: nick@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu (Nick Pine)
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References: <2835.usenet@merckx.graphics.cornell.edu>, <rdsck.12.000B5852@rmit.edu.au>, <ED.WCP.38.00128032@cphillips.pdial.interpath.net>
Subject: Fan power (was: Cube of the wind speed??)
content-length: 1740
Status: O
X-Status: 

>  The power required to operate a fan varies with the cube of the amount of 
>air moved (usually in CFM, cubic feet per minute). 

I think we might add, "for a given duct size." If we make the air ducts large,
and the airspeed low, we can make the dynamic air pressure and duct friction
and fan power as low as we want, practically-speaking. For instance, 100' of
a 2' x 2' duct with a cross sectional area of 4 ft^2, carrying 2,000 CFM and
500 linear feet per minute (lfm) of air, has a back pressure of only about
0.01" of water, according to my 1993 ASHRAE HOF.

This goes well with the performance of the 16" Grainger 4C861 1600 rpm (max),
high-temp (311 F), high-priced ($359), very reliable (3 year guarantee),
low-power (240 watts, max, with no speed control) fan, which is rated to
deliver 2765 CFM in free air, and 2190 CFM at 0.20 inches of water.

And this pressure and fan power is quite low compared to many hot air heating
systems using more powerful blowers with tiny cheap ducts. One way to make big
ducts is to blow air between multiple studs or joists or rafters... So if
we want to minimize fan power, and use fans instead of more energy-consuming
blowers, we should make the ducts big and the air velocities and rpm's low.
The last two things also minimize acoustical noise.

Norman Saunders recommends that new houses have a 2' x 2' airshaft from
top to bottom, so solar heat can be stored upstairs in the winter, and
easily transported downstairs, and cool air from the basement floor can
easily be transported upstairs in the summer. He says this allows easy
air movement of 1 m^3/sec, which transfers 1 kW/degree Kelvin, or was that
10 degrees Kelvin? Let's see. One Btu can heat 55 ft^3 of air 1 degree F...

Nick

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Date: 8 Mar 1995 08:58:52 -0500
From: nick@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu (Nick Pine)
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Subject: Fan power (was: Cube of the wind speed??)
content-length: 1740
Status: RO
X-Status: 

>  The power required to operate a fan varies with the cube of the amount of 
>air moved (usually in CFM, cubic feet per minute). 

I think we might add, "for a given duct size." If we make the air ducts large,
and the airspeed low, we can make the dynamic air pressure and duct friction
and fan power as low as we want, practically-speaking. For instance, 100' of
a 2' x 2' duct with a cross sectional area of 4 ft^2, carrying 2,000 CFM and
500 linear feet per minute (lfm) of air, has a back pressure of only about
0.01" of water, according to my 1993 ASHRAE HOF.

This goes well with the performance of the 16" Grainger 4C861 1600 rpm (max),
high-temp (311 F), high-priced ($359), very reliable (3 year guarantee),
low-power (240 watts, max, with no speed control) fan, which is rated to
deliver 2765 CFM in free air, and 2190 CFM at 0.20 inches of water.

And this pressure and fan power is quite low compared to many hot air heating
systems using more powerful blowers with tiny cheap ducts. One way to make big
ducts is to blow air between multiple studs or joists or rafters... So if
we want to minimize fan power, and use fans instead of more energy-consuming
blowers, we should make the ducts big and the air velocities and rpm's low.
The last two things also minimize acoustical noise.

Norman Saunders recommends that new houses have a 2' x 2' airshaft from
top to bottom, so solar heat can be stored upstairs in the winter, and
easily transported downstairs, and cool air from the basement floor can
easily be transported upstairs in the summer. He says this allows easy
air movement of 1 m^3/sec, which transfers 1 kW/degree Kelvin, or was that
10 degrees Kelvin? Let's see. One Btu can heat 55 ft^3 of air 1 degree F...

Nick

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Wed Mar 15 19:21:55 1995
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Date: 14 Mar 1995 08:37:48 -0500
From: nick@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu (Nick Pine)
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Subject: Re: Flat Panel Efficiency?
content-length: 1436
Status: RO
X-Status: 

Jim Bulmer <jbulmer@ccinet.ab.ca> wrote:

>What efficiency can I expect from flat-panel solar collectors?

That depends on a lot of things, like the collection and ambient
temparatures and the number and type of glazings and collection surfaces,
whether selective or not.

>If I assume 1000 W/m^2 incident light, how
>many watts' worth of hot water will come out of the panel? 

500? There are lots of efficiency curves around page 315 of Duffie and
Beckman's book, _Solar Engineering of Thermal Processes," 2nd edition.
Water heaters are more efficient than air heaters, usually, from 60-80%
vs 40-60, altho the new unglazed Conserval air heater has an efficiency
of 80%, they say, heating cold air from the outside. The Conserval people
say that when you add glazing, efficiency goes down by at least 80%.

People sometimes lose sight of the fact that if a collector is cheap, or
replaces something with 0 efficiency that costs about the same or more, and
that has to be there anyway, eg vinyl siding, low efficiency can be fine.

As temperatures go up, efficiency goes down. Steve Baer talks about this,
saying that when people start experimenting, they are impressed with
high temperatures, which is an indication of INefficiency...

>How would the efficiency of a flat-panel collector
>compare with that of a parabolic trough of the same size?

Probably not so good, at low temperatures. Perhaps better at high temperatures.

Nick

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Wed Mar 15 21:52:09 1995
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Date: 14 Mar 1995 08:43:24 -0500
From: nick@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu (Nick Pine)
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Subject: Re: Flat Panel Efficiency?
content-length: 188
Status: RO
X-Status: 

Nick Pine <nick@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu> wrote:

>The Conserval people say that when you add glazing, efficiency goes down
>by at least 80%.

Oops. I meant it goes down by at least 20%.

Nick

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Thu Mar 16 18:22:04 1995
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Date: 16 Mar 1995 10:39:53 -0500
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Subject: 12V fan source?
content-length: 375
Status: RO
X-Status: 

Would anyone know of a place to buy a nice, reliable, low-speed, inexpensive
12 VDC fan, 12-16" in diameter, rated for about 1000 cfm? Something like a
12 V window fan...

Auto radiator fans come to mind, but it seems to me that they are high
speed and not too efficient. Norman saunders says that the efficiency
of a fan is about the same as its diameter in inches...

Nick

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Thu Mar 16 18:52:05 1995
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Date: Wed, 15 Mar 1995 12:53:52 GMT
From: Lee Butler <lbutler@GATE.NET>
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Reply-To: Alternative Energy Discussion List <AE@SJSUVM1.SJSU.EDU>
Subject: Orchid School
content-length: 3070
Status: RO
X-Status: 

Orchid  School

Is a place in which individuals, students,  artists, grass roots
neighborhood groups and teachers can come together and find solutions to
environmental and social problems by striving to create beauty in the
world.

We will co-create a healthy sustainable local neighborhood economy
producing beautiful utilitarian objects of art and at the same time,
conduct a multi-cultural ritual celebration of life through art. It will be
a place where people will take great pride in what they do, be responsible
for who and what they are and be accountable to each other for the peace
and welfare of the whole.

We will provide a stimulating and inspiring  environment in which young
artists can develop their full potentialand demonstrate the philosophy that
"small is beautiful", "less is more" and that "individuality and variety
create the spice of life". We will strive to express these values through
our building designs, our social relationships and our art.

The school will provide a participatory design service, facilitated by
expereinced trained professionals, in which individuals can meet, freely
communicate, share cultures, stories, prioritize their own values,
objectives, define their own needs and ultimately focus to organize their
own resources and create solutions to their own social and environmental
problems.

The school will produce it's own energy using benign, earth friendly,
non-polluting, autonomous resource free passive technologies and will be
free of the existing power complex. It will grow 50% of it's own
food,including of fish, shrimp, herbs, fruits, vegetables and flowers in
airponic and hydroponic greenhouses and slat houses integrated within the
building complex. It will utilize the patented principles of Ekotecture =A9.

Orchid School will be located at Georgia and N Street, West Palm Beach,
=46lorida. The site overlooks Howard Park with it's Art Armory and the
Kravits Performing Arts Center.  It is conveniently located in the heart of
a revitalizing historic art's neighborhood in downtown West Palm beach. It
is only a short 10 minute walk to the Intercostal, the island of Palm Beach
and the Atlantic Ocean.

In the future, Orchid School expects to receive government grants, private
foundation gifts, tax deductible donations from individual patrons and
royalties from patents and copyrights.

At the present time, we derive our income as a percentage of the sale of
fine art and objects of art which are created by  interior designers,
artists and crafts people. These objects and services are marketed through
Jill's, Customized Objets de' Art at 323  Worth Avenue, Palm Beach, Florida
and through top end decoraters, retailers and mail order catalogs
internationally.

It is our intention to  become a model community & educational development
center for sustainable global development.

 March 14, 1995

Lee Porter Butler
Jill Karlin Butler
620 Biscayne Drive
West Palm Beach, Florida 33401
407-659-7656

Lee Porter Butler
620 Biscayne Drive
West Palm Beach, Florida 33401
407-659-7656


Orchid School

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Thu Mar 16 18:52:07 1995
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Date: Wed, 15 Mar 1995 12:52:43 GMT
From: Lee Butler <lbutler@GATE.NET>
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Subject: Response to Podnar
content-length: 8470
Status: RO
X-Status: 

Dear Gregg Podnar,

Although your hostile reaction to my writing indicates a closed mind, the
fact that you are willing to communicate indicates otherwise. With that
assumption, I will try and respond to your questions.

=46irst with regard to technical information. I am a practicing architect,
general contractor and real estate developer. Over the past thirty years of
practice, I have accumulated thousands of pages of architectural
construction drawings, details and specifications which describe hundreds
of commissions all over the  world. All of these documents contain
technical information which could, in some way, possibly be beneficial to
you and others like you who seem to be dabbling in this field.

What I know is that architects are usually 55 years old before they are
ever giving a chance to design a great building. With surgeons, computer
programmers, attorneys, engineers and sports heros, expertise, authority
and perceived fame usually comes at around thirty. For architects and city
planners it is around fifty five. I believe it is because we are dealing
with something infinitely more complicated than the other professions and
it takes that long to know what you are doing.

I am suggesting that you and other amateur designers are innocently
overlooking the enormous complexity of the issues involved in designing our
life support system, infrastructure, architecture and ecology. I do not
believe that you have the slightest appreciation for how much there is to
know in producing the "good life" you are all after.

Nothing worthwhile is free. The internet does not eliminate effort of the
necessity to think. Computers do not create designers. We all exist by
selling or providing a product or a service. Mine is the thirty years of
knowledge,  experience and skill which I have accumulated from over one
billion dollars of construction world wide.

You are lucky that a person in my position would take the time to explain
all of this after the way in which you have addressed me.

The essential teaching of all great religions suggests that each individual
relate directly with a single, monolithic source of all knowledge, usually
referred to as God. If each individual would take their direction directly
from this source instead of other men, they would not need a leader.
Leaders are for puppets, monkeys and robots. Human beings can think for
themselves. All human beings are programmed to think the way they do by
their genes and their culture. By paying homage to money and only money,
you become a monk, dedicated to the one, the monoythic authority system
which has brought you the past two world wars, the atomic bomb, shopping
malls, fast food, more disease and suffering, destruction, religious myths
which keep people enslaved in fear and oppressed by violent bullies. Always
bring the money into every equation, eliminates the other values and
considerations. Let us break this addiction and illusion to false wealth
and oblivion, to what we call money.

I do not advocate eliminating the manufacturing infrastructure, simply that
the product itself ( our homes and workplaces ) satisfy our basic comfort,
health security needs without the consumption of resources.

=46ornication is not a sin. It is how we are all created. Pleasure is not a
sin or it would never have been given to us by the creator. Men make paper
laws and issue personal subjective judgments to punish and retard other men
using violence, hardware and machines do help them. The creator has created
people like me to expose them. Their hatred of life and suffering delivered
to others will not stand on this earth. It is inhuman behavior and will
eventually be bred out of us. We do not need leaders or hero's. The very
concept of is is degrading and as ridiculous as early hollywood comedies.

=46ornication is not a sin. Getting high is not a sin. Having a good time is
not a sin. The concept of sin itself has crippled human kind since the
beginning of myth. The belief in the concept of being born flawed, in
sentence of  suffering and torture is the sickest possible lie you could
tell you children, if you wanted the to suffer and then die, unfulfilled,
unrewarded and unhappy.

All truth comes from the mouths of  human channels who use concepts like
truth and words to convey them. There is no single source of truth. The
Jews have not been chosen by God nor has the father of Jesus. Let us stop
repeating these unprovable theories and stories and talk about what we do
know.

Socrates said, " Let those who know lead and let others follow".

The Orchid School will produce leaders. We have always been leaders and we
will teach what we know to others. We are not trying to start a cult, we
are starting a school and a intentional community, where people will be
free to think and act as they please so long as they respect the feelings
and rights of others. Please read the following description and let me know
what you think.

Please do not get me wrong. I do not in any way want to limit or restrict
what you are free to believe. I simply refuse to allow you to dominate or
suppress others with your own  limitations and beliefs. This is America and
many people died for these rights. many people are willing to die again, so
why do we not stop slinging the slime and hurling the epitafts and truly
communicate? It is your delusion which prevents you from even discussing
the issues. Please see the previous postings on Ekotecture.

Orchid  School

Is a place in which individuals, students,  artists, grass roots
neighborhood groups
and teachers can come together and find solutions to environmental and
social problems by striving to create beauty in the world.

We will co-create a healthy sustainable local neighborhood economy
producing beautiful utilitarian objects of art and at the same time,
conduct a multi-cultural ritual celebration of life through art. It will be
a place where people will take great pride in what they do, be responsible
for who and what they are and be accountable to each other for the peace
and welfare of the whole.

We will provide a stimulating and inspiring  environment in which young
artists can develop their full potential and demonstrate the philosophy
that "small is beautiful", "less is more" and that "individuality and
variety create the spice of life". We will strive to express these values
through our building designs, our social relationships and our art.

The school will provide a participatory design service, facilitated by
experienced trained professionals, in which individuals can meet, freely
communicate, share cultures, stories, prioritize their own values,
objectives, define their own needs and ultimately focus to organize their
own resources and create solutions to their own social and environmental
problems.

The school will produce it's own energy using benign, earth friendly,
non-polluting, autonomous resource free passive technologies and will be
free of the existing power complex. It will grow 50% of it's own
food,including of fish, shrimp, herbs, fruits, vegetables and flowers in
airponic and hydroponic greenhouses and slat houses integrated within the
building complex. It will utilize the patented principles of Ekotecture =A9.

Orchid School will be located at Georgia and N Street, West Palm Beach,
=46lorida. The site overlooks Howard Park with it's Art Armory and the
Kravits Performing Arts Center.  It is conveniently located in the heart of
a revitalizing historic art's neighborhood in downtown West Palm beach. It
is only a short 10 minute walk to the Intercostal, the island of Palm Beach
and the Atlantic Ocean.

In the future, Orchid School expects to receive government grants, private
foundation gifts, tax deductible donations from individual patrons and
royalties from patents and copyrights.

At the present time, we derive our income as a percentage of the sale of
fine art and objects of art which are created by  interior designers,
artists and crafts people. These objects and services are marketed through
Jill's, Customized Objects de' Art at 323  Worth Avenue, Palm Beach,
=46lorida  and through top end decorators, retailers and mail order catalogs
internationally.

It is our intention to  become a model community & educational development
center for sustainable global development.
Where do we go from here.

 March 14, 1995

Lee Porter Butler
620 Biscayne Drive
West Palm Beach, Florida 33401
407-659-7656


Response to Podnar

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Thu Mar 16 18:52:05 1995
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To: london@sunsite.unc.edu
Date: Wed, 15 Mar 1995 12:53:52 GMT
From: Lee Butler <lbutler@GATE.NET>
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Subject: Orchid School
content-length: 3070
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Orchid  School

Is a place in which individuals, students,  artists, grass roots
neighborhood groups and teachers can come together and find solutions to
environmental and social problems by striving to create beauty in the
world.

We will co-create a healthy sustainable local neighborhood economy
producing beautiful utilitarian objects of art and at the same time,
conduct a multi-cultural ritual celebration of life through art. It will be
a place where people will take great pride in what they do, be responsible
for who and what they are and be accountable to each other for the peace
and welfare of the whole.

We will provide a stimulating and inspiring  environment in which young
artists can develop their full potentialand demonstrate the philosophy that
"small is beautiful", "less is more" and that "individuality and variety
create the spice of life". We will strive to express these values through
our building designs, our social relationships and our art.

The school will provide a participatory design service, facilitated by
expereinced trained professionals, in which individuals can meet, freely
communicate, share cultures, stories, prioritize their own values,
objectives, define their own needs and ultimately focus to organize their
own resources and create solutions to their own social and environmental
problems.

The school will produce it's own energy using benign, earth friendly,
non-polluting, autonomous resource free passive technologies and will be
free of the existing power complex. It will grow 50% of it's own
food,including of fish, shrimp, herbs, fruits, vegetables and flowers in
airponic and hydroponic greenhouses and slat houses integrated within the
building complex. It will utilize the patented principles of Ekotecture =A9.

Orchid School will be located at Georgia and N Street, West Palm Beach,
=46lorida. The site overlooks Howard Park with it's Art Armory and the
Kravits Performing Arts Center.  It is conveniently located in the heart of
a revitalizing historic art's neighborhood in downtown West Palm beach. It
is only a short 10 minute walk to the Intercostal, the island of Palm Beach
and the Atlantic Ocean.

In the future, Orchid School expects to receive government grants, private
foundation gifts, tax deductible donations from individual patrons and
royalties from patents and copyrights.

At the present time, we derive our income as a percentage of the sale of
fine art and objects of art which are created by  interior designers,
artists and crafts people. These objects and services are marketed through
Jill's, Customized Objets de' Art at 323  Worth Avenue, Palm Beach, Florida
and through top end decoraters, retailers and mail order catalogs
internationally.

It is our intention to  become a model community & educational development
center for sustainable global development.

 March 14, 1995

Lee Porter Butler
Jill Karlin Butler
620 Biscayne Drive
West Palm Beach, Florida 33401
407-659-7656

Lee Porter Butler
620 Biscayne Drive
West Palm Beach, Florida 33401
407-659-7656


Orchid School

From homestead-approval@world.std.com  Thu Mar 16 13:12:50 1995
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To: homestead@world.std.com
From: kowens@teleport.com (Jeff Owens)
Subject: Solar Cookers
Date: Thu, 16 Mar 1995 10:41:07 -0500
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Here is a message recently posted about solar cooking which
might interest homesteaders.

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Tom Sponheim <tsponheim@ACCESSONE.COM>
Subject: Solar Cooking Archive 

Readers of the listserve might be interested in the Solar Cooking Archive
which we have recently set up on WWW.  If you have web access you can check
it out directly at http://www.xmission.com/~seer/sbcn/index.htm
 
Otherwise, email me and I'll send you some files containing background
information on the growing movement to build fully functioning solar ovens
from simple materials such as cardboard boxes, baskets, etc.  We also have
some in-depth articles on solar water pasteurization.  The archive contains
complete construction plans for many types of ovens as well as two recent
issues of Solar Box Journal and a photo gallery.
 
We look forward to hearing from any interested parties,
 
Tom Sponheim
Solar Cookers International
Solar Box Cookers Northwest
Seattle, Washington USA
Tom Sponheim
 
Solar Box Cookers Northwest
7036 18th Ave. NE
Seattle, WA 98115 USA
 
The Solar Cooking Archive --> http://www.xmission.com/~seer/sbcn/index.htm


From london@sunsite.unc.edu  Thu Mar 16 22:52:10 1995
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Date: Thu, 16 Mar 1995 22:49:27 -0500 (EST)
From: "Lawrence F. London, Jr." <london@calypso-2.oit.unc.edu>
To: renew-energy@ces.ncsu.edu
Subject: Solar Cookers (fwd)
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---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Thu, 16 Mar 1995 10:41:07 -0500
>From: Jeff Owens <kowens@teleport.com>
To: homestead@world.std.com
Subject: Solar Cookers

Here is a message recently posted about solar cooking which
might interest homesteaders.

---------- Forwarded message ----------
>From: Tom Sponheim <tsponheim@ACCESSONE.COM>
Subject: Solar Cooking Archive 

Readers of the listserve might be interested in the Solar Cooking Archive
which we have recently set up on WWW.  If you have web access you can check
it out directly at http://www.xmission.com/~seer/sbcn/index.htm
 
Otherwise, email me and I'll send you some files containing background
information on the growing movement to build fully functioning solar ovens
from simple materials such as cardboard boxes, baskets, etc.  We also have
some in-depth articles on solar water pasteurization.  The archive contains
complete construction plans for many types of ovens as well as two recent
issues of Solar Box Journal and a photo gallery.
 
We look forward to hearing from any interested parties,
 
Tom Sponheim
Solar Cookers International
Solar Box Cookers Northwest
Seattle, Washington USA
Tom Sponheim
 
Solar Box Cookers Northwest
7036 18th Ave. NE
Seattle, WA 98115 USA
 
The Solar Cooking Archive --> http://www.xmission.com/~seer/sbcn/index.htm


From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Sat Mar 18 14:33:57 1995
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To: london@sunsite.unc.edu
Date: 17 Mar 1995 10:26:16 -0500
From: nick@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu (Nick Pine)
Message-Id: <3kc9mo$3cu@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu>
Organization: Villanova University
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Subject: Re: 12V fan source?
content-length: 258
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David Stockton  <AE@SJSUVM1.SJSU.EDU> wrote:
>
>    Oh dear!  What happens if I build a 200 inch fan (with 200%
>efficiency?) and use it to blow a wind generator powering the fan ?

Good idea, David :-) Just don't talk about this in alt.solar.thermal.

Nick

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Sun Mar 19 00:04:06 1995
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Date: Thu, 16 Mar 1995 21:09:04 GMT
From: Marge Wood <mwood@ACUVAX.ACU.EDU>
Message-Id: <13636.usenet@merckx.graphics.cornell.edu>
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Subject: solar cookers
content-length: 385
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You were wondering how long it would take for me to talk about that, huh?
Here is a good new source from Solar Box Cookers International:

http://www.xmission.com/~seer/sbcn/index.htm

Thanks to Kerry Miller and Sanjay Sharma for sharing it.
And right now I'm waiting for the first sunny, not-windy day to take my
renovated box cooker outside.
Marge
mwood@acuvax.acu.edu
solar cookers

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Fri Mar 24 02:05:04 1995
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To: london@sunsite.unc.edu
Date: 21 Mar 1995 15:31:53 GMT
From: jbulmer@ccinet.ab.ca (Jim Bulmer)
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Subject: Re: catalogue for solar energy
content-length: 180
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X-Status: 

Try the following sources:

Norwester Energy, Calgary  (403)249-4399
Photron Canada			(403)675-2634
Moonlight Solar, Virginia	(703)381-4971

There are a lot more. Good luck. 

Jim

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Fri Mar 24 14:35:12 1995
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To: london@sunsite.unc.edu
Date: Thu, 23 Mar 1995 10:49:47 GMT
From: BOB KELLAND <RKELLAND@FAC.CABOT.NF.CA>
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Subject: Re: Flat plate solar heat collector panels
content-length: 195
Status: RO
X-Status: 

Randy,

Try the following for solar collectors:

AAA Solar Service and Supply
1-800-245-0311

Solar Components Corporation
1-603-668-8186


Bob Kelland
RE: Flat plate solar heat collector panels

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Fri Mar 31 05:38:23 1995
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To: london@sunsite.unc.edu
Date: 29 Mar 1995 09:06:29 -0500
From: nick@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu (Nick Pine)
Message-Id: <3lbph5$oqo@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu>
Organization: Villanova University
Sender: london@sunsite.unc.edu
Subject: A high-performance, cost-effective, solar-heated greenhouse
content-length: 21096
Status: RO
X-Status: 

Commercial greenhouses that operate in the winter are usually made of two
layers of polyethylene film, statically-inflated with a small blower, after
the film is stretched over curved steel pipes on 4-6' centers. The steel pipes
typically form a quonset hut or gothic arched structure, about 13' tall at the
ridgeline, for a 30' wide house. These greenhouses are fairly inexpensive:
A 30' x 96' greenhouse costs less than $3,000, including the poly film cover
and ground stakes that serve as the foundation. Three people can put one up
in less than one day.

But, they also use a lot of energy in the wintertime. Roger Williams mentions
that a standard commercial greenhouse like his 30' x 208' tomato greenhouse
in New Bruswick, Canada, would typically require about 12,000 gallons of oil
to heat, in that 9,000 degree-day climate. He was able to reduce the oil
consumption of his greenhouse to less than 4,000 gallons a year, by various
means, including the use of better insulation and solar heat :-)

What can be done to make commercial greenhouses more solar-heated?

Here is a drawing of a typical $3,000 commercial greenhouse...

                    Greenhouse  96' long x 30' wide
           _________________________________________________ 
          :                                                 :
          :                                                 :
        < D  BBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBB : 
        < A                                                 : 
        < M  BBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBB F <
        < P                                                 A <
        < E  BBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBB N <
        < R                                                 : 
          :  BBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBB : 
          :                                                 :
          :_________________________________________________:

The house usually has a large fan at one end, about 23,000 cfm, mounted
chest-high on one endwall, and a large motorized damper at the other end. 
There is usually a large gas or oil heater hanging from the ridge pipe.
When the greenhouse begins to heat up from the sun in the wintertime,
the fan turns on and the motorized damper opens, to cool the house.
When the sun goes down, the heater comes on...

The greenhouse may have 4 benches, as shown, each one being about 4' wide,
with 2' aisles between the benches. The benches are typically supported on
a 2 x 4, cement block or steel framework, at a height of about 33". Since
the greenhouse walls are curved, the area near the walls has low headroom,
typically about 4' 5" a foot away from the wall, 5' 5" 2' away, and 6' 7"
3' away from the wall. This headroom can be increased 1-2' by using longer
ground posts.

The first thing that one might do to help this picture, energy-wise, might be
to put some dark-colored 55 gallon drums full of water under the south bench,
to support it. 55 gallon drums are free for the hauling in many places, and
the benches need some sort of support anyway. This would make the benches a
little taller, since 55 gallon drums are about 23" in diameter and 35" tall.
So along with this, one might pile up 2" of gravel or dirt in the walkways.

                    Greenhouse  96' long x 30' wide
           _________________________________________________ 
          :                                                 :
          :                                                 :
        < D  BBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBB : 
        < A                                                 : 
        < M  BBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBB F <
        < P                                                 A <
        < E  BBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBB N <
        < R                                                 : 
          :  DDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDD : 
          :               white poly film                   :
          :_________________________________________________:

                                south

The drums would be standing on end, and dark colored, so the low-angle
winter sun would shine on the sides of the drums. If the south bench
were close to the south wall of the greenhouse, with no usable aisle
on the south side of the bench, because the curved greenhouse wall has
low headroom close to the wall, one might as well put some white poly
film on the ground to the south of the south bench, to reflect about
50% more sun onto the drums. There might be a double row of drums under
the 4' bench, about 96 drums altogether... It would make sense to use
an 8' width of white poly, extending it under the drums to keep them
from rusting, if they are steel drums in contact with the ground.

Ordinary steel drums last about 20 years, when filled with water, when
kept dry on the outside, I think. Adding a quart of oil to each drum,
along with the 450 pounds of water, increases the lifetime, I've read.
Food-grade drums, that contain things like molasses, usually have a plastic
coating on the inside of the steel, which should further increase the drum
lifetime, when the drum is filled with water. An empty drum weighs about
15 or 20 pounds. Plastic drums should last a long time, but they are harder
to come by than steel drums. One might have to pay $5 for a plastic drum...

An average day in the month of January, in the Philadelphia area, has
an outdoor temperature of about 30 degrees F, and on an average January day,
about 1000 Btu/ft^2 of solar energy falls on a south-facing vertical surface.
Each pair of drums under the south bench has a south-facing area of about
2' wide x 3' tall, ie 6 ft^2, so, ignoring the sun that is absorbed by the
plastic glazing, each pair of drums receives a daily solar input of about

Ein = 6 ft^2 x 1000 Btu = 6000 Btu.

Each drum has a surface area of about 25 ft^2, so if the average
day/night greenhouse temperature is, say 60F, each pair of drums
that contains water at a temperature of Td, higher than 60F, loses
energy to the greenhouse over 24 hours, as the water cools off. The
energy lost over 24 hours would be about

Eout = 24 hours x (Td - 60) x 50 ft^2/R1 = 1200 (Td - 60).

If Ein = Eout, over 24 hours,

Td = 60 + 6000/1200 = 65F. Not very warm...

But suppose we put a 12' poly film skirt around the drums, over the top
of the drums (and under the bench itself) and down the sides to the ground.
This would increase the R-value and decrease the surface area of the "solar
closet" under the bench...

In that case, the amount of heat that would leave the drums over a day
would be about

Eout = 24 (Td - 60) x (2 x 3 + 2 x 4 + 2 x 3) ft^2/R2 = 480 (Td-60),

so if Ein = Eout, again, Td = 60 + 6000/480 = 72.5F. Better...

Suppose we put some insulation on top of the drums, under the poly film.
This will help keep the plant roots from cooking, as they sit in peat
moss or pots on top of the benches, and make the drum water warmer. If
the tops of the drums are covered with 2" of beadboard, or the benches
are filled with mostly dry vermiculite or peat moss, most of the heat
loss of the drums will be through the poly film side walls of the area
under the bench, so Eout will be approximately

Eout = 24 (Td - 60) x (2 x 3 + 0 + 2 x 3) ft^2/R2 = 288 (Td - 60), 

so if Ein = Eout, again, Td = 60 + 6000/288 = 80.8F. Better...

We are trying to increase the drumwater temperature here, in order to
better provide overnight heat, at least, and ideally, enough heat for
a few cloudy days in a row.

According to Roger's estimate, a 30 x 96' greenhouse, with a double poly
inflated cover, would need about 3600 Btu/hour/degree F to stay warm
inside in the winter, with no sun, or about 86.4K Btu/degree day. So
in the Philadelphia area, a 96' x 30' greenhouse would need a daily
heat input of about

Eday = 86.4K x (50F - 30F) = 1.72 million Btu/day

to stay at 50F inside on an average day, with no sun. Call it 2 million
Btu/day, for a round number. This is the heat equivalent of about 20 gallons
of oil, as burned in an old oil burner... If the 80.8 degree water in
the 55 gallon drums above could be cooled quickly enough to heat the
greenhouse to 50 degrees F for a while, the useful stored heat in the
drum water might be about  

Estored = (80.8F - 60F) x 96 x 450 lb/drum = 900K Btu, 

which is enough heat to keep the greenhouse warm for about a half-day
without sun, eg overnight...

By the way, in some cases, commercial greenhouses use very efficient,
internally-vented gas heaters, called CO2 generators, as well as externally
vented heaters, to raise the CO2 level inside the greenhouse, which plants
like a lot :-) Here is some text from the Stuppy Greenhouse catalog:

   Plants must absorb carbon dioxide in combination with water, soil
   nutrients and sunlight, to produce the sugars vital for growth. A
   shortage of any of these requirements will retard the growing process.
   Normally there are approximately 300 parts per million of CO2 in the
   atmosphere; when this level is increased to over 1,000 ppm, it results
   in higher production and better plant quality. The Johnson Generator 
   [18" diameter x 20" high, 25 pounds, 20-60K Btu/hr, 8 lb CO2/hr, $465]
   provides up to 1,500 ppm per unit in an average 24' x 200' greenhouse or
   an equivalent 50,000 cu. ft. volume, **based on one air change per hour**.
   [Emphasis mine.]

   Nighttime levels in a greenhouse range generally from 400 to 500 ppm 
   due to plant respiration. Shortly after sunrise this level will drop
   to normal atmosphere (300 ppm) due to the plant using the early light
   to start photosynthesis. After 3-4 hours of early morning sunlight,
   the CO2 level can drop to around 100-150 ppm. Then growth is practically
   stopped. Supplemental CO2 added during this period can substantially
   increase your plant and flower production. By adding CO2, especially
   during the winter months when greenhouse ventilators are closed and
   when low CO2 concentration becomes a limiting factor in growth, users
   are obtaining yield and bloom quality comparable to that which is normally
   associated with spring and summer conditions...

Reducing the use of ventilation to the outside to cool the greenhouse
on sunny winter days also helps increase the retention of CO2, if a
CO2 generator is used, as noted above. (I think a CO2 generator would
make a fine backup heater in a solar greenhouse.) Reducing sunny-day
winter ventilation also helps in maintaining a high humidity level in
the greenhouse. It takes about 1000 Btu to evaporate a pound of water,
so the less we vent humidity to the outside, in the winter, the less
water and energy are needed to keep the greenhouse humidity level high.

Preheating water is also sometimes a good thing, in a greenhouse.
Plants don't like being watered with very cold water. Roger's tomato
greenhouse consumed about 400 gallons of water a day, and he preheated
this water by running it through a long 1/2" poly pipe along one wall.
A poly pipe for water heating might also run under the south bench... 

What's next? Well, we could put 55 gallon drums full of water under
all the benches, since 55 gallon drums are free, and the benches need
some support anyway. This would help keep the greenhouse from freezing,
at least, but it seems like just doing this would not add a lot to the
useful stored heat, because the new drums would have a drumwater temperature
of 60F (or less, since they would be near the floor), so they wouldn't
do much to help the greenhouse stay warm at 50F, which is not much
cooler than 60F. With a 10F difference between the water temp in the new
drums and the greenhouse temp, there will not be much heatflow from the
drums to the greenhouse air, at night. Still, the idea of that much free
thermal mass is appealing: 300 more drums, each containing about 500 pounds
of water, with a temperature fluctuation of 10 degrees F, will store about
10F x 300 x 500 = 1,500,000 Btu of heat, about 15 gallons of oil's worth,
almost one cloudy day's worth for the greenhouse...

About now, we might ask, if this is so easy to do, why don't more commercial
growers do it? I think the answer is that they haven't thought much about it.
They are more interested in plants and beautiful flowers than Btus. A lot of
them don't even have engineering degrees :-) Some of them come from families
who have grown plants in greenhouses for five generations, and they know what
works, and they are not too inclined to experiment with anything new, which
might cost them an entire crop of dead plants, or poinsettias that are
practically worthless, because they bloom the week AFTER Christmas...

So they just fire up the old heaters and pass on the costs to their customers,
making their lives simpler, and we pay high prices if we want to eat fresh,
red tomatoes or oranges in December. (One of the reasons that Roger Williams
got interested in building a tomato greenhouse, in northern Canada, was that a
couple of children in the small town where he lived got scurvy in wintertime.)

So, where were we? Oh yes, now we have lots of thermal mass, but it's
not very warm yet, and the heat transfer rate is too low. Considering only
the drums under the south bench, with 600 ft^2 of drum closet surface area,
losing heat at 1 Btu/hr/F, if the drums were heating the greenhouse entirely,
at 60F inside and 30F outside, the greenhouse will need 108K Btu/hr, so the
drums would have to be 108K/600/R2 = 360 degrees warmer than the greenhouse.

Hmmm. Something is wrong here... The heat transfer rate is too low.

If there were a motorized damper in the closet, to let some air flow past
the drum surfaces, the heat transfer area would increase to 2400 ft^2,
with an R-value of about 1, so the drums would need to be about

108K/2400 = 45 degrees

warmer than the greenhouse. This is the right direction, but it is still
too large a temperature difference... If the air were moving at 10 mph, the
R-value of the air film at the drum surface would decrease to about

1/(1+ 10/2) = 1/6,

so the temperature drop would decrease to about 7 degrees, which is OK.
I guess the bench needs a fan underneath, now, at one end, with a gravity
damper at the other end now, not a motorized one. In this case, one might
stagger the drums a bit, to allow air to flow more freely between them,
down under the length of the bench. This might reduce the number of drums
in a row from 96 to 90... That's OK.

How big a fan? 108K Btu/hr at, say, another 10F drop makes the fan want to be
about 10K cfm. 10 mph is 880 fpm, so the effective cross sectional area
for airflow, under the bench, wants to be about 10K/880 = 10 ft^2.

This could be done by placing the drums about 3' apart, but that would
make the bench 7' wide, so it is probably better to stagger the drums,
and make them about 6" apart, at their closest points, with a 3" air gap
between the outside walls of the drums and the poly sidewalls. A small
horizontal air gap, or some air leaks along the base of the poly skirt,
near the ground, would also make air flow more easily. In this case, the
airspeed might be about 3000 fpm at 10,000 cfm, but the air would actually
flow more slowly at a lower cfm, which would depend on the characteristics
of the fan. 

E. C. Geiger at (800) 4GEIGER or (215) 256-6511 sells a 1/3 HP, 431 rpm,
36" diameter, two-speed, $700 fan, rated at 10,300 cfm free air delivery, 
and 8800 cfm at 0.10" of water. The stock number is DC36F, on page 118
of their 1995 catalog. 

At this point, one wonders if the fan should be near the top of the house,
to push warm air from the peak down a diagonal poly duct along one endwall,
thru the length of the "solar closet" under the bed...

The sun that comes into the greenhouse in January, at a low angle,
comes thru "the south wall," an effective area of the length of the
greenhouse x the height. In the Philadelphia area, I would figure this as

1000 Btu/day x 96' x 13' = 1.25 M Btu/day,

for a 30' Geiger "Northerner" greenhouse, with a peak height of about 13',
on an average January day. At 86.4K Btu/dd, the greenhouse would lose about

(60-30)x86.4K = 2.6 M Btu/day, on an average Jan day...

So if the greenhouse were entirely solar heated, the average (day and night)
indoor temp would only be about 30 +1.25/2.92x30 = 44F. But if there were
snow or a white piece of poly or perhaps a shallow reflecting pool on the
ground, in front of the south wall, outside the greenhouse, that would roughly
double the solar input, making it close to 100% solar-heated in January...

Here is one possible "final" version of a commercial solar greenhouse:

                    Greenhouse  96' long x 30' wide
           _________________________________________________ 
          :                                                 :
          :                                                 :
        < D  DDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDD : 
        < A                                                 : 
        < M  DDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDFDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDD F <
        < P                       A                         A <
        < E  BBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBNBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBB N <
        < R                                                 : 
          :  DDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDD : 
          :               white poly film                   :
          :_________________________________________________:

                          reflecting pool

                              south

Looking at this from the south side, not to scale:

           _________________________________________________ 
          :                                                 :
        < DAMPER Poly film ductP<==FAN                    FAN <
          :  P                 P                          P :
          :  up               down                       up : 
          :  DDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDD : 
          :  DDDDDDDDDDDDDDD (poly film) DDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDD :
          :_________________________________________________:

The central fan would be the main one used on a sunny winter day. The east
fan would be used for extra cooling capacity in the summer, if needed.

The central fan would push warm air from the peak of the greenhouse into
a 30" poly film duct near the ridge that went to a motorized damper at the
west end of the greenhouse. In external cooling mode, this air would pass
through the poly duct and out the motorized damper, which would be open.

Another duct would run north and south from the central fan, to connect to
4 down ducts that went into the tops of the benches at the center of the
greenhouse. This air would emerge from the ends of the benches into up-ducts,
which would return the air to the peak of the greenhouse, allowing the
peak of the greenhouse to be warmer than the air in the bench area. One
of the down ducts might contain a CO2 generator...

The space under the benches would look like this, from the east:

     |     4'     |
   _ :___bench____:
        polyfilm            In winter, the drums would be kept at, say,
       pfoamboardp          130F, weatehr permitting. This would store
   3'  odrum drumo          about 200K lbs x (130F-80F) = 10 million BTU,
       ldrum druml          or 5 cloudy day's worth of useful heat.
       ydrum drumy
white poly film...---------

And the space under the bench might look like this, from the top:

     :           :          In the summer, the central fan could run up to 
     : drum      :          24 hours a day, partially storing summer heat
     :           :          in the drums during the day, and cooling the
     :      drum :          400 drums and the greenhouse at night. In the
     :           :          Philadelphia area, with 50% shadecloth, the 
     : drum      :          summer sun input in June would be about 1000 BTU
                            per square foot per day, or 
          ...
			    3000 Btu x 1000 Btu/ft^2 = 3 million Btu/day.

If all of this daily summer sun's heat (100%, with NO external ventilation
during the day) were stored in the 200K pounds of drumwater, this would raise
the water temperature by 15 degrees F.

If the drumwater were at 130F in the winter, and the house were at 60F,
the plant roots, in peat moss, would be at a temperature Tr, where
Tr is about 60 + (130-60)/R11 = 66F. Water evaporating from the plants
would actually keep the roots a bit cooler than this...

Roger Williams suggests that in a new greenhouse, solar heating can be done
by storing energy in the earth below, eg by burying 10" plastic pipes, one
on each side of each bench, and blowing air through them, without using all
of these drums. The success of this technique for heating and cooling a
greenhouse would depend on the height of the water table and the nature of
water flow underground...

I've heard that solar greenhouses are used extensively in Japan, where
energy is more expensive. Does anyone know anything more about this?

Nick

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To: london@sunsite.unc.edu
Date: Fri, 31 Mar 1995 12:37:16 -0500
From: "Lawrence F. London, Jr." <london@calypso-2.oit.unc.edu>
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Organization: The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
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Subject: Energy resources at sunSITE.unc.edu
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X-Status: 



Accessing Selected Resources At sunSITE.unc.edu
-----------------------------------------------
WAIS (available via telnet, follow login instructions)
World Wide Web (lynx available via telnet for vt100 users)
  URL for sustainable agriculture is:
  gopher://sunsite.unc.edu/11/.pub/academic/agriculture/sustainable_agriculture/
  URL for rural skills is:
  gopher://sunsite.unc.edu/11/.pub/academic/agriculture/rural-skills
  URL for energy resources is:
  gopher://sunsite.unc.edu/11/.pub/academic/environment/alternative-energy/energy-resources
  URL for alternative healthcare is:
  gopher://sunsite.unc.edu/11/.pub/academic/medicine/alternative-healthcare
  URL for pesticide education is:
  gopher://sunsite.unc.edu/11/.pub/academic/environment/pesticide-education

Ftpmail (Send e-mail to ftpmail@sunsite.unc.edu for help file on ftpmail usage) 

Anonymous ftp:
  ftp sunSITE.unc.edu
  Login: anonymous
  Password: (enter your Internet E-Mail ID)
  cd pub/academic
    cd agriculture/sustainable_agriculture
      cd gardening/gardening-faqs
  cd pub/academic/agriculture/rural-skills
  cd pub/academic/medicine/alternative-healthcare
  cd pub/academic/environment/alternative-energy/energy-resources
  cd pub/academic/environment/pesticide-education

Gopher: (gopher sunSITE.unc.edu)
The Worlds of sunSITE
  Sustainable Agriculture Information
  links to:
    Rural Skills: etc.
    Alternative Energy
    Alternative Healthcare
    Pesticide Education
    - other Gopher sites with ag/gardening information

The Worlds of SunSITE
  browse sunSITE archives
    academic
      agriculture
        sustainable_agriculture
          gardening
            gardening-faqs
        rural-skills

The Worlds of sunSITE
  browse sunSITE archives
    academic
      environment
        alternative energy
          energy-resources
        pesticide-education        

The Worlds of sunSITE
  browse sunSITE archives
    academic
      medicine
        alternative healthcare


Information contained in the Archives:
--------------------------------------

Newsgroup, mailing-list, newsletter archives/documents/FAQs on 
sustainable agriculture, permaculture, IPM, landscaping, gardening, 
farming, rural skills, horticulture, metalworking, woodworking, weather, 
housebuilding, food, cooking, nutrition, ecology, environment, pesticide 
education, health and safety, survivalism, beekeeping, food preservation,
alternative: healthcare, energy, architecture, housing, communities 
and many other related topics.

Documents on these subjects (partial list):
-------------------------------------------
historic food
food preserving
survivalism, health, safety, first-aid
sourdough bread-yoghurt-kraut-fermented foods
vegetarian cooking
alternative architecture
alternative/co-housing, sustainable/intentional communities - co-operatives 
alternative healthcare
health and safety faqs 
sustainable agriculture
gardening-farming-rural life
gardening faqs
landscaping-landscape architecture
permaculture
integrated pest management
hydrology
meteorology
beekeeping
hydroponics
biological pest control
mycology
botany
vermiculture
wildlife
hydroponics
aquaponics
bioremediation
aquaculture
guides to Internet agriculture/healthcare/environment/biology resources 
homeopathy
ayurveda
nutrition
meditation

FAQs for these newsgroups (partial list):
-----------------------------------------
rec.gardens (/agriculture/sustainable_agriculture/gardening/gardening-faqs)
misc.rural (/agriculture/rural-skills/faqs)
rec.food.sourdough (/agriculture/rural-skills/food/sourdough/faqs)
rec.food.veg (/medicine/alternative-healthcare/faqs)
rec.crafts.metalworking (/agriculture/rural-skills/metalworking/faqs)
rec.woodworking (/agriculture/rural-skills/woodworking/faqs)
alternative energy (/environment/alternative-energy/miscellaneous)
sci.energy.hydrogen (/environment/alternative-energy/miscellaneous)
alt.meditation (/medicine/alternative-healthcare/faqs)
alt.co-ops (/environment/energy-resources/faqs
alt.housing.nontrad (/environment/energy-resources/faqs
alt.folklore.herbs (/medicine/alternative-healthcare/herbs/faqs)
sci.life-extension (/medicine/alternative-healthcare/faqs)
vegetarian (/medicine/alternative-healthcare/faqs)
sci.agriculture.beekeeping (/agriculture/sustainable_agriculture/beekeeping/faqs
misc.survivalism (/agriculture/rural-skills/survivalism/faqs)
rec.food.preserving (/agriculture/rural-skills/food/food-preserving/faqs)
alt.backrubs (/medicine/alternative-healthcare/faqs)
alt.med.allergy (/medicine/alternative-healthcare/faqs)
alt.support.asthma (medicine/alternative-healthcare/faqs)

Mailing lists of interest:
--------------------------
List name: sustag-public (sustainable agriculture)
  Server: almanac@ces.ncsu.edu
  Post articles to: sustag-public@ces.ncsu.edu
List name: sanet-mg (Sustainable Agriculture Network mail group)
  Server: almanac@ces.ncsu.edu
  Post articles to: sanet-mg@ces.ncsu.edu 
List name: forage-mg (forage crops)
  Server: almanac@oes.orst.edu
  Post articles to: forage-mg@oes.orst.edu
List name: forage-quality-mg (forage crop quality)
  Server: almanac@oes.orst.edu
  Post articles to: forage-quality-mg@oes.orst.edu
List name: ipm-mg (integrated pest management)
  Server: almanac@ces.ncsu.edu
  Post articles to: ipm-mg@ces.ncsu.edu
List name: permaculture-mg (permaculture)
  Server: almanac@ces.ncsu.edu
  Post articles to: permaculture-mg@ces.ncsu.edu
List name: agmetnet (meteorology)
  Server: almanac@awis.auburn.edu
  Post articles to: agmetnet@awis.auburn.edu

Also available from almanac@ces.ncsu.edu:
-----------------------------------------
renew-energy (Renewable Energy), renew-energy@ces.ncsu.edu
nc-solar (North Carolina Solar Energy Resources), 
          nc-solar@ces.ncsu.edu 

Additional mailing lists of interest:
-------------------------------------
[/net-resources will contain more information on many of these lists]
wetnet  soils-l  agmodels-l  agric-l  envst-l  grasses  bee-l  dairy-l
hydro-l  devel-l  indknow-l  aqua-l  maxlife  marine-l  gardens-l  
cohousing-l  pot-mod-l  trickle-l  mgarden-l lakes-l sustag-l

Newsletters (partial list):
---------------------------
American Garden Newsletter  ipmnet-news  aanews  aosa.news  ben  panups
safefood-news  susag-news  vita-news  altag-news  apis  attranews-digest
cgiar-news  csas-news  food-safety-week  handsnet-news  leopold-center-news
wsaa-news ....and many others

Archives of articles in these Usenet newsgroups:
------------------------------------------------
sci.agriculture
sci.agriculture.beekeeping
alt.sustainable.agriculture
alt.agriculture.misc
alt.agriculture.fruit
rec.ponds
sci.bio.entomology.lepidoptera
alt.landscape.architecture
rec.gardens
misc.rural
rec.food.preservation
misc.survivalism
sci.bio
sci.bio.ecology
sci.geo.geology
sci.geo.meteorology
sci.geo.hydrology
sci.aquaria
rec.aquaria
bionet plants
bionet mycology
bionet.biology.grasses
bionet photosynthesis
bionet cellbiology
bionet general 
bionet.agroforestry
bionet.n2-fixation
bionet.biology.tropical

alt.architecture.alternative
alt.housing.nontrad
sci.energy
sci.energy.hydrogen
alt.energy.renewable
alt.solar.thermal
sci.engr.lighting

misc.health.alternative
alt.aromatherapy
sci.life-extension
alt.health.ayurveda
alt.folklore.gemstones
alt.folklore.herbs
alt.co-evolution
alt.meditation
alt.consciousness.mysticism
rec.food.veg
rec.food.veg.cooking
sci.med.nutrition
alt.food.fat-free
alt.support.asthma
alt.med.allergy


For more information contact:

Lawrence F. London, Jr.      
london@sunSITE.unc.edu 









________________________________________________
Lawrence F. London, Jr. - london@sunSITE.unc.edu 
------------------------------------------------

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Sat Apr  1 19:08:45 1995
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To: london@sunsite.unc.edu
Date: Fri, 31 Mar 1995 14:33:55 GMT
From: Barro Michele <mbarro@MICRONET.IT>
Message-Id: <1923.usenet@merckx.graphics.cornell.edu>
Sender: london@sunsite.unc.edu
Reply-To: Alternative Energy Discussion List <%cmsa.Berkeley.EDU:AE%SJSUVM1.BITNET@bigblue.oit.unc.edu>
Subject: magazines on AE
content-length: 354
Status: O
X-Status: 

I am following this list since a while and I am interested in viewing
magazines on the matters discussed on this list.
Which could be the most interesting for a non scientist public (I am an
Industrial Designer)
No matter for the language, if a magazine is really more interesting then
others, I can get artichles translated.
Thank You


magazines on AE

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Sat Apr  1 12:38:53 1995
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To: london@sunsite.unc.edu
Date: Thu, 30 Mar 1995 15:31:55 GMT
From: Marge Wood <mwood@ACUVAX.ACU.EDU>
Message-Id: <15164.usenet@merckx.graphics.cornell.edu>
Sender: london@sunsite.unc.edu
Reply-To: Alternative Energy Discussion List <%cmsa.Berkeley.EDU:AE%SJSUVM1.BITNET@bigblue.oit.unc.edu>
Subject: reminder of environmental showcase home seminar Apr. 17
content-length: 3259
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X-Status: 

Hope y'all can come for this. That entire week will have activities of
various kinds.  Register ahead of time for the seminar and save money.  If
you are coming and happen to have a solar powered laptop with modem that
you would be willing to bring, please let me know. Thanks. Marge Wood,
mwood@acuvax.acu.edu

>Subj:  ENVIRONMENTAL HOUSING SEMINAR APRIL 17-18, 1995
>
>To Environmentally interested persons
>From Kitty Wasemiller and Abilene Christian University (and Marge,of course)
>Re: Environmental Housing Presentation
>When Monday evening April 17, 1995 7:00 pm, reception following
>Where: Abilene Christian University Campus, College of Biblical and Family
>       Studies, Hart Auditorium, Room 100
>
>Abilene Christian University, along with other interested parties and
>individuals, will be hosting a special presentation on the evening of
>April 17, 1995.  The speakers for the evening will be architects Tom Hahn
>and Eddie Jones of Phoenix, Arizona.  Their recently completed project, the
>Arizona Public Service Environmental Showcase Home will be highlighted.  The
>home incorporates environmental planning philosophies into mainstream
>architectural and building standards and practices.  By demonstrating how
>these ideas work, the architects will assist contractors and home buyers in
>making decisions which will improve and influence the energy efficiency and
>environmental responsibility of new homes.  the home was designed by Hahn
>and Jones without preconceived ideas.  By relying on fundamental principles
>of site selection, home orientation, passive solar, daylighting, energy,
>water and materials efficiency, this home will be about 60 percent more
>energy efficient and use 60 percent less water while greatly reducing
>pollution.  The home is a 2,640 sq. ft. design with four bedrooms, three
>bathrooms, and other features and amenities similar to homes in the
>$125,000-$175,000 range.
>
>Among the home's features: Passive solar design; high efficiency triple
>function heat pump; stand-alone heat pump and solar water heating;
>photovoltaic panels turning sunlight into energy; highly insulative
>glazing in the windows; unique energy efficient walls; energy efficient
>lighting and landscaping with sub-surface irrigation system; building
>materials with recycled content; indoor paint and finishes selected to
>reduce indoor air pollution; environmentally sensitive furnishings and
>accessories; environmentally responsible swimming pool.
>
>(There will also be a similar lecture on Tuesday morning, April 18,
>primarily geared toward students, but it is open to anyone who cares to
>attend.)
>
>Early bird registration is $7, if registered by April 10.
>At the door, the cost is $10 for one session.
>Group registration,  5-10    $50
>Groups over 10, $100
>Any students with valid picture ID admitted free
>
>Underwriters admitted free of charge
>
>Pay with checks, or cash at the door.
>
>For more information, contact Kitty Wasemiller 674-2087 or
>       Box 8155, Abilene Christian University, Abilene TX 79699
>       or via email, Marge Wood, mwood@acuvax.acu.edu
Marge Wood
A-V Supervisor,
Brown Library
Abilene Christian University
mwood@acuvax.acu.edu
reminder of environmental showcase home seminar Apr. 17

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Sun Apr  2 01:38:50 1995
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To: london@sunsite.unc.edu
Date: Fri, 31 Mar 1995 15:22:58 GMT
From: Marge Wood <mwood@ACUVAX.ACU.EDU>
Message-Id: <4168.usenet@merckx.graphics.cornell.edu>
Sender: london@sunsite.unc.edu
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Subject: Re: AE Digest - 29 Mar 1995 to 30 Mar 1995
content-length: 2208
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I think yesterday's digest was about the best one in a long time.
First, the greenhouse on Martha's Vineyard is owned and operated by
Anna Edey. The business is called Solviva. I have her address and phone
number if you want it. She sells books about it.

The new Smithsonian has an interesting short article about renewable
energy in it's new issue with the big 25 on the front. It referred back to
the year 1971 in which people expected renewable energy to have largely
replaced fossil fuels by this time (1995). I would be interested for the
ones of you with a Smithsonian sitting on your coffee table or in your
library to read the little article and respond to it.

Oh no. I see I put an apostrophe in "it's".  That's what constant emailing
does to one's writing skills.....

Back to the Smithsonian.  I'd even like to propose that several of us
send them replies to that article--preferably the more knowledgeable ones,
like Toms Gray and Stanton, and Mick Sagrillo, and a few others.

re: words like "liberal" and "conservative"--a truly conservative person
is concerned with conserving things of importance.  A true liberal cares about
the rights of other people.  I don't see that they are mutually exclusive.
When we left New York 15 years ago, I was the resident conservative in our
group of friends.  On arrival in Texas 4 days later, I became the resident
liberal--all by virtue of having moved 2000 miles.  Think about it.

Looking back over the last year or two, I am amazed at the things I've learned
and the people I've met who have helped me learn.  Thank you all.  Here's
to another good year with a lot of careful listening and sharing of helpful
information.  Y'all have a good weekend.  Mine will likely be spent working
in the library and making yet another solar cooker.

Oh, and I think Nick should send SMITHSONIAN something about passive solar--
the "cost" of energy should also reflect what it costs us in other ways,
like international relations, health, and degradation of our environment.
Even though I'm a church-going person, I believe protecting our earth is as
important as protecting cathedrals and museums and libraries.

Marge
RE: AE Digest - 29 Mar 1995 to 30 Mar 1995

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Mon Apr  3 20:39:09 1995
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Date: 31 Mar 1995 04:14:24 GMT
From: rbahm@Rt66.com (Ray Bahm)
Message-Id: <3lfvj0$j10@mack.rt66.com>
Organization: Engineering International, Inc.
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References: <3le88q$grs@shore.shore.net>
Subject: Re: Solar Desalinization
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In article <3le88q$grs@shore.shore.net>, wbw@shore.net (William B. Warren) says:
>
>Has anyone here experimented w/ Solar Desalinization of sea water? I 
Lots of folks have.  There should be a fair amount of literature available.
I remember one in Pureto Penasco, Sonora, Mexico about 30 years ago
that was operated by the University of Arizona.  I seem to remember that
there was a major one on Malta, or some other island in the Medeterranian
which has no supply of fresh water.  Mobil has installed one which is PV
powered on the Red Sea in Saudi Arabia.  The foregoing is all from 
memory - may not be too acccurate, but you get the idea.

I once built a small solar still out of a box lined with styrofoam and black 
plastic with a fibreglass cover -  about 2 by 3 feet.  It produced about 
1/2 gallon per day  not very exciting, but the concept worked.

I think the reall problem with solar stills is the maintenance.  They need
it, and also take up a lot of area.  The stills I've seen condense the water
vapor on the bottom side of the window, and then it runs down that side
until it is caught in a trough.  In mine lots of water never made it to the 
trough, but instead dripped back into the original pool, losing efficiency.

Ray Bahm

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Mon Apr  3 20:39:14 1995
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Date: 2 Apr 1995 03:18:37 -0400
From: nick@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu (Nick Pine)
Message-Id: <3llj4d$542@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu>
Organization: Villanova University
Sender: london@sunsite.unc.edu
Subject: gravity
content-length: 1945
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>Newtonian physics allows us to compute the mutual force between two objects
>due to their gravitational attraction,

True.

>but one can also correctly speak of the energy
>associated with an object due to its presence in a gravitational field.

One can, if it has somewhere lower to go... I'd call that "gravitational
energy," like "solar energy." But it is INcorrect to simply say "gravity 
is energy." To most English speakers, especially those who are science-
literate, gravity is a force, not an energy. Even to the science-illiterate,
gravity is what makes you fall down, not something you can cook dinner with.
This loose talk is confusing, as is "I hope to collect 3 kilowatts per day
from my PV cells," or "Can anyone tell me where to buy a 14 volt fuse?"

>We're comfortable speaking of electric & magnetic fields: this is probably
>the best way to discuss gravitation as well.

Gravitational fields are useful to talk about, but neither electrical nor
magnetic nor atomic nor gravitational fields are "energy." Energy has a very
specific and mathematical meaning, in physics, the same as "work." Poets
may say "energy is eternal delight." Mark Twain said "work is whatever
a body is obliged to do," but alternate energists might usefully be more
careful in their language. This is a technical subject, (as well as an art
form and a peculiar expression of personal independence, in this country.)
Such loose talk invites confusion and technical failure, and bespeaks of
scientific ignorance.

Other things I would happily call "energy" are mv^2 (not just v), eg
400-slug 60-mph cars, or mgh or horsepower-hours or ergs or microwatt-weeks
or temperature differences times heat capacities or dyne-lightyears or cubic
feet of standard atmosphere (considering the work it takes to expand such
a volume near the earth's surface) or roomfulls of relative humidity or
1-pound water balloons on top of the Statue of Liberty (WBSLs :-)

Nick

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Tue Apr  4 18:09:37 1995
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Date: 1 Apr 1995 02:24:49 -0500
From: nick@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu (Nick Pine)
Message-Id: <3liv41$no8@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu>
Organization: Villanova University
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References: <3lhq5g$a1e@charm.magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu>
Subject: Re: EcoTips - Lawn Mowers
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Steen H Hviid <shviid@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu> wrote:
 
>Time to replace your lawn mower? How about considering some alternatives

I used to have a lawn mower, but it died. I used to get a farmer to mow my
lawn once a year, with a bush hog, when it got up to about chest-high, but
that seemed expensive and wasteful. My father used to talk about covering the
ground with green concrete. (He was an engineer.) I've considered sheep or
goats or ostriches, but they seem like a lot of trouble, and they require
some sort of building, water, and perhaps an electric fence (or an invisible
fence, with a radial transmitter, or 2 90 degree horns at the property
corners?), or even a real fence.

So lately I'm thinking it's time to just let it all go back to nature,
altho I'm letting my neighbor grow 3 acres of corn on it this year, which
he will probably try to feed to his llamas.

Nick

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Tue Apr  4 19:09:32 1995
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To: london@sunsite.unc.edu
Date: Sat, 1 Apr 1995 09:13:53 GMT
From: Lee Butler <lbutler@GATE.NET>
Message-Id: <1566.usenet@merckx.graphics.cornell.edu>
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Subject: Re: Solar Desalinization
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>Has anyone here experimented w/ Solar Desalinization of sea water? I
>would like to do  some food production
>(aquaculture/mariculture/hydroponics)  experiments on my "Biobarge" this
>summer and would like to be able to meet my freshwater needs through
>this method of desalinization.  Any input would be greatly appreciated...
>
>Thanks in advance,
>William
>
>
>Solar Desalinization

Passive solar glass houses can be designed to desalinize water at the same
time they provide an environment in which the water can be used to grow
plants, fish, shrimp.etc. I have prototype designs, based on Israeli work
in this field.
Essentially, we are talking about an evapotative condensor. Not too
complicated I presume. Hope this is helpful to you. Your floating
hydroponic plant producing "barge" which gets it's water from local
availible indigeneous sources sounds suspiciously similiar to my Ekotecture
designs. You could refer to my floating Ekotecture houses as barges.I like
your idea.

Lee Porter Butler

Lee Porter Butler
620 Biscayne Drive
West Palm Beach, Florida 33401
407-659-7656


Re: Solar Desalinization

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Tue Apr  4 19:09:35 1995
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To: london@sunsite.unc.edu
Date: Sat, 1 Apr 1995 09:03:23 GMT
From: Lee Butler <lbutler@GATE.NET>
Message-Id: <1062.usenet@merckx.graphics.cornell.edu>
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Subject: Re: Alpha Lee's Latest...
content-length: 5203
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>Lee Butler  <AE%SJSUVM1.BITNET@cmsa.Berkeley.EDU> wrote:
>
>>It continues to profoundly amusing to me, that my wrap is so intimidating
>>to the members of this board that they refuse to even discuss the 16 points
>>presented in the patent claims for Ekotecture.
>
>Nonono. _You_ are the one who has refused to discuss these, Lee...
>
>Nick
>
>
>Re: Alpha Lee's Latest...
Even though you refuse to discuss the broader issues, you continue to
respond to my postings. This is some kind of progress.

Let us take one specific form of energy which you are ignoring. There is
one form of perpetual, universal, useable energy and it is is quietly, and
elegantly availible to do all kinds of future practical"work" which we are
now doing with non-renewable polluting energies ( fossil or nuclear )
energy.It has been used by great architects down through the last five
thousand years. I am speaking of gravity. Gravity convection. Hot air rises
does it not? Actually, hot air rises is an oxymoron. Cold air is pulled
toward the earth by gravity. Hydro power is actually gravity power. The
distance of the "fall" or height determines a linear relationship with the
rate of movement, along with diferential temperature.

Let us take another specific. Decentralization. Only someone with conflicts
of interest can argue against generating power only where it is needed.

Let us take up the issue of who pays and how much, for the fact that our
structures can not stand the most elementary natural occurences such as
tornadoes, hurricanes, earthquakes and even fires.  I am amazed by people
who continue to advocate building buildings out of flamable materials.

Why can't more of you bright engineers react rationally to common sense
intuition and logic. How long can you successfully go on brainwashing
yourselves into pretending that I am some kind of illiterate, irrational
crank.

My track record makes liers our of you and since you have no comments which
are worth hearing, you ignore me because tht is safe. If you discussed the
broader issues logically and intelligently, you would open yourself up to
the stupid juvenile rantings that have only been directed at me.

What about switching from heavy, conductive, steel reinforced concrete to
an ultra light, insulating, silicon or plant fiber reinforced composite
earth based "concrete" material which make builderings stronger, safer,
more energy conserving and it floats.

Is this really "that" complex or controversial? Am I a crank who should be
allowed to die or a visionary who should be leading the critical
discussions which can veentually resolve many of our most pressing
problems.

I am confident, based on the increasing number of positive letters I am
receiving, that you will not continue to ignore these vital concerns for
too much longer. The "system" is about to collapse under the weight of it's
own paper work.

You see, successful wall street business men have been creating paper (
stock certificates ) for years. They exchange these " created" pieces of
paper for " real" currency which represents actually physical "work". A
paper swap. The government has been doing the same thing. printing paper
money and using it the same way that people who earn it use it. When they
run out one form of paper, the print another ( savings bonds, Treasury
bills) and exchange them just like " real money" Then even smarter wall
street attorneys create other pieces of paper called futures, derivatives,
options, etc., etc, on and on endlessly.

These con artists and captians of industry have " chaeted the common man"
or small investor out of billions trillions of dollars since the Vietnam
war. Add to this the billions wasted on over kill and obscene weaponry
research and pretty soon you are taking about " real money".

Our entire economy is based on unecessary BS. Our actual quality of life is
actually far less than many European countries. Teh hell of it is that
apparently most of you do not even understand this sophisticated con and
you go on pumping the illusion in the hope that you will get yours.

The good news is that information, even over the internet, is not free. You
are inundated with mountains of information and what do you know?
How many of you are genuinly happy with your profession, business or the "
system"

You are all acting like a bunch of scared female cats.
Doesn't any one have an opinion they care to risk?

Listen boys, I have been around, stirring up the soup and smashing icons
since the early sixties. I am not going to go away. Me and people like me
are just going to become more numerous, tenatious and well informed and
successful at doing something to stop the technical overkill and neurotic
worship of high science and machismo rhetoric. The dinasaurs were unable to
change with the times. Humanity seems to be having similiar problems.
Certain gene pools are destined to die out. Evolution will win. Ignorance
and stupity and ignorance will be wiped out in this next century and we
will not have to spend so much of our time engaged  in this pointless
psychobabble.

Lee Porter Butler

Lee Porter Butler
620 Biscayne Drive
West Palm Beach, Florida 33401
407-659-7656


Re: Alpha Lee's Latest...

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Tue Apr  4 21:09:30 1995
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Date: 1 Apr 1995 18:16:18 -0400
From: pferraro@bud.peinet.pe.ca (Inst. for Bioreg. Studies)
Message-Id: <3lkjbi$7o7@bud.peinet.pe.ca>
Organization: PEINet, Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, Canada
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Subject: permaculture/bioregional studies
content-length: 1714
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  It is the objective of IBS to train participants to become 
effective catalysts in the regeneration of  the planet. The 
"Bioregional" perspective means that our focus is  on the 
design and evolution of healthy, interdependent and self-reliant 
communities. 
  Today we can not just, "Think  Globally and  Act Locally" We 
also need to, "Think Long Term and Act Now". Therefore, IBS was 
founded to demonstrate the recent, ecologically oriented, scientific,   
social   and   technological   achievements   that   are relevant  
to  achieving  the   goal   of   an   ecological  society.

The Institute for Bioregional Studies 1995 Summer Programs 
catalogue is now available on-line or by requesting a hard copy.
Our programs will be hosted at the spectacular Ovens Natural Park 
in Riverport, Nova Scotia. Seminars will feature:

~Permaculture Design Course~
~Straw Bale Construction~
~Ecological Planning~

Guest Lecturers include:
Kirkpatrick Sale, Schumacher Society;
Michael Pilarski, Friends of the Trees;
Judith Plant, New Catalyst Education Society;
Maureen Cureton, Rocky Mountain. Institute;
Ray Cote, Director, School of Environmental Planning,Dal. U;
William Rees, Dean, School of Community Planning, UBC;
Carla Conrod, Regional Atlantic Trading Note Association

and others

For more information send $2.00 to:
IBS, 449 University Avenue, Suite 126,
Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island C1A 8K3
Phone: (902) 892-9578
or
for an electronic copy e-mail: pferraro@peinet.pe.ca
-- 
Phil Ferraro, Director
Institute for Bioregional Studies
449 University Avenue Suite 126            "Developing Local Solutions to 
Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island	    Global Problems"
Canada   C1A 8K3
(902) 892-9578

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Wed Apr  5 03:09:29 1995
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Date: 2 Apr 1995 16:57:15 GMT
From: nellison@lonestar.jpl.utsa.edu (Newton T. Ellison)
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Newsgroups: g,news.announce.newusers
Subject: response to Nick Pine
Summary: alt.energy.renewable
Followup-To:alt.energy.renewable 
Distribution: world.alt.energy.renewable
Organization: University of Texas at San Antonio
Keywords:alt.energy.renewable 
With respect, I vote *no* to Nick Pine's call to break up the old
alt.energy.renewable gang, to enable a forum about photovoltaics 
only. I am new to the internet process, but an old hand at advocating 
renewables, especially solar heat to drive hot water, space heating 
and absorption a/c, using natural gas, propane, whatever, as a backup.
   I believe we need a forum as wide as this. There are many ways 
that a sustainable human, etc, civilization on this nice little planet
can happen. The many technologies that will be in the new "mix" are 
already known, but mostly political factors keep the some of them from 
being implemented.
   I expect to be "flamed," so here's my final solution, after we 
replace most of our electricity-guzzling a/c compressors, a.k.a. "heat 
pumps" with solar assisted absorption refrigeration.
   We need to downsize human individuals, starting with offering large 
size people incentives *not* to reproduce so much. It would take 
thousands of years, but a human race with individuals, say, six inches
tall, and individual fauna, flora and automobiles in proportion would 
be nice, and there could be a lot more of us.
   Comments?         nellison@lonestar.utsa.edu  
  













From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Wed Apr  5 10:39:38 1995
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From: Forward Thinking <0007354216@mcimail.com>
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Subject: Free Catalog Offer "AD"
content-length: 649
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X-Status: 

Greetings

I would like to recommend the following free catalog offer to you.
Its from ADVENTURES UNLIMITED PRESS

Its 50+ pages and filled with illustrations of some of the most
unusual books and videos available.

If you are interested in Anti-Gravity, Free Energy,
Tesla Technology, and the secrets of Ancient Science.
And much much more.
Then I feel you will really enjoy this catalog.

Just reply with your name and postal address to
forwardthinking@mcimail.com

I am affiliated with this company.
But I still feel that you still should have this catalog.

Harry G. Osoff


I apologize to anyone who this post offends.

Free Catalog Offer "AD"

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Wed Apr  5 13:09:45 1995
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Date: Sun, 2 Apr 1995 18:33:48 -0600 (MDT)
From: "Frank J. Pecsy" <fpecsy@freenet.calgary.ab.ca>
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The notion of timed latency or decay rate is one that I made a bit of an 
analysis of myself.  Based on the notion of a one or 2 percent 
opportunity of falling outside of the target range of internal 
temperatures I calculated that the realistic possibility of falling 1 
percent below that range was one chance every 12 years.  The solution I 
used was to keep heat storage in the center of the living spaces , 
specifically water stored inside a masonary mass, that mass being a wood 
burning fieldstone fireplace.  Essentially hollowed out with facility for 
grey water heat exchange, it works perfectly, and if things should 
overheat then opening the flue fixes the problem.  
However I cna't resist tinkering, and had thought of changing to either a 
glyco or silicon system. Comments would be welcome!

Frank 

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Wed Apr  5 16:39:39 1995
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Date: 3 Apr 1995 02:11:16 GMT
From: ah892@detroit.freenet.org (Michael A. Ketterman)
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Status: O
X-Status: 


Try 'Home Power' magazine. Published 6 times per year $15/year
subscription. P.O Box 520, Ashland, OR 97520. $20/year
international.  It is a hands on magazine with real applications
on small scale alternate energy systems and electric vehicles.

Hope this helps you out.
Mike.

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Wed Apr  5 20:10:00 1995
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To: london@sunsite.unc.edu
Date: Tue, 4 Apr 1995 14:54:16 GMT
From: "James W. Swonger" <jws@mlb.semi.harris.com>
Message-Id: <19393.usenet@merckx.graphics.cornell.edu>
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Reply-To: Alternative Energy Discussion List <%cmsa.Berkeley.EDU:AE%SJSUVM1.BITNET@bigblue.oit.unc.edu>
Subject: Solar thermal panels / heat pumps
content-length: 1084
Status: RO
X-Status: 

 The reason to use a heat pump in conjunction with solar thermal collectors
is to produce a higher temperature from the low grade heat obtained.
A solar panel producing 150F air in large volume could be the "cold side"
for a heat pump, that heat pump could "charge" a heat battery at 300F or
higher. Such temperatures could only be obtained by using concentrator
collector systems with attendant inefficiencies of their own.

  By storing heat at a higher temperature you would gain compactness,
the potential to use a phase change medium, and the potential to use
the heat battery for things requring high grade heat energy like steam
production/distillation or absorbtion cycle refrigeration. A heat pump
being the thermal equivalent of a transformer, you are accepting some
inefficiency in order to gain a more locally useful heat/temperature
combination.

  If the panel is a forced air ducted collector, then the long plumbing
will be relatively cheap and leak-insensitive, and the heat pump can be a
remote, physically compact and robust unit.
Solar thermal panels / heat pumps

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Wed Apr  5 20:10:08 1995
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To: london@sunsite.unc.edu
Date: Tue, 4 Apr 1995 15:00:40 GMT
From: Tom Gray <tgray@IGC.APC.ORG>
Message-Id: <19720.usenet@merckx.graphics.cornell.edu>
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Reply-To: Alternative Energy Discussion List <%cmsa.Berkeley.EDU:AE%SJSUVM1.BITNET@bigblue.oit.unc.edu>
Subject: Jeffords-Wellstone Amendment
content-length: 2491
Status: RO
X-Status: 

JEFFORDS AND WELLSTONE WILL OFFER AMENDMENT
TO SHIFT FUNDS FROM NUCLEAR FISSION TO RENEWABLES

The U.S. Senate is currently debating a "rescission" (pronounced like
"recision") bill, which would cut current year spending (that is, funds
previously approved by Congress) for a number of government programs.

The bill proposes to cut renewable energy research and development (R&D)
funding by $35 million, while making smaller cuts in fossil and nuclear
fusion R&D and no reductions at all in nuclear fission R&D.

We expect an amendment to be offered by Senators Jeffords (R-VT) and
Wellstone (D-MN) that would shift $14 million from nuclear fission R&D
to renewable energy programs.  This would result in the final Senate
rescissions package containing the following funding levels (all numbers
in millions) for the current year, which is called Fiscal Year 1995 or
FY '95 in government lingo):

                             Proposed
                    FY'95   Rescission   Amendment     %Cut
                                                    (If Amended)
Renewable Energy    $417.8    -$35        +$14         5.0%
Energy Efficiency   $770.8    -$49                     6.4%
Fossil Energy       $441.8    -$21                     4.8%
Nuclear Fusion      $368.4    -$15                     4.1%
Nuclear Fission     $811.4    -$0         -$14         1.7%

The Jeffords-Wellstone amendment has attracted a number of cosponsors,
including Senators Campbell (R-CO), Chafee (R-RI), Daschle (D-SD),
Harkin (D-IA), Kerry (D-MA), Kohl (D-WI), Leahy (D-VT) and Roth (R-DE).
If your Senator is among this list, please call and thank them for
cosponsoring the amendment.

Please call your Senators as soon as possible at (202) 224-3121 and urge
them to vote YES on the Jeffords-Wellstone Renewable Energy Amendment to
shift $14 million from nuclear fission to renewable energy.

Possible talking points:

- The renewable energy industries are new and very small.  Government
funding for research is more justifiable than for the nuclear industry,
which is large and mature.

- If government spending has to be reduced, the renewable energy
industries are willing to take their share of cuts along with everyone
else.  As the table above shows, even if the Jeffords-Wellstone
amendment is passed, renewables will be suffer a larger percentage
reduction than nuclear.

For more information, contact Jared Barlage at (202) 383-2507 or Michael
Marvin at (202) 383-2506.

Jeffords-Wellstone Amendment

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Thu Apr  6 14:10:12 1995
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To: london@sunsite.unc.edu
Date: Wed, 5 Apr 1995 09:52:12 GMT
From: Lee Butler <lbutler@GATE.NET>
Message-Id: <19121.usenet@merckx.graphics.cornell.edu>
Sender: london@sunsite.unc.edu
Reply-To: Alternative Energy Discussion List <%cmsa.Berkeley.EDU:AE%SJSUVM1.BITNET@bigblue.oit.unc.edu>
Subject: Re: reply to Nick Pine
content-length: 2412
Status: O
X-Status: 

>Dear Harry C......
>     Thanks for response. Maybe somebody did figure out an
>"optimum" human size. I picked 6" arbitrarily. Perhaps we
>need an interim target.  Say, four ft. David Robinson
>notwithstanding, we don't really need too many more seven
>footers, do we?
>
>   What do you think about flatplate collectors, large
>undergroundtank water storage, absorption a/c assisted by natural
>or other gas, hydronic loop space heat & water out of the same
>storage as needed. PVs for lights and small elec. Ethanol for cars.
>More mass transit. Vegetarianism. Acoustic guitars. Bicycles.
>Proportional representation.
>Newton Trey Ellison       210.227.9769
>
Excellent suggestions, however, a much more seriou problem is the mass
denial by most white male people. Consider.....Alvin Toffler explains what
is ahhpening better than I can, however,

There is a crisis of confidence in hard science in the world today.
President Clinton just announced today that the present administration
leadership is planning to cut fifty five thousand jobs (55,000) from the
space program. Good. We should not be spending money to get into space when
there is so much to do here on the ground. We are also wittnessing the end
of another respected icon of our civilization, MIT, the brain trust, which
along with Harvard, has dominated the scientific and business decisions
since the founding of America.

I think it is time to point out that this group of leaders dropped the
atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasakki near the end of world war two. We
know they will use the bomb to destory helpless citizens, in order to bring
their political leaders to their knees. We have seen them destory Kuait and
Nicaraga. They are behind the conflict in Israel, northern Ireland, Tibet,
Bosnia, and the killing which is going on in our own country.

These intellectuals, who can condemn mass populations to death, simply
because of the remarks of one man, their unfortunate leader, who has had
thecourage to speak his own mind about right and wrong in the world and
disagree with the Harvard-MIT brain trust.

 It is a known fact that all killing is wrong. Especially institutionalized
killing and yet our country continues to operate a secret covert operation,
all over the world to dominate and control everything.

alpha lee

Lee Porter Butler
620 Biscayne Drive
West Palm Beach, Florida 33401
407-659-7656


Re: reply to Nick Pine

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Thu Apr  6 16:10:14 1995
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To: london@sunsite.unc.edu
Date: 6 Apr 1995 09:41:06 -0400
From: nick@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu (Nick Pine)
Message-Id: <3m0r1i$jdt@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu>
Organization: Villanova University
Sender: london@sunsite.unc.edu
References: <6133.usenet@merckx.graphics.cornell.edu>, <3lvhbe$1m6i@usenetp1.news.prodigy.com>
Subject: Re: Proposing the creation of alt.solar.photovoltaic
content-length: 2047
Status: O
X-Status: 

Stephen Bosbach <MWVW57A@prodigy.com> wrote:

>go for it.  I'm all for a photovoltaic newsgroup.  There is so much to 
>this field it would help to have a newsgroup to share data and plans.  

Will someone **puhleeze** create this newsfroup, by placing their name
in the *** field below? I just saw a post about PVs and lizards in
alt.solar.thermal, and I'm pissed...

Nick

Newsgroups: alt.config,alt.solar.photovoltaic,alt.solar.photovoltaic.ctl,control
Subject: cmsg newgroup alt.solar.photovoltaic
Summary: newgroup for technical discussions of solar photovoltaic energy
Followup-To: alt.solar.photovoltaic
Control: newgroup alt.solar.photovoltic
Approved: ***
Distribution: world
Keywords: solar photovoltaic energy

The creation of the group alt.solar.photovoltaic was proposed in alt.config
on March 20, about two weeks ago. So far, the proposer has received only a few
positive responses to its creation by email, and mostly positive postings,
so the  group is being created with this message. alt.solar.photovoltaic is
intended to be a newsgroup for discussions of photovoltaic energy collection
and use, ie making and using electricity from the sun. This is often discussed
in alt.energy.renewable, and reading about it there tends to waste the time of
people who are interested in other forms of renewable energy, and photovoltaic
people who read that group may not wish to wade through the other discussions
that go on there. At this point, it seems useful to specialize...

alt.solar.photovoltaic is NOT intended to be a place to discuss solar
thermal energy collection and use, except as combined with photovoltaic
systems, politics, aesthetics, solar space mirrors, envelope houses,
Stirling engines, solar refrigerators or air conditioning, cool tubes,
heat pipes, wind energy, wood energy, water energy, methane generation,
sewage treatment, perpetual motion, Nikola Tesla, unseen forces,
electromagnetic pollution, capturing free energy from power lines or radio
stations, nuclear waste, decomposing dead bodies or 600 mpg cars.

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Thu Apr  6 16:40:14 1995
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To: london@sunsite.unc.edu
Date: Wed, 5 Apr 1995 09:43:38 GMT
From: Lee Butler <lbutler@GATE.NET>
Message-Id: <18991.usenet@merckx.graphics.cornell.edu>
Sender: london@sunsite.unc.edu
Reply-To: Alternative Energy Discussion List <%cmsa.Berkeley.EDU:AE%SJSUVM1.BITNET@bigblue.oit.unc.edu>
Subject: Re: PM_Square ! Permanent Magnet Powered Motor !
content-length: 3407
Status: O
X-Status: 

>> Well, I have worked together with the inventor and another "magnet freak"
>> during this weekend on the design and we found the solution how to power a
>> motor just via using Permanent Magnets !
>
>(And more description, with an exclamation point at the end of every
>single paragraph.)
>
>You're a fool too.
>
>--Z
>
>"And Aholibamah bare Jeush, and Jaalam, and Korah: these were the borogoves..."
>
>Re: PM_Square ! Permanent Magnet Powered Motor !
Egotistical male artists farts
flashing all their machismo parts
keeping women in their place
spinning illusions in your face
taking liberties with our fate

when we they act responsibly
when will they use their position to point the way
when will they ever learn
Why don't the museums hang women artists or artists of color
art, fart, male, principle
abstract shit only a few can do
give us a break
let the women through
let the people of color
express another opinion

The female point of view is open, lovely, sweet
soft, compassionate, forgiving, non-violent, reasonable
understanding, loving, caring, preserving, soft

Our present culture is brutal, violent, judgemental,
destructive, negative death defying, dominating, tyranical police nonesense,
that is what our machismo, Republican, Newt Gingrich KKK American money
monkey culture is all about

When will they ever learn?When is enough enough?
How  high is high enough? How far is far enough?
Where are we running to? What do we expect to find when we get there?
How many more attorneys, police, jails, judgement do we need?

When the male machismo artsy fartsy artists and psuedo intellectuals stop
beating women and ignoring wormen in their art, and ignoring female values
with their government and science, when these aristocrats become conscious
and aware, they find themselves happy and at peace with themselves and the
burning will stop.

Run Baby Run

See dreams forming, clouds drifting above
Hear drums pounding on distant shores
never look behind,  surrender all regrets,
the setting sun always dips below the horizon in the west

waters cover up what use to be
fears blinds to what might have been
every blade of grass has a memory
every drop of rain lives to rise again
every beam of light is a message to something
gravity attracts light
gravity attracts anything
everything attracts everything
love is gravity, matter is made up of light
light is what we use to see
see is what we long to see
run baby run
run from the setting sun
stay in the light
stay in the love
stay in the know
those who know
are not afraid
those who fear do not know
love is light, light is information
light is used by each sentient conscious entity
transformed from pure chaos into pure form through desire, love, gravity,
the weak force, the magnetic force, atraction

Elementary logic flows from the intention to communicate
Elementary harmony flows from communication
sinlight tells the plant gene to build a hydrocarbon structure, capable of
pumping water, energy and material through it self to constantly renew and
extend itself. what does sunlight tell you?

Run baby run
run from the setting sun
run for your life
run for the light
run till you drop
run till you stop
run till you see the point.

Thought you might like a break from the techno jargon.
alpha Lee

Lee Porter Butler
620 Biscayne Drive
West Palm Beach, Florida 33401
407-659-7656


Re: PM_Square ! Permanent Magnet Powered Motor !

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Thu Apr  6 16:40:18 1995
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To: london@sunsite.unc.edu
Date: Wed, 5 Apr 1995 09:37:10 GMT
From: Lee Butler <lbutler@GATE.NET>
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Sender: london@sunsite.unc.edu
Reply-To: Alternative Energy Discussion List <%cmsa.Berkeley.EDU:AE%SJSUVM1.BITNET@bigblue.oit.unc.edu>
Subject: universal energies/forces
content-length: 5461
Status: O
X-Status: 

I love the discussion to determine if gravity is an energy of a force. Come
on boys, back to basics. What is the effective difference when it comes to
moving mass or doing work. Gravity creates the wind. Wind creates torque.
Torque can be converted to heat.
In gravity convection, we speak of loops. If you change the temperature of
a liquid or a gas, you change the denisty. In a loop, if you add or
subtract heat to one side, you will create differential density ( between
the two columns of liquid or gas) causing the colder side of the loop to
fall.

Not that you would want to do it, but you could build a solar chimney in
which you put hudge air foil blades which turned whenever the air rises. I
am simply saying that this system is superior to one which uses a crystal
to generate electricity, then uses the electricity to move air or create
torque. Building the crystal is harder than building the solar chimney.
Storage for the solar chimney system could be in the form of heat, stored
in earth mass, water or whatever. Storage for the electrical power would be
far more complicated and harder to maintain.

All of this assumes you are dealing with a client who wants something
quiet, safe, trouble free and simple to fix should anything every go wrong
with the system.

Solar electricity makes sense for providing lighting and certain electronic
applications which demand electrical power. Even up to 85 % of all lighting
could be done through well designed daylighting and ionically activated
phosphorescence surface coatings.

The other energy this board is ignoring is the thermal capacity of the
earth to influence and dominate the interior temperatures of our buildings.
The earth stays cooler in the summer and warmer in the winter, than the
temperatures at which we design our buildings. This is true virtually
anywhere in the world, meaning, we are ignoring the energy of thermal
inertia, represented by the mass of earth directly beneath our feet. Again,
this is energy which is everywhere, doesn't cost anything once a design is
created to utilize it, is quiet, pollution free. Any more questions.

Food. Food is energy. there is mounting evidence that we eat too much and
more specifically, we eat things which are known to cause deadly diseases.
In other words, we are getting our energy from corrupted and dishonest
sources which do not care if we individually, the consumers of their
products, live or die. How we cook our food and what kind of foods we
combine is very important. Without this knowledge, we suffer from many
forms of disease and die.

Without art or creative forms of self expression, the individual becomes
depressed and neurotic. The present emphasis on money and only money is
creating a society of boring lonely people. Everyone is afraid to talk
about it, however, the time is coming soon, when the pain of isolation will
become too great. People will recognize and accept theri need for artistic
expression through poetry, painting, sculpture, writing, theater,
gardening, and architecture. Our century is coming to a close with a
country overun by attorneys, bureaucrats, accountants, bean counters and
technocrats at the local, state and national levels. None of these people
make anything. All they do is sell it, account for it and print paper
subsittutes for real wealth. The unfortunate thing is, they control the
country.

The third wave describes what is happening now perfectly, just that no one
wants to accept how far it is going to go. Mindless machismo politico
police tactics are dead. Long live the revolution.

Alpha lee Rainbow Light

The Tall White men with ties

meet in their office tower board rooms
and tell each other lies
about the sizes of their portfolios
while paid cheap white trash female suckers drain their plumbing
belore the big sucker kill
waiting in the next room
 full of invited suckers listening to their lies

The tall white men with ties
Planning now  to industrialize
the next unsuspecting third world culture
sentencing the people to daily slavery
polluting the beautiful earth
felling all of the tall trees
exhausting every square inch of earth
paving over more of it with asphalt and concrete
for obscene profit and more discretionary income

the tall white men with ties
blowing up old buildings
destroying resources, buildings and effort while
allowing there brothers to go homeless and without love
sending off powerful rockets to the moon
looking for more territory to desecrate and destroy
blowing up each other in war

The tall white men with ties
telling all their lies
killing all of their wives and their children
the king white aristocrats of hate
this KKK of late
The Tall white men with ties of Wall Street
making up the wrap
legalizing con games and crap shoots
the hypnotic tunes of Madison Avenue
seducing the poor working schmuck
into beating his wife
into ignoring their children
into mortaging their life's work
for the latest consumer electronics
and cheap weekend thrills in a trendy spa resort
and a fantasy life in a country club golf course real estate development
Where will it end up?
When will it ever end?
who is responsible for the soul of man?
Who is responsible for the earth?
Who is accountable to our future generations?
Who is accountable to the cosmos?
When is enough enough
enough is enough
small is beautiful
less is more


Lee Porter Butler
620 Biscayne Drive
West Palm Beach, Florida 33401
407-659-7656


universal energies/forces

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Thu Apr  6 21:10:07 1995
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To: london@sunsite.unc.edu
Date: 5 Apr 1995 13:28:49 +0200
From: organic@aztec.co.za (SA Organic Fertilizer)
Message-Id: <3ltuth$m7e@aztec.co.za>
Organization: Aztec Public Access Internet
Sender: london@sunsite.unc.edu
Subject: Green groups wanted
content-length: 589
Status: O
X-Status: 

My company is currently developing a world-wide database of environmental
and "green" organisations. We would like to cover a wide spectrum of
interest groups and angles. Anyone wishing to have themselves or their
organisations / groups listed, can contact me at the address listed in my
signature. If faxing would be more convenient, my fax number is :

+27 21 880 1140. 

-- 
 ============================================================
          S.A. Organic Fertilizer Holdings (Pty) Ltd
                   organic@aztec.co.za 
        P.O.Box 1513, Stellenbosch, 7599, South Africa 

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Thu Apr  6 23:40:22 1995
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To: london@sunsite.unc.edu
Date: Wed, 5 Apr 1995 14:25:41 GMT
From: Marge Wood <mwood@ACUVAX.ACU.EDU>
Message-Id: <4494.usenet@merckx.graphics.cornell.edu>
Sender: london@sunsite.unc.edu
Reply-To: Alternative Energy Discussion List <%cmsa.Berkeley.EDU:AE%SJSUVM1.BITNET@bigblue.oit.unc.edu>
Subject: Re: AE Digest - 3 Apr 1995 to 4 Apr 1995
content-length: 897
Status: RO
X-Status: 

I think these discussions are helpful, even if a certain amount is "drivel"
to quote Bob Sanders.  The long, thoughtful message about the concern of
scientists helped me realize that surveys which ask people if they believe
people descended from apes point out the distressing fact that almost half
the people in the survey don't believe that.  It really seems irrelevant,
and questions like that shut people off from more certifiable data, such as
the importance of trees and clean air and water.  It's find to exchange
our opinions, but we need to realize that lots of things can't be proved, and
don't have to be. Yes, we must find ways to help people be willing to accept
provable facts and move in a direction of cooperating with other people.
Have the senators voted yet on the amendment which would make moneey available
for renewable energy?
Marge
RE: AE Digest - 3 Apr 1995 to 4 Apr 1995

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Fri Apr  7 10:10:16 1995
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To: london@sunsite.unc.edu
Date: Fri, 7 Apr 1995 13:30:48 GMT
From: mcfaddp@westminster.ac.uk (Pamm McFadden)
Message-Id: <D6o2vD.DvJ@westminster.ac.uk>
Organization: University of Westminster
Sender: london@sunsite.unc.edu
References: <3m11sg$7nt@fdcap2.ap.dg.com>, <3m02rp$av5@ixnews3.ix.netcom.com>, <D6M1B4.Cs9@yc.estec.esa.nl>
Subject: National Solar Energy Conference
content-length: 1343
Status: O
X-Status: 

Hello everyone,

I though you might be interested in this announcement.

SOLAR '95   The National Solar Energy Conference

sponsored by the American Solar Energy Society


Solar '95 will celebrate the rich history of American Solar Energy Society Conferences.  This is the 20th anniversary of the first passive solar conference.
We also mark the 40th anniversary of the first solar society conference.
Solar '95 will focus on 10,000 Solutions: Paths to a Renewable Future.  In
Minnesota, the midwestern climate presents unique challenges to realizing a 
renewable energy future.  As we work toward this goal, experts from the 
midwest and around the world will share their experience in the Plenary
and Symposia Sessions.

The technical sessions include over 140 technical presentations chosen in
a rigorous review process by two program committees.  Thetechnical program will also include forums for audience participation, and hands-on demonstrations
of recently developed assessment technology.

There will also be tours and workshops.

For more information, contact:
	The American Solar  Energy Society
	2400 Cnetral, Unit G1
	(opps, I can't go back and edit - 2400 Central)
	Boulder, CO 80301
	(303) 443 3130    phone
	(303) 443 3212    fax
	ases@igc.apc.org  email

Pamm

P.S. and let them know where you found out about the conference!

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Sun Apr  9 11:10:39 1995
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To: london@sunsite.unc.edu
Date: Sat, 8 Apr 1995 07:58:26 GMT
From: Lee Butler <lbutler@GATE.NET>
Message-Id: <15446.usenet@merckx.graphics.cornell.edu>
Sender: london@sunsite.unc.edu
Reply-To: Alternative Energy Discussion List <%cmsa.Berkeley.EDU:AE%SJSUVM1.BITNET@bigblue.oit.unc.edu>
Subject: Re: universal energies/forces
content-length: 3365
Status: O
X-Status: 

>>Lee Porter Butler writes
>
>>I love the discussion to determine if gravity is an energy of a force. Come
>>on boys, back to basics. What is the effective difference when it comes to
>>moving mass or doing work. Gravity creates the wind. Wind creates torque.
>>Torque can be converted to heat.
>>In gravity convection, we speak of loops. If you change the temperature of
>>a liquid or a gas, you change the denisty. In a loop, if you add or
>>subtract heat to one side, you will create differential density ( between
>>the two columns of liquid or gas) causing the colder side of the loop to
>>fall.
>
>Wrong. Gravity does not create the wind. The energy input is solar energy
>which alters air density. Gravity is a force which is exerted on the fluid.

Solar creates the differential density. Gravity creates the movement of
air. The movement of air transfers heat and can be used to create torque.
>
>There is no energy input from Gravity. As air rises the solar energy input
>is stored as gravitational potential energy. When it falls the stored
>gravitational potential energy is exchanged for kinetic energy. The storage
>of energy exactly equals the return. This is what is meant by saying the
>gravitational field is conservative.
>
>You can store energy by moving mass to higher altitudes in a conservative
>field. You cannot generate energy from it.
>
>Dr. Peter J. Wolfs                      [=---=]
>Electrical Engineering                    \o/
>Central Queensland University              X
>Rockhampton M.C. 4702                     / \
>Australia
>Tel +61 79 30 9599
>Fax +61 79 30 9382
>
>
>Re: universal energies/forces

So in all the old buildings which were built before fans of forced
mechanical air movement systems, to what force or energy does one attribute
the movement of air. What does the term "gravity convection" mean?

If one builds a solar chimney and the moving air turns a wind ( rising air)
turbine, I say the air would not move were it not for the solar heat (
added to the system) and the air would not move without the " force" of
gravity applied to the system.

What good is one without the other? The air will not move without the
existence of either "force or energy". Why does changing the height of a
"solar chimney" change the effective work which can be accomplished with a
fixed amount of applied solar heat?

What "force is at work when,in the middle of the night or during long
cloudy periods, heat and air is pumped up from deep in the ground below the
envelope houses?

What force moves a pendulum? Gravity plus the rotational movements of the earth.

Some day, when physicists overcome their lack of understanding of gravity,
we will use it to pull of space ships through hyperspace at speeds far in
excess of the speed of light. Physicists are dumfounded with limits. There
are no real limits, to our ability to imagine somthing.

I realize that we are all wasting time. I believe that all funds now being
used to destroy matter ( high energy physics ) fission research, big bang
theory, etc. should be terminated untill all human binegs have at least a
primary education and enough to eat. This is what I call common sense
priorities. What we have going on now is what I call nonesense.

Alpha Lee

Lee Porter Butler
620 Biscayne Drive
West Palm Beach, Florida 33401
407-659-7656


Re: universal energies/forces

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Sun Apr  9 20:10:41 1995
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To: london@sunsite.unc.edu
Date: 5 Apr 1995 14:18:14 GMT
From: Steve Troy <75442.1622@CompuServe.COM>
Message-Id: <3lu8r6$e6g$1@mhadg.production.compuserve.com>
Organization: Jade Mountain Inc.
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Subject: Re: DC to AC Inverters
content-length: 264
Status: RO
X-Status: 

Lee,

We have 240V pure sine wave inverters available - up to 4000 watt at
60 Hz and up to 3000 watts at 50 Hz.

If you would like more specs, send a fax number or mailing address.

-- 
Best regards,
Steve Troy, Jade Mountain Inc.
email: 75442.1622@compuserve.com

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Mon Apr 10 22:41:07 1995
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Date: 6 Apr 1995 09:19:04 -0400
From: nick@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu (Nick Pine)
Message-Id: <3m0po8$j72@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu>
Organization: Villanova University
Sender: london@sunsite.unc.edu
Subject: Solar closet economics
content-length: 5673
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This is a rough estimate of the payback period for three houses, counting
only materials costs and annual energy costs, ignoring labor costs and the
time value of money...

House (a) is a conventional 2000 ft^2 two-story frame house, about 32' on
a side, with R30 insulation, 20% R4 window area on each wall, and 0.5 air
changes per hour, in the Philadelphia area. It has a sum of R-values divided
by surface areas of approximately

SAR = (32x16x4+1024 ft^2)/R30 +0.2x32x16x4 ft^2/R4 = 100 +100 = 200,

and an air infiltration rate of about 0.5 x 16,000 ft^3 = 8000 ft^3/hr,

so the average annual space heating requirement is about

5500 degree days x 24 hr/day x (200 + 8000 ft^3/hr/55 ft^3/Btu-F)

    = 5500 x 24 x (200 + 150 ) = 46 x 10^6 Btu/year,

or about the same as the heat contained in 450 gallons of oil, burned in an
old, 70%-efficient oil burner.

In addition, this house needs the heat equivalent of about 400 gallons of oil
per year for domestic water heating, which would cost about $1200/yr, with an
electric water heater, using electricity at 10 cents/kWh. This house uses the
heat equivalent of about 850 gallons of oil per year, altogether. Its oil
burner has an infinite payback period, for comparison with the next two houses.

House (b) is the same house, as redesigned by an architect, as a typical
"passive solar house." It might use 30% less oil than house (a) for space
heating, with 50%, vs. 20% south wall window area, and a masonry floor
in front of the south windows, or a double layer of drywall for additional
thermal mass in the house, at an additional cost of about $10/ft^2 for the
additional windows and thermal mass. The savings here is about 150 gallons
of oil/year, vs. house (a), and the additional cost of the house is about

30% x 512 ft^2 x $10/ft^2  = $1500 for the windows, plus 
50% x 1024 ft^2 x $10/ft^2 = $2500 for the floor.

Ignoring the time value of money, the payback would be about

$4000/(150 gal/yr x $ 0.7/gal) = 40 years,

or perhaps less if the floor is concrete, vs. tile, granite or marble,
which is good, compared to case (a).

House (c) is the same house as redesigned by a residential passive solar
HVAC engineer, with a 4' wide x 16' long x 8' tall solar closet, behind some
clear polycarbonate solar siding, an air heater measuring 24' wide x 16' tall.
Both the closet and air heater would have plastic film dampers to prevent
reverse thermocirculation at night. House (c) might use 90% less energy than
house (a) for space and water heating, at an approximate additional cost of

64 ft^2 x $10/ft^2 = $640 for the solar closet, plus
                     $200 for a small pump and water-water heat exchanger.

The polycarbonate siding might replace vinyl siding _and sheathing_, and the
greenhouse shadecloth and 3 1/2" insulation in the  south wall might replace
5 1/2" of fiberglass insulation. The solar closet would have 3 1/2" of
insulation all around it, and it would contain 32 55 gallon drums full
of hot water, as a sort of stagnant, inefficient solar collector, BUT most
of the lost heat from the closet would go into heating the house. The air
heater wall would provide heat for the house on an average day, in January,
with some sun, and the solar closet would operate in "standby mode," until
its stored heat were needed to heat the house during a string of cloudy days.
Depending on the geometry, the solar closet might have a small, high
temperature fan to help with natural convection, and a horizontal reflective 
surface in front of it, eg a white-painted surface or shallow reflecting pond.

The solar closet would also provide hot water for the house, using a couple
of plastic drums on top of the 4 high x 8 wide drum stack as air-water heat 
exchangers. These bunghole drums would be plumbed together in series, and
low-pressure, high-temperature solar water would be circulated with a pump
through a loop with a water-water heat exchanger located below a conventional
electric water heater. If the electric water heater were located in or above 
the solar closet, the pump might not be necessary. In any case, electric water
heating would seldom be necessary.

The solar closet would be inexpensive floorspace, about 3% of the house area.
It might have a dirt floor, with the drums sitting on a piece of polyethylene
film on the dirt, with each drum supporting the one above it. The rectangular
array of drums might be lightly supported by the closet endwalls, to keep it
from tilting. The inside walls  of the closet might be the foil face of the
fiberglass insulation. The outside walls of the closet, inside the house,
might be drywall. The closet might have a small electrical air damper with a
thermostat to control it, to let warm air heat the house on cloudy days. The
closet could be extended a bit on one end to make a sauna or "warm room,"
for clothes drying or food drying. 

So here we seem to have an additional cost of materials, over case (a)
of about $840, (if the air heater replaces part of the normal south wall,
at the same or lower cost.) The payback period would be approximately

$840/(90% x 450 gal (space) + 400 gal (water)) x $ 0.70/gal)
 
    = $840/$535 = 1.5 years, or less, if water were heated electrically.

Now you might also ask, "Will this work, as described?" I think so, but
I haven't tried it, yet. That's an enginering question that can be answered
by experiments and caclulations involving heatflow. The new Conserval wall is
a thin, unglazed sheet of aluminum, painted black, with about 2% of its area
as 1/32" holes, with air flowing through the holes. It has a measured solar
collection efficiency of 80%, which seems encouraging.

Nick

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Tue Apr 11 18:11:08 1995
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Date: 4 Apr 1995 16:00:56 -0400
From: nick@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu (Nick Pine)
Message-Id: <3ls8ho$euj@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu>
Organization: Villanova University
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Subject: High-Performance, Cost-Effective, Passive Solar Workshop
content-length: 3474
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Earth Day, April 22, 8:30 AM-8:30 PM  Connelly Center  Villanova University

There will be an all-day workshop on passive solar heating in the Bryn Mawr
Room of the Connelly Center at Villanova University on Earth Day, Saturday,
April 22, beginning at 10 AM. The workshop will consist of a morning session,
with a basic tutorial on the fundamentals and simple mathematics of passive
solar heating, and a practical afternoon session, with open discussions and
designs for individual participants. The Bryn Mawr room and the cafeteria
in the Connelly Center will be open until 10 PM on Saturday, which will allow
the workshop to continue into the evening, if necessary. 
 
Local engineer Nick Pine and math teacher Clarissa Coffey will describe a
new, simple, passive solar heating technique for houses, offices, schools,
greenhouses and other structures. The technique may be used for new houses
as well as for retrofits to existing houses: a low-thermal-mass sunspace
heats the house in average solar weather, and a higher-temperature,
high-thermal-mass "solar closet"/sauna inside the sunspace heats the house
during cloudy weather. Nick believes that this inexpensive technique can
provide close to 100% of the year-round space heating and water heating
requirements of a house in Pennsylvania.

The workshop will include a voluminous paper handout, a tutorial on the simple
mathematics of heatflow, and some examples of useful solar materials and tools,
including computer simulations. There will be a slide show with pictures of
many local buildings, with some specific suggestions for solar improvements
for each, including estimated costs of materials and numerical benefits. There
will also be some specific suggestions for further practical solar research.
 
The workshop fee is $50 for families, $35 for non-students, and $25 for
students. Reservations must be made by April 15. A reduction in fee of $5
will be made for payments received by April 15, and scholarships are
available. Email reservations are preferred, to nick@ece.vill.edu. Nick may
also be reached by phone at (610) 489-0545, by fax at (610) 489-7057 or by
mail at 821 Collegeville Road, Collegeville, PA, 19426. Participants may find
it useful to bring pictures or drawings of their houses to the workshop, with
approximate measurements, and an indication of compass direction. 
 
This workshop is sponsored by the Villanova Environmental Group, as well as
the Villanova department of Electrical and Computer Engineering.
 
Tentative workshop agenda:

    8:30-9:00   Registration 
    9:00-10:00  "Ohm's Law for Heatflow"
   10:00-11:00  Thermal storage
   11:00-12:00  Sunspaces and solar closets
   12:00-1:00   Lunch break
    1:00-2:00   Slide presentation
    2:00-3:00   Materials and tools
    3:00-5:00   Open discussions and individual designs
    5:00-6:00   Dinner break
    6:00-8:30   Continue discussions, designs, etc.
 
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Please register me for the High-Performance, Cost-Effective, Passive
                           Solar House Heating Workshop on April 22.
 
Name: _________________________________________________
 
Address: ______________________________________________
 
Phone number: _________________________________________
 
Email address, if any: ________________________________
 
Present heating system: _______________________________

South-facing wall area: _______________________________

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Wed Apr 12 01:41:46 1995
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To: london@sunsite.unc.edu
Date: Mon, 10 Apr 1995 14:11:31 GMT
From: Robin van Spaandonk <rvanspaa@OZEMAIL.COM.AU>
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Subject: Re: Seaweed
content-length: 806
Status: RO
X-Status: 

>From:    William Bill Kovarik <wkovarik@RUACAD.AC.RUNET.EDU>
>Subject: Re: Seaweed

>agar, a medium for petri dish experiments. It grows in cultivation at
>very rapid rates, something like a ton per square meter per year, (Ill
>check exact figures if anyone likes).
>
>In an old scientific american I once came across an article about the
>Pasteur Institute using acid hydrolysis to get 10 gallons of alcohol
>for fuel per ton of seaweed.
>
>Using these figures, one could imagine a 100 square kilometer area producing
>one million gallons of alcohol for fuel per year, or an area the size of

Thats one _billion_  gallons, per 100 square kilometers per year.

>Argentina producing enough to replace the entire US supply of gasoline.

Regards,

Robin van Spaandonk <rvanspaa@ozemail.com.au>

Re:  Seaweed

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Fri Apr 14 14:42:36 1995
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Date: 13 Apr 1995 03:48:35 -0400
From: nick@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu (Nick Pine)
Message-Id: <3mil0j$ksd@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu>
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Subject: synchronous inverters
content-length: 3463
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X-Status: 

From this morning's email...

>I'm sure the principle is simple.

I think so... It's sort of a backwards lamp dimmer... If these things are
more expensive today than a normal inverter, there is something out of whack.
I think these are regularly used with PVs in Germany...

Here's a simple circuit:

      ------------------------
      |          |           |    Tp and Tm are 4 triacs in a full wave
      |  +       |           |    bridge. There is a current-limiting
     DC  Vdc     Tp +    -   Tm   coil in series with the 120V connection,
   source        |--120VAC---|    not shown...
      |  -       Tm          Tp
      |          |           |    The DC source could be 12 Volts, but the
      ------------------------    circuit is cheaper and more efficient if
                                  the DC source is or is converted to a
				  higher voltage, eg 120VDC. This allows 
        - -                       using lower current, cheaper triacs, or
     / Toff  \                    higher power from the same triacs. A suitable
Vdc/---------- \                  triac might be the 40 Amp 2N5445 made by 
 /Xp             \                Motorola, which costs about $5.
..............................................
                    \Xm            /
-Vdc    --------------\----------/
                        \ Toff /
                           - - 

When the 120VAC sine wave is less than the DC source voltage, in the
positive half-cycle of the sine wave, triacs Tp are both triggered on,
by a control circuit, not shown above, during time Xp. The earlier in
the cycle that they are turned on, the more power is drawn from the DC source.
When the AC voltage rises above the DC voltage, the triacs turn off.

On the negative half cycle of the sine wave, triacs Tm turn on during
time Xm, when the AC voltage is less negative than the DC voltage, and triacs
Tm turn off during the part of the cycle marked Toff, when the AC voltage
becomes more negative than the DC voltage.

So there you have it, $20 worth of triacs to feed about 40 Amps x 120VDC
to the AC line, about half the time, ie the above circuit sends about 2 kW
of power back to the power company, making the meter run backwards.

(It would send 4 kW at 220VAC.) You might make the coil by winding some
heavy copper wire around a loop made of iron pipe, with an air gap. The
coil/choke needs to be large enough to protect the triacs from overcurrent
and limit the harmonic distortion at the AC interface to less than 5%.

This circuit needs some fuses and other safety features, to keep from
energizing the power line when the power line is off, and some control/load
matching features, perhaps including a microprocessor, for PV panel or
windmill power point tracking, and some lightning protection and radio
interference protection, but it is really a lot simpler and cheaper in
principle than a normal inverter, and you don't need any batteries at all...

It does require some fussing to make it work, but a very talented
electronic person could build one in his/her basement, altho someone who
designs lamp dimmers or motor speed controls or switching power supplies
or inverters every day would have a much easier time of making it work. 

I'm increasingly drawn to the heretical idea that what you choose to do
with the power line, once it comes into your house, is your business, which
is pretty much how things work with the phone line now, vs. 20 years ago...

Nick

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Sat Apr 15 08:12:50 1995
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To: london@sunsite.unc.edu
Date: 10 Apr 1995 23:28:25 -0400
From: nick@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu (Nick Pine)
Message-Id: <3mct0p$2n8@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu>
Organization: Villanova University
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Subject: Re: Proposing the creation of...
content-length: 2041
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Frank Lewon:Off <AE%SJSUVM1.BITNET@cmsa.Berkeley.EDU> wrote:

>Hope you get thr pv alt. off the ground. Good luck.

I have little interest in photovoltaics, except to not see them in this group.
Perhaps you would like to create a.s.p., by posting the message below, with
your email address in the *** field. Then you might follow up by contacting
upstream sites to ask them to carry it...

Nick

Newsgroups: alt.config,alt.solar.photovoltaic,alt.solar.photovoltaic.ctl,control
Subject: cmsg newgroup alt.solar.photovoltaic
Summary: newgroup for technical discussions of solar photovoltaic energy
Followup-To: alt.solar.photovoltaic
Control: newgroup alt.solar.photovoltic
Approved: ***
Distribution: world
Keywords: solar photovoltaic energy

The creation of the group alt.solar.photovoltaic was proposed in alt.config
on March 20, about two weeks ago. So far, the proposer has received only
a few positive responses to its creation by email, so it is being created
with this message.

alt.solar.photovoltaic is intended to be a newsgroup for discussions of
practical photovoltaic energy collection and use, ie making and using
electricity from the sun. This is often discussed in alt.energy.renewable,
and reading about it there tends to waste the time of people who are
interested in other forms of renewable energy, and photovoltaic people
who read that group may not wish to wade through the other discussions
that go on there. At this point, it seems useful to specialize...

alt.solar.photovoltaic is NOT intended to be a place to discuss solar
thermal energy collection and use, except as combined with photovoltaic
systems, politics, aesthetics, solar space mirrors, envelope houses,
Stirling engines, solar refrigerators or air conditioning, cool tubes,
heat pipes, wind energy, wood energy, water energy, methane generation,
sewage treatment, perpetual motion, Nikola Tesla, unseen forces,
electromagnetic pollution, capturing free energy from power lines or radio
stations, nuclear waste, decomposing dead bodies or 600 mpg cars.

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Sat Apr 15 13:42:53 1995
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Date: 14 Apr 1995 04:01:47 -0400
From: nick@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu (Nick Pine)
Message-Id: <3mla5b$7qn@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu>
Organization: Villanova University
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Subject: Re: Fireplace creosote deposition - Interior fireplace
content-length: 1168
Status: O
X-Status: 

will1000@ix.netcom.com (Will Stewart) writes:
 
>   I plan to use an interior fireplace to avoid having a cold masonry flue  
>   exposure. The top of the chimney will be insulated to reduce heat loss.  
>   Are there any formulas or rules of thumbs for these conditions?
>
>   At what temperature (or delta T) does deposition take place?  

Perhaps you could use two concentric fluepipes, or three for leak-safety
(Norman Saunder's suggestion), with the flue gas going up thru the center one
(made from 316 stainless steel?) and outside air coming down from the roof
between the outer ones, to make a counterflow air-air heat exchanger that
would work even when there is no fire. Unlike typical triple-walled fluepipe,
there would be no insulation in this assembly, or perhaps some thermal shunts,
eg bolts, thru the insulation. If the joints nest downwards, w/o horizontal
sections, the creosote, condensation, etc. in the flue gas should end up back
in the fireplace, regardless of the (ideally low) exit temperature.

The fireplace might be enclosed and airtight, to be more efficient.
Part of the air that comes down from the roof might be combustion air. 

Nick

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Sat Apr 15 15:13:05 1995
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To: london@sunsite.unc.edu
Date: Wed, 12 Apr 1995 10:11:47 GMT
From: Lee Butler <lbutler@GATE.NET>
Message-Id: <5934.usenet@merckx.graphics.cornell.edu>
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Reply-To: Alternative Energy Discussion List <%cmsa.Berkeley.EDU:AE%SJSUVM1.BITNET@bigblue.oit.unc.edu>
Subject: Re: universal energies/forces
content-length: 469
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Gobblegook. Egg heads, nerds, impractical imperilists, extinct.

Neither is capillary action, evaporative cooling, osmosis or physical
expansion due to changes in temperature an energy, but they can be utilized
to serve human beings and they do not cost anything.
When will you boys stop using raw horsepower And atomic energy to cut hot
butter?Alpha Lee

Lee Porter Butler
620 Biscayne Drive
West Palm Beach, Florida 33401
407-659-7656


Re: universal energies/forces

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Sat Apr 15 15:13:25 1995
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Date: Wed, 12 Apr 1995 10:05:23 GMT
From: Lee Butler <lbutler@GATE.NET>
Message-Id: <5881.usenet@merckx.graphics.cornell.edu>
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Reply-To: Alternative Energy Discussion List <%cmsa.Berkeley.EDU:AE%SJSUVM1.BITNET@bigblue.oit.unc.edu>
Subject: Re: World Peace Society Project
content-length: 2902
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X-Status: 

>        The idea behind the World Peace Society Project is peace.
>As the founder of the Project, I ask this question:  Is humanity
>behaving in a way that, as a whole, serves the best interest of
>humanity?
>        As the founder of the World Peace Society Project, my job
>is to merely coordinate the Project in its early stage.  In the
>early stage, I plan to merely share the idea of the World Peace
>Society Project.
>        In your opinion, is humanity presently working for peace,
>as a whole, or working against it?  For right now, I'm looking for
>people interested in helping me share the idea of he World Peace
>Society Project.
>        To hear more form me about the World Peace Society Project,
>send email to Geoff Coe,  c/o  mnoon@cc.gettysburg.edu.  The "snail
>mail" address of the World Peace Society Project is:
>        WPSP
>        PO BOX 167
>        Chambersburg, PA  17201
>
>
>
>World Peace Society Project

Dear Geoff Coe,

I wish more people were this easy to respond to. Yes I am interested in
peace and I am interested in participating in your project.My wife Jill and
I are also looking for people who are into peace, commitment and being
responsible for the damage each of us is causing, due to the very way in
which we light out lamps and obtain our daily bread. We are looking for
people who are not afraid to share a dream, that true community is
possible, that it begins by telling the truth about how you really feel. I
think putting you posting on this board is the best place in the world to
start the peace process. From this "enlightened group" I have been
personally threatened or wished to die. These people are so caught up in
hard science, aggresive mechanical approaches to really very simple
problems.

We have started a local school of environmental consciousness and art,
called the Orchid School.It is located at the Ann Norton Sculpture Garden,
on Lake Worth, overlooking the island of Palm Beach. Palm beach has 3000
homes with an average value of over a million dollars. Many go for 20
million or more. Donald Trump has kust formed the most exclusive and
important club in the world at Mar Large. He already entertains the power
and the players, who also incidently, comeinto our art gallery on Worth
Avenue.

We believe that if you do not start by teaching the very richest people in
the world, a better way, you might as well not bother with everyone else.
These people own and run the world. This is the real world here. Everywhere
else just pretends things are real. Here you are dealing with the only
people who count.
Please keep me posted on your progress. What are your visions of world at
peace? What would everyone be doing? Good luck and may you achieve your
dreams in our own lifetime.

Alpha Lee Rainbow Light Cloud

Lee Porter Butler
620 Biscayne Drive
West Palm Beach, Florida 33401
407-659-7656


Re: World Peace Society Project

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Sat Apr 15 15:42:49 1995
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Date: Wed, 12 Apr 1995 10:24:00 GMT
From: Lee Butler <lbutler@GATE.NET>
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Subject: Re: universal energies/forces
content-length: 910
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It is this kind of pedantic, reductionistic thinking which has brought the
world into the amazing wonders of modern technology. Personally I can not
disprove anything you are saying.I simply stand by my houses as the most
comfortable, open, light airy, easy to maintain, beautiful of any in the
world. All the arguments, pro and con about why they work and how they work
are scientific bs.

I will continue to utilize gravity, evaporative cooling, and dozens of
other " energies" to power my natural living organic systems. You can
continue building and getting your power the old way. Eventually, you will
run out of bs and the fuel you are consuming.

It is combustion and friction which are the enemy, along with
centralization and closed scientific minds who practive architecture.
Alpha Lee

Lee Porter Butler
620 Biscayne Drive
West Palm Beach, Florida 33401
407-659-7656


Re: universal energies/forces

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Sat Apr 15 15:42:51 1995
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Date: Wed, 12 Apr 1995 10:26:27 GMT
From: Lee Butler <lbutler@GATE.NET>
Message-Id: <6584.usenet@merckx.graphics.cornell.edu>
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Subject: Re: universal energies/forces
content-length: 1342
Status: O
X-Status: 

>>In article <18738.usenet@merckx.graphics.cornell.edu> Lee Butler
>> <lbutler@GATE.NET> writes:
>>
>><snip>
>>
>>> Gravity creates the wind.
>                No gravity no rising or falling of the air mass because of
>differential densities.
>                Least that 's how i sees it..
>
>
>>
>>
>>Hmmm... I thought that solar heating of the atmosphere combined with the
>>Earth's rotation creates the wind.  Darn.  So the best place for wind farms
>>would be at the base of really tall mountains?  ;^)
>>
>                Any chopper pilot will tell you that you HAVE to be real
>careful during mountain operations.. seem to be tremendous up and down
>drafts.. probably in part due to the THERMALS from Rising and Falling air
>because air gets hot, less dense,and rises on the sunnysie of the mountain..
>Then on the cooler darker side of the mountain it sinks...but it wouldnt
>sink OR rise in a gravityless environment.. ( warm air wouldn't be lighter
>than cool air )
>                I would think that a properly selected mountain site that
>took into account direction of prevailing wind and existing thermals would
>have tremedous potential as a wind mill site
>
>Re: universal energies/forces

Thank you. Alpha Lee

Lee Porter Butler
620 Biscayne Drive
West Palm Beach, Florida 33401
407-659-7656


Re: universal energies/forces

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Sat Apr 15 15:42:53 1995
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Date: Wed, 12 Apr 1995 10:30:20 GMT
From: Lee Butler <lbutler@GATE.NET>
Message-Id: <6636.usenet@merckx.graphics.cornell.edu>
Sender: london@sunsite.unc.edu
Reply-To: Alternative Energy Discussion List <%cmsa.Berkeley.EDU:AE%SJSUVM1.BITNET@bigblue.oit.unc.edu>
Subject: Re: universal energies/forces
content-length: 7547
Status: O
X-Status: 

>In article <18738.usenet@merckx.graphics.cornell.edu> Lee Butler
> <lbutler@GATE.NET> writes:
>
><snip>
>
>> Gravity creates the wind.
>
>
>Hmmm... I thought that solar heating of the atmosphere combined with the
>Earth's rotation creates the wind.  Darn.  So the best place for wind farms
>would be at the base of really tall mountains?  ;^)
>
>>The Tall White men with ties
>
><snipping of much drivel>
>
>Gee Lee, I'm kinda tall, I'm of the male gender, and even wear a tie
>occasionally; but, I work in and for renewable energy.  Did I miss something?
>
>But seriously, please watch the generalizations, particularly when combined
>with that kind of invective.  If we're going to get out of the mess we've
>created, everyone, including a whole bunch of tall white guys, have to work
>together with mutual respect.
>
>later
>Kevin
>
>- All opinions expressed are solely those of the author -
>
>Re: universal energies/forces

If the poem fits, wear it. If you can still act and think independently in
a tie environment, more power to you. I simply find the arrogant, up tight
Hravard-MIT attitude or business approach so monodimensional and boring. I
did not mean to imply that everyone who wore a tie was brain dead, just 95%
of them.

By the same token, if you go casual, it does not mean that you think for
yourself. Consider thisThe Palm Beaches
by Lee Porter Butler

West Palm Beach, or "Waste Palm Beach", as it is know by the midnight
underground alternative youth culture,( i.e The Flow and Rage, Red Heron )
is a microcosm or mini version of what is happening in the whole wide
world. It is easy to criticize, so that is what I am going to do here. I am
also going to offer a solution.

We have attempted to introduce some progressive, positive ideas, actions
and solutions to the problems of the revitalization of the down town area.
These ideas have been directed at the youth, who presently have no where to
go and nothing to do.

 The problem is we live in a money culture. If you have no money,you can
not be a part of the culture. Of course we have nature and that is free,
but if you are poor stay out of our downtown, it is for upwardly mobile,
well heeled,  material consumers.There is no place for art or alternative
economies.

The leaders of this community ignore the poor people, the children, the
defenseless, gays, Negros, Hispanics and individual artists who choose not
be a part of the system. I honestly believe that it would be correct to say
the the downtown developers, authorities and political leaders do not
understand art of life at all. All they know is concrete, accounting,
conceptual principles of mass production, laws and banking. In failing to
understand art and life, the aging fathers and young politically correct
clones are feeding the causes of crime, juvenile delinquency and begging
for another violent revolution.Their high rates of alcoholism & divorce are
just a symptoms of their deeper inner miseries.

Why should our young people respect what these old buzzards are doing or
who they are, when they do not allow alternative points of view to even be
heard. Our local politicians and city leaders all act petty, egotistical
and can not delegate responsibility or get anything done. i.e. therefore
instead of leaving our beautiful 10 year old streetscape and thirty foot
tall shade trees along Clematis be, they blew them up to replace them with
newer trees and sidewalks. 2.9 mil Just like the Pennsylvania Hotel 2.0 mil
The Holiday Inn 2.0 mil the Police Station 5.0 mil and the entrance to the
main downtown library, another mil or two.Pretty soon you are talking "real
money". Why? What for? Why is there no day care for working mothers? Why
are there not more books in our library or the latest computerized internet
connections which could free our local poor from ignorance and poverty. Why
did they close the downtown swimming pool? Where are our priorities? Have
we lost our minds?

We can now gaze at a (expensive to operate) computerized fountain, that
wastes precious water supplies  through high rates of evaporation. Why? So
we can attract more tourists. Do we really want downtown West Palm Beach to
be like South Beach? Most locals I know  say no. Then why do we have these
machismo juveniles running and ruining our beautiful city? Why did they cut
the 80' tall Olive shade tree which my wife and I tried to save at the Art
Armory? To cover more earth with concrete and build a wider sidewalk.
Idiotic Why did they just cut another tree? To cover more earth with
concrete.Idiotic. Progress, no. For profit, Yes. No. You decide. Power to
an old crowd of destructors and dominators. We have concrete at the Art
Armory while artists starve and languish for lack of basic support. We call
this the concretization of the earth. Our community will eventually end up
looking and feeling like New York or  Miami, a concrete jungle, a
nightmare, out of control. It starts small.

We are calling for a silent revolution. A Peaceful revolution. A expedient
and efficient revolution. Let the people who know speak. Let the others
remain silent. Let the leaders lead. Let the other follow. If it sounds
like I am running for something but I am not. I just want responsible
leaders who will communicate with their people. I am calling for an end to
the disparity of wealth here in Palm Beach county, to the end of millions
of square feet aging empty impotent warehouses and commercial buildings
which are presently legally inaccessible to the people who could actually
use them for self supporting and productive purposes.

I don't care what we have to call it. I don"t care who gets paid or how
much. I want to know why we have all these starving artists, needing studio
and living space, with no visible means of support cannot communicate with
the rich property owners, clinging to their wealth, self righteously
preaching to the artists to get a job. That is anti art and I call it anti
life.

In the past, 1776, 1860, and 1917, and throughout this century in China,
large masses of law abiding citizens, driven past their ability to
understand their dominators, stormed the bastions of power and took the
space and resources from the emperors, Tsars and Kings. In America, twice
the people have demanded local rule. In 1776 freedom won. In 1860 the
empiralists or federalists won. It is a situation something like the
ancient Egyptian civilization, instead of a pharaoh, we have a president. I
believe it is time for the people to reject this antiquated concept. I
hereby declare my primary allegiance to the earth and not to any political
nation or power which has temporarily established itself here on earth. The
time has come to end corruption. If everyone would simply tell the truth (
their own feelings) , evil would disappear.

We propose that the new growth business of Downtown West Palm  Beach be
environmental education and entertainment. A kind of ecotourism resort,
where the latest in benign ecologically sustainable life styles and
technologies would be visible and being demonstrated for profit and fun.
Health oriented, we have the perfect climate in which to develop something
like this. We have the two  most important ingredients, sunshine and water.
All it takes is  vision & leadership, scholarship and acts of distinction
on the part of each and every person who lives here. Help us convince the
powers that be to start this multiversity now.



Lee Porter Butler
620 Biscayne Drive
West Palm Beach, Florida 33401
407-659-7656


Re: universal energies/forces

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Sat Apr 15 17:42:59 1995
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Date: Fri, 14 Apr 1995 10:53:08 GMT
From: willem hamel <aomgt@INFI.NET>
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Subject: Fwd) AoM 13th Annual International Conference
content-length: 15357
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X-Status: 

ATTENTION AE SUBSCRIBERS:

Please take a moment to look at the Global Health and Ecology (GH&E)
Group listed below in this forwarded "call for papers".  The Track
relative to Alternate Energy may be of interest to you.  I recommend
this conference for all persons interested and active in renewable
resources and alternative energy research and development worldwide.

Will Hamel, Ph.D.


------- Forwarded Message Follows -------


                           THE ASSOCIATION  OF MANAGEMENT (AoM)
                                       13th Annual International Conference
                                                    August 2-5, 1995
                         Waterfront Hotel, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
                                                             _______
______________________________  _AoM_  ____________________________
________Academicians_____________  _ _  ___________Practitioners________
_________________________________  _  ______________________________


                                                     CALL FOR PAPERS
                   SUBMISSION DEADLINE DATE POSTMARKED MAY 15, 1995

Announcing the Association of Management's Thirteenth Annual International
Conference, Waterfront Centre Hotel (Hotels et Villegiatures Canadian
Pacifique), Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, August 2-5, 1995

CALL FOR PAPERS,
Research in Progress, Symposia, Panels, Workshops, Case Studies, Proposals

CONFERENCE
This year's conference will present 300 sessions in ten (10) parallel AoM
'95 Groups consisting of 114 topical area tracks.  Together they will offer
an outstanding selection of papers, research in progress, symposia, panels,
workshops, case studies and proposals.  Awards will be made for the best
papers selected from each of the 10 AoM '95 Groups listed in this announcement.

AoM '95 THEME
"Bridging the Global Gap between Research and Practice into the 21st
Century"

DRAFT SUBMISSION GUIDELINES
You are invited to submit three copies of a completed paper, symposium,
case study, research in progress paper, panel discussion, or other activity.
Papers should be original, unpublished elsewhere, in the style of the
American Psychological Association (APA), fourth edition, and no longer
than 5000 words (approximately 25 front and back typewritten double
spaced pages on American sized, if possible, 8.5" x 11" 20# white
bond paper). Include an abstract with the body of the full paper.

Symposia, panels, workshops and other proposals should include the names
and affiliations of the individuals who have agreed to participate and a
1-2 page summary of the topic, including a description of how the session
will be structured.

Research in progress submissions should be no longer than 2000 words in
length and include a one-page abstract.

All submissions should include a separate title page with each author's
full name, affiliation, complete address, telephone, and if available, fax
number and e-mail address.  Where possible, correspondence with presenting
authors will be done by e-mail.  Also identify the name of the AoM GROUP
with its corresponding GROUP TRACK CODE (e.g., ESR-06) ON THE TITLE PAGE.
In addition, include an address where you can be reached during the summer
months of 1995.  MAIL YOUR ENTRIES BEFORE THE SUBMISSION POSTMARKED
DEADLINE OF MAY 15, 1995 directly to the conference program co-chairperson
noted at the end of this call.

All submissions should be accompanied by a self-addressed, stamped postcard
(with paper title written on reverse) to acknowledge receipt, and a
self-addressed, legal size envelope to be used in returning Referee Committe
decisions. Submissions outside the continental limits of the United States
of America must be accompanied by INTERNATIONALLY-STAMPED, self-addressed
postcards and legal size envelopes.

MARK YOUR CALENDAR WITH THESE IMPORTANT DATES:

Submission Receipt Deadline:  Monday, May 15, 1995
Acceptance Notice:  Monday, June 05, 1995
Final Entry Version & Registration Fee Due: Monday, June 19, 1995
Conference Dates:  Wednesday thru Saturday, August 2-5, 1995

PUBLICATIONS
The AoM publishes one (1) Best Papers Proceedings (consisting of the most
distinguished refereed submissions from each of the AoM Groups), and 10
separate Group Related Proceedings containing all of the refereed sub-
missions accepted for conference presentation. See list of Groups below.

Accepted papers are published in one of the group's refereed AoM conference
proceedings to which submitted (see groups below) in both soft cover
traditional, and contemporary electronic formats.  Full papers will be
published in their entirety.  Extented abstracts will be published for
symposia, panel discussions, research-in-progress papers workshops and
other accepted proposal formats.

Further, all accepted papers within the Educational Studies and
Research Group (ESR) will be considered for insertion in a special
section of _On the Horizon's_  WWW site.  Modified versions of these
will also be considered for publication in _On the Horizon: The
Environmental Scanning Newsletter for Educational Leaders_.  Contact
the editor, James L. Morrison for details: Morrison@unc.edu or
919-962-2517.

In addition, papers judged by the review process to be the best candidates
for AoM journal publication will, with the approval of the authors, be
forwarded to the Journal of Management Systems (JMS), the Journal of
Information Technology Management (JITM), and/or the Global Information
Systems Journal (GISJ) journal senior editors.

Qualified presenting authors will be notified of acceptance before June 5, 1995.
Presenting authors of accepted submissions will have the opportunity to
make revisions of their accepted entries prior to submitting the final
version by June 19, 1995.  At that time, a disk done in MSWord or WordPerfect
version of the final paper or extended abstract should be submitted, along
with 2 camera ready laser printed originals.  Submitting an electronic
document as a backup to a camera ready version is contingent upon the paper
being accepted for presentation and publication, BUT IS NOT required for
submitting papers for the initial review.  The conference chairperson will
provide assistance for those presenting authors of accepted submissions who
are new to submitting electronic documents.  Accepted papers will be
officially indexed and prepared for electronic publication by Maximilian
Press in addition to the their publishing and distributing the standard
bound publication at conference.

REMEMBER, THE EXTENDED  SUBMISSION POSTMARKED DEADLINE DATE IS:
Monday, May 15, 1995

SUBMISSIONS MAY BE TENDERED TO ANY ONE OR MORE OF THE FOLLOWING GROUPS:


AoM '95 GROUPS (divisions), GROUP TRACKS AND TOPICAL CODES

MANAGEMENT FUNCTIONS AND APPLICATIONS GROUP (MF&A)
Tracks: MF&A-01 Accounting; MF&A-02 Auditing; MF&A-03 Law and Taxation;
MF&A-04 Finance and Investments; MF&A-05 Healthcare Accounting and Financial
Management; MF&A-06 Economics; MF&A-07 Marketing and Consumer Behavior;
MF&A-08 Production, Operations and Service Management; MF&A-09 Materials
Management and Logistics; MF&A-10 Quality Management; MF&A-11 Management
Science; MF&A-12 Business Technology; MF&A-13 Policy and Strategy;
MF&A-14 Mergers, Acquisitions and Downsizing; MF&A-15 Planning and
Forecasting; MF&A-16 International Business; MF&A-17 International
Management; MF&A-18 Consulting and Professional Issues; MF&A-19 Case Studies

MULTIDISCIPLINARY GROUP (MD)
Tracks: MD-01 Corporate Social Responsibilities and Ethics; MD-02 Health
Care Administration; MD-03 Budgeting and Financial Management; MD-04
Business Communication; MD-05 Administration of Justice and other Legal
Issues; MD-06 Project Planning and Political Systems; MD-07 Diversity Issues
in Organizations;  MD-08 Leadership and Strategic Planning; MD-09 Economic
Development and Cultural Change; MD-10 Entrepreneurship and Small Business;
MD-11 Research Methods

EDUCATIONAL STUDIES AND RESEARCH GROUP (ESR)
Tracks: ESR-01 Adult Education; ESR-02 Administration; ESR-03 Corporate,
Global and Management Education; ESR-04 Curriculum Studies; ESR-05 Educa-
tional Leadership; ESR-06 Education in the Professions; ESR-07 Social
Context of Education; ESR-08 Instruction and Learning; ESR-09 Measurement
and Research Methodology; ESR-10 Policy Analysis, Law and Education;
ESR-11 Distance Education and Communication

HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT GROUP (HRM)
Tracks: HRM-01 Comparative Labor Relations; HRM-02 Compensation and Benefits;
HRM-03 HRM in Higher Education Institutions; HRM-04 Labor Education in the
21st Century; HRM-05 Motivation; HRM-06 Participatory Management/Quality;
HRM-07 Performance Appraisal; HRM-08 Private and Public Sector Collective
Bargaining; HRM-09 Recruitment and Selection; HRM-10 Safety, Health and
Employee Relations and Assistance Programs; HRM-11 Teaching Innovation/Cases in
 HRM;
HRM-12 Training and Career Development

ORGANIZATIONAL STUDIES GROUP (OS)
Tracks: OS-01 Organizational Theory; OS-02 Organizational Structure;
OS-03 Organizational Behavior; OS-04 Organizational Change and Development;
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From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Sat Apr 15 18:12:54 1995
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To: london@sunsite.unc.edu
Date: 13 Apr 1995 06:36:04 GMT
From: hatch@CompuTech.reno.nv.us (Stephen Hatch)
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Subject: Solar Powered House
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  I live in Northern Nevada and my house is almost entirely Solar powered.
PhotoVoltaics battery stored Inverter driven 120 volt system.
It works great.
I have thirty feet of 3inch black ABS pipe on the roof covered by clear plexiglass
that produces steam if I don't watch it and cool it down.
The wood stove heats quite adequately in the dead of winter.
What's all the idiotic discussions about??
Some of us are already doing it...... not gumming it.
Total invested cost is less than $6,000.    And that spent over a two year period.
You wanna know more?
Stephen Hatch

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Sat Apr 15 20:13:01 1995
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Date: 14 Apr 1995 08:24:22 -0400
From: nick@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu (Nick Pine)
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_Super-Solar Houses--Saunders's Low-Cost, 100% Solar Designs_

By William A. Shurcliff (with extensive help from Norman B. Saunders)

Copyright 1983 by William A. Shurcliff

Brick House Publishing Company, Andover MA 

Table of Contents

1. Introduction                            1
2. Preview of the Three Houses             7
3. General Strategies                     15

I. Shrewsbury House

4. Shrewsbury House: Specific Strategies  23
5. Attic Solar Window                     38
6. Upper Thermal-Storage System           46
7. Lower Thermal-Storage System           49
8. Greenhouse                             53
9. Air-Drive System                       57
10. South Window System                   61
11. Non-South Windows                     65
12. Other Components                      67
13. Operation in Summer                   72
14. Performance                           76
15. Cost                                  84
16. Discussion                            85

II. Cliff House       

17. Cliff House: A General Overview       91
18. Sunspace                              99
19. Thermal-Storage Systems              105
20. Main Airflow System                  108
21. Other Components                     113
22. Wintertime Performance               115
23. Keeping Cool in Summer               117

III. All-Solar-Too House

24. All-Solar-Too House: Main Goals
    and Strategies                       121

IV. Comparison

25. Comparison of the Three Houses       131

Patents and Trademarks                   137
Bibliography                             138
Index                                    140

Introduction
------------

This book is about three remarkable houses. One, called Shrewsbury House,
was essentially completed and occupied late in 1981; through two winters
and one summer it has performed with full success. Another, called Cliff
House, is nearly complete as of this writing (May 1983.) The third, called
All-Solar-Too House, is a design prepared for the 1982 Gardenway Passive
Solar Design Competition; as yet no construction is scheduled.

Main Performance Features

All three houses, employing unique solar heating systems invented and
engineered by Norman B. Saunders of Weston, Massachusetts, are 100%
solar heated. More exactly, they are kept warm by intrinsic heat sources
(human bodies, electric lights, cooking stove, etc.) and by solar energy.
None has a furnace or wood stove. Also, all stay cool in summer.

The "100% solar heated" claim [now much stronger, in 1995, after 12 years
of electronic data logging of house temperatures, etc.--Nick] needs some
slight qualification. Although the houses will remain comfortable throughout
the winter without auxilliary heat, the occupants may, on certain occasions,
make use of a small electric heater to make one room extra warm, if someone
in the house is ill, or to accelerate the drying of fresh paint. And they may
do so when, for experimental purposes, various changes are made in system
components or in control procedures. One house, Cliff House, has a fireplace
that was included for reasons of esthetics.

All three houses have many attractive features other than heating
self-sufficiency. Operation is automatic, or hearly so. The houses
remain fairly warm in winter even if left unoccupied for a week or more.
Each has an integral south greenhouse or sunspace. Each has ample window
areas, not only on the south, but also on the east, west and north.

In each of these houses, the space heating system employs no conventional
collector panels, no pumps, no valves, no drains, no moving liquid, no pipes.
There are no Trombe walls. In none of the living-area rooms is there any
bulky equipment used solely for space heating. Thus there is great freedom
of choice in room layout, furniture placement, etc.

All three houses have automatic passive solar preheating of the domestic
hot water supply.

Low Cost

For each house, construction cost is low--about the same as for a conventional
house of comparable size and comfort. More interestingly, the construction
cost is comparable to, or slightly lower than, that of a typical 40-80%
passively solar-heated house, and it is much lower than that of a typical
_actively_ solar-heated house.

How can the cost be so low? Because:

o Most of the components consist of low-cost materials--air, water,
  stones, glass, plastic, fiberglass, etc.

o Most of the components can be assembled on-site by carpenters and
  others of typical competence.

o There is no furnace, no oil tank, no furnace room, no furnace
  chimney, no radiators, no air conditioner.

Operating cost is low--$50 to $100 per year for electric power to run the
one or two small fans that are the heart of the temperature control system.

Comparison with Other Leading Designs

How do these three houses compare with other outstandingly successful,
energy-conserving passive solar houses in the United States and Canada?
It is premature to make judgements with respect to Cliff House and
All-Solar-Too House. But Shrewsbury House has been in use throughout two
winters and one summer, and the record is clear: its performance has been
superb. I make the guess that its performance equals or surpasses that of all
other houses--in the USA or Canada--of comparable size, comfort, etc. 

Many hundred superinsulated houses have been built and operated for
one or more years and have performed excellently. They keep warm in
winter and cool in summer. But nearly all of them require an auxiliary
heating system. Most have no greenhouse. Many require operating thermal
shades in the evening and in the morning. Many have smaller-than-normal
areas of windows on the east, west, and north sides of the house.

Scores of double-envelope houses have been built and operated for two
or more years. They have performed well, and annual fuel bills have
been of the order of $200 or less. But auxiliary heating systems are
needed and some rooms are sometimes on the chilly side. Many double-envelope
houses entailed considerable extra construction cost, of the order of
$5,000 to $15,000. (Some early builders of double-envelope houses have
recently lost some of their enthusiasm for the double envelope itself
and are attaching greater significance to earth-coupling and solar energy
storage--a shift toward some of the features that, in Saunders-designed
houses, play major roles.)

About 100,000 passive solar houses that have large areas of south-facing
windows and much added thermal mass have been built and have been in use
for two or more years. Nearly all of these require auxiliary heating systems;
many require large areas of thermal mass that preempt space in the most
important part of the house--the south part; many employ large thermal
shutters or shades that must be operated twice a day; many suffer from
excessive glare on sunny days; many tend to overheat, especially on very
hot days late in the summer when the solar energy input via the south
windows is especially large.

Clearly it is a noteworthy advance when a solar engineer develops designs
that, besides requiring no auxiliary heating system, provide an integral
greenhouse, have ample window areas on all sides of the house, operate
automatically (no thermal shutters or shades to operate), reduce glare,
keep cool in the summer, and solar-preheat the domestic hot water supply.
To do all this at a cost that is no greater than that of a conventional
house is a landmark achievement.

The performance of the Shrewsbury House is now well proven, and I am
confident that Cliff House and All-Solar-Too House have the capability
of approximating its superb performance.

Crumbling the Classic Rule, "Do not try to achieve 100% solar heating."

Ten years ago, most solar architects and engineers were convinced that,
in designing houses for cold climates (such as New England), it was foolish
to try to achieve 100% solar heating. Prestigious experts made detailed
calculations that showed conclusively (they said) that, in New England
for example, it was unwise to try to achieve more than about 50-70% 
solar heating. They warned that the cost of achieving a higher percentage,
such as 80% or 90%, would be enormous and would far outweigh the benefits.
Even if the designer were to double the size of the collector and double
the size  of the storage system, he would get only about 90% solar heating.
To achieve 100% might require tripling the sizes, and much of the added
capacity would be useful only on five or ten days a year.

Especially clear warnings against attempting to achieve 100% solar
heating in cold climates are contained in articles by G. O. G. Lof and
R. A. Tybout. See, for example, their article in Natural Resource Journal,
Vol. 10(2), p. 268, 1970, or their article in Solar Energy, Vol. 14, p. 253,
1973. Tybout was an economist and Lof was one of the world's foremost solar
heating experts... 

Faith in the experts' negative pronouncements began to weaken a few years ago,
with the advent of superinsulated houses. By 1981 there were hundreds of such
houses, and by the spring of 1983 one or two thousand had been completed or
were under construction in the USA or Canada. Most of these houses require
only $50 to $150 worth of fuel per winter, and a few come close to being
100% heated by the combination of intrinsic heat and direct-gain solar energy.
Many such houses have no furnace, but do have a wood stove or a small electric
heater.

The final crumbling of the experts' gloomy view occurred in January and
February of 1982. In these midwinter months, Robert Bushey, owner and
occupant of Shrewsbury House, found that his house held at about 70 F--
day and night, in clear weather adn overcast weather, with no backup heat
at all. The goal was reached: 100% solar heating in a cold climate! It was
reached at no extra cost. For good measure, the goal was achieved without
turning the thermostat that controls the fan below 70 degrees F, without
reducing the areas of east, west, and north windows, without needing to
close thermal shutters each night and open them each morning, and without
curtailing fresh air input.

Why a full-length book?

To devote an entire book to three solar-heated houses may seem absurd.
A typical solar house can be described in a few pages.

But Saunders's three low-cost, 100% solar houses are different--very
different. They embody several radically new approaches to solar heating.
The design goals and also the general strategies used are new and strange, and
some of the key components are puzzling even to experienced solar designers.

A galaxy of new concepts is involved.

To clearly convey what the designs are all about, and what exactly the
heating and cooling systems consist of, requires a book.

Norman Saunders: Inventor and Doer

Norman B. Saunders, a professional engineer residing at 15 Ellis Road,
Weston, MA 02193, is a thoughtful, quiet, deliberate inventor: an inventor
of the lone-wolf type and one of New Englands's best known solar consultants. 

His passion is devices that are simple, homely and durable. He avoids
like the plague any device that is merely brilliant, flashy, impressive, or
striking. From forty years' experience in physics, mechanical engineering,
electrical engineering, and electronics engineering, he has developed the
greatest distrust of "brilliant" devices which, so often, turn out to cost
three times as much as anyone had predicted and to break down much too
promptly.

He turns his back instantly, with no apology, on most types of conventional
solar heating equipment.

Ignoring popular trends in solar design, he goes his own way, trying
to formulate the heating and cooling requirements in the simplest and
most basic way possible.

One of his main approaches is to use a multipronged attack: use a lot
of "little" pieces of equipment that will work together well. Each,
although simple and unimpressive, contributes significantly. Together
they provide a full but low-cost solution.

Accordingly, his inventions cover a broad range, from special glazing
materials and special window structures to special south roof louver
systems, special heat-storage assemblies, and special airflow controls; also,
various special systems for use in commercial buildings, eg high-temperature 
(steam-producing) systems. (The appendix lists many of his patents.)

But he does a lot more than think and patent: he tries out his inventions
prompltly. He puts them to work, either in his own house or in houses of
friends or clients. Often he continues to improve a given invention,
year after year.

Some of the solar houses that he has designed--and that have worked well--
are described in my earlier books... His first solar house is described in
his book Solar Heating Basics [a new edition may be coming... :-)] and in
a very recent report. See also the book by Carriere and Day.

I have found his patents hard to read, hard to understand. My impression is
that very few people have given the patents the attention that they deserve.
He has written a number of reports on his inventions, but they are heavy
reading.

For all these reasons, his major contributions to the art of solar heating
have been, until now, little known outside of New England. This is true even
though he has been generous with his time in presenting papers on his
developments at various meetings of solar energy societies and in giving
monthly talks and seminars to local groups on the theory and practice of
solar heating.

...

Some patents (copies of which are available for $3 each from The Commissioner
of Patents and Trademarks/Washington, DC 20231)

3,952,947 4/27/76  Solar heating system employing controlled
                   introduction of outdoor air via a special window.

4,078,603 3/14/78  Skylight-type collector with storage and
                   distribution systems.

4,123,002 10/31/78 System for controlling air temperature, humidity
                   and ventilation with use of ground coupling.

4,157,639 6/12/79  Seals for vertical and sloping windows or glazing.

4,201,189 5/6/80   South window solar-radiation absorbing element (as
                   in Shrewsbury House and All-Solar-Too House.)

4,296,733 10/27/81 Transparent roof employing reflective louvers that
                   admit much solar radiation in winter and admit little
		   solar radiation in summer.

Note: US patents are normally valid for 17 years from date of issue.

Nick

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Wed Apr 19 02:14:13 1995
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From: nick@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu (Nick Pine)
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Subject: Re: MRA free energy hobby project!
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DaveHatunen <hatunen@netcom.com> wrote:

A very nice evaluation of an MRA device... 

I think I'm beginning to understand these things. I wonder how they can be
useful. How about loosely coupling 1 to 3 60 Hz MRAs to the output windings
of an automobile alternator (without the diodes), connected to a windmill, as
an energy source, and connecting the MRA output to the 60 Hz power grid,
somehow, with suitable safety circuitry? It seems to me that the windmill
might be able to synchronize at multiple rotational speeds this way, and still
provide a 60 Hz output at a high voltage...

Nick

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Wed Apr 19 23:14:23 1995
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Date: 18 Apr 1995 04:13:56 -0400
From: nick@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu (Nick Pine)
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Subject: Re: MRA free energy hobby project!
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Harry H Conover <conover@max.tiac.net> wrote:
>Nick Pine (nick@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu) wrote:
 
>: I think I'm beginning to understand these things. I wonder how they can be
>: useful...
 
>Nick, wouldn't a Trace Inverter  be  better choice for this applicaton than 
>using a previously discredited MRA? ^---error1              error2--^
   ^---error3 

Trace inverters seem pretty complicated for this task, and an MRA
would seem to have some multiple rotational speed synchronization 
and load matching potential that is not in the Trace...

And Trace as a company seems leery of synchronous utility interfaces,
for political or business reasons, I guess... ("Yes, our box could
operate in that mode, but we don't want to irritate the utilities.")

>Remember, MRA is already demonstrated to be an energy sink without 
>any obvious useful function or application, not an energy source. 

Oh, I forgot. But what does that have to do with the price of cheese?
Previously discredited tools can be useful too, in new applications.
I hesitate to mention a certain architect, enamored of eternal harmonies.

Jeez Harry, I wish you would act less like an ignorant, illiterate,
backward-thinking, incorrigible curmudgeon, and more like me... :-)

Nick

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Harry H Conover <conover@max.tiac.net> wrote:
>Nick Pine (nick@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu) wrote:
>
>: Trace inverters seem pretty complicated for this task, and an MRA
>: would seem to have some multiple rotational speed synchronization 
>: and load matching potential that is not in the Trace...
>
>Seems like an appules and orgis comparison to me, Nick.  I suspekt
>that yur reeding mor sophistication into MRA curkuts then most of
>us elektronics and injuneering types do.

As I understand it, these things are resonant circuits, and if you are
somehow able to attach the output of a 60 Hz version to a power line,
and chop the low voltage alternator output, and loosely couple it to
the MRA input, you could end up with a windmill that would have a
reasonably high effective output voltage, as a fairly pure sine wave,
loosely phase locked to the chopping frequency. If the windmill
rotational speed changed a bit, and the chopping freq were fairly high
compared to 60 Hz and the rotational speed, it seems possible that one
could lock to a new, slightly different rotational speed. So this
would be a sort of synchronous system, with highish multiply/divide ratios
that would change as the windspeed changed. I'm just kinda rambling here.
Does this make sense at all? I don't have a detailed plan, or even a clear
idea of how this might work, and I don't really give a hoot about all this,
but sometimes these crude ideas work out nicely...

I'd say there is some potential. Something further to explore. I do have
a couple of EE degrees, and 25 years of experience as an engineer, so
I can speak ex-catheter on this particular hunch, if I'm sitting down...

>: And Trace as a company seems leery of synchronous utility interfaces,
>: for political or business reasons, I guess... ("Yes, our box could
>: operate in that mode, but we don't want to irritate the utilities.")

That's an actual quote from a Trace employee, BTW...

>Posubly tru, but bare in mind that wen you use powur lines for electrical
>sinks and not (as they were intenduded) sorces, you exxtend the risk
>and ramufucatons of your mistukes and inncompetunce from yur locul domaan
>to the greatur comunety, with a potental imppact on pubblic safty.
>This is wy injuneers dooring this kind of theeng are licunsed.

I can relate to that. But PEs do a lot of silly things too, and
sometimes they just try to make their lives simple, vs designing
inspired cool systems... The last time I employed a PE was when a house
I owned had a fire, and the building inspector (who had a high-school
education) refused to let me reconstruct it as it had stood for the
last hundred years. So I did a bunch of beam strength calculations,
and got a PE to stamp a dwg, and everyone ended up happy, altho one of
us was a tad poorer. I guess bribing the building inspector might have
been cheaper, and equally safe, from a stuctural point of view :-)

Of course there are people who also believe that one should not do
high-temperature experimental sewage treatment in the attic, that it
makes more sense for licenced professionals to treat sewage in 50 million
dollar treatment plants, connected to every house in the county by pipes
and pumps and sewage blenders. I do think that certain architect would agree
with me that there are alternatives to this sort of over-centralization,
were he to realize that we are on the same side here. 

I just took a PE review course, BTW, and intended to take the exam last
weekend, but the state licensing board had a fire that apparently destroyed
all their EIT records, so I have to somehow go prove that I passed that test
10 years ago... Yuck.

>: >Remember, MRA is already demonstrated to be an energy sink without 
>: >any obvious useful function or application, not an energy source. 
>
>: Oh, I forgot. But what does that have to do with the price of cheese?
>: Previously discredited tools can be useful too, in new applications.
>: I hesitate to mention a certain architect, enamored of eternal harmonies.
>
>Well Nick, acktully, I would mor expekt that certun arketek to champiun the
>MRA klugge than suphistikated persuns like you and I.  :-)

Perhaps if it had a convective loop, or a gravity battery, certain
cylindrical seers would so champeen it.
 
>: Jeez Harry, I wish you would act less like an ignorant, illiterate,
>: backward-thinking, incorrigible curmudgeon, and more like me... :-)
>
>Wurken on it, Nick!  Unfortunetally, my resurch on combinin expoxy with
>Capt. Krunch cerual to prodooce new, strngg, lite strukturel materieels 
>eats intu my avalable time.  Stil, I'm tryun!

Sounds good, Harry. Sounds a bit like Bucky's patented "stockade system."

Have you been using a strange spell-checker lately? Or perhaps a Griz filter?
 
Nick

From JAMIE@UTKVX.UTCC.UTK.EDU  Thu Apr 20 12:01:47 1995
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Date: Thu, 20 Apr 1995 11:40:14 -0500 (EST)
From: James Pizzirusso <JAMIE@UTKVX.UTCC.UTK.EDU>
Subject: Watts Bar Rally/Renewables Fair
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>From:	IN%"jdavis@cs.utk.edu" 20-APR-1995 11:24:40.34
To:	IN%"jamie@utkvx.utk.edu"
CC:	
Subj:	

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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:  
APRIL 19TH - WATTS BAR RALLY AND RENEWABLE ENERGY FAIR
PLEASE DISTRIBUTE FREELY!

Renewables Now, Watts Bar Never!
Saturday & Sunday April 29-30, 1995 in Spring City Tennessee.
Renwables Energy Fair & Watts Bar Rally.
Saturday: 10am - 7pm	Sunday: 11am - 5pm

Come Enjoy the Power of the Sun.

*  Come hear Dave Freeman, former head of the Tennessee Valley 
Authority (TVA), speak about renewable energy.

*  Meet Cyrus, Greenpeace's 18-wheel truck that carries a portable
solar electric generator and provides power from the sun!

*  Watch the actual building of a straw bale house and a geodesic 
dome that are super energy efficient.

*  Learn about the potential of windpower in the region!

*  March to the Watts Bar nuclear power plant (see fact sheet 
below) - the last nuclear power plant under construction in the 
United States.  With over 22 years of construction and $8 billion
spent, it is time ot pull the plug on this money drain!  
Saturday 11am - 2pm.

*  There will be music, food, theater and fun both days!

Directions:  Take I-75 from Chattanooga or Knoxville, Tennessee to
Exit 60 near Spring City.  Head northwest & follow the signs to 
the Watts Bar Dam.  Follow signs to the fair (across from the
nuclear plant).

Hosted by the Snail Darter Alliance (Students Promoting 
Environmental Action in Knoxville, Foundation for Global 
Sustainability, Katuah Earth First!, Tennessee Valley Energy 
Reform Coalition, Student Environmental Action Coalition, and
Greenpeace).

For more information, call: (615)-524-4771, or (615)-624-3939.
or email: jamie@utkvx.utk.edu or jdavis@cs.utk.edu



          *** Watts Bar Nuclear Power Plant Fact Sheet  ***
                  PLEASE DISTRIBUTE FREELY

Watts Bar nuclear power plant is the only nuclear power plant 
still under activeconstruction in the United States.  Watts Bar is
the only nuclear power plant that has not received an operating 
license from the NRC.  Watts Bar has one of the most dismal 
construction histories in the United States.  TVA has spent over 
$1 million every day for the past six years trying to "correct" 
safety problems.  Every year, TVA says this plant will go into 
operation.  Every year, this plant is delayed and hundreds of 
millions of dollars are spent - 8 billion thus far.  As the only 
federal power utility in the country, TVA has been allowed to 
incur this massive debt at the expense of American taxpayers.

	        WATTS BAR IS A LEMON!!! 

*  The Watts Bar nuclear plant, located in Spring City, Tennessee 
is approximately 50 miles southwest of Knoxville and 75 miles 
northeast of Chattanooga, Tennessee.  The Tennessee Valley 
Authority (TVA) began construction on Watts Bar in 1972 with a 
$325 million budget and planned to begin operation in 1978.

*  In 1985, after delays and cost-overruns, TVA applied for an 
operating license intending to begin operation of the plant in 
mid-April.  Only weeks before Watts Bar was about to go online, 
safety concerns expressed by employees halted all construction at 
the plant.  A subsequent Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) 
investigation confirmed that the actual status of Watts Bar 
revealed a large number of significant safety problems not 
previously identified by TVA.  TVA was denied an operating license
for the facility.  The safety problems were identified in many 
areas including structural welding, electrical cables, concrete, 
seismic supports and an overall poor quality assurance and quality 
control program.  Official NRC investigations of this matter 
blamed employee harassment and intimidation as one of the root 
causes of TVA's problems.

*  Congress initiated hearings spanning throughout 1986 to deal 
with the subject of TVA mis-management, intimidation and 
harassment of employees, shoddy development of their nuclear 
program, and failure of top-level TVA managers to identify crucial
safety problems.  TVA delayed the operation of the plant until 
1988.  In 1990, after more delays and cost-overruns, the NRC once 
again denied an operating permit when safety inspections 
identified further deficiencies at the plant.

*  In 1992, TVA released a study rating Watts Bar with the highest
probability of a core meltdown accident of any plant in the United 
States.  According to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, over the 
next 20 years, there is a 45% chance of a meltdown accident at a 
nuclear power plant in the United States.  

*  In August, 1993 the Nuclear Regulatory Commission Inspector 
General released a report indentifying TVA as having 1/4 of all 
the employee intimidation and harassment concerns filed with the 
NRC - more than any other utility in the country.   This same year,
the TVA delayed the start up of Watts Bar three times. 

*  In 1994, during a test to prepare for the operation of the 
plant, the control room caught on fire because of a loose wire 
behind the control panels.  Several people were taken to the 
hospital.  TVA again delayed the operation of Watts Bar two more 
times.

*  In reference to many of the problems at Watts Bar Unit One, the 
NRC recently stated in a staff assessment that, "the same mistakes 
have been repeated, and original problems have not been corrected."
The NRC staff noted, during several inspections, that Quality 
Assurance had been inadequate.

*  Today, Watts Bar is in its 22nd year of construction.  For the 
past three years, TVA has consistently delayed the start up of 
Watts Bar for months at a time while promising unrealistic 
operation dates and underestimating costs.  The projected cost to 
complete Unit One at Watts Bar is $8 billion.  TVA has already 
ceased contruction on Unit Two and several other plants due in 
part to public concern.  Currently, TVA is spending over $1 million
every day to fix safety problems still being discovered at 
the plant.  

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Thu Apr 20 14:14:35 1995
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Date: 17 Apr 1995 11:13:10 -0400
From: nick@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu (Nick Pine)
Message-Id: <3mu0i6$6ss@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu>
Organization: Villanova University
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References: <11456.usenet@merckx.graphics.cornell.edu>, <3mm5nr$6ce@mack.rt66.com>, <Pine.SUN.3.91.950417035924.25119B-100000@tyrell.net>
Subject: Re: Proposing the creation of alt.solar.photovoltaic
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Willie  <willie@tyrell.net> wrote:

>I checked the .newsrc file and could not find the alt.solar.photovoltaic
>group. When this group is created...

Perhaps you mean IF this group is created. I don't know that anyone is
ever going to do that, altho I've told several people how to do that,
in some detail...

Meanwhile, I have to go on reading about this very expensive and
mostly impractical technology, including news of amazing price
breakthroughs, "just around the corner." I wonder how many people have
rooftops full of PV panels and housefuls of batteries and $3000
refrigerators, who also live next to power lines and have big oil
burners in the basement, which they use to heat their houses, while
they vent the exhaust from their electric clothes dryers outside? :-)

Nick

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Tue Apr 25 03:46:06 1995
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Date: 24 Apr 1995 08:43:46 -0400
From: nick@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu (Nick Pine)
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Would you please take this discussion to alt.solar.photovoltaic?

Thanks,

Nick

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Tue Apr 25 03:46:07 1995
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From: nick@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu (Nick Pine)
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Would you please take this discussion to alt.solar.photovoltaic?

Thanks,

Nick

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Tue Apr 25 04:16:05 1995
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From: nick@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu (Nick Pine)
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Subject: Passive Solar House Heating Lectures in the Philadelphia Area
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High-Performance, Cost-Effective, Passive Solar House Heating

Wednesday, April 26, at 7:30 PM at the Academy of Natural Sciences, and

Thursday, April 27, at noon at Ursinus College, Pfhaler Hall room 114

Local engineer Nick Pine will describe a *new*, simple, passive solar heating
technique for houses, offices, schools, greenhouses and other structures.
The technique may be used for new houses as well as for retrofits to existing
houses: a low-thermal-mass sunspace heats the house in average solar weather,
and a higher-temperature, high-thermal-mass "solar closet"/sauna inside the
sunspace, heats the house during cloudy weather.

Nick believes that this inexpensive technique can provide close to 100% of
the year-round space heating  and  water heating requirements of a house in
Pennsylvania. A number of 100%-solar, inexpensive houses with long track
records have been designed by Professional Engineer Norman Saunders, using
similar techniques. These houses are mostly in the New England area, and
some of them have no backup heating systems at all.

The lecture will include a paper handout, a tutorial on the simple mathematics
of heatflow, and some examples of useful solar materials and tools, including
computer simulations. There will be a slide show with pictures of many local
buildings, with some specific suggestions for solar improvements for each,
including estimated costs of materials and numerical benefits. There will
also be some specific suggestions for further practical solar research.
 
Sponsors include the Philadelphia Solar Energy Society and the Ursinus College
Sigma Xi scientific society. There is no admission fee. All are invited. 
 

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Wed Apr 26 08:46:48 1995
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Date: 18 Apr 1995 20:25:30 GMT
From: shviid@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu (Steen H Hviid)
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Subject: Re: Where are the Earthships?
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The idea with the tires is to avoid making the adobe bricks, instead the
tires are filled with dirt and punded full. I have a copy of the video
where Dennis Weaver builds his house in Colorado, it looks impressive.
His house in in two level, built into the side of a hill (typicaly for
these houses) so there is only an exposed south side. The south side
is all-glass to get heat from the sun.

They do not use any other insulation than what the surrounding earth provides,
they say it takes about a year for the temperature to even out in the walls
of this earth-bermed house. I am surprised they don't use any insulation
though, since the earth a few feet down will be constantly about 60 degrees
(in the desert) or so. But maybe the charging-up over the year make up for it?
-- 
Steen Hansen (Hviid)    E-mail: hansen+@osu.edu
Computer Specialist,    The Ohio State University
There is something fundamentally wrong in treating the earth as if it was 
a business in liquidation.  -- Herman Dailey, quoted in "Earth in the Balance"

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Wed Apr 26 09:16:43 1995
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Date: 25 Apr 1995 09:17:10 -0400
From: nick@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu (Nick Pine)
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Subject: Re: Passive Solar House Heating Lectures in the Philadelphia Area
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Woodrow W. Baker <knapper@bga.com> wrote:
>Nick Pine (nick@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu) wrote:
>: High-Performance, Cost-Effective, Passive Solar House Heating
>
>: The lecture will include a paper handout...
>
>Hope you can post the paper handout here.

Sure, if you like. I'll be handing out these updated postings...

Article: 2080 of alt.architecture.alternative
From: nick@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu (Nick Pine)
Subject: One way to build a high-performance passive solar house
Date: 9 Feb 1995 08:56:54 -0500 [updated 4/25/95]
Organization: Villanova University

Step 1.

Look up the average outdoor temperature in December, where you live.

The nice new, free book, _Solar Radiation Data Manual for Flat-Plate
and Concentrating Collectors_, from the National Renewable Energy
Laboratory at (303) 275-4099, has this information, as well as some
solar information, for many places in the United States. (They also
have a CD, with *hourly* solar weather data for 247 US cities over the
last 30 years, that might be used for passive solar house simulations.)

For example, where I live, in the northeast, the average December
temperature is about 32 degrees F, and the average amount of sun falling
on a south wall is about 1,100 Btu per square foot per day.

Step 2. 

Estimate how many Btu/day you need to heat your house at that average
outdoor temperature.

For example, if you have a 30' x 30' 2-story house, you have about
3,000 square feet of walls and roof. If the R-value of that surface is,
say, 30, it takes about 3,000/30 = 100 Btu per hour to heat the house to
68 degrees, if it is 67 degrees outside. Subtract the average outdoor
temperature from the indoor temperature and multiply by 24 hours, then
multiply this by the sum of each surface area divided by its R-value.

Our example house takes (68-32) x 24 x 100 = 86,000 Btu per day to heat. 
Call it a hundred thousand, a nice round number that is about the same
amount of heat as a gallon of oil burned in an old oil burner.

Step 3. 

Calculate how much south-facing glazing you need on your low-thermal-mass
sunspace, to supply that amount of solar heat, on an average day.

Where I live, each square foot of south facing wall receives about 1,000
Btu/day, another nice round number. If the low-thermal-mass sunspace has an
insulated low-thermal-mass wall between it and the house, with a big window
fan in one window, to suck most of the warm air into the house during the day,
and you let the sunspace get icy cold at night, the sunspace will be about
68 F during the day, as a first approximation. So the heat lost from each
square foot of glazing in the sunspace to the outside, during the day, in our
example house, will be about (68-32) x 5 hours, or 180 Btu, if the sun shines
for 5 hours on a winter day. So each square foot of sunspace glass provides
about 800 Btu/day to the house, net, on an average winter day. Another way
to figure this is that each square foot of south-facing glazing collects the
heat-equivalent of 1-2 gallons of oil per year. If your present oil bill
indicates that you need a thousand square feet of glazing or more, perhaps
more house insulation and caulking are needed before solar heating, or you
could just use the sunspace to reduce the oil heat, with no thermal store.

Our example house would need about 100,000/800 = 125 square feet of glazing
in the low-thermal-mass sunspace glass to keep it warm on an average day.
Say, an 8' high x 16' wide window, with an insulated wall between that window
and the rest of the house. The sunspace might be quite shallow, eg some
cost-effective "solar siding," instead of, say, vinyl siding, as in the solar
closet wall below. Or it might be a bit deeper, extending out from the house
8', and used for growing ripe, red tomatoes and basil in December, perhaps
with a couple of extra hours of 90% high-pressure sodium and 10% mercury
vapor light, and a little heat leaked from the house on freezing nights.

Step 4.

Take a guess at how many cloudy days there are in a row in December, where you
live, and what the outdoor temperature is during those days. In many places,
cloudy days are warmer than sunny days in December.

(If you wanted to be more precise, the weather bureau, or perhaps NREL or NOAA
could help. Or you could calculate Gaussian statistics using the CD data.)

Let's say that our example house is in a climate with 5 cloudy days in a row,
in December, and that the average temperature during those days is 32 F.

Step 5.

Calculate how many 55 gallon drums full of water you need to keep the house
warm for that cloudy day period.

In our example house, this would be 5 x 100,000 = 500,000 Btu, about the same
as 5 gallons of oil. If the water in the drums is hot, say 130 F, and the
drums can keep the house warm until the water cools to, say, 80 F, then
each drum stores about 25,000 Btu, about the same as a quart of oil. So
5 gallons divided by one quart is 20 drums (talk about apples and oranges :-)

How do you keep the drums that hot? You build an insulated solar closet behind
the sunspace, in the house, with an air heater as part of the insulated wall
between the sunspace and the house, with a transparent vertical cover of glass
or transparent "solar siding," eg Dynaglas or Replex ((800) 726-5151)
polycarbonate plastic, which costs about a dollar a square foot, and comes
in long sheets, about 4' wide.

Behind that siding, you staple some 80% greenhouse shadecloth, which costs
about 14 cents per square foot, leaving a 1" air gap between the siding and
the shadecloth, and you leave another 1" air gap between the shadecloth and
the 3 1/2" of fiberglass insulation in the 6" wall, and you put small vents
(about 1% of the overall area, eg 1 square foot in our example house) at the
top and bottom of this air heater, to allow warm air from the solar closet to
flow into the outside air gap through the vent hole at the bottom of the air
heater, _through_ the shadecloth, and back through the upper vent hole into
the insulated solar closet. The vent holes should have plastic-film backdraft
dampers to keep the air from flowing when the sun is not shining. These might
be made from chicken wire and a thin (1 mil) plastic film like that used for
dry cleaner bags. 

The inside wall of the closet could be the foil face of the fiberglass
insulation. The floor might be dirt, covered with a layer of plastic.
There should be an air space between the drums and the walls of the
solar closet, to allow air to circulate around the drums. There should
also be a vent to the house, to be slightly opened on cloudy days. This
could be an electric air damper controlled by a thermostat. (Another
approach might be to put the 55 gallon drums on a strong attic floor as
an overhead "warmstore," a la Norman Saunders, for new construction.)

In our example house, if the 2' diameter x 3' long drums were stacked up
horizontally, 4 high, the solar closet would be 8' high x 10' long x 4' deep.
I would make it 6' longer, and use the non-drum space for a sauna. The
solar closet should also have 3 1/2" of fiberglass insulation in its ceiling,
ie the second floor of the house, and in its back (north) wall, inside the
house. Note that most of the "waste heat" from this solar closet ends up
in the house via the sunspace from the front glazing, when it is collecting
heat, and via most of the insulated surface the rest of the time. Note
that the solar closet does not usually provide heat for the house, except
during cloudy day periods, so it stays hot like a stagnant solar collector.

The sauna might have a very small woodstove, for burning newspapers, junk
mail, old paper towels, college committee recommendations, letters from
congressmen, and press releases announcing amazing new price breakthroughs
in photovoltaic technology.

Nick

Article: 2127 of alt.architecture.alternative
From: nick@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu (Nick Pine)
Subject: Passive solar house evolution
Date: 13 Feb 1995 09:49:42 -0500
Organization: Villanova University

Question 1: If you put a 55 gallon drum full of water in a 2' square x 4' tall
uninsulated box in the shade in Philadelphia, in January, what would the
average temperature of the drum be? 

Answer 1: According to the NREL _Solar Radiation Data Manual_, the average
January temperature in Philadelphia is -0.9 degrees C, or about 30 degrees F.

Q2: What would the average box temperature be if it were in the sun,
in Philadelphia, in January, and if it were painted white?

According to the 1993 ASHRAE Handbook of Fundamentals, the "sol-air
temperature," or equivalent air temperature, Te, of a vertical surface
in the sun, is the outdoor temperature + 0.15 x U, IF the surface is painted
a light color, and the amount of sun falling on the surface is U Btu/hour.

According to the NREL book, a south-facing wall in Phila in January receives
about 3.3 kWh/m^2/day, ie 3300 x 3.41 Btu/10.76 ft^2/m^2 = 1000 Btu/ft^2/day
of sun. This is an average daily insolation of about 40 Btu/ft^2/hour. So
assuming the sun only shines on the south side of the box, if it were painted
white, the average temperature of the south side would be 30 + 0.15 x 40 = 36
degrees. The interior temperature should be the average temp. of all of the
outside surfaces, I think. Each face of the box has a surface area of 8 ft^2,
and the top and bottom have areas of 4 ft^2, so the average drum temperature
should be about (8x36+3x8x30+2x4x30)/(8+3x8+4+4) = 1248 / 40 = 31.2 F, 1.2
degrees warmer than the drum in the shade.

Q3. What would the drum temperature be if the box were painted black?

The ASHRAE HOF says that the sol-air temperature of a DARK vertical surface
is the outdoor temperature + 0.3 * U, so if the black box were receiving 
the same amount of sun as the white box, the average temperature of the
south wall would be 30 + 0.3 x 40 = 42 F. So you can raise the effective
average outdoor temperature of a white south-facing wall in Philadelphia by
an average of 6 degrees, in January, just by painting it darker. Not bad... 

In the above case, the average temperature of the drum/box would be 

(8x42+3x8x30+2x4x30)/40 = 32.4 F, just above freezing.

Q4. Suppose the box had a single-pane glass south wall, with no insulation?

In this case, the solar energy, Ein, that goes into the box would be about

Ein = 2 x 4 ft^2 x 1,000 Btu/ft^2/day = 8,000 Btu/day,

assuming the glass transmits 100% of the solar energy.

If the drumwater has an average temperature of Tw, and the walls and glass
front of the box have an R-value of 1, the energy that goes out of the box
in one day is Eout = (Tw-30) x 24 hours x 40 ft^2/R1. If energy is conserved,
ie Ein = Eout, then Tw = 30 + 8,000/(24x40) = 38.3 degrees F. An improvement.
Six degrees warmer than the unglazed box...

Q5. How about if we add R-14 insulation to the other three sides and the top
and the bottom?

In this case, the solar energy that goes into the box is the same, but
the solar energy that goes out of the box, into the outside air, is

Eout = (Tw-30) x 24 hours x (8 ft^2/R1 + 32ft^2/R14) = (Tw-30) x 247, so if
Eout = Ein, then Tw = 30 + 8,000/247 = 62 degrees F, a livable temperature,
when the sun is shining, which begins to decrease when the sun stops shining.
This is often as far as passive solar house designs go, with the house getting
colder and colder on cloudy days, as a lot of heat leaks out of the south-
facing windows. One of the problems with this design is that you have to
*live* inside the "heat battery," so you can't make it too warm. 

Q6. But then suppose we make the glazed side an ideal air heater, so it
collects the sun's heat during the day, but the drum is insulated at night?

Now Eout = Es + Eother, where Es is the heat lost through the ideal south wall
air heater. Say the sun shines for 6 hours a day in January... Then
Es = (Tw-30) x 6 hours x 8 ft^2/R1 + (Tw-30) x 18 hours x 8 ft^2/R14.

Eother is the heat lost through the east, north and west walls of the box,
as well as the top and bottom. Eother = (Tw-30) x 24 hours x 32 ft^2/R14. 

So, if the energy into the box equals the energy out of the box, then

(Tw-30)(48+10+55) = 8,000, so Tw = 30 + 8,000/113 = 103 degrees F. But wait!
This is no good... This passive solar house has too much south-facing glass!
It overheats! At this point, the thing to do is open the windows in January,
or (better) move out of the little box with the drum in it, and build a house
behind it, using the hot water in the drum as a heat battery for cloudy days.

If the drum and its air heater are inside a sunspace, and the air from the
sunspace heats the house during sunny-day periods, the heat lost from the south
side of the air heater will help heat the house during sunny day periods. If
the house is built around an insulating solar closet containing the warm drum,
the heat lost from the drum will help heat the house too... So the heat that
leaks out of the heat battery during sunny-day periods is not wasted.

Q7. Now suppose we make the box 8' tall instead of 4' tall, so that the air
heater collecting area is 16 ft^2, and the drum on top still gets all the
collected heat, but none of the collected heat goes out through the lower half
of the box or the uninsulated glass at night?
                                                 g: glass       giii
Ein = 16 ft^2 x 1,000 Btu/day = 16,000 Btu/day.  D: drum        giDi
                                                 i: insulation  giii
Eout = Es + Eother                                              giii

       Es = (Tw-30)x6x16ft^2/R1 + (Tw-30)x18x8ft^2/R14 = (Tw-30)(96+10).

       Eother = (Tw-30)x24x32/R14 = (Tw-30)x55, as before.

So Ein = Eout ==> Tw = 30 + 16,000/(96+10+55) = 131 degrees. This is getting
interesting... We could not possibly live inside this solar closet, except
for a few minutes at a time, as a sauna, but it is good to have a heat battery
like this sitting around, charged up to a high temperature, because that will
make the useful heat that we can get out of it last for a long time, during
periods of cloudy days. Along with a bit more glazing, one might also put an
electric water heater inside this closet, and preheat its cold water input
with about 20' of 1 1/4" copper pipe running along the ceiling of the closet,
to heat water for taking showers, etc... If the input water is preheated, and
the water heater is in a 130F room, the electric heating element should rarely
turn on.

Q8. Suppose we used two layers of glazing instead of one, above?

Ein would be the same, in this simple model.

Es would be about (Tw-30)(48+10), and Eother would be the same.

So Tw = 30 + 16,000/(48+10+55) = 174 degrees F.

Q9. Then suppose we add a reflecting pool or shutter in front, which
increases the solar input by 50%?

Tw = 30 + 16,000x1.5/(48+10+55) = 242 F. (Which of course, would make
the water steam. Maybe these drums should be full of sand. But then you
would need about 3 times more of them, since masonry has about a third
the heat capacity of water, and a higher thermal resistance.)

Q10. But wait, we were going to put the solar closet inside the sunspace,
right? So during the day, when the solar air heater is working, the south
side of the air heater will be exposed to, say, 68 F house air, not 30 F air,
and the other walls of the solar closet will also be exposed to 68 F air,
not 30 F outside air. So what would the "water temperature" be in this case?

It's roughly the same little calculation, using 68 F instead of 30 F:

Tw = 68 + 16,000x1.5(48+10+55) = 280 F.

Q11. Then suppose we lay the drum/box down horizontally, and put the air
heater side at the focus, under an ideal 4:1 reflective linear parabolic
concentrator? Or use an R-14 movable reflective shutter to cover the glass
over the drum when the sun is not shining?

Ein = 16,000 x 4 = 64,000 Btu/day.

Eout does not change.

So Tw = 68 + 64,000/(48+10+55) = 634 degrees F.

...

So, it seems to me that it isn't too hard to arrange for a passive solar house
to have a "solar closet" with a few high temperature 55 gallon drums full of 
water, a "heat battery" that can be discharged in a controlled way, to provide
heat for a house during cloudy days...

Nick

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Wed Apr 26 10:46:40 1995
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To: london@sunsite.unc.edu
Date: Sun, 23 Apr 1995 16:03:08 GMT
From: David Allen <wizsigns@IOL.IE>
Message-Id: <14563.usenet@merckx.graphics.cornell.edu>
Sender: london@sunsite.unc.edu
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Subject: catalogue
content-length: 105
Status: RO
X-Status: 

Send Catalogue to

David Allen
Wizard Signs
Cormaddyduff
Virginia
Co. Cavan.
Ireland.

Thanks

catalogue

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Wed Apr 26 12:16:47 1995
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To: london@sunsite.unc.edu
Date: 23 Apr 1995 18:11:46 GMT
From: RGNR13A@prodigy.com (Matt Farner)
Message-Id: <3ne592$325u@usenetp1.news.prodigy.com>
Organization: Prodigy Services Company  1-800-PRODIGY
Sender: london@sunsite.unc.edu
Subject: earthship--i have one==i live in one!!!
content-length: 1003
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First:  Please read any of Michael Reynolds books about earthships

I own all three and I love them.  Mike is a gem..  He literally writes to 
tell you how to build them..  I know of earthships in many states 
including Michigan, Idaho, Hawaii, Florida, Mew Mexico and Arizona

The thermal mass concepts work well--you stay warm in winter and cool in 
summer.
Recycle:  you use tires for a good use instead of trying to get rid of 
them.

I invite all who are really interested in a great concpt in recycleing 
and in energy efficient building to read Mike's books.  Many good 
libraries have them..If yours does not ask them to order it from Solar 
Survival Press, POB 1041, Taos, New Mexico  87571.

You are also welcome to tour our earthship in Northern Idaho (near Coeur 
d'Alene) or see our new one to begin constrcution in Michigan this fall.

One other important note:  recyclinig pays!!!   The cost of a "tirehouse" 
earthship can be as low as $15 per sq ft!!!

We love our tirehouse/earthship.

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Wed Apr 26 15:16:46 1995
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To: london@sunsite.unc.edu
Date: 25 Apr 1995 14:27:41 -0400
From: markmrohs@aol.com (MarkMrohs)
Message-Id: <3njeut$9jh@newsbf02.news.aol.com>
Organization: America Online, Inc. (1-800-827-6364)
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Subject: Siemens Solar Training Programs
content-length: 588
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X-Status: 

The schedule and description of the Siemens Solar Industries Training
Programs for 1995 have been posted to alt.business.seminars and to
news.announce.conferences.  Anyone interested in learning more about the
Basic Photovoltaic Technology Self Study Program (12 hours of video
lessons with 500 page training manual) or the Comprehensive Photovoltaic
System Design Seminar (5-day hands-on field assembly, lecture and system
design practice with guest speakers) should reference those postings.  The
next Seminar is May 15-19 at the Siemens Solar Training Center in
Camarillo, California.

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Thu Apr 27 02:46:54 1995
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To: london@sunsite.unc.edu
Date: 25 Apr 1995 09:28:56 -0400
From: nick@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu (Nick Pine)
Message-Id: <3niteo$c8p@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu>
Organization: Villanova University
Sender: london@sunsite.unc.edu
References: <11039.usenet@merckx.graphics.cornell.edu>
Subject: Re: AE Digest - 23 Apr 1995 to 24 Apr 1995 -Reply
content-length: 658
Status: O
X-Status: 

Anton Simmons  <AE%SJSUVM1.BITNET@cmsa.Berkeley.EDU> wrote:

>Nick Pine, would you take your discussions/contributions to some other list
>somewhere else, please.

No thank you.

>PV, and its use, is a subject within AE/RE, whatever you wish to call it,

I call it stupid, IF you have a power line next door,
and you don't somehow sell power back to the utility.

But then, who am I to criticize the expensive hobbies of other people...
I would simply prefer to not have to read about them here.

>and I will continue to post here, thanks.

May you soon be lighting your one little candle in the dark.
Or perhaps subscribing to alt.solar.photovoltaic.

Nick

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Wed May  3 22:49:34 1995
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To: london@sunsite.unc.edu
Date: Mon, 1 May 1995 10:36:13 GMT
From: Lee Butler <lbutler@GATE.NET>
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Reply-To: Alternative Energy Discussion List <%cmsa.Berkeley.EDU:AE%SJSUVM1.BITNET@bigblue.oit.unc.edu>
Subject: Re: T@Re: EKOSE'A & EKOTECTUREO_^?6hrs:Tpm;lB(ec&
content-length: 3222
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X-Status: 

April 25, 1995

EKOTECTURE =A9  is defined as the integration of fields of architecture,
engineering and ecology, resulting in the design and construction of
buildings which meet the following criteria.

(A) Structural Integrity
Ekotecture structures can resist the stresses of nature to protect and
preserve human life. They are designed to resist earthquakes, can float in
a flood or tidal surge and can withstand the effects of tornadoes and
hurricanes.
(B) Healthier Buildings
The presence of plants in the outer air envelope adds oxygen to the
building interior air and acts as an electrostatic filter, purifying the
interior air.
 (C) Standardization of Components
The standardization of building components, reduces the manufacturing cost
making it affordable to the mass market.
(D) Widely Available Indigenous Materials
 Ekotecture is manufactured from elements which exist in abundance world
wide, further lowering the cost and increasing availability. The components
will be manufactured from an ultra lightweight super strength insulating
concrete using a nonmetallic fiber reinforcing.
(E) Utilizes Universal Energies, Forces and Principles
They utilize solar, gravity, geothermal, phase change, evaporative cooling
effects of ordinary water, capillary action, osmosis and other universal
natural energies, forces and principles to provide the utility conveniences
and food.
(F) Zero Pollution from Operation
Ekotecture puts nothing into the earth, air or water and takes nothing out
of the earth air or water, beyond the materials and energy needed to
manufacture the structure itself, eliminating the need to acquire, for it's
operation, non-renewable resources ( fossil fuel or nuclear fuel ) and the
pollution and threats to human life caused by their mining, refinement  and
combustion or utilization.
(G) Decentralization
Inherent in the concept of Ekotecture, is decentralization of the
production of utilities and the elimination of friction and combustion,
real estate required for distribution and the cost and loss of efficiency
of the distribution system.
(H) Quality, Taste, Freshness of Food
By growing food locally, using recycled organic waste, fresh supplies of
fish, shrimp, fruits and vegetables would increase the quality and the
freshness of the food supply.
(I) Superior Return on Invested Capital
Ekotecture is provides an ecological, economical solution to our present
needs and  fits the structure of the profit oriented corporate capitalists
system of mass production and standardization. The ultimate market for
Ekotecture is global. All existing buildings will eventually justify the
need for retrofitting or rebuilding. Massive economies of scale are
possible, given such a demand. The company who builds and maintains new
Ekotecture utility will  be able to show superior returns on invested
capital.
(J) Patents & Business Plan Development
At present we are working on filing the patents with our attorneys and
soliciting third party technical opinions.

Lee Porter Butler & Jill Karlin Butler, Principals* Ekotecture
International Corporation

Lee Porter Butler
620 Biscayne Drive
West Palm Beach, Florida 33401
407-659-7656


Re: T@Re: EKOSE'A & EKOTECTUREO_^?6hrs:Tpm;lB(ec&

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Thu May  4 07:49:22 1995
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To: london@sunsite.unc.edu
Date: 4 May 1995 07:05:26 -0400
From: nick@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu (Nick Pine)
Message-Id: <3oacdm$oac@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu>
Organization: Villanova University
Sender: london@sunsite.unc.edu
References: <pmclaasn.21.0010F940@ING.SUN.AC.ZA>, <3o5a5s$m0h@sundog.tiac.net>, <1995May3.091713.48013@msuvx1.memphis.edu>
Subject: Re: 80% SOLAR MATERIAL efficiency
content-length: 303
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<urwfoster@cc.memphis.edu> fuzzed:

>... all info is appropriate in any newsgroup that caters to people
>trying to advance benign energy production.  So Pv is appropriate in thermal
>and thermal is appropriate in renewables.

Sure, and if you wrap up a chair in enough gauze, it's a beachball :-)

Nick

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Fri May  5 11:19:50 1995
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Date: 3 May 1995 07:30:37 GMT
From: nep@ccnet.com
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Organization: Norris Electronic Publications
Sender: london@sunsite.unc.edu
Subject: Renewable Energy Directory on the Web
content-length: 651
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I'm in the process of compiling company info for a Web-based directory on renewable energy.  

If you would like to list your company, (free standard listing) please send the company name, address, phone, fax, e-mail, URL (if 
avail), contact name, contact title, and a brief (<30 word) description.  Appropriate business functions include manufacturing, 
retailer product distribution, finance, development, research, engineering, law, and consulting.

Please respond via e-mail.

I will publicize the location of the directory at a future date.  Feel free to reply if you have any questions.

Ben Norris
nep@ccnet.com
Norris Electronic Publications

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Fri May  5 11:19:52 1995
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Date: Wed, 3 May 1995 14:20:34 GMT
From: "Solar Energy Industries Assoc." <seiaopps@ACCESS.DIGEX.NET>
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Subject: Solar Technician Training Workshop
content-length: 7856
Status: O
X-Status: 

NOTE: AGENDA INCLUDED


               Solar Hot Water Technician Training Workshop

            REFURBISHMENT AND INSTALLATION OF LARGE AND SMALL
                        SOLAR WATER HEATING SYSTEMS


                              June 2-3, 1995
                              Albuquerque, NM


                               Sponsored by:
                       Sandia National Laboratories

                               Conducted by:

             Renewable Energy & Efficiency Training Institute
                                    and
                              SEMCO/AAA Solar


Background

The owners of thousands of non-functioning solar hot water systems (large
and small) are eager to get them working again.  However, most businesses
in the Solar Thermal Industry today lack qualified service technicians who
can perform the simple repairs needed.  Many qualified people, who were
trained in the 80's, are now either in business for themselves or have
moved on to greener pastures.  The bottom line is this: if our industry
cannot find technicians, then we must train them.  To that end, this
workshop is offered to you and your employees.

Workshop Content

The first of this series of traveling workshops will be
held on Friday and Saturday, June 2 and 3, 1995 at the National Solar
Thermal Test Facility at Sandia National Laboratories in New Mexico.  The
two day workshop will cover several types of solar water heating systems
and will emphasize maintenance and repair, because if technicians can
troubleshoot and repair older existing equipment then they can also
install new equipment.  The workshop is split between classroom
lecture/discussion and hands-on exercises with printed instructions.
Attendees will assemble and troubleshoot several types of solar water
heating systems.  All attendees will receive a course text and a
manufacturers spec book, which will be a handy reference in the field.  At
the end of the workshop there will be a self-evaluation quiz for attendees
to gauge what they have learned and what other information might be
useful.

Who Should Attend

The typical attendee for this workshop is probably
already employed by a renewable energy company in some capacity and needs
to be brought up to speed to fill a niche in their company.  The workshop
is not limited to such people.  Contractors in related trades, architects,
engineers, and academic and government renewable energy professionals are
also welcome.

If you are not sure if this workshop is for you, call "Smitty" at SEMCO
(800) 246-8803.  Attendees should plan on bringing a small box of hand
tools including multimeter, electrical tools, and small adjustable
wrenches.

Who Should NOT Attend

If you are presently servicing solar hot water systems with little trouble
and/or feel you have a good understanding of the industry and the
equipment it has generated in the last 15 years, then this workshop will
waste your time and ours.

Instructors

Chuck Marken (AAA Solar), Odes Caster (AAA Solar), Jeff "Smitty" Schmitt
(SEMCO), and Tim Connolly (SEMCO) will be teaching the workshop.
Collectively they have over 55 years of experience in the solar business
and have installed or serviced over 10,000 solar water heating systems.

Registration

Deadline for registration is May 15.  Class size will be limited to 25
people on a first-come- first-served basis.  To register, fill out the
enclosed registration form, and mail it along with a check for $50.00
($40.00 for NM SEIA Chapter members) made payable to "Renewable Energy
Training Institute" to:

      RETI, 122 C St. NW, 4th floor
      Washington, DC 20001
      attn: Jeff Ross or Jeff Keas

After registering, you will receive additional information about the
workshop, including transportation and recommended hotel accommodations.

For More Information

Jeff Ross or Jeff Keas, Renewable Energy Training Institute
ph: 202-383-2559 (2614), fax: 202-383-2670 (2555)

Chuck Marken, AAA Solar Service & Supply, Inc.
ph: 800-245-0311, fax: 505-243-088

WORKSHOP AGENDA

The workshop is composed of four sessions, one each morning and one each
afternoon.  Each session is divided into a classroom component and a
corresponding hands-on component, with approximately 50% of the time
devoted to each component.  Day One will concentrate on plumbing and
mechanical aspects and Day Two will address electrical controls and
troubleshooting.

FRIDAY, JUNE 2,  7AM TO 5PM

7:00 - 9:30       CLASSROOM
        Introduction
        Recent history of solar industry (last 15 years)
        Solar water heating theory - how and why it works
        Solar collectors - types and applications
        Collector orientation, tilt and mounting
BREAK
        Passive batch water heaters
        Thermosyphon systems
        Direct pump and recirculation systems
        Glycol/oil systems
        Draindown and drainback systems and why they are not
         used
        Swimming pool systems, both indoor and outdoor
        Space heating systems

10:00 - 11:30     HANDS-ON (Workshop participants will be
divided into 4 groups and rotate between the following  stations)

1.       Simulated rooftoop - mounting orientation and safety
2.       Soldering and brazing
3.       Collector construction and repair
4.       Piping a thermosyphon system
5.       Piping a glycol system
6.       Piping a swimming pool system

11:30 - 12:30     LUNCH (provided by Sandia)

12:30 - 2:30     CLASSROOM
        What to look for in large commercial/industrial systems
         (John Anderson, SNL)
        Pumps - types and uses
        Head and flow considerations and pump
         replacement/substitution
        Heat exchangers, liquid to liquid and air to liquid
BREAK
        Storage tanks, construction and application
        Piping and material compatibility, insulation types
        Fluids, fluid compatibility and expansion tanks
        Flushing and filing glycol systems, getting the air out
        Hard water considerations and remedies

3:00 - 5:00     HANDS-ON  (4 groups to 5 stations)

1.       Tour of industrial solar thermal equipment at Sandia
2.       Pump troubleshooting
3.       Pump changeouts and substitutions
4.       Glycol drain, purge and fill
5.       Unplugging a heat exchanger



SATURDAY, JUNE 3,  7AM TO 5PM

7:00 - 9:00     CLASSROOM
        Measuring BTU output and understanding test data
        AC and DC electricity - load voltage and control
         voltage
        Basic switching devices and how they work
        Set point control, thermostats and aquastats
        Differential controls and thermistors
BREAK
        Multiple differentials and multiple outputs
        Domestic hot water controls
        Control strategies for space heat
        Pool/spa controllers

9:30 - 11:00      HANDS-ON (4 groups to 4 stations)

1.       Glycol system controls install station
2.       Bulk storage commercial controls install station
3.       Pool systems install station
4.       Space heating controls install station

11:00 - 12:00     LUNCH (provided by Sandia)

12:00 - 2:00     CLASSROOM
        Troubleshooting logic trees
        Standard test equipment and how to use it
        Component substitutions - recognizing what's there

2:00 - 4:00     HANDS-ON
        This session involves all participants at a troubleshooting
         station.  Trainers will disable a hot water systems and
         each group of participants will have 5-10 minutes to
         diagnose and recommend repairs to the faulty system.
         The remainder of the class will be given an opportunity
         to agree or recommend other solutions.  Simulated
         repair situations will include such problems as stuck
         sensors, bad relays, open wiring, and bad capacitors.

4:00 - 5:00       QUESTION & ANSWER, QUIZ, EVALUATIONS


Solar Technician Training Workshop

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Fri May  5 13:20:01 1995
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To: london@sunsite.unc.edu
Date: 3 May 1995 04:36:54 -0400
From: polarbeer@aol.com (PolarBeer)
Message-Id: <3o7fb6$frl@newsbf02.news.aol.com>
Organization: America Online, Inc. (1-800-827-6364)
Sender: london@sunsite.unc.edu
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Reply-To: polarbeer@aol.com (PolarBeer)
Subject: Re: wood pelleting machines?
content-length: 647
Status: RO
X-Status: 

Ralph Arnold    rarnold@teleport.com writes:

>Any suggestions on where to turn to find manufacturers of the machinery
>that are used to make wood pellets (used in pellet-burning wood stoves)?


Try contacting the Pellet Fuels Institute @
Phone: (612) 831-3203
Fax: (612) 831-3283

A good contact in the Portland area would be Eric Smith at ESA Process
Equipment in Vancouver, WA @
Phone: (206) 576-2824
Fax: (206) 576-2825
Eric represents Sprout-Bauer - the largest manufacturer of pelletizing
equipment in the US.
<><><><><><><><><><><><><><>
Phil St Jean
Northern Canada
polarbeer@aol.com
72774,3534@compuserve.com
<><><><><><><><><><><><><><>

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Sat May  6 06:20:02 1995
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Date: Wed, 3 May 1995 23:02:01 GMT
From: "Solar Energy Industries Assoc." <seiaopps@ACCESS.DIGEX.NET>
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Subject: SEIA Press Release
content-length: 9425
Status: O
X-Status: 

For Immediate Release   For Further Information Contact
        Scott Sklar, Executive Director
        (202) 383-2600

SOLAR INDUSTRY CALLS COAL INDUSTRY'S
REPORT "SHEER NONSENSE"

Washington, D.C.  (April 27, 1995) The Solar Energy Industries Association
(SEIA), the national trade organization of the photovoltaics and solar
thermal manufacturers, distributors, contractors, and component suppliers,
blasted the April 24th report by the coal industry's front organizations,
the Center for Energy and Economic Development (CEED) and Resource Data
International (RDI), as preposterous and unsupported propaganda.

Said SEIA Executive Director Scott Sklar, "It is unbelievable that the
coal industry, which receives nearly $8 billion in federal subsidies and
tax benefits in a single year, compared to less than $500 million in R&D
and tax incentives for the combined solar, wind, biomass, geothermal,
hydropower, and hydrogen energy industries, would make claims that it
would cost $52 billion to double the use of renewables by 2010."

O According to the April, 1993 study by the Alliance to Save Energy,
"Federal Energy Subsidies: Environmental and Fiscal Impacts," coal
subsidies per year totalled $8 billion (1989 reference year).

O A November, 1992 study by the Department of Energy's Energy Information
Administration, entitled, "Federal Energy Subsidies: Direct and Indirect
Interventions in Energy Markets," illustrated $1.1 billion in subsidies
and tax benefits for the coal industry (FY1992 reference year).  This
estimate, while more conservative, is still more than double the FY1996
request for the entire DOE renewable energy R&D budget.

These studies indicate that by the year 2010, the coal industry will have
reaped between $16.5 and $120 billion in federal taxpayer support (2 to 16
times greater than support for all renewables combined) for a mature
technology that has been in mainstream commercial use for over a hundred
years.  Solar technologies, most less than 20 years old, are only now
emerging in the commercial marketplace, with market growth of 35-40
percent a year over the last five years, and over 65 percent of new
product being exported overseas.

In contrast to the CEED study, Sklar highlighted the April, 1992 study jointly i
ssued by the American Gas Association, the Alliance to Save Energy, and SEIA, en
titled, "An Alternative Energy Future," which concluded that at current levels o
f support, the use of solar and renewables would double by 2010, natural gas wou
ld increase by 30 percent, and coal would decrease by 15 percent.  Furthermore,
over 350,000 net new jobs, as many as employed by the nation's largest automaker
, would be created in the solar and renewables, energy efficiency, and natural g
as industries.  The premise of the study was to show that by using the existing
incentives passed as part of the Energy Policy Act of 1992, the U.S. could meet
the greenhouse gas targets proposed under the UN climate change accords signed i
n Rio.

Sklar attributed the misguided CEED/RDI study to a desperate attack by
some in the coal industry in response to the recent public opinion survey
findings by Republican pollster Vince Breglio.  The telephone interview
questioned 1000 registered voters nation-wide in December, 1994.

O 85 percent of respondents agreed that the federal government should
continue to support public-private partnerships with American business to
promote the sale of renewable energy and efficiency technologies,
including programs to open new domestic and international markets.

O 42 percent ranked renewable energy technologies, including solar, as
their number one funding priority, as compared to 9 percent for nuclear, 7
percent for fossil fuels such as oil and coal, and 15 percent for natural
gas.

O 75 percent of respondents agreed that, while the overall Department of
Energy budget should be reduced, resources should be directed toward
renewable energy and efficiency and away from coal and other conventional
fuel technologies.

Solar technologies are bolstering the U.S. economy in key areas, including
exports and employment.  Over 65 percent of photovoltaics manufactured in
the U.S. are exported to developing countries.  And in contrast to coal,
60 to 80 percent of the solar technology produced in the next 15 years
would be exported overseas, offsetting oil imports which account for the
single largest component of our trade debt.

The solar industries directly employ nearly 20,000 people and support over
150,000 jobs in diverse areas such as glass and steel manufacturing,
electrical and plumbing contracting, architecture and system design,
battery and electrical equipment development, as well as general solar
system manufacturing.  Furthermore, as many as seven new, major
manufacturing plants, some with foreign investment dollars being poured
into the U.S. economy, are being built or are on the cusp of construction.
In comparison, although there currently are approximately 123 million jobs
in the United States, only about 1.4 million, or one percent, are
supported by the conventional energy industry.  Recent studies show a
trend toward even fewer jobs; for example, coal mining employment in the
United States fell by almost 40 percent between 1980 and 1988, even though
coal production grew by 14 percent.  With new methods of automation and
better production methods, the number of coal miners is predicted to
decline even further.

Solar technologies, besides providing good jobs, produce clean,
pollution-free energy.  Conversely, although fossil fuel industries
provide an extraordinarily small number of jobs for American workers, they
contribute most of the carbon emissions that threaten our atmosphere--70%
of the carbon emissions worldwide stem from fossil fuel combustion.  In
1992, United States industries emitted 5.4 tons of carbon in the form of
carbon dioxide per person.  Any new limitations on allowable carbon
emissions also will affect employment in fossil fuel-related occupations,
another reason for us to begin investing in solar energy.  A solar water
heating system, for example, will displace 71.5 tons of carbon dioxide
(CO2) when replacing an electric system, most of which get their
electricity from coal-fired plants.

In regard to the coal group's claim that no solar industry exists today or
will develop in the future because of utility restructuring, Sklar pointed
to signs abound that solar energy being accepted as an integral part of
utility business in a competitive power generation and service
marketplace:


O Over 31 trillion BTUs -- enough to satisfy the water heating needs of
nearly 1.8 million households -- are currently produced in the U.S. by
solar thermal systems, many of which are leased by utilities to consumers;

O Utilities currently use over 355 MW of solar thermal power in the U.S.
to produce more than 1,000 GWh/year -- equivalent to the electricity needs
of 100,000 American households;

O The solar thermal power industry has vowed to raise private capital to
finance a 1000 megawatt Solar Enterprise Zone in Nevada as the first new
wave of commercialization of central receiver, solar/dish engine, solar
trough and photovoltaics technologies.  Also, Solar Two, the first U.S.
baseload solar powerplant is on schedule to open in February 1996.

O Nearly 15 MW of electricity is produced in 36 states by utility-owned or
sponsored, grid-connected photovoltaics (PV).  Thousands of GW of
non-grid-connected applications exist in the U.S. and abroad, which
continue to be a lead market for PV technologies;

O PV-COMPACT, a 5 year pledge of $368 million by over 90 US electric
utilities, the largest renewable energy private sector leveraged program
ever, to help bring on the next generation of photovoltaics plants in the
United States.  The participants represent over 50 percent of the
electricity generating capacity in the U.S.

Sklar stated that solar energy could easily and economically supply 20
percent of the U.S. energy need over the next 30 years if current federal,
state and local programs to promote energy efficiency, renewable energy
development, pollution prevention and fuel diversity are maintained.  The
utilization of solar technology will double over the next 15 years with a
total of $2 billion in federal support -- approximately one quarter of the
coal industry's annual support.  The solar industries would create over
100,000 new, U.S.-based jobs without the pollution; negative environmental
impacts on land, water, and climate change; or black lung and mining
accident related health costs.  For example, according to a 1991 report by
the Mine Safety and Health Administration, nearly 14,000 coal miners are
seriously injured in accidents each year.

The Solar Energy Industries Association called the CEED/RDI study a flawed
and gross attempt to scare the American public with half-baked statistics
of their own invention.  Said Sklar, "the study was ridiculous not only
because it so poorly tried to distort reality, but also because it showed
the coal industry believes that it can aid our country's energy policy
debate by casting aspersions on other technologies.  In fact, the country
needs a diverse supply of energy resources."  Sklar called on the coal
industry and its front groups to stop the negative campaigning and become
a positive player in America's future.

RIGHT ON!!!









SEIA Press Release

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Date: 5 May 1995 07:46:46 -0400
From: nick@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu (Nick Pine)
Message-Id: <3od376$gq6@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu>
Organization: Villanova University
Sender: london@sunsite.unc.edu
Subject: Further perspectives on wall-warmers
content-length: 5635
Status: O
X-Status: 

We are wasting lots of energy in this country now, and a lot of that can
easily be helped. Ex-aerospace engineers like me don't usually work on
energy conservation for houses. Sometimes a different perspective helps.
 
In the last six months I've seen and taken pictures of hundreds of bare
south-facing walls that could be covered with inexpensive glazing a few
inches away from the walls, to make efficient wall-warmers, like the
one described in the Morse 1881 patent, but better and cheaper.
 
In the last six months I've seen and taken pictures of hundreds of
south-facing porches that could easily be enclosed with some sort of glazing
to make low-thermal-mass sunspaces, adding usable winter floorspace to houses,
as well as saving thousands of gallons of oil each year.  
 
There are many existing houses that just happen to have good solar
orientations and appropriate south-facing wall features, that cry out for
these "cream-skimming retrofits," home improvements that are inexpensive,
and save lots of energy...

There are many commercial buildings and schools and churches with easy,
high-performance, retrofit potential as well, especially buildings that were
built after air-conditioning became popular, and before the energy crisis
arrived. Say, from 1950 till 1970, when designers often deliberately
minimized the use of south-facing glass on walls, to reduce the cost of
air-conditioning. Some are still doing this... A local shopping center,
built two years ago, has a bare, cement-block wall on the back, facing
due south, that is about 800 feet long and 12 feet tall, a 10,000 gallon
a year wall. Adding wall warmers to these bare walls can often reduce air
conditioning bills, if they contain some shadecloth and work as solar
chimneys in summertime.

If you travel with a compass, and look at south-facing walls of existing
buildings, you develop an eye for cream-skimming retrofits, large, flat walls
with few windows, often painted white, often facing away from the street,
sometimes with blocked-up windows, sometimes with air conditioners sticking
out of the few windows left.

Sometimes, in cities, people tear down buildings to make parking lots, and
leave huge bare south-facing walls overlooking the parking lots. These walls
cry out for solar facades, advertising sprayed over shadecloth, Elvi on
velvet, banners, wall murals, or supergraphics inside glazed picture frames,
a few inches away from the wall. One rule of thumb is that every square foot
of south-facing glazing gathers the solar heat-equivalent of one or two
gallons of oil per year. 

A few years ago, I gave a college president a square foot of glass, with 
a label that said, "One gallon of oil per year." He asked, "What should I do
with this?" I said, "Show it to the board of directors at the next meeting,
and tell them that there is too little south-facing glass on campus." There
is still far too little south-facing glass on that campus. It seems time now 
to make some square feet of polycarbonate plastic. Lots of them.
 
For new construction, the picture seems even brighter. Many houses now
use vinyl or aluminum siding, and if transparent plastic siding is used
on the south side instead, with no sheathing board underneath, just an air
gap, a piece of inexpensive and durable greenhouse shading cloth, which comes
in many colors, another air gap and 3 1/2" of fiberglass insulation, with
some diagonal wind bracing, the south wall becomes an inexpensive solar air
heater, perhaps costing LESS than a normal 6" wall of a new house... This
can easily provide a reasonable fraction of the heat needed for a new house,
with no thermal storage.

To get close to 100% solar heat and hot water, some thermal storage is needed,
eg some inexpensive 55 gallon drums, perhaps 20 of them, stacked up on the
ground and each other, 4 high, in a 4' wide x 10' long x 8' tall insulated 
"solar closet," a sort of very small unfinished garage, taking up about 2%
of the floorspace of a new 2,000 square foot house. In return, such a house
would need no backup heating system.

The idea of using 55 gallon drums to store heat is not new. Steve Baer
has been using drumwalls to heat his house in New Mexico, for years.
He lives inside his "heat battery." That works well in places with 363
days of sun a year, but here on the east coast, we should be more careful
about storing heat for several cloudy days in a row. Insulating drumwalls
seems like a good idea, in this part of the country, as does keeping them
warmer than room temperature. Making the south side of an insulated drumwall
closet a passive solar air heater with backdraft dampers, can simply provides
the equivalent of movable insulation at night. It doesn't have to be a
completely passive air heater. It might have a small fan, for fan fans.
 
There are many reasons why solar house heating has not become more popular.
Some of them are aesthetic, some have to do with tradition or laziness or
ignorance, or the fact that cheap oil is a way of life in this country.
Few of them are economic, I think, and far fewer are technical reasons.
 
I'd like to show lots of people my slide show of easy retrofit possibilities,
with numbers, and some useful solar tools and materials, eg the Leslie-Locke
FV-1B automatic foundation damper, which sells for $10.83 at home stores, and 
has a bimetallic spring that can be removed and reversed and adjusted for
different temperature ranges, so the foundation vent can become an air damper
that opens on decreasing temperature, replacing $200 worth of active solar
air-heating controls... If you would like to see it, let me know.
 
Nick

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Sun May  7 07:20:09 1995
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Date: Fri, 5 May 1995 06:28:26 GMT
From: Nick Pine <nick@NFS.EE.VILL.EDU>
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Subject: Re: solar steam generation
content-length: 203
Status: O
X-Status: 

Norman Saunders has a patent on that...

Nick

(Are we ever going to get the reply field working correctly in this froup?)

Re: solar steam generation                                                   R

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Sun May  7 09:20:17 1995
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To: london@sunsite.unc.edu
Date: 5 May 1995 02:51:53 -0400
From: nick@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu (Nick Pine)
Message-Id: <3ochu9$g5h@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu>
Organization: Villanova University
Sender: london@sunsite.unc.edu
References: <pmclaasn.21.0010F940@ING.SUN.AC.ZA>, <3oa5e0$eqt@net.auckland.ac.nz>, <1995May4.111708.48181@msuvx1.memphis.edu>
Subject: Re: 80% SOLAR MATERIAL efficiency
content-length: 5160
Status: O
X-Status: 

R. Wesley Foster <urwfoster@cc.memphis.edu> wrote:

>Surely, N. isn't concerned about the current state of world affairs but
>rather more into the greed driven side of energy.

Au contraire, mon ami. I've been interested in solar heating for the last 20
years. I added Trombe walls to my old house in 1980, and I'm still improving
it (see below.) This started out being fun for me because I liked the idea
of getting something for nothing, but now it's a fairly expensive hobby.

Since our big oil war, I'm quite conscious of the connection between oil
and the loss of 500,000 human lives in Iraq, by one estimate, most of them
children, who died from starvation, poor sanitation and no medical treatment
after we killed 100,000 of their parents directly, for cheap oil...

Amory Lovins said in his 12/94 Atlantic article that we probably would not
have invaded Iraq had they only grown broccoli. For years, we shamelessly
funded both Iran and Iraq in their war with each other, supplying weapons
and money to both, in an attempt to create a "balance" that would ensure
cheap oil for our wasteful energy habits and make Exxon rich. Kuwait was
more or less created entirely by Standard Oil, setting up some rich sheiks
to sell us oil cheap in the 50s. WE are the international terrorists now,
not the arabs... We walk up to the arabs and point a gun at their heads
and say "You don't REALLY want to raise the price of your oil, do you?"

In private life this would be called extortion or robbery. Imagine going down
to the supermarket with a gun and telling the checkout clerk that the oranges
are too expensive. You would like to pay a bit less... Imagine walking into
the bursar's office with a gun, and saying you don't want to pay more than
$500 for the linear systems course, because the professor is so dull. Even
before George Bush, the five previous presidents, including gentle, Christian,
blessed, peacemaking Jimmy Carter, had publicly threatened war in the middle
east if they "cut off our vital supply of oil," and I believe that included
raising the price significantly... We are addicted to oil in this country,
as well as cocaine.

It's  their  oil, not ours, and they have a basic right to sell it for any
price that they want to sell it for. We have been bullying them into selling
it to us cheaply for years. And killing them, lately, en masse. This is not
a good thing. Killing people is bad, and it cannot go on. For one thing,
there is only a finite amount of oil in the world. It WILL run out...

>...a chair wrapped in gauze couldn't be a beachball but rather a gauzeball!!!

You may be one of the great fuzzy thinkers of our time :-)

Article: 3458 of alt.architecture.alternative
From: nick@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu (Nick Pine)
Newsgroups: alt.architecture.alternative
Subject: radiant floor heating, sort of...
Date: 4 May 1995 06:48:43 -0400
Organization: Villanova University

My 1820 stone farmhouse now has a transparent steep south-facing attic
roof, which makes a very nice space upstairs, as well as a 600 ft^2
solar air heater, with a roof made from 4' wide x 12' long sheets of
clear corrugated polycarbonate plastic greenhouse roofing that costs
about a dollar a square foot. The south roof still looks a lot like
the north roof now, which is still covered with corrugated metal...
Except that when the sun is shining, and you look at it dead on, you
can still make out the cedar shingle purlins under the Dynaglas. I think
they would disappear if I put some shadecloth underneath, on the inside.

And we are starting to renovate the bathroom. The first step has been to
take all the plaster off one wall and rough-point the stone on the inside.
The wall was very dry, since it has polyurethane foam on the outside.

When we got down to the floor, there was this ugly new baseboard radiator
there, near the gap where the wood floor met the stone wall, getting in
the way of some cabinets-to-be, so we took off its metal skin and soldered
the fin tube into the loop downstairs, near the basement ceiling, just under
where it used to run on the floor above. It should collect less dust there.
I haven't used the oil burner in a year.

I wonder why more people don't put fin tubes under uninsulated first floors
of houses, near basement ceilings. Heat rises, and a wood floor has a low
R-value, and if the heat spreads out under the first floor, the heat transfer
area is increased, so the R-value of the floor is a lot less important...
I think I could make the floor disappear, mathematically. Perhaps the basement
ceiling should have a radiant barrier, some builder's foil stapled to the
ceiling, under the fin tubes... 

When I first moved into this house, the old radiators had frozen (in fact,
all the plumbing had frozen--ick) and when I got new baseboard radiators
put in, I noticed that some of the few electrical outlets in the rooms
disappeared, and the rooms got a bit smaller, since in many cases, furniture
had to be farther out from the walls... I'm thinking now of moving all the
fin tubes under the floors, so that all that will show above will be the
holes where the pipes used to come up from the basement.

Nick

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Sun May  7 14:20:16 1995
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To: london@sunsite.unc.edu
Date: 5 May 1995 07:23:56 -0400
From: nick@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu (Nick Pine)
Message-Id: <3od1sc$glu@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu>
Organization: Villanova University
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Subject: Re: Goin' off-line     help!!!!!!!
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>I will be moving to the end of the road above Rogue River, Oregon where 
>there ain't no power an' there ain't no phone.  Problem is, there ain't 
>no power an' there ain't no phone.  

I'd ask your local (or not so local) phone company about InterDigital
radio telephones. They give you a real phone in the house, with a standard
telephone interface, for modems, fax, etc. They use digital voice compression
and digital transmission in the 400 Mhz radio range, with a small sort of
TV antenna on the house. The antenna sites are custom-engineered, like
microwave links, for landline vs cellular reliability, ie, outages of
a few seconds a year, vs. 10% of the time, with some cellular scenarios.

These phone systems are often very cost-effective in remote, low-density
areas, where the alternative is running a wire 20 miles to a single
subscriber. InterDig sells most of its product overseas, where you might
find a solar-powered phone on a mud hut, with no running water, etc.

I used to be their patent agent.

Nick

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Wed May 10 09:22:26 1995
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To: london@sunsite.unc.edu
Date: 9 May 1995 16:30:21 -0400
From: seiaopps@access3.digex.net (Solar Energy Industries Assoc.)
Message-Id: <3oojct$acg@access3.digex.net>
Organization: Express Access Online Communications, Greenbelt, MD USA
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Subject: FEMP Training Program and Reception Invitation
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Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency Training Institute 
122 C Street, NW, 4th floor, 
Washington DC 20001 

Invitation to a Renewable Energy Industry Reception 
June 5, 1995 5:00-7:00pm 
Madison Hotel, Washington DC

REETI has co-developed with NREL a course for the Federal Energy
Management Program on "Implementing Renewable Energy Projects" to be run
for the first time in Washington DC on June 5th and 6th.  This two day
course is designed to introduce federal facility energy managers and their
engineers and contractors to cost-effective renewable energy technologies
available for new and retrofit construction and electricity generation. 

As part of this event, REETI is hosting a reception and exhibition June
5th at the Madison Hotel from 5:00 to 7:00pm for the facility managers and
others to meet some of the renewable energy industry.  If you are an
industry person involved with one of the technologies listed below and are
interested in attending and/or exhibiting at the reception, please sign-up
with REETI.  THERE IS NO COST FOR ATTENDING OR EXHIBITING.

The Audience as of May 2 included over 60 federal government officials and
their contractors, including one or more representatives from the
following government agencies: 

Veterans Affairs, Forest Service, Secret Service, Navy, Coast Guard,
National Guard, Maritime Administration, USSAH, National Park Service,
Department of Energy, Department of Interior, GSA, Army National Guard, US
EPA, FAA, Army, Department of Labor, CIA, Air Force, Department of
Agriculture, Department of Treasury, National Institute of Health, and the
Bureau of Printing and Engraving.

Technologies to be discussed include:

       Passive solar technologies for heating and cooling
       Ground source heat pumps for heating and cooling
       Solar water heating
       Solar preheating of ventilation air
       Photovoltaic and wind energy systems for remote or backup power
       Biomass systems for process heat or cogeneration 

For a copy of the course brochure which describes the course a little more
thoroughly, contact Chris DeChaine of EASI at 301-230-1502. 
       
To sign-up to attend and/or exhibit at the reception contact Jeff Keas of
REETI at ph: 202-383-2614, fx: 202-383-2670. 







From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Fri May 12 04:22:42 1995
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To: london@sunsite.unc.edu
Date: Thu, 11 May 1995 10:26:21 GMT
From: Nick Pine <nick@NFS.EE.VILL.EDU>
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Subject: Re: Used Solar Panel Source???
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>Greetings,

Hi Rob,

>I work for a public schools system in Mass. that is developing a mandatory
>environmental sciences cirriculum. In order to demonstrate alternative
>energy principles, I'd like to power the classroom lights (at least) using
>solar power only. This would be a great way for a new generation to become
>accustomed to alternative energy.

I don't think so. How about doing something with solar thermal power,
which is about 100X more cost-effective? Or invite Norman Saunders or
Tom Sciacca of Intelligen cogen systems to come talk to your class, if
you are near Boston...

A lean-to sunspace, or solar siding, here in the northeast, would cost about
a dollar a square foot with plastic glazing, and produce the heat equivalent
of about 1-2 gallons of oil per heating season, for the adjacent house, and
perhaps some living space and food. A 3 month payback period if you build it
in the Fall.

Heat production still seems like it should be a high priority, followed by hot
water, then maybe electricity, in declining order of ergs/year/$-invested...

It still continues to amaze me that so many people are interested in PV
applications, when there is so much oil being consumed for home heating in
this country, and solar house heating pays for itself at least 10 times
faster. Photovoltaics seem sort of trendy or glamorous... I don't know.
Maybe all the PV people live in warm places, where they don't need heat
at all, or they all live in the southwest, and already easily heat their
houses with the sun.

But I think that only about 2% of the houses in the US are solar heated now,
and it seems to me that that can be done anywhere in the US... At least
anywhere that people need house heat at all, which is most places... So
it seems to me that there is a huge job to be done, which is being largely
ignored by people interested in photovoltaics... Perhaps they are fiddling
while Rome burns.

I wonder how many people have large oil bills for house heating and also have
large arrays of PV cells on the roof? I wonder how many people have PV cells
on the roof and stacks of batteries in the house, and a large oil burner that
they use every day for heat, and a nearby grid they could easily connect to,
but don't? Why don't more people sell PV power back to the electric companies
in this country, using synchronous grid-tie inverters instead of piles of
batteries, like they do in europe? Part of it must be a psychologically
peculiar and unhealthy pride in being completely independent, in one aspect
of life, vs an attitude of harmony and cooperation. Part of it may be that
oil is so cheap, and we are so used to using that for heat. But I digress :-)

I suppose photovoltaics are more useful than those solar pith helmets
in the Real Goods catalog, but I don't know... Putting human energy
and money into PVs when there is so much oil that could be saved with
more solar house heating seems very strange to me. Irresponsible, even.
It seems almost like criminal negligence, given that we have just killed
100,000 people in the name of ensuring cheap oil for our wasteful house
heating habits. It's a little like H. L. Mencken's description of our
election of Coolidge. He said something like: "For a nation of 50,000,000
able-bodied and fairly intelligent people to elect someone like Coolidge
for president, is as if a person facing a dinner table of the finest viandes,
perfect pastries, wonderful vegetables and breathtaking desserts were to
turn around and begin to catch and eat flies."

But each to his own taste, I suppose... I don't really want to control
the behavior of other people, but when they seem to be acting very peculiar,
I feel a sort of urge to point that out once in a while...

>Any ideas???  THANKS!

I'd suggest you focus on space heating first, then perhaps water
heating, then maybe electricity...

Article: 1308 of alt.architecture.alternative
From: clarion@dorsai.org (Clarissa Coffey)
Subject: A solar cave
Organization: The Dorsai Diplomatic Mission NYs Computer Consulate
Date: Sun, 30 Oct 1994 14:33:14 GMT

Rex Roberts talked about caves dug into south-facing hills...

Suppose cavepersons had had glass:

                    .         ^
                     .        | up
                      .
     R10 earth at      .        south ==>
         55 degrees F   .
                         .
                        / g    If the enterprising caveperson had insulated
            Rc         /   g       the inside of the cavern with leaves and
    ------------------g  W  g       mud, until, say, Rc = 10, and the daytime
   |                  .----- .       temp of the cavern had been 65 degrees F
   |  20 x 20' cavern |       .       and the nighttime temp had been 55, and
   |     10' tall     |        .       he or she had desired to warm the cave
   |                  |         .       for, say, 5 days without sun, with an
    --------Rf--------           .       average sunnytime steady-state floor
   |vaulted -- stone  |           .       temp of, say 90 F, and mammoth skins
   |   -----  -----   | T          .       piled on top of the floor to make
   |---   floor    ---|             .       a sunny day R-value of Rf (which
        .                .           .       skins could be moved aside to
             .             Rc .   .   .       decrease the R-value of the floor
                 .                     g       during sunless times), how much
Note that since      .Rc                g       glass area, Ag, would have been
the upper edge of the    .               g  Ag   needed, and what would Rf and
glass is lower than the      .            g       the average floor thickness T
bottom of the floor, the floor   .Aa       g        have had to have been,
stays warm during sunless times,     .      g        ignoring the clerestory
because of this igloo-like heat trap.    .   g        cave window, W?
(How did the caveperson insulate around     . g
the edge of the floor?)                        g        south ==>
                                                .
The daily heatloss of the cavern would have been .
                                                  .
    Lday = (8 hours)(1200 ft^2/R20)(65-55) ~ 5K Btu.       32 F outside temp
                                                    .
During sunny times, the sun would shine onto the     .
absorbing surface Aa, assumed equal to Ag, and some   .
heat would be lost thru Rc to the earth underneath...  .
                                                        .
The daily net heat resulting from each square foot of    .
glass might have been on the order of                     .
                                                           .
    Eg = 1000 - 8(90-32)/R1 - 8(90-55)/R20                  .
         sun    glass loss    absorber back loss             .
       = 500 Btu/ft^2/day                                     .
                                                               .
So keeping the cavern warm might have required only about       .
10 ft^2 of glass... A 3.16 x 3.16' single-glazed window, or      .
an early sliding-glass door...                                    .
                                                                   .
The mammoth-skin floor resistance would want to have been about     .
                                                                     .
    Rf = (90-65)(400 ft^2)/(5000/8) = R-16.                           .
                                                                       .
    During sunless days, the skins would be moved around or a trapdoor  .
    in the floor would have been opened to reduce this, to get more heat .
    out of the floor...                                                   .
                                                                           .
Assuming the floor would have had a minimum R-value of 1, per square foot   .
(both sides), the required heat transfer rate would have been about 5000/8   .
Btu/hour, from 800 ft^2 of floor, which leads to a minimum temperature        .
differential, after 5 days, of about 1 degree F.

So if the masonry had held about 22 Btu/ft^3/degree F, the floor thickness
might have wanted to be about

    T = (5 days)(5000 Btu/day)/((90-66)(22)(400 ft^2)) = .12'

    Hmmm. Ferro-cement...

Other modern improvements might include making the whole thing above ground,
including some throwaway diet-pepsi bottles filled with water in the floor,
making the absorbing surface a parabolic reflector, and making the floor a
wall.

Nick Pine (nick@ece.vill.edu)


Article: 3458 of alt.architecture.alternative
From: nick@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu (Nick Pine)
Newsgroups: alt.architecture.alternative
Subject: radiant floor heating, sort of...
Date: 4 May 1995 06:48:43 -0400
Organization: Villanova University

My 1820 stone farmhouse now has a transparent steep south-facing attic
roof, which makes a very nice space upstairs, as well as a 600 ft^2
solar air heater, with a roof made from 4' wide x 12' long sheets of
clear corrugated polycarbonate plastic greenhouse roofing that costs
about a dollar a square foot. The south roof still looks a lot like
the north roof now, which is still covered with corrugated metal...
Except that when the sun is shining, and you look at it dead on, you
can still make out the cedar shingle purlins under the Dynaglas. I think
they would disappear if I put some shadecloth underneath, on the inside.

And we are starting to renovate the bathroom. The first step has been to
take all the plaster off one wall and rough-point the stone on the inside.
The wall was very dry, since it has polyurethane foam on the outside.

When we got down to the floor, there was this ugly new baseboard radiator
there, near the gap where the wood floor met the stone wall, getting in
the way of some cabinets-to-be, so we took off its metal skin and soldered
the fin tube into the loop downstairs, near the basement ceiling, just under
where it used to run on the floor above. It should collect less dust there.
I haven't used the oil burner in a year.

I wonder why more people don't put fin tubes under uninsulated first floors
of houses, near basement ceilings. Heat rises, and a wood floor has a low
R-value, and if the heat spreads out under the first floor, the heat transfer
area is increased, so the R-value of the floor is a lot less important...
I think I could make the floor disappear, mathematically. Perhaps the basement
ceiling should have a radiant barrier, some builder's foil stapled to the
ceiling, under the fin tubes...

When I first moved into this house, the old radiators had frozen (in fact,
all the plumbing had frozen--ick) and when I got new baseboard radiators
put in, I noticed that some of the few electrical outlets in the rooms
disappeared, and the rooms got a bit smaller, since in many cases, furniture
had to be farther out from the walls... I'm thinking now of moving all the
fin tubes under the floors, so that all that will show above will be the
holes where the pipes came up from the basement.

Nick


Article: 118 of alt.solar.thermal
From: nick@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu (Nick Pine)
Newsgroups: alt.solar.thermal,alt.energy.renewable,alt.architecture.alternative
Subject: Super-Solar Houses
Followup-To: alt.solar.thermal
Date: 14 Apr 1995 08:24:22 -0400
Organization: Villanova University

_Super-Solar Houses--Saunders's Low-Cost, 100% Solar Designs_

By William A. Shurcliff (with extensive help from Norman B. Saunders)

Copyright 1983 by William A. Shurcliff

Brick House Publishing Company, Andover MA

Table of Contents

1. Introduction                            1
2. Preview of the Three Houses             7
3. General Strategies                     15

I. Shrewsbury House

4. Shrewsbury House: Specific Strategies  23
5. Attic Solar Window                     38
6. Upper Thermal-Storage System           46
7. Lower Thermal-Storage System           49
8. Greenhouse                             53
9. Air-Drive System                       57
10. South Window System                   61
11. Non-South Windows                     65
12. Other Components                      67
13. Operation in Summer                   72
14. Performance                           76
15. Cost                                  84
16. Discussion                            85

II. Cliff House

17. Cliff House: A General Overview       91
18. Sunspace                              99
19. Thermal-Storage Systems              105
20. Main Airflow System                  108
21. Other Components                     113
22. Wintertime Performance               115
23. Keeping Cool in Summer               117

III. All-Solar-Too House

24. All-Solar-Too House: Main Goals
    and Strategies                       121

IV. Comparison

25. Comparison of the Three Houses       131

Patents and Trademarks                   137
Bibliography                             138
Index                                    140

Introduction
------------

This book is about three remarkable houses. One, called Shrewsbury House,
was essentially completed and occupied late in 1981; through two winters
and one summer it has performed with full success. Another, called Cliff
House, is nearly complete as of this writing (May 1983.) The third, called
All-Solar-Too House, is a design prepared for the 1982 Gardenway Passive
Solar Design Competition; as yet no construction is scheduled.

Main Performance Features

All three houses, employing unique solar heating systems invented and
engineered by Norman B. Saunders of Weston, Massachusetts, are 100%
solar heated. More exactly, they are kept warm by intrinsic heat sources
(human bodies, electric lights, cooking stove, etc.) and by solar energy.
None has a furnace or wood stove. Also, all stay cool in summer.

The "100% solar heated" claim [now much stronger, in 1995, after 12 years
of electronic data logging of house temperatures, etc.--Nick] needs some
slight qualification. Although the houses will remain comfortable throughout
the winter without auxilliary heat, the occupants may, on certain occasions,
make use of a small electric heater to make one room extra warm, if someone
in the house is ill, or to accelerate the drying of fresh paint. And they may
do so when, for experimental purposes, various changes are made in system
components or in control procedures. One house, Cliff House, has a fireplace
that was included for reasons of esthetics.

All three houses have many attractive features other than heating
self-sufficiency. Operation is automatic, or hearly so. The houses
remain fairly warm in winter even if left unoccupied for a week or more.
Each has an integral south greenhouse or sunspace. Each has ample window
areas, not only on the south, but also on the east, west and north.

In each of these houses, the space heating system employs no conventional
collector panels, no pumps, no valves, no drains, no moving liquid, no pipes.
There are no Trombe walls. In none of the living-area rooms is there any
bulky equipment used solely for space heating. Thus there is great freedom
of choice in room layout, furniture placement, etc.

All three houses have automatic passive solar preheating of the domestic
hot water supply.

Low Cost

For each house, construction cost is low--about the same as for a conventional
house of comparable size and comfort. More interestingly, the construction
cost is comparable to, or slightly lower than, that of a typical 40-80%
passively solar-heated house, and it is much lower than that of a typical
_actively_ solar-heated house.

How can the cost be so low? Because:

o Most of the components consist of low-cost materials--air, water,
  stones, glass, plastic, fiberglass, etc.

o Most of the components can be assembled on-site by carpenters and
  others of typical competence.

o There is no furnace, no oil tank, no furnace room, no furnace
  chimney, no radiators, no air conditioner.

Operating cost is low--$50 to $100 per year for electric power to run the
one or two small fans that are the heart of the temperature control system.

Comparison with Other Leading Designs

How do these three houses compare with other outstandingly successful,
energy-conserving passive solar houses in the United States and Canada?
It is premature to make judgements with respect to Cliff House and
All-Solar-Too House. But Shrewsbury House has been in use throughout two
winters and one summer, and the record is clear: its performance has been
superb. I make the guess that its performance equals or surpasses that of all
other houses--in the USA or Canada--of comparable size, comfort, etc.

Many hundred superinsulated houses have been built and operated for
one or more years and have performed excellently. They keep warm in
winter and cool in summer. But nearly all of them require an auxiliary
heating system. Most have no greenhouse. Many require operating thermal
shades in the evening and in the morning. Many have smaller-than-normal
areas of windows on the east, west, and north sides of the house.

Scores of double-envelope houses have been built and operated for two
or more years. They have performed well, and annual fuel bills have
been of the order of $200 or less. But auxiliary heating systems are
needed and some rooms are sometimes on the chilly side. Many double-envelope
houses entailed considerable extra construction cost, of the order of
$5,000 to $15,000. (Some early builders of double-envelope houses have
recently lost some of their enthusiasm for the double envelope itself
and are attaching greater significance to earth-coupling and solar energy
storage--a shift toward some of the features that, in Saunders-designed
houses, play major roles.)

About 100,000 passive solar houses that have large areas of south-facing
windows and much added thermal mass have been built and have been in use
for two or more years. Nearly all of these require auxiliary heating systems;
many require large areas of thermal mass that preempt space in the most
important part of the house--the south part; many employ large thermal
shutters or shades that must be operated twice a day; many suffer from
excessive glare on sunny days; many tend to overheat, especially on very
hot days late in the summer when the solar energy input via the south
windows is especially large.

Clearly it is a noteworthy advance when a solar engineer develops designs
that, besides requiring no auxiliary heating system, provide an integral
greenhouse, have ample window areas on all sides of the house, operate
automatically (no thermal shutters or shades to operate), reduce glare,
keep cool in the summer, and solar-preheat the domestic hot water supply.
To do all this at a cost that is no greater than that of a conventional
house is a landmark achievement.

The performance of the Shrewsbury House is now well proven, and I am
confident that Cliff House and All-Solar-Too House have the capability
of approximating its superb performance.

Crumbling the Classic Rule, "Do not try to achieve 100% solar heating."

Ten years ago, most solar architects and engineers were convinced that,
in designing houses for cold climates (such as New England), it was foolish
to try to achieve 100% solar heating. Prestigious experts made detailed
calculations that showed conclusively (they said) that, in New England
for example, it was unwise to try to achieve more than about 50-70%
solar heating. They warned that the cost of achieving a higher percentage,
such as 80% or 90%, would be enormous and would far outweigh the benefits.
Even if the designer were to double the size of the collector and double
the size  of the storage system, he would get only about 90% solar heating.
To achieve 100% might require tripling the sizes, and much of the added
capacity would be useful only on five or ten days a year.

Especially clear warnings against attempting to achieve 100% solar
heating in cold climates are contained in articles by G. O. G. Lof and
R. A. Tybout. See, for example, their article in Natural Resource Journal,
Vol. 10(2), p. 268, 1970, or their article in Solar Energy, Vol. 14, p. 253,
1973. Tybout was an economist and Lof was one of the world's foremost solar
heating experts...

Faith in the experts' negative pronouncements began to weaken a few years ago,
with the advent of superinsulated houses. By 1981 there were hundreds of such
houses, and by the spring of 1983 one or two thousand had been completed or
were under construction in the USA or Canada. Most of these houses require
only $50 to $150 worth of fuel per winter, and a few come close to being
100% heated by the combination of intrinsic heat and direct-gain solar energy.
Many such houses have no furnace, but do have a wood stove or a small electric
heater.

The final crumbling of the experts' gloomy view occurred in January and
February of 1982. In these midwinter months, Robert Bushey, owner and
occupant of Shrewsbury House, found that his house held at about 70 F--
day and night, in clear weather adn overcast weather, with no backup heat
at all. The goal was reached: 100% solar heating in a cold climate! It was
reached at no extra cost. For good measure, the goal was achieved without
turning the thermostat that controls the fan below 70 degrees F, without
reducing the areas of east, west, and north windows, without needing to
close thermal shutters each night and open them each morning, and without
curtailing fresh air input.

Why a full-length book?

To devote an entire book to three solar-heated houses may seem absurd.
A typical solar house can be described in a few pages.

But Saunders's three low-cost, 100% solar houses are different--very
different. They embody several radically new approaches to solar heating.
The design goals and also the general strategies used are new and strange, and
some of the key components are puzzling even to experienced solar designers.

A galaxy of new concepts is involved.

To clearly convey what the designs are all about, and what exactly the
heating and cooling systems consist of, requires a book.

Norman Saunders: Inventor and Doer

Norman B. Saunders, a professional engineer residing at 15 Ellis Road,
Weston, MA 02193, is a thoughtful, quiet, deliberate inventor: an inventor
of the lone-wolf type and one of New Englands's best known solar consultants.

His passion is devices that are simple, homely and durable. He avoids
like the plague any device that is merely brilliant, flashy, impressive, or
striking. From forty years' experience in physics, mechanical engineering,
electrical engineering, and electronics engineering, he has developed the
greatest distrust of "brilliant" devices which, so often, turn out to cost
three times as much as anyone had predicted and to break down much too
promptly.

He turns his back instantly, with no apology, on most types of conventional
solar heating equipment.

Ignoring popular trends in solar design, he goes his own way, trying
to formulate the heating and cooling requirements in the simplest and
most basic way possible.

One of his main approaches is to use a multipronged attack: use a lot
of "little" pieces of equipment that will work together well. Each,
although simple and unimpressive, contributes significantly. Together
they provide a full but low-cost solution.

Accordingly, his inventions cover a broad range, from special glazing
materials and special window structures to special south roof louver
systems, special heat-storage assemblies, and special airflow controls; also,
various special systems for use in commercial buildings, eg high-temperature
(steam-producing) systems. (The appendix lists many of his patents.)

But he does a lot more than think and patent: he tries out his inventions
prompltly. He puts them to work, either in his own house or in houses of
friends or clients. Often he continues to improve a given invention,
year after year.

Some of the solar houses that he has designed--and that have worked well--
are described in my earlier books... His first solar house is described in
his book Solar Heating Basics [a new edition may be coming... :-)] and in
a very recent report. See also the book by Carriere and Day.

I have found his patents hard to read, hard to understand. My impression is
that very few people have given the patents the attention that they deserve.
He has written a number of reports on his inventions, but they are heavy
reading.

For all these reasons, his major contributions to the art of solar heating
have been, until now, little known outside of New England. This is true even
though he has been generous with his time in presenting papers on his
developments at various meetings of solar energy societies and in giving
monthly talks and seminars to local groups on the theory and practice of
solar heating.

...

Some patents (copies of which are available for $3 each from The Commissioner
of Patents and Trademarks/Washington, DC 20231)

3,952,947 4/27/76  Solar heating system employing controlled
                   introduction of outdoor air via a special window.

4,078,603 3/14/78  Skylight-type collector with storage and
                   distribution systems.

4,123,002 10/31/78 System for controlling air temperature, humidity
                   and ventilation with use of ground coupling.

4,157,639 6/12/79  Seals for vertical and sloping windows or glazing.

4,201,189 5/6/80   South window solar-radiation absorbing element (as
                   in Shrewsbury House and All-Solar-Too House.)

4,296,733 10/27/81 Transparent roof employing reflective louvers that
                   admit much solar radiation in winter and admit little
                   solar radiation in summer.

Note: US patents are normally valid for 17 years from date of issue.

Nick




Re: Used Solar Panel Source???                                               R

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Sun May 14 04:53:35 1995
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Date: 10 May 1995 06:29:52 -0400
From: nick@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu (Nick Pine)
Message-Id: <3oq4j0$k46@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu>
Organization: Villanova University
Sender: london@sunsite.unc.edu
Subject: A high-performance, cost-effective, solar heated pool
content-length: 4142
Status: O
X-Status: 

Solar pool heating should be easy, since temperatures are low, it is usually
done only in mild weather, and there is a large inherent water heat battery.
The May/June issue of Solar Today has a primer on conventional solar pool
heating that says: "In many areas of the country, solar pool heating is the
most economically attractive solar technology available today."

But there is still room for improvement, especially for year-round heating.
Yesterday, a physics teacher told me about a remarkable house that was next
to a swimming pool, which was under a conventional greenhouse. In winter, the
engineer/owner pumped some of the swimming pool water into the house, to heat
the house. This was done years ago, in PA, and it's probably all gone now,
along with the engineer. I wonder how it worked. A water-source heat pump?

Here is one way to heat a pool:

1. Put a 16 x 32' piece of plastic on the ground, and lay some cement blocks
on top. Lay some plywood or steel greenhouse bench mesh on top of the cement
blocks. One could also support the plywood with 55 gallon drums full of water,
standing upright. 

2. Buy a 15 x 30' rectangular steel pool from J C Penny, for about $2000.
Or build one out of 2 x 6s on 4' centers, with ferrocement over 4' wide
chicken wire. Set this up on top of the hollow platform above.

3. Make a 15 x 30' rigid pool cover out of 2" of beadboard and 2 x 4s, with a
layer of Thermo-ply underneath, sprayed with clear urethane, shiny side down,
and another layer of Thermo-ply on top, shiny side up. This would be hinged
along the 32' north edge of the pool, with a few counterweights hanging over
the north edge.

4. Buy a 21' x 36' commercial plastic film greenhouse, for about $1000, from
Stuppy at (800) 877-5025 or E C Geiger at (800) 432-9434, and put it up over
the pool. Or build an A frame over the pool, with Dynaglas for the south side
and ferrocement over kerfed 16' 2 x 4s, every 4', for the curved north side.
Attach a garage door opener to the top, to lift up the pool cover to an angle
of about 45 degrees, when the sun is shining and the pool needs heat. 

5. Make a hollow bench along each 16' edge of the pool, to form an air
distribution plenum, for the space under the pool. At one endwall of the
greenhouse, make a 4 ft^2 vertical airshaft or duct from the peak of the
greenhouse to the middle of the bench. Fit a 2000 cfm exhaust fan (perhaps
solar powered) to the middle of the bench at the other end of the pool. 

In the Philadelphia area, in January, the average amount of sun that comes
into the greenhouse, Ein, is about 12' (height) x 36' x 1000 Btu/ft^2/day, ie
430K Btu/day, over about 6 hours. The average outdoor temperature in this area
in January is about 30F. Say the pool were kept at 80F, in January.

Then the amount of energy that leaves the pool each day, Eout, would be about

    6 hours x 15 x 30 (80-30)/R1 = 135K thru the top, when the sun is shining,
+  18 hours x 15 x 30 (80-30)/R12 = 34K thru the top, at other times,
+  24 hours x 360 ft^2 (80-30)/Rs = 430K/Rs, thru the sides.

So if Ein = Eout,  135K + 34K + 430K/Rs = 430K, so 430K/Rs = 261K, so the side
insulation would have to be at least Rs = 430K/261K, about R2, eg 1/2" of
white beadboard, glued to the sides of the pool.

If the 12,000 gallon pool were closed up, while the sun didn't shine for a few
days, it would initially lose heat at a rate of about 45K Btu/day through the
top, and 130K Btu/day through the R2 sides, so the water temperature in the
pool would initially decrease by about (45K + 130K)/(12,000 x 8lb/gallon) = 2
degrees F per day.

Possible enhancements include a solar pool cover to reduce evaporation losses
when the top is up, a white surface or a reflecting pond on the ground along
the south edge of the greenhouse, a layer of vertical glazing along the 30'
south side of the pool, tomato plants, an indoor herb garden, orange trees,
lights, fountains, insulation for the north greenhouse roof, and another layer
of glazing or UV-transparent Tedlar film for the south side, to allow tanning
in January. 

Nick

PS: This might also make a dandy sewage treatment system.

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Sun May 14 07:23:29 1995
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Date: Wed, 10 May 1995 11:28:17 GMT
From: Robert Winfield <winfield@CPCUG.ORG>
Message-Id: <27921.usenet@merckx.graphics.cornell.edu>
Sender: london@sunsite.unc.edu
Reply-To: Alternative Energy Discussion List <%cmsa.Berkeley.EDU:AE%SJSUVM1.BITNET@bigblue.oit.unc.edu>
Subject: Solar panels (fwd)
content-length: 1263
Status: RO
X-Status: 

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Wed, 10 May 1995 11:14:53
From: ALAN NOBLE <anoble@balloons.win-uk.net>
To: balloon@lut.ac.uk
Subject: Solar panels

Following his historic solo crossing of the Pacific in a
Roziere balloon Steve Fossett is planning another long distance
balloon flight - I can't say what, but it will be with his existing
balloon. I would like to be able to equip him with lightweight
solar panels capable of generating around 13V dc (it has to be
greater than 12V dc to charge the batteries) at a minimum of 5
amps (preferably more). Solar panels for charging boat batteries
are easy to source, but the substrate is too heavy. Equally I
don't want to use film panels over the top of the balloon because
of the loss in the down-lead. My plan is to clamp lightweight
structures to the burner poles, top of the fuel tanks (so they can
be angled manually to face the sun), or even hang them below the
gondola in a cone or triangular config.
Does anybody on the list have knowledge of solar panel technology,
or is able to point me in the direction of somebody that does?
Please reply to my e-mail address - ANOBLE@BALLOONS.WIN-UK.NET - to
save clogging the airwaves. Many thanks. Alan Noble at Cameron
Balloons UK.


Solar panels (fwd)

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Sat May 13 23:23:19 1995
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To: london@sunsite.unc.edu
Date: Mon, 8 May 1995 15:21:25 GMT
From: ifjed@nmsua.nmsu.edu (Slieve M'Daid)
Message-Id: <ifjed.760.2FAE36F5@nmsua.nmsu.edu>
Organization: Alamogordo Branch Community College
Sender: london@sunsite.unc.edu
Subject: Zomeworks Sunflow
content-length: 89
Status: RO
X-Status: 

That's Zomeworks Sunflow, a freeze-tolerant solar water heating system for 
about $1000.

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Sun May 14 13:23:25 1995
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Date: Wed, 10 May 1995 14:16:04 GMT
From: Renewable News Network <rnn@WORLD.STD.COM>
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Subject: NEW ENGLAND ENERGY TASK FORCE (NEETF)
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1:30 PM Tuesday, May 16, 1995 TASK FORCE MEETING

Conference Rooms, 11th Floor, One Congress Street,
Boston, MA.

The theme will be "Electricity Competition:  How
Efficiency and Renewables Can Plug-In."  Speakers
include:

=F9 Theo MacGregor, Conservation Coordinator, MA Division
of Public Utilities, Boston, MA
=F9 Jeanne Sole, Staff Attorney - Conservation Law
Foundation, Boston, MA
=F9 Donald Bradshaw, Senior Consultant, Arthur D. Little,
Cambridge, MA
=F9 Larry Alexander, Executive Director, Consortium for
Energy Efficiency, Boston, MA
=F9 Erika Morgan, Deputy Commissioner, MA Division of
Energy Resources
=F9 Harvey Michaels, President-CEO, Xenergy Corporation

Each speaker will make a brief statement, respond to
comments and questions from co-speakers and then the
floor will be open for questions from meeting
participants.

Organization and Work Group Coordinators will report as
appropriate on current activities, accomplishments and
challenges.  Our goal is to promote more efficient energy
use and a better balanced energy resource system to
assure an adequate supply of energy at reasonable costs.

If you wish to continue to receive NEETF Agendas and
Minutes, please send your request to:

Hugh Saussy, Jr., Director - Region I
Department of Energy - Boston Office
One Congress Street
Boston, Massachusetts 02114

              --------> <RNN> Renewable News Network
                                  info@rnn.com
NEW ENGLAND ENERGY TASK FORCE (NEETF)

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Sun May 14 10:53:26 1995
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Date: Wed, 10 May 95 00:49:51 -0500
From: Josh Myers <joshmyers@delphi.com>
Message-Id: <Jg2fj0P.joshmyers@delphi.com>
Organization: Delphi (info@delphi.com email, 800-695-4005 voice)
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Subject: Re: Sunpower Stirling Engine
content-length: 500
Status: RO
X-Status: 

the sd100 is kind of old technology isnt it?.  William Beale has move
a long way past that engine.  as I remember that was sort of 1978?
design.  he is up working with cummins on free piston generators for
solar applications now.  they have a 7.5kw unit built and running.
i cant remember if beale has an address at the shop but he did have
an e-mail address at ohio state I think.  a good description of the sd100
in "lecture notes in engineeing" by walker and senft,  springer-verlag
publishers
jm

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Sun May 14 12:23:23 1995
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To: london@sunsite.unc.edu
Date: Sat, 13 May 95 22:50:57 PST
From: "Ralph D. Arnold" <rarnold@teleport.com>
Message-Id: <91550.rarnold@teleport.com>
Organization: Teleport - Portland's Public Access (503) 220-1016
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Subject: Any Experince with Savonius Rotor Windmills?
content-length: 373
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X-Status: 

I received an interesting catalog from Jade Mountain (18004421972),
which lists a book discussing how to build a wind generator from
oil drums, titled "Savonius Rotor Construction".  Have any of you
personally built these and, if so, any tips or experiences that might help
me?  Any add'l reference books you'd like to recommend?  
Thanks!   Ralph     rarnold@teleport.com

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Mon May 15 08:23:35 1995
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Date: Sun, 14 May 1995 12:44:04 -0800
From: amt@teleport.com
Message-Id: <amt-1405951244040001@ip-pdx1-20.teleport.com>
Organization: Planet Peace
Sender: london@sunsite.unc.edu
Subject: Black Mesa Permaculture Project on Navajo/Hopi Reservation
content-length: 5253
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X-Status: D

Here is an upcoming workshop/intensive for those interested in
Permaculutre.  It will be held on the Navajo/Hopi Reservation and is a
project of Indigenous People living on Reservation lands.   For more info
on this project and other issues concerning the environment and Indigenous
Peoples - check out URL http://www.teleport.com/~amt/PlanetPeace

----------------
Planet Peace
----------------
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
      Black Mesa Permaculture Project
     4th Annual Dryland Permaculture Intensive Design Course on the
     Navajo/Hopi Reservation, May 27 - June 4
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Permaculture, or permanent (agri)culture, means working with natural forces
- wind, sun, and water - to provide food, shelter, water and other needs
with minimum labor and without depleting the land. Permaculture is a
holistic approach based on traditional agricultural practices.

The Black Mesa Permaculture Project is a project of Indigenous People living
on Reservation lands on Black Mesa in the Four Corners area of the
Southwest with assistance of concerned support groups and persons.
Permaculture techniques allow people to diversify and increase flora
production, to restore eroded lands, and to make more efficient use of
resources. We feel that this project will help us and other Native Americans
integrate self-reliance and cultural values.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

                     4th Annual Intensive Design Course

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Instructors

The course will have three instructors, two of which are local Native
Americans. Justin Willy and George Crittenden have both taken certified
permaculture courses and are currently enrolled in an ecoforestry program.
George has several years previous experience in fire suppression and
reforestation while Justin has taught hands-on classes and consulted on
permaculture projects in the Black Mesa for five years. Both are working on
projects in their local areas and have been doing consulting work and giving
presentations to schools and local groups on the Black Mesa for nearly three
years in an attempt to expand the role of permaculture in healing the land.

Dan Dorsey, the primary instructor for the first three workshops has a
degree in forestry and has studied regenerative systems for over ten years.
In addition to residential landscapes, he has designed sustainable projects
for Tucson City Parks and Recreation, the Tucson Community Food Bank, and
the Tohono O'Odham Indian Nation. A well-known speaker in the Tucson area,
Dan emphasizes strategies for water harvesting, re-vegetation of damaged
areas, and integrating people with a sustainable environment.

This complete course will provide you with a permaculture design
certificate. Workshop fees promote scholarships for indigenous people.
Bring: camping gear, food, rain gear, notebooks, and work gloves.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Objectives

  1. Conduct surveys of site-specific soil, water, water-shed conditions,
     locally occurring native plant species, to provide a base of
     information for planning permaculture systems.
  2. Continue presentation of annual, comprehensive, hands-on permaculture
     courses on reservations which are open to the public and free to Native
     Americans.
  3. Set up a tree grow out program for planting in spring and fall.
  4. Design and construct with each family appropriate runoff water
     diversion and collection structures, and /or spring developments, to
     enable the family to make optimal use of available water resources.
  5. Work with each family, level bordered or terraced fields, and organic
     or garden plots in which collected runoff waters will be used for
     irrigation.
  6. Work to build solid fertility in their permaculture plots with locally
     available organic materials.
  7. Select and plant an appropriate mix of perennial trees, shrubs,
     grasses, and herbs with food or medicinal value.
  8. Plan and construct additional soil and water conservation and
     permaculture structures, including runoff plots for annual plantings,
     greenhouses to extend the growing season, and erosion control
     structures.
  9. Collect and ensure the survival and availability of traditional
     varieties of seeds and cultivators.
 10. The use of appropriate technology training will build all the needed
     skills and capacities in permaculture system design and construction so
     that the instructors and consultants will be primarily Native American.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Registration

To register, send your name, address, and phone number along with $250.00 or
non refundable $50.00 deposit to: Black Mesa Permaculture Project, PO Box
26195, Tucson, AZ 85796. Make cheques payable to Black Mesa Permaculture
Project.

-- 
-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-
Nothing Real Can Be Threatened.  Nothing Unreal Exists.
-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Mon May 15 11:23:37 1995
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Date: 14 May 1995 21:01:02 GMT
From: sky-tech@inet.uni-c.dk (Jorgen Skyt)
Message-Id: <3p5r2e$27q@news.uni-c.dk>
Organization: News Server at UNI-C, Danish Computing Centre for Research and Education.
Sender: london@sunsite.unc.edu
References: <91550.rarnold@teleport.com>
Subject: Re: Any Experince with Savonius Rotor Windmills?
content-length: 1647
Status: RO
X-Status: 

Ralph D. Arnold (rarnold@teleport.com) wrote:
: I received an interesting catalog from Jade Mountain (18004421972),
: which lists a book discussing how to build a wind generator from
: oil drums, titled "Savonius Rotor Construction".  Have any of you
: personally built these and, if so, any tips or experiences that might help
: me?  Any add'l reference books you'd like to recommend?  
: Thanks!   Ralph     rarnold@teleport.com

  Sorry, I can't give you any booktitles, but I believe there are numerous
books covering windenergy-turbines, amoung them "handy-man" versions of
the Savonius. You can find them all in the local library. 

  The Savonius is not very efficient on longer timescales, but it is
probably the easiest and cheapes windturbine to be build. 

  Advantages is low cost, standard equipment/materials, and the
interesting possibility to build a Savonius into the existing design of a
standard house, even in a city (chimney-mount if not to heavy). 
  The disadvantages is low energy output and heavy weight per kilowatt -
or kilojoule or whatever. 

  A major advantages in the construction is, that you don't have to worry
about which direction the wind comes from. So you build it, mount it,
connect it - and it works! For an experiment, start up with Polyethylene
bottles or ping-pong balls cut in half. You will then be able to do some
experiments. 

  Unfortunately, the Savonius is difficult to mount in altitudes where the
wind is more steady and runs faster. But then again: Think about the
chimney-mount. There you have the high-altitude mount ready made for
smaller applications. 

Best wishes
Joergen Skyt
Denmark

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Wed May 17 18:24:05 1995
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To: sustag-public@ces.ncsu.edu
Date: Fri, 12 May 1995 10:34:00 +0600
From: jim.mcnelly@midwest.org (Jim Mcnelly)
Message-Id: <36.295.1676@midwest.org>
Organization: Granite City Connection St. Cloud MN 612-654-8372
Sender: london@sunsite.unc.edu
References: <Pine.HPP.3.91.950511000340.13304E-100000@forth.stir.ac.uk>
Subject: WORMS
content-length: 1719
Status: O
X-Status: 

Juan writes:
References: <Pine.HPP.3.91.950511000340.13304E-100000@forth.stir.ac.uk> 

MR> I am culturing worms (E. foetida), and feeding fish with it. It is a
MR> good proteine source. On the other hand I've got pleanty of humus as
MR> a result of the worm culture, however I do not know how good it
MR> could be as an organic fertlizer? It is made of aquatic plants
MR> (Pistia stratiotes) and caw manure. Do somebody knows what to do
MR> with this stuff?

As a person who has been raising e.foetida for 22 years and with 
extensive experience marketing worm castings, I recommend using it as a 
potting soil amendment in rations from 20% to 33%. Of over 1,000 plant 
growth trials I am familiar with, no container plant tested did not 
benefit from the worm compost over conventional compost.

At studies at the Rothampstead research station in the 1980s conducted 
by Dr. Clive Edwards now at the Ohio State University, plant growth 
using worm castings was increased 20% to 200% over controls as measured 
by increased root mass, numbers of shoots, and size of plant.

You can also add it when planting shrubs, flowers, and trees, as well as 
using it in the garden around the active root zone. Some people market 
the product as a top dressing for house plants, but the benefits seem to 
be most pronounced when the castings are in the plant root zone.

Mr Compost~~~

Jim~ McNelly

Please note new E-mail address
compost@cloudnet.com


 * RM 1.3 02460 * Scotty, I need that power!

------------------============<>=============-----------------
   Granite City Connection (612) 654-8372 28.8K 3 Lines
   Email: jim.mcnelly@midwest.org (Jim Mcnelly)
------------------============<>=============-----------------

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Date: Wed, 17 May 1995 08:33:09 GMT
From: Nick Pine <nick@NFS.EE.VILL.EDU>
Message-Id: <19433.usenet@merckx.graphics.cornell.edu>
Sender: london@sunsite.unc.edu
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Subject: Re: AE Digest - 14 May 1995 to 15 May 1995
content-length: 304
Status: O
X-Status: 

Hi Marge,

In article <6006.usenet@merckx.graphics.cornell.edu> you write:

>Don't you think it could work?

Sure :-) If we can make the reply and subject lines work correctly
in this newsgroup, we can do anything :-)

Nick

Re: AE Digest - 14 May 1995 to 15 May 1995                                   R

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Thu May 18 21:54:43 1995
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To: sustag-public@ces.ncsu.edu
Date: 17 May 1995 07:42:03 GMT
From: Scott Crawford <exec@hawaii-nation.org>
Message-Id: <3pc9cb$9tf@nuhou.aloha.net>
Organization: Nation of Hawaii
Sender: london@sunsite.unc.edu
References: <3p51ip$5gu@newsbf02.news.aol.com>
Subject: Re: Aquaculture:  Request for Info Sources
content-length: 904
Status: RO
X-Status: 

Aloha,

The Native Hawaiian people developed one of the most sophisticated 
aquaculture systems in the world, and much of the knowledge of these 
techniques is still intact.

Two good sources for contacts are:

Wai`anae Coast Community Development Corporation
P.O. Box 630
Wai`anae, Hawai`i  96792
808/696-7241 ph
808/696-9411 fx

Office of Hawaiian Affairs
Economic Development Division
711 Kapiolani Blvd, Suite 500
Honolulu, Hawaii  96813
808/594-1928 ph
808/594-1865 fx

And they can probably refer you to others in Hawaii or elsewhere.

Scott

      /\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\
     /                                    \
    /  Scott Crawford - Nation of Hawai`i  \
    \                                      /
    /       exec@hawaii-nation.org         \
    \   http://hawaii-nation.org/nation/   /
     \                                    /
      \/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/


From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Fri May 19 14:24:39 1995
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Date: Thu, 18 May 1995 17:01:31 GMT
From: David Bazeley <nrnf_eea@nlnet.nf.ca>
Message-Id: <1153.usenet@merckx.graphics.cornell.edu>
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Subject: Compost Power
content-length: 489
Status: O
X-Status: 

I am looking for information and/or references for the power output of
anaerobic compost piles. I am told the temperature in the pile centre is
around 60 degrees C, but I am trying to establish the rate at which this
could be removed without seriouly cooling the pile. I am told there is
definitely excess heat, as in an open compost pile it radiates/convects away.

Any help with this presumably somewhat wierd request would be greatly
appreciated.

Regards,

David Bazeley
Compost Power

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Sat May 20 19:25:02 1995
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To: london@sunsite.unc.edu
Date: 17 May 1995 08:57:35 GMT
From: helthuis@cs.utwente.nl (Bert Helthuis)
Message-Id: <3pcdpv$50n@utrhcs.cs.utwente.nl>
Organization: University of Twente, Dept. of Computer Science
Sender: london@sunsite.unc.edu
Subject: recent Home Power Mag  editions ?
content-length: 482
Status: O
X-Status: 

Hello,

I'm reading editions of Home Power Magazine on 'sunsite.unc.edu',
but the last one stored there is #35, whereas the last actual edition
appears to be #45. I know of the Redwood Alliance BBS where back issues
are available, but I'm on the Internet only  ( :-) sorry for that ) AND
I'm living in the Netherlands. Does some kind soul have any pointers
to these issues available via FTP/WWW/... ?
Thanks in advance,

Bert Helthuis
searching for renewable energy from Holland ..

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Sat May 20 19:54:53 1995
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To: london@sunsite.unc.edu
Date: 18 May 1995 20:16:12 GMT
From: lbutler.gate.net@bigblue.oit.unc.edu (Lee Porter Butler)
Message-Id: <lbutler.gate.net-1805951524520001@wpbfl2-45.gate.net>
Organization: Ekotecture Incorporated
Sender: london@sunsite.unc.edu
References: <amt-1705951209450001@ip-pdx5-03.teleport.com>
Subject: Re: CORRECTION:Black Mesa Permaculture Project on Navajo/Hopi Reservation
content-length: 1345
Status: RO
X-Status: 

thanks for your response. What do you think of this? I am trying to create
a lens of focus group, which could present and advocate practical
solutions to our present problems. I would appreciate your help. I believe
that if we can language the request properly, millions of people who feel
just like we do and can not express it, will respond with support and add
power to our message.


The
DOLPHIN GREEN
Planetary Prosperity Project©

We are a group of individuals seeking environmental equilibrium
 
&  a voluntary world order through

€A Return of economic and political responsibility 
to the neighborhoods and communities.
€A voluntary world order based on self discipline, 
non-violence, strength, courage, compassion and trust.
€The protection of individual civil liberties, 
private life styles and religious freedom.
€The commercial development of intentional,  sustainable, floating 
communities,  powered by solar, gravity, geothermal and other 
universally abundant ecologically harmonious sources of energy.

To support this vision of a better world & receive our quarterly newsletter
Send name, address, your own ideas &  $15 to:
The Dolphin Green Prosperity Project
620 Biscayne Drive 
West Palm Beach, Florida 33401 (407) 659-7656
Or you may charge your credit card by calling 
(407) 833-9007 or VIA Internet <lbutler@gate.net>

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Sun May 21 04:54:57 1995
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Date: 19 May 1995 08:33:13 -0400
From: nick@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu (Nick Pine)
Message-Id: <3pi369$ier@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu>
Organization: Villanova University
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Subject: Subsidizing the Sun
content-length: 990
Status: O
X-Status: 

Here's a quote from Steve Baer's intro to the pamphlet, "Subsidizing the Sun," 
written with William Shurcliff, in 1988, about 4 years after the 40% renewable
US tax credits expired:

   I don't want to watch them try to subsidize the sun again. I don't care
   what the subsidies are to oil, coal or nuclear energy. If you read
   the following pamphlet you will see why I believe that it is futile
   to try to subsidize the sun. Our only hope is to take away competing
   subsidies. What I hate most about our government help is the kind of
   people it attracts. The "far-sighted" environmentalists who prove
   you need it, the weapons lab scientists who promise to solve the problem
   for just a few hundred million dollars and, least vile of the three groups,
   the fast buck artists who peddle the overpriced equipment. Another
   sidelight I don't like (actually I have kind of enjoyed it) is becoming
   a "crackpot" by repeating an obvious truth to people who will not listen.

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Sun May 21 13:25:02 1995
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To: london@sunsite.unc.edu
Date: 19 May 1995 17:40:59 -0500
From: rvaidyan@ub.d.umn.edu (rajiv vaidyanathan)
Message-Id: <3pj6pr$5dk@ub.d.umn.edu>
Organization: University of Minnesota, Duluth
Sender: london@sunsite.unc.edu
Subject: World Power Technologies - E-mail
content-length: 389
Status: RO
X-Status: 

Just to let you folks know. World Power Technolgoies - the manufacturer 
of the Whisper line of wind generators now have an e-mail address to go 
along with their homepage.  Here are the details:

WWW Page:  http://www.webpage.com/wpt/
E-mail:    wpt@cp.duluth.mn.us

This is not a commercial announcement - simply information for anyone who 
may want to contact them for whatever reason.

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Sun May 21 22:55:16 1995
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To: london@sunsite.unc.edu
Date: Sun, 21 May 1995 04:47:14 GMT
From: Kerry Miller <%cmsa.Berkeley.EDU:ASTINGSH%KSUVM.BITNET@bigblue.oit.unc.edu>
Message-Id: <4290.usenet@merckx.graphics.cornell.edu>
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Subject: Re: Any Experince with Savonius Rotor Windmills?
content-length: 3386
Status: RO
X-Status: 

Hugh wrote (citing Joergen),
> |>   Advantages is low cost, standard equipment/materials, and the
> |> interesting possibility to build a Savonius into the existing design of a
> |> standard house, even in a city (chimney-mount if not to heavy)....
>
> Another claimed advantage is that the gearbox and generator
>  are at the bottom of the rotor [often on the ground], with easy
>  access for installation or maintenance.  The more reliable the
>  generator the less advantage.
>
> |> ... For an experiment, start up with Polyethylene
> |> bottles or ping-pong balls cut in half. You will then be able to do some
> |> experiments.

If you want an anemometer, go with bottles. But a rotor of any size
reveals that
it is essential to have *both* bearings securely anchored. Guys won't do it.
The problem is, you're dealing with a three-dimensional dynamic balance
problem (bad enough in ~2D: ever try to balanvce your own tires?) and
the rectangular cross section of a cylindrical Savonius is made to order for
a design that throws itself out of balance once its rotating.

Take your oil drum, cut it in half,  fasten the halves to hubs (offsetabout a
foot) and string it up on a shaft. Then wait and watch the central space
*open up* and youll be able to see the shaft .  What this tells you is that
centripetal forces are deforming the surface -- in the section, from a
vertical line to a catenary curve. But the distortion is different on the
downwind side from the upwind side: i.e., out of balance.  Once the thing
starts throwing out, it's only a matter of time before the guys give way, or
the shaft fatigues or the whole thing topples over -- taking your chimbley
with it.

Having damped your enthusiasm, here's a
possible solution:  hang the axis *horizontally*.: both bearings are equally
rigid (or floppy if you want to look at it that way) plus you can draw your
power off from *both* ends. The axis is of course transverse to the
prevailing winds. (Dont worry about omnidirectionality. That was S's big
idea, because he thought it would work as a sail for water craft which go
all directions - but show me a place that has good consistent wind from all
directions and I'll show you a  place called Oz.)  The rotor will respond
well to wind even 45 off-axis, in any case.

 Secondly, forget the drums; make your own windcatcher with (doubly)
curved skins.  Fabric over ribs is one way to at least approximate this, with
the further advantage that when the wind finally takes it (nothing manmade
yet that's put up against nature stays put forever) its only a few yards of
cloth blowing into the neighbors yard rather than a serious piece of metal
plate.

The comments about loss of efficiency in gearing up for generation are
true enough -- but there are  other things to do with power (e.g. pumped
water storage or hydraulic swashplate compression) and anyway,
whatever happened to the Orbidrive (TM) cam type boxes that were
marketed as having 1000:1 ratios at 97% eff?

If you really want electrics, wind your own rotor: at a radius of two or 3 ft,
something will come of it (providing of course the stators are on the same
floppy/rigid mountings...), tho at this point I'm not speaking from
experience ;-)


kerry miller         astingsh@ksuvm.ksu.edu
/ / *    Reduce   Reuse  Repair   Recycle   Reject    Remember.  * / /
Re: Any Experince with Savonius Rotor Windmills?

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Sun May 21 22:55:16 1995
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Date: Sun, 21 May 1995 04:47:14 GMT
From: Kerry Miller <%cmsa.Berkeley.EDU:ASTINGSH%KSUVM.BITNET@bigblue.oit.unc.edu>
Message-Id: <4290.usenet@merckx.graphics.cornell.edu>
Sender: london@sunsite.unc.edu
Reply-To: Alternative Energy Discussion List <%cmsa.Berkeley.EDU:AE%SJSUVM1.BITNET@bigblue.oit.unc.edu>
Subject: Re: Any Experince with Savonius Rotor Windmills?
content-length: 3386
Status: RO
X-Status: D

Hugh wrote (citing Joergen),
> |>   Advantages is low cost, standard equipment/materials, and the
> |> interesting possibility to build a Savonius into the existing design of a
> |> standard house, even in a city (chimney-mount if not to heavy)....
>
> Another claimed advantage is that the gearbox and generator
>  are at the bottom of the rotor [often on the ground], with easy
>  access for installation or maintenance.  The more reliable the
>  generator the less advantage.
>
> |> ... For an experiment, start up with Polyethylene
> |> bottles or ping-pong balls cut in half. You will then be able to do some
> |> experiments.

If you want an anemometer, go with bottles. But a rotor of any size
reveals that
it is essential to have *both* bearings securely anchored. Guys won't do it.
The problem is, you're dealing with a three-dimensional dynamic balance
problem (bad enough in ~2D: ever try to balanvce your own tires?) and
the rectangular cross section of a cylindrical Savonius is made to order for
a design that throws itself out of balance once its rotating.

Take your oil drum, cut it in half,  fasten the halves to hubs (offsetabout a
foot) and string it up on a shaft. Then wait and watch the central space
*open up* and youll be able to see the shaft .  What this tells you is that
centripetal forces are deforming the surface -- in the section, from a
vertical line to a catenary curve. But the distortion is different on the
downwind side from the upwind side: i.e., out of balance.  Once the thing
starts throwing out, it's only a matter of time before the guys give way, or
the shaft fatigues or the whole thing topples over -- taking your chimbley
with it.

Having damped your enthusiasm, here's a
possible solution:  hang the axis *horizontally*.: both bearings are equally
rigid (or floppy if you want to look at it that way) plus you can draw your
power off from *both* ends. The axis is of course transverse to the
prevailing winds. (Dont worry about omnidirectionality. That was S's big
idea, because he thought it would work as a sail for water craft which go
all directions - but show me a place that has good consistent wind from all
directions and I'll show you a  place called Oz.)  The rotor will respond
well to wind even 45 off-axis, in any case.

 Secondly, forget the drums; make your own windcatcher with (doubly)
curved skins.  Fabric over ribs is one way to at least approximate this, with
the further advantage that when the wind finally takes it (nothing manmade
yet that's put up against nature stays put forever) its only a few yards of
cloth blowing into the neighbors yard rather than a serious piece of metal
plate.

The comments about loss of efficiency in gearing up for generation are
true enough -- but there are  other things to do with power (e.g. pumped
water storage or hydraulic swashplate compression) and anyway,
whatever happened to the Orbidrive (TM) cam type boxes that were
marketed as having 1000:1 ratios at 97% eff?

If you really want electrics, wind your own rotor: at a radius of two or 3 ft,
something will come of it (providing of course the stators are on the same
floppy/rigid mountings...), tho at this point I'm not speaking from
experience ;-)


kerry miller         astingsh@ksuvm.ksu.edu
/ / *    Reduce   Reuse  Repair   Recycle   Reject    Remember.  * / /
Re: Any Experince with Savonius Rotor Windmills?

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Mon May 22 18:25:32 1995
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To: london@sunsite.unc.edu
Date: Fri, 19 May 1995 23:27:34
From: aaasolar@rt66.com (Chuck Marken)
Message-Id: <aaasolar.2.00177652@rt66.com>
Organization: Engineering International, Inc.
Sender: london@sunsite.unc.edu
Subject: Morning Star Controls (prev. Looking for Information)
content-length: 478
Status: RO
X-Status: 

Brian:

Having checked with the ancient ones, I am told that Morning Star is no 
longer in business. However, systems like yours are still installed, so 
replacement equipment is available. 

If you have access to the web, go to http://www. rt66.com/aaasolar. I found 
controls and a basic wiring diagram. Better yet call 1-800-245-0311 and get 
the Solar Design Catalog sent to you. It's free.

Hope this indicates a direction to try and you're up and running by fall. 

Bill


From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Tue May 23 13:26:04 1995
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To: london@sunsite.unc.edu
Date: 22 May 1995 12:58:51 GMT
From: konjohn@eua.ericsson.se (John Self)
Message-Id: <3pq1qb$969@euas20.eua.ericsson.se>
Organization: Ellemtel Telecom Systems Labs, Stockholm, Sweden
Sender: london@sunsite.unc.edu
Reply-To: konjohn@eua.ericsson.se
Subject: Stockholm EV exhibition - Report
content-length: 4514
Status: RO
X-Status: 

The exhibition of electric vehicles in Stockholm on Sunday was very interesting - 
there were more than 80 vehicles there, ranging from an electric cycle to a hybrid 
sports car. Two of the EVs were very old showpieces: a fire engine from about 1905 
and a small flatbed delivery truck from about 1920. But the rest of the vehicles 
displayed were practical every day units for transporting people or delivering goods.

The city of Stockholm obviously takes alternative energy sources seriously. The 
company Stockholm ENERGI operates its own fleet of Volkswagen Golf (Rabbit) cars, 
and charging points are available at 14 city parking areas. Another city company 
runs a mixed fleet of 19 EVs.

I have outlined the EVs below and I have a lot of other material, including some 
prices, phone and fax numbers of the manufacturers or suppliers. If anybody wants 
more information, send me an e-mail with your fax number, and I'll mail/fax you. 

Finally, something to look out for this year: The Scandinavian Electric Car Rally 
from Gothenborg to Oslo between 2 and 5 August. 
Contact: SECR 95, Box 53, 401 20 Gothenburg, Sweden. 
Tel: 031 62 60 61 Fax: 031 62 60 66. I have one colour brochure in English which I would be pleased to post on, otherwise give them a call for more information.
 
There were two main classes of EVs, three wheel and four wheel, with variations on 
the basic theme within the class.

THREE WHEEL

Most of this class were utility vehicles. 

There were about 15 yellow Post trucks used for mail delivery in the Stockholm 
suburbs. These were a rather curious design called TUGGER, with front steering 
on one wheel, but the other two wheels were staggered, not aligned together at 
the rear. There was 120 degree access to the mail on the waist-high L-shaped 
load platform. Range 40 km, with 800 stops, all-weather capability. 
Max load 300 kg.

The ELEBRA Carry would be at home used for park, estate, golf course maintenance: 
single seat over the rear wheel and a flatbed with box or cage attachment, tipper. 
Max load 400 kg. Platform 1250 x 1250 mm. 

EZGO similar to above. Company: Ground and Garden, Stockholm 08 621 40000.

City El was a very sleek, low-slung, single seater. It had a semi-reclined driving 
position, canopy hinged at the front that takes the instrument panel and steering 
wheel with it when you lift it up. Just like being in a high-performance sailplane. 
Also available as a convertible. max speed: 60 kmh. Weight 400 kg, motor max 3.5 kW, 
nominal 2.5 kW, 36 V supply. 8 hours between charges. Made in Denmark. $2500.

FOUR WHEEL

SOLON - definitely the best-looking car - a red sports car which used hybrid drive technolgy: a three cylinder diesel turbo driving a generator. max speed: is 
110 kmh (70mph). Battery charge time 5 hours. Electric motor power 40 kW, diesel 
8 kW. Diesel consumption 2 litres/hour. The two doors opened out and then flipped 
up and forward like the Lamborghini Countach.

Kewet - a small two-seat hatchback shopper with a small load area. Jazzy colours 
but quite expensive. Top speed 60 kmh. Range 50 km at 50 kmh.

Volkswagen Golf Citystromer based on the successful VW Golf (US = Rabbit), and 
operated by the Stockholm ENERGI company. max speed: 110 kmh, range: 80 km at 50 kmh, 
65 km at 70 kmh, 56 km in city traffic.

CITYVAN 200 is based on a small Japanese delivery van, converted to electric 
operation by a Finnish company. max speed: 80 kmh, acceleration 0 - 50 kmh 13 sec, 
range: in city 70 km, motor power 22 kW. A local delivery company uses these vans.

Solectria Force 95 - a four-door compact saloon (Chrysler Neon size). Photo only, 
but looks very sleek. max speed: 115 kmh, range: 70 - 100 km with lead acid batteries, 
120 to 150 km with "other" batteries.

There was even a 340 series Volvo hybrid that used a Honda portable generator as 
the power for charging the batteries. Novel idea that. Looked like a private 
conversion, but well carried out.

Renault Extra van, based on the Renault 5 car.

Ford Escort vans and estate cars.

THE CYCLE
Rexoped 2000 is a bicycle with a motor built in to the front wheel hub, small
battery pack on the back carrier, motorcycle twistgrip throttle. Max speed: 22 kmh, 
range: 20 - 25 km, 2 hour charge time, weight 26 kg. Battery 36 V/4 Ah. 
Very impressive. Made by the Swedish bicycle firm Rex.

      //
     //
\\  //
 \\//
  \/ohn   "Yield to temptation - it may not pass your way again"  
  

[my employer only sponsors the bandwidth, not my opinions]



From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Tue May 23 13:25:52 1995
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To: london@sunsite.unc.edu
Date: Mon, 22 May 1995 16:45:42 +0100 (BST)
From: men3cah@sun.leeds.ac.uk (The Ageing Hippie)
Message-Id: <1995May22.154543.1992@leeds.ac.uk>
Organization: University of Leeds, England
Sender: london@sunsite.unc.edu
References: <3pe1pj$1aom@usenetp1.news.prodigy.com>
Subject: Re: NYT EV and lead impacts
content-length: 2316
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In article <3pe1pj$1aom@usenetp1.news.prodigy.com>, RXFN56A@prodigy.com (Steven Piet) writes:
> Some interesting posting on this subject.  However, I think people need 
> to keep some matters in perspective.  Any activity has safefy and 
> environmental impacts, the issues are the amount, cost of reducing 
> impacts, alternatives, etc.  For decades, researchers have rightly 
> pointed out the hazards of lead in the environment (paint, gasoline, 
> smelting, etc.).  It is only appropriate to consider another new possible 
> source of lead - increased lead batteries.  Attacking the motives of 
> people does not contribute to useful debate and inquiry.  Especially 
> attacking the NYT as being a friend of conservative business interests is 
> pretty nuts; the NYT has supported and reported every environmentalist 
> attack and report for decades, with typically inadequate attention to 
> science in the process.
> 
> Electric vehicles can be a beneficial step in air pollution if (a) the 
> net lifecycle air pollution of the required generation of electricity is 
> less than the gasoline generated pollution, (b) the EV technology does 
> not add significantly some new pollution source (such as lead)  and (c) 
> the safety hazards of the EV's are reduced.   The energy should be able 
> to be generated with less air pollution using low emission technologies 
> such as fission and hydropower, which themselves have environmental 
> impacts (especially hydropower).   The safety hazards of EV's need more 
> study; lead batteries are heavy --> more momentum --> crash forces.  Yes, 
> everyone loves the idea of improved battery technologies.  And, I will 
> buy my family an EV when the technology is suitable.  But, lead acid 
> battery EV's are crummy performers, are not necessarily safer than 
> current cars, not necessarily more environmentally benign.
> 
> -
>   STEVEN PIET  RXFN56A@prodigy.com

- Nice post. Just one thing; when talking about the environmental impact of
fission and hydropower, you imply that the impact of hydropower is worse than
that of fission.
	I hope this is a typo. If it isn't, may I ask how you make your nuclear
waste safe (given that not all reactors are fast breeding) in America, 'cause us
simple folk in Blighty would quite like to know...

Luv,

Ageing Hippie 

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Tue May 23 23:26:03 1995
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To: london@sunsite.unc.edu
Date: Tue, 23 May 1995 05:12:54 GMT
From: Lee Butler <lbutler@GATE.NET>
Message-Id: <18870.usenet@merckx.graphics.cornell.edu>
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Subject: response to focus group
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Date: Sun, 21 May 1995 21:02:18 GMT
=46rom: shelter@peg.apc.org (Madhudvisah dasa Swami)
Subject: Changing the Face of the Earth!
To: lbutler@gate.net
X-Newsreader: Forte Free Agent v0.46

lbutler.gate.net (Lee Porter Butler) wrote:

>What do you think of this? I am trying to create a lens of focus group,
>which could present and advocate practical solutions to our present
>problems. I would appreciate your help. I believe that if we can language
>the request properly, millions of people who feel just like we do and can
>not express it, will respond with support and add power to our message.

  I think you will have to express it in more clear language!

>The
>DOLPHIN GREEN
>Planetary Prosperity Project=A9

>We are a group of individuals seeking environmental equilibrium
>
>&  a voluntary world order through

>=C4A Return of economic and political responsibility
>to the neighborhoods and communities.

  It's a sentimental idea which presumes people will voluntarily
  cooperate together [without a leader I suppose] for the environment and
  world peace. They won't do it!

  Nothing substantial has ever been accomplished without a leader. If
  people have faith in a leader and the leader is actually qualified then
  your objects could be achieved. You have to face reality. The vast
  majority of people are not capable of making decisions considering all
  angles of vision. I have been involved in many cooperative decision
  making groups and committees and invariably they don't work as a group.
  Everyone is trying to push their own ideas...

>=C4A voluntary world order based on self discipline,
>non-violence, strength, courage, compassion and trust.

  Once again sentimental and unrealistic [it sounds nice though!]. In
  reality there will always be rebellious people and if there is no
  strong government to check them they will just exploit the citizens and
  create havoc in society. What would your "peaceful, non-violent
  collective government" do about them? It's not practical. Non-violence
  is not for governments. The government is responsible to protect the
  citizens so they have to curb the disturbing elements in society and
  sometimes violence is necessary, they have to protect the citizens from
  attacks from outside so violence is sometimes necessary here also.

>=C4The protection of individual civil liberties,

  Sometimes this requires violence on the part of the government.

>private life styles and religious freedom.

  I don't understand what you mean by "private lifestyles". Religious
  freedom is ok. But people have to follow some bona fide religious
  system properly. The government should see to this.

>=C4The commercial development of intentional,  sustainable, floating
>communities,  powered by solar, gravity, geothermal and other
>universally abundant ecologically harmonious sources of energy.

  Why not just get some land and some cows and bulls? You can use the
  bulls to plow the fields and grow grains and vegetables, you can milk
  the cows and you can get building materials from the forest. What more
  could you want?

  Better to develop simple, local communities rather than such a complex
  thing as you have mentioned.


  I'm in the process of getting a WWW site together at:

     http://www.peg.apc.org/~shelter

  You will find  "Changing the Face of the Earth" there [soon]. I think you =
will
  be interested.

  Thank you. Hare Krishna.



                          ___________________________________________
Madhudvisah dasa Swami   |                                           |
(shelter@peg.apc.org)    | S H E L T E R   I N T E R N A T I O N A L |
   +61 02 248 967        |___________________________________________|
                                CHANT HARE KRISHNA AND BE HAPPY!

Quotes from His Divine Grace A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada (c) BBT

Lee Porter Butler
620 Biscayne Drive
West Palm Beach, Florida 33401
407-659-7656 =20


response to focus group

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Tue May 23 23:26:06 1995
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Date: Tue, 23 May 1995 05:10:38 GMT
From: Lee Butler <lbutler@GATE.NET>
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Subject: euology
content-length: 9282
Status: O
X-Status: 

We speak and they are silent
all men are brothers and yearn to be free
we speak and they turn away
we see and try to make them see

we burried our dead president today
he spoke and they were silent
he had hope and they did not believe
we laid down our arms and they were violent

they shot his brother Bobby
they killed Martin Luther King
we called out again to our parents
to let go of this evil thing

they shot their own children today
Kent State so far away
they made their point
we can not stay

there is no place in America
 for those who are free
our heart was burried at Wounded knee
Auschwitz, Nagasaki to name just three

we speak about the children
they do not care
we speak about the earth
and meaningless warfare

they burried my son today
lost in this miserable life
looking for someone who cares
he finally took the dare

we speak and no one listens
we call for a place where children can hear
we ask that they preserve the earth
for the future ones so dear

they are caught up in their monkey culture
monkey this, monkey that
we plead with the powers that be
to give us just one tiny place
where men can be free

all of their empty warehouses
all of their greed
all of their wealth and all of their need
leaves no place for those who can feel

they burried my other son today
he was so strong
playing music and
singing his song

there was no place in this world
for children like him
he was too kind
to willing to bend

we speak and no one listens
we write and they can not respond
the whole world is dead now
that is the end of this song

Dear Harold and Mutzie,
     Lee and I have so much to give to the world.  We aren't just thinking
of ourselves, as our vision is one that we believe will make a difference
in the world to make it a better place.  All of my art work is directed
with that in mind, as is all of Lee's architecture.  We have been
interested in a community of people who are able to hear the wisdom in our
philosophy, and embrace it by responding to it.  That means addressing any
of the issues that we raise.  (We live in south Florida, so we realize that
we are at a deficit to begin with, as most people seem quasi brain-dead,
having left the north for retirement or whatever reason.)  We don't even
ask that anyone agree with the philosophy, because it begins with a
dialogue, or even a question.  What do you mean by x,y,or z?    Lee has
written you, and in countless talks to you requested some sort of response.
There has been only the response of  a refusal to talk about issues that
you believe you will disagree about (even though you don't really know as
you have never discussed them).  i.e.  you have put your foot down and told
Lee that you refuse to talk about LSD.  You will listen to Lee for great
lengths of time on subjects that interest you from the internet to
religion, music, your children.
     Lee has a brilliant mind.  You have recognized that.  Mutzie likes
listening to his comforting voice.  When Lee used to go to his
"appointments" with Harold I used to laughingly tell him that he was doing
the psychiatry on you Harold, but there is more than a grain of truth to
that, and if you let your ego down for a minute you will admit that.    The
fact of the matter is that Lee and I need people who will give us energy,
and recognize us, instead of draining us, and demoralizing us.  You have
criticized Lee and looked down upon him for his efforts writing the
President, or desiring a response to his work.  We call you "Herr Doctor",
"Herr Holier Than Thou".  Lee is the only one I know out there holding the
torch, asking the questions, and looking for the answers, and spending a
lifetime on the solutions and then offering them up.  For people who call
him "One of their best friends" to ridicule him for his efforts is painful.
YOU NEED TO JOIN THE WAR, Instead of sitting on the sidelines
dispassionately.  YOU KNOW IN YOUR HEART OF HEARTS THAT WHAT WE ARE DOING
IS MERITORIOUS.
     Quite truthfully Harold and Mutzie I don't want you to buy my art
work.  If my vision of the world as expressed through my art doesn't move
you I won't let you own my art.  Lee has told me that  I will only attract
light.  Once I remember Lee telling me you wanted me to put my art work in
your office, gracing your walls.  You wouldn't of course be able to buy
it.( there it is again our energy for no exchange).  You and people like
you are responsible for the ugliness in the world, because you don't
support art.  You think it  doesn't merit any energy exchange.  You
probably thought you would be doing me a favor "letting me grace your walls
with my art".  I  tried to sell you on Patrick's work, or Patricia
Feinman's work, or anyone other than me, as I have twelve other artists
there.  I wanted your support.  You know that we are struggling.  You know
that I am the only one earning a dime, and that Lee's life is threatened by
this illness.  We need every ounce of energy possible to support Lee to
live.  It's about energy.  Lee has given you so much of his wisdom and
energy, and you know it  We deserve something in the exchange.  We give
freely from the depths of our being because we have what I call a
generosity of spirit.  This is a great blessing that both Lee and I have,
but now we are in life-threatening situations and we are calling out for
help, and not without an ability to give in abundance.How can one measure a
lifetime of enjoyment derived from a beautiful creation, that has been
created with the intention to give pleasure and enjoyment be measured by
dollars and cents.  The owner of the beautiful creation is always the
winner.
     I know Harold that you were crying by the time Lee finished talking to
you.  I know you had called as a friend to say some kind and comforting
words about our deep loss.
Both you and Mutzie bypassed me, without a thought as to how all this must
be affecting me. I was deeply hurt by it, first when Mutzie called, as  I
have been acutely aware of  your ignoring me in the energy exchange, and I
would have carried on saying nothing, if I wasn't pressed by both you and
Lee to say something.  Aaron and David were very close to me.  Aaron called
me "Mom", and  I know that I was the closest thing that either of the boys
had to a mother they dreamed about.  Aaron was going to give Lee one of his
kidneys, and had considered being the father to a baby for me.
       I hope that this is an opportunity for growth. I
f it is we all might be able to build a friendship, but if it isn't I know
that one day you will look back on my words, and realize what your role has
been.  You have a choice.

We love you no matter what you decide.     Jill and Lee
Dear Harold and Mutsi,

We did not choose to communicate with you. You choose to communicate with
us, because of an article Jill had written on Yoga. Yoga is about union or
unity. It is about the unification of the body with the mind and spirit,
the emotions with the intellect. You would not have been touched by her
wisdom nor acted to call her, if you did not at least understand the very
basics of this concept. What Jill and I are trying to communicate to you is
about unity and the implications of joining and integration and harmony, a
process which leads to peace, Nirvana or understanding. It is the process
which brought Jill and I together. It is very powerful. Once you surrender
to the mysteries of life, the secrets of life open up for you. It gives you
compassion, hope, faith and energy to love people, no matter how they treat
you. It gives you the capacity to accept something like the death of your
children, and to go on living and being a light in the world.

Our role is to give of light, i.e. love, understanding, acceptance, of you,
of the wino on the corner of Tamarind and Clematis begging for a dime, the
rich  socialites who spent all of their time and all of the money on people
like you and plastic surgeons, all in an effort to escape from who they
really are and what their really could do with their energy. We accept and
love all of you, equally, and with compassion and empathy for you small
worlds and the problems you are caught up in. We appeal you, but we do and
will try to communicate with you about the issues which robbed us of our
two children and many other fine young people who are growing up in our
world.

Your children, if allowed to know us, beyond superficially controlled
situations, would support and endorse everything we try to teach. All of
children hear us and support us and love us because they se they we are
awake and care about the whole, not just the parts we like. We are writing
to point this out to you because, if we can make even a small dent in your
psychic armor, reinforced by your official legal status, giving you the
right to decide or judge other people's lives, making or breaking their
future,  expensive homes, gated communities, fancy clothes and smug holier
than thou attitudes, which you express and command like a pure genius, then
there is some hope for the rest of the world.

We know you are trying to do the right thing. All we say is that you are
incapable of responding to our energy. please respond.
Jill and Lee

Written by Lee

Lee Porter Butler
620 Biscayne Drive
West Palm Beach, Florida 33401
407-659-7656


euology

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Wed May 24 11:56:10 1995
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Date: Fri, 12 May 1995 14:33:57 GMT
From: dnoble@magi.com (Duncan Noble)
Message-Id: <dnoble-1205951033570001@magi2p25.magi.com>
Organization: Noble Consulting
Sender: london@sunsite.unc.edu
Subject: Renewable Energy Policy
content-length: 1408
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Here is your chance to improve government policy on renewable energy.

I am pulling together some information about Canadian government economic
and financial policies that encourage or discourage the adoption of
renewable energy solutions like wind, solar, etc.  This includes direct
government spending on energy R&D, tax treatment for energy producers,
manufacturers, and investors, and other government policies.  This
information will be used by Renewable Energy Associations in Canada to
influence senior politicians about opportunities to reform existing
policies so that renewable energy is treated more fairly, compared to
fossil fuels and nuclear.

Any information or sources about spending and policies in Canada, the U.S.
or other countries would be greatly appreciated.  For example, a while
back I believe there was some information posted here on the U.S. DOE 1995
Budget by energy sector.  Does anyone have the latest version, or even a
copy of the original posting? 

In return for your help, I will summarize the information I receive from
this and other sources and make it available to this newsgroup.  In case
you were wondering, I am not being paid for this work.

-- 
Duncan Noble, Noble Consulting      Tel: (613) 235-6476
38 Renfrew Avenue                   Fax: (613) 235-9367
Ottawa, Ontario, Canada             Email: dnoble@magi.com

            http://infoweb.magi.com/~dnoble/

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Wed May 24 11:56:12 1995
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To: london@sunsite.unc.edu
Date: 23 May 1995 07:05:38 -0400
From: nick@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu (Nick Pine)
Message-Id: <3psfi2$eo3@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu>
Organization: Villanova University
Sender: london@sunsite.unc.edu
References: <9505221653.AA17105@nfs.ee.vill.edu>, <Pine.SOL.3.91.950522183209.22916C-100000@rocky>
Subject: Re: Solar thermal/Gas Hybrid Proj.
content-length: 1497
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X-Status: 

Rama Polefka  <ez013053@peseta.ucdavis.edu> wrote:
 
>> You might check out the patent issued to Norman Saunders on a solar
>> steam generator, which consists of a linear sort of cusplike concentrating
>> reflector below a glass boiler, with an intermediate radiation absorbing
>> mesh grid just below the waterline.

>Indeed I will!!! Do you have any additional info...?

You can reach Norman B. Saunders, PE, at
              15 Ellis Road,
              Weston, MA 02193

Some of his patents (copies of which are available for $3 each from
The Commissioner of Patents and Trademarks/Washington, DC 20231):

3,952,947 4/27/76  Solar heating system employing controlled
                   introduction of outdoor air via a special window.
		   [I think this one briefly describes the steam generator.]

4,078,603 3/14/78  Skylight-type collector with storage and
                   distribution systems.

4,123,002 10/31/78 System for controlling air temperature, humidity
                   and ventilation with use of ground coupling.

4,157,639 6/12/79  Seals for vertical and sloping windows or glazing.

4,201,189 5/6/80   South window solar-radiation absorbing element (as
                   in Shrewsbury House and All-Solar-Too House.)

4,296,733 10/27/81 Transparent roof employing reflective louvers that
                   admit much solar radiation in winter and admit little
		   solar radiation in summer.

Note: US patents are normally valid for 17 years from date of issue.

Nick

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Mon May 29 13:58:34 1995
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To: london@sunsite.unc.edu
Date: 26 May 1995 06:13:27 -0400
From: nick@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu (Nick Pine)
Message-Id: <3q49k7$d8i@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu>
Organization: Villanova University
Sender: london@sunsite.unc.edu
Subject: Meanwhile, in Texas...
content-length: 5331
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Joining this program in medias res...

>Well, the kid wonder and his sidekick just wandered by; they finished my
>uh, square.  I told them put me 4 cornerposts in the ground and nail 2x4s
>around the top.

Hmmm. How big is this square? 16' x 16'?

>Well, they set the posts in cement and screwed the 2x4s
>around the top and braced the corners.

OK...

>After they recovered from the shock of charging me $120 for the whole thing, 
>we looked up one of your messages with the 800 number for Dynaglas.

Replex has an 800 number. The Dynaglas people are at (408) 997-6100. If I
were you, I'd look in your local phone book for commercial greenhouse
and nursery suppliers, and/or call Stuppy at (800) 877-5025 and matter-of-
factly ask them to send you a copy of their nice 1/2" thick pink greenhouse
catalog, which happens to have a $5 price printed on the cover, which as a
large Texas agribusinessperson, you should not have to pay. No need to
even talk about that.

One local greenhouse supplier sells Dynaglas in standard 4' x 12' lengths,
and delivers to the Collegeville area once a week. It's fun to watch
them deliver to my house. They pull up in front of the house in a full
size tractor trailer, in this rural neighborhood. The driver won't
come into my driveway, because he could never turn around, so I have
to carry the stuff in from the road. 

Dynaglas is for commercial greenhouses, and comes in custom lengths.
The product sold to homeowners, etc. is called Suntough, (tuff?) available
in standard lengths at Home Depot stores, etc. I'd get the 4' wide clear
kind, not the 2' wide stuff that Home Depot sells, since that way you have
less work to put it up, and fewer joints for air leaks.
 
>After all, I told them, with this overengineered thing for the 
>pole beans, now I have to do something more than just run vines on it.

Ya know, a lot of engineers design things before they start building them.
They make a drawing, a plan, ahead of time :-) Your overengineered pole bean
support is an underengineered building. But I guess ya gotta start somewhere.
At least real engineers do that. We electrical engineers frequently just
wing it, when designing computer systems, and plan to fix it up later
with programmable parts and software.

>So our next step is to figure how to put glazing over the top; would you
>suggest something more slanty, or putting thin PVC pipe curved over the top? 

I would say... Make the south wall vertical, or make it slant back, up
to say, 30 degrees from vertical, towards the north, using 12-16' long
straight 2 x 4s on 4' centers. (This will make a tall greenhouse.) 
And cover that south wall with Dynaglas or polyethylene film.

Then, take some more long 2 x 4s and lay them down on their 1 1/2" edges and
make some saw cuts about halfway through the 2 x 4s across their other short
edges every 2-6" or so, along, say, 12' of their 16' length. The saw cuts
at the end should be a bit closer together or deeper than the ones in the
middle of the 2 x 4. Then slip some bricks or cement blocks under the cut
sections of two of the 2 x 4s, and bend them into parabolas, roughly, so
that when the uncut straight length of each 2 x 4 is resting flat on the
ground, the cut curved part is sitting 1 - 3' above the ground. You may
have to get some people (or a car) to stand on top of the 2 x 4s to make
this curve, or you may have to make the saw cuts a bit deeper, but don't
make the cuts any deeper than you have to...

(This is not the way that people usually build houses :-)

Then, using some 2" deck screws, screw some thin (1/4"?) exterior plywood or
exterior flakeboard to the concave surface, on 4' centers, keeping the 2 x4s
curved. When you are done, you will have two 16' 2 x 4s connected by two
sheets of plywood (or Thermo-Ply if you can find any), with the plywood
screwed onto half of the width of the short edge of each 2 x 4, ie 3/4"
of each short edge of each 2 x 4. The plywood will thus be supported on
4' centers.

Paint the inside surface of each piece of plywood white. Make another one
of these curved 4' x 16' panels, with the same shape. Then attach the 4'
edge of one panel to the NE corner of the 16' long north wall with a bolt,
so it can hinge up, measure over exactly 4' and attach the other panel in
the same way. And bolt another curved 2 x 4 to the NW corner of the
foundation. Then nail a 16' 2 x 4 ridge beam flat along the upper ends
of the 5 2 x 4s, and screw on 4 more sheets of plywood to the underside,
between the two panels, to make two more panels. Fill up the space between
the plywood and the top edges of the 2 x 4s with leaves or straw or beadboard
or some leftover foam peanut packing material, staple a layer of poly film
over that, using batten tape, and tilt up the north wall, and attach the
ridge beam to the 2 x 4s of the south wall at the peak, somehow, as you stand
on an orchard ladder. A vent at the top would be nice, with a door to close
it somehow in winter time.

>in the fall, we're planning on 55 gallon drums of water in the back

Sounds good, under the benches. Perhaps with a solar powered fan at the top
to blow down some warm air through a poly film duct to the space under the
benches, with a poly film skirt around the drums to make a solar closet. 

>and Dynaglas on the other 3 walls...

Sounds good...

Nick

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Mon May 29 22:28:30 1995
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To: london@sunsite.unc.edu
Date: 30 May 1995 02:24:54 GMT
From: london@sunSITE.unc.edu (Larry London)
Message-Id: <3qdvlm$rne@bigblue.oit.unc.edu>
Organization: SunSITE at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill
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This document (GUIDE) is the April 21, 1995 update of:
ftp://sunsite.unc.edu/pub/academic/agriculture/sustainable_agriculture/GUIDE
For more information contact Lawrence London, london@sunSITE.unc.edu.

____________________________________________________________________
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Accessing FAQs and Selected Information Resources at sunSITE.unc.edu
____________________________________________________________________
--------------------------------------------------------------------

World Wide Web (lynx available via telnet for vt100 users)
 WWW URL info:
  http://sunsite.unc.edu/london/Gateway_to_Archives.html
  http://sunsite.unc.edu/london/Rec.Gardens-FAQs.html
  http://sunsite.unc.edu/london/Herb_Archives.html
 GOPHER URL info:
  URL for sustainable agriculture is:
  gopher://sunsite.unc.edu/11/.pub/academic/agriculture/sustainable_agriculture
/
         [add gardening/gardening-faqs/ to the path for the rec.gardens FAQs]
  URL for rural skills is:
  gopher://sunsite.unc.edu/11/.pub/academic/agriculture/rural-skills/
  URL for energy resources is:
  gopher://sunsite.unc.edu/11/.pub/academic/environment/alternative-energy/ener
gy-resources/
----->  [Home Power Magazine archives are here]
  URL for alternative healthcare is:
  gopher://sunsite.unc.edu/11/.pub/academic/medicine/alternative-healthcare/
  URL for pesticide education is:
  gopher://sunsite.unc.edu/11/.pub/academic/environment/pesticide-education/
 FTP URL info:
  file://sunsite.unc.edu/pub/academic/agriculture/sustainable_agriculture/
       [add gardening/gardening-faqs/ to the path for the rec.gardens FAQs]
  file://sunsite.unc.edu/pub/academic/agriculture/rural-skills/
  file://sunsite.unc.edu/pub/academic/medicine/alternative-healthcare/
       [the herb archives are here]
  file://sunsite.unc.edu/pub/academic/environment/alternative-energy/energy-res
ources/
----->  [Home Power Magazine archives are here]
  file://sunsite.unc.edu/pub/academic/environment/pesticide-education/

Anonymous FTP:
  ftp sunSITE.unc.edu
  Login: anonymous
  Password: (enter your Internet e-mail ID)
  cd pub/academic
    cd agriculture/sustainable_agriculture
      cd gardening/gardening-faqs
  cd pub/academic/agriculture/rural-skills
  cd pub/academic/medicine/alternative-healthcare
    cd herbs
  cd pub/academic/environment/alternative-energy/energy-resources
----->  [Home Power Magazine archives are here]
  cd pub/academic/environment/pesticide-education

WAIS (available via telnet, follow login instructions)

Ftpmail (Send e-mail to ftpmail@sunsite.unc.edu for help file on ftpmail usage)

Gopher: (gopher sunSITE.unc.edu)
The Worlds of sunSITE
  Sustainable Agriculture Information
    gardening
      gardening-faqs
  links to:
    Rural Skills: etc.
    Alternative Energy
----->  [Home Power Magazine archives are here]
    Alternative Healthcare
    Pesticide Education
    - other Gopher sites with ag/gardening information

The Worlds of SunSITE
  browse sunSITE archives
    academic
      agriculture
        sustainable_agriculture
          gardening
            gardening-faqs
        rural-skills

The Worlds of sunSITE
  browse sunSITE archives
    academic
      environment
        alternative energy
          energy-resources
----->  [Home Power Magazine archives are here]
        pesticide-education

The Worlds of sunSITE
  browse sunSITE archives
    academic
      medicine
        alternative healthcare
          herbs

__________________
------------------
About the Archives
__________________
------------------

Newsgroup, mailing-list, newsletter archives/documents/FAQs on
sustainable agriculture, permaculture, IPM, landscaping, gardening,
farming, rural skills, horticulture, metalworking, woodworking, weather,
housebuilding, food, cooking, nutrition, ecology, environment, pesticide
education, health-safety-welfare, beekeeping, food preservation,
alternative: healthcare, energy, architecture, housing, communities
and many other related topics.

Partial list of topics
----------------------
historic food
food preserving
health-safety-welfare
sourdough bread-yoghurt-kraut-fermented foods
vegetarian cooking
alternative architecture
alternative/co-housing, sustainable/intentional communities - co-operatives
alternative healthcare
health and safety faqs
sustainable agriculture
gardening-farming-rural life
gardening faqs
landscaping-landscape architecture
permaculture
integrated pest management
hydrology
meteorology
beekeeping
hydroponics
biological pest control
mycology
botany
vermiculture
wildlife
hydroponics
aquaponics
bioremediation
aquaculture
guides to Internet agriculture/healthcare/environment/biology resources
homeopathy
ayurveda
nutrition
meditation

Newsgroup archives:

sci.agriculture
sci.agriculture.beekeeping
alt.sustainable.agriculture
alt.agriculture.misc
alt.agriculture.fruit
rec.ponds
sci.bio.entomology.lepidoptera
alt.landscape.architecture
rec.gardens
misc.rural
rec.food.preservation
sci.bio
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sci.geo.geology
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bionet plants
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bionet.biology.grasses
bionet photosynthesis
bionet cellbiology
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bionet.biology.tropical

alt.architecture.alternative
alt.housing.nontrad
sci.energy
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alt.energy.renewable
alt.solar.thermal
alt.solar.photovoltaic
sci.engr.lighting

misc.health.alternative
alt.aromatherapy
sci.life-extension
alt.health.ayurveda
alt.folklore.gemstones
alt.folklore.herbs
alt.co-evolution
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alt.consciousness.mysticism
rec.food.veg
rec.food.veg.cooking
sci.med.nutrition
alt.food.fat-free
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alt.med.allergy












From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Thu Jun  1 08:29:12 1995
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	for london@sunsite.unc.edu (london@sunsite.unc.edu)
To: london@sunsite.unc.edu
Date: Wed, 31 May 1995 18:14:29 GMT
From: Lee Butler <lbutler@GATE.NET>
Message-Id: <26711.usenet@merckx.graphics.cornell.edu>
Sender: london@sunsite.unc.edu
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Subject: Re: AE Digest - 27 May 1995 to 29 May 1995
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We want to star a "home Page" for the www. Can you help us?

Ekotecture International Incorporated
Solar Gravity Geothermal Powered Sustainable Construction

Wednesday, May 31, 1995

Gentlemen:

I propose that we base any future design technologies or life support
systems on the following:

The availability of abundant indigenous materials.That they contain minimal
embodied energy. That their assembly and maintenance be simple enough to
eventually provide all of the advantages of  the new technology to all
people living on the earth, now and in the future.

Secondly, we could agree to base these new machines-structures on
universally available energies such as gravity, solar, geothermal specific
heat, ( thermal inertia) capillary action ( the mechanism plants use to
pump water 100's of feet vertically, evaporative cooling, photosynthesis
and many other natural systems which can relieve and replace our human
labor, therefore supporting human life. We could agree to use these
abundant benign universal energies, principles and processes to support
human life without producing harmful pollution in the air, water or earth,
without friction or combustion ( except for rituals and personal cooking ).


Thirdly, we could agree to build the new  structures in such a way that
they can survive the frequent and widespread catastrophic forces of nature
including floods, earthquakes, tidal surges, tornadoes and hurricanes which
annually cause billions of dollars of property damage and the even greater
cost of lost human lives and productivity.

=46inally, we could  agree to the application of some basic minimum
standardization of component concepts and ( third world) mass assembly by
hand labor techniques, in order to radically reduce the cost of the
structure-infrastructure ( machine ) to the level where sustainable
structures could eventually be bought and paid for by all human families,
with either "currency", money or exchange of hand labor and equivalent
services.

=46urther preliminary descriptions of the engineering and structural
specifications, performance criteria and construction methods are contained
in the technical paper, Ekotecture, An Integrated Approach to Sustainable
Construction.

I believe and hope these assumptions, principles, concepts and goals are
clearly self evident and will certainly become the basis of a vibrant new
world ( great architectural) economy,  creating a beautiful, sustainable
global culture.

I invite the reader to respond! Before a new company can be formed, other
people ( third party endorsements)  must understand and further explain
these concepts. I am writing you because your contribution is important.
Without you and others like you, offering additional expert opinions
regarding these basic concepts and proposals, Ekotecture will not be fully
realized.

With best regards,


Lee Porter Butler.

620 Biscayne Drive * West Palm Beach, Florida, 33401 * (407) 659-7656
 Internet < lbutler@gate.net >

Ekotecture International Incorporated
Solar Gravity Geothermal Powered Sustainable Construction


 Description of Ekotecture Structures

 (1) produces "0" zero pollution, taking nothing out of the earth, air or
water, putting nothing back into the earth, air or water.
 (2)  integrates the architectural building structure with a decentralized
utility infrastructure.
 (3) utilizes a  complex of flotation tanks as part of its "floating
foundation platform" structurally integrated with the architectural
superstructure above, enabling the entire structure to resist seismic
horizontal (earthquake) shear  forces, hurricane wind forces, floods,
fires, tidal surges and tornadoes.
(4)utilizes passive and active solar,  gravity  convection ( fluid
dynamics), geothermal  inertia, capillary action, evaporative cooling,
photovoltaics, solar water heaters, biodigestors, solar chimneys, ect  and
others power" the  Ekotecture utility system
(5) maintains comfortable interior temperatures, year round in all
climates, by utilizing the gravity geothermal convection  double air
envelope  =81 and the gravity solar convection chimney    =81 eliminating
mechanical and electrical  systems for  day lighting, heating, cooling,
space conditioning, ventilation and  humidity control, all of which
combined,  help to eliminate "sick building syndrome" and retard the growth
of  molds, fungus, bacteria and germs.  (7) utilizes the organic atomic
spiraling dodecahedral  stacking crystalline structures as the model for
the  design of its physical structure. Based on the geodesic geometry of
Bucky Fuller.
 (8) utilizes widely available indigenous materials, including industrial
and commercial waste products  to form ultra-strong, lightweight, inert,
fireproof, inexpensive, molded structural components which reducing
construction assembly time.
 (9) utilizes its organic wastes to produce organic fertilizer and methane g=
as
(10) utilizes a "garden greenhouse space" to negatively ionize the air,
removing all particle pollutants, odors, toxic "off gassing", and
increasing the oxygen content, eliminating sick building syndrome.
(11) utilizes low voltage direct  photovoltaics generated electric current
which is stored in very large underground liquid storage batteries
(12) captures rain water and uses the latest radionic water treatment
technologies and rock-mineral-salt additives to produce a nutritionally
superior drinking and domestic water supply ( stored in underground tanks).

(13) utilizes the gray water from lavatories, showers and laundry to
fertilize and water the landscape ( stored in underground tanks )
(14) utilizes the concept of central ownership and maintenance of the
utility generating infrastructure, billing the occupants for  services
consumed in order to integrate with existing economic business structures,
wall street, self-interest  and conventional thinking.
(15) Ekotecture able to offers investors superior returns on invested
capital by  (A) reducing exposure to losses from natural disasters, acts of
war, sabotage, ect. (B) eliminating the requirement  to supply the system
with natural resources ( fossil fuel or nuclear ) and (C)  maintain an
expensive sprawling and vulnerable  distribution system which requires an
expensive real estate  right of way (D)  maintain a friction-combustion
fossil nuclear based high maintenance  mechanical technology which is
dangerous to human life and impossible to fix by most people (E) by being
able to bill the consumer for  the sum total dollar amounts now going into
natural disaster insurance, fire insurance, lights, electricity, heating,
cooling, thermal gas for cooking, water, heating water, heating and cooling
of the structure, all of which are now paid separately to several different
companies.  Ekotecture will reduce the total cost of housing and
maintenance for the consumer.
(16) Ekotecture, by design, links the resource being generated by the
living-working environments  ( methane gas and organic fertilizer to supply
the local food needs of each community and create jobs, i.e. hydroponic
fruits and vegetables, aquaculture of fish and shrimp, horticulture of
flowers,herbs and spices, providing fresh  agri & aquatic  produce,
convenient to the occupants of all structures, creating jobs where the
people are, harvesting and selling  fresh produce without the necessity of
refrigeration thereby eliminating many auto trips to the grocery for the
consumer.


Lee Porter Butler and Jill Karlin Butler
( Principals )

Ekotecture International Incorporated
Solar Gravity Geothermal Powered Sustainable Construction



Ekotecture Biospheres=81 (patented) are designed and  built according to the
principles  of Ekotecture knowledge as follows:

(1) integrates the architectural structural functions with the utility
infrastructure functions
(2) utilizes solar, gravity, geothermal and other universal energies to
"power" the integrated utility system ( utilizes photovoltaics, solar water
heaters, biodigestors and solar chimneys).
(3) eliminates  friction generating mechanical systems ( waste heat) and
combustion
(4) produces "0" zero pollution, taking nothing out of the earth, air or
water, putting nothing back into the earth, air or water.
(5) utilizes the organic spiraling dodecahedral stacking crystalline
structures as models for the design principles of its physical structure.
(6) utilizes industrial and commercial waste to  manufacture ultra-strong,
lightweight, inert, fireproof,inexpensive molded structural components
which eliminate mold, mildew, fungus, virus and bacterial growth.
(7) utilizes flotation tanks as part of its "floating foundation platform"
structurally integrated with the superstructure above, enabling the
structure to resist seismic horizontal earthquake shear forces, hurricane
wind forces, floods, tidal surges and tornadoes while  retaining its
ability to produce interior comfort, electricity, gas, water and to manage
it's organic wastes.
(8) utilizes its organic wastes to produce organic fertilizer and methane ga=
s
(9) maintains comfortable interior temperatures, year round in any climate,
by utilizing the gravity geothermal convection  double air envelope
eliminating mechanical systems for heating, cooling, space conditioning,
ventilation and  humidity control
(10) utilizes a "garden greenhouse space" to negatively ionize the air,
remove all particle pollutants, odors, toxic "off gassing", and increase
the oxygen content, eliminating sick building syndrome
(11) utilizes low voltage direct electric current moving through
"electrically activated portions of the structural wall elements,
eliminating electrical wiring and the associated potential for fire
(12) utilizes rain water and the latest radionic water treatment
technologies and rock-mineral-salts to produce a nutritionally superior
drinking and domestic water supply
 (13) utilizes the gray water from lavatories, showers and laundry to
fertilize and water the landscape
(14) utilizes the concept of central ownership and maintenance, economy of
scale and mass production to reduce the cost of manufacture and operation
approximately 90% over existing systems
(15) offers investors superior returns on invested capital with minimum
exposure to losses from natural disasters, acts of war, sabotage, ect. or
the requirement  to supply the system with natural resources ( fossil fuel
or nuclear ) or to maintain an expensive ( real estate ) right of way or
maintain a friction ( wear) based mechanical technology.
(16) links the resource being generated by the  living-working environments
( methane gas and organic fertilizer with hydroponic, aquaculture,
horticulture and  agricultural facilities and companies, providing fresh
agri & aquatic  produce, convenient to the occupants of all structures,
creating jobs and eliminating auto trips to the grocery.

April 25, 1995

Gentlemen:

EKOTECTURE =A9  is defined as the functional integration of the principles o=
f
architecture, engineering and ecology, resulting in the design of
sustainable structures, described as follows:

(A) Structural Integrity
Ultra lightweight, fiber reinforced insulating stressed skin panels resist
the forces of nature to protect human life. Designed to resist earthquakes,
float in a flood or tidal surge and withstand the effects of
tornadoes,hurricanes and fires, reducing fire and casualty losses.
(B) Healthier Buildings
The presence of plants in the outer air envelope  adds oxygen to the
building interior air and acts as an electrostatic filter, purifying the
interior air.
(C) Standardization of Components
The standardization of component parts reduces the manufacturing cost.
(D) Indigenous Materials
Manufactured from widely available, inexpensive materials.
(E) Utilizes Universal Energy, Forces and Principles
Incorporates the solar-gravity-geothermal double air envelope , and other
passive principles.
(F) Zero Operating Pollution
Puts nothing into the earth, air or water and takes nothing out of the
earth air or water, preserving the natural environment.
(G) Decentralized Infrastructure
Eliminates the cost and loss of efficiency caused by distribution systems.
(H) Superior Return on Invested Capital
Allows for each consumer to be billed monthly for utility services yet
functions without the expense of non-renewable (fossil or nuclear)
resources, making it is more profitable than conventional utility system
investments.



Lee Porter Butler & Jill Karlin Butler



620 Biscayne Drive * West Palm Beach, Florida, 33401 * (407) 659-7656
 Internet < lbutler@gate.net >






620 Biscayne Drive * West Palm Beach, Florida, 33401 * (407) 659-7656

The Origin of the cosmos
In the beginning, everything was dark and void. There was no thought and no
thing. There was no light, only darkness and it ran deep, infinitely deep,
in every direction. All was quiet. This lasted for an infinite period of
time.

Then, from everywhere, nowhere, everywhere,  simultaneously, the mind of
God experienced the thought of the universe beginning with a big band,
blowing light particles all over the universe and organized in patterns and
common structural characteristics we call atoms. These tiny light centers,
are consciousness of their own identity and it is this consciousness,
connected to the consciousness of God which connects them to each other and
to congregations of different atomic characteristics to form water, algae,
wiggling microbes, spermatozoa, snakes, dolphins, puppies and warriors or
what we call man kind. This super chain of atomic energy is an interactive
generator capable of destroying the whole universe.

Each of us possesses a spirit energy which is equal to everyone else, so
there is no escape if you try to dominate or judge. Judgment is left alone
to God almighty, maker of heaven and earth and everything there of. God
created all of us to explain all of the above to each other.

Consciousness creates Form

Consciousness, human consciousness, is now creating the form and character
of our entire universe. Through the power of our mind, communication and
corporation, we can accomplish anything that can be stated and agreed upon
as a shared intention. Human abilities to perform miracles and magic
through this sacred order are legendary. It is the secret of the Cabal, the
Pyramids of ancient Egypt, the supernatural powers of Moses and David. It
is the power to which Jesus testified and demonstrated byhis miracles. It
is the power called upon by Lord Krishna, when he vanquished his evil
enemies without every leaving his marriage bed. It has come to be referred
to down through the ages as the light. Each of us possesses the light and
the ability to let it shine in the world to make the world a better place.
Each of us has been given some special gift which we can share with
everyone in the whole wide world. This simple truth has been hidden from
humanity for since long before recorded history. It has been impossible
before this very moment to communicate this to you but the time has come
for everyone to stand up and be counted. The time has come for all of us to
communicate with someone, anyone, everyone about our dreams, pains, sorrows
and our desires. When we chant Hari Krishna, and we chant Hari Krishna
often, we evocate the awesome power and force of will that was krishna's
right. Krishna and Rama and Lord Brama God, all give us this power.

Become  your true self. Let go, surrender to your desires and trust
yourself to contain yourself and set reasonable limits for yourself, lest
you go to far and destroy life. Self discipline is the axiom of our age.
The age of hero's, guru's and leaders is dysfunctional and dead. Long live
the free spontaneous artistic individual who can express their innermost
feelings and desires to as many people as possible. This is what the arts
is all about, writing and publishing, this is what acting,  poetry and the
spoken word is all about. This is what singing, painting, cooking and
sculpture is all about. And so I invite you to live in joy and bliss,
create art, let your light shine.We invite you to investigate reserving
your place in the Ekotecture ARKS, the floating cities and flying
biospheres, by purchasing stock in the new company, Ekotecture
International Inc. Creative communication is what it is all about. We
invite you to share your point of view with us.

Alpha Lee Raibow Light Cloud, Messenger/Prophet  from the Seven Stars.

Lee Porter Butler
620 Biscayne Drive
West Palm Beach, Florida 33401
407-659-7656 =20


Re: AE Digest - 27 May 1995 to 29 May 1995

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Sun Jun  4 11:29:48 1995
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To: london@sunsite.unc.edu
Date: 1 Jun 1995 05:13:42 -0400
From: nick@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu (Nick Pine)
Message-Id: <3qk0c6$nlu@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu>
Organization: Villanova University
Sender: london@sunsite.unc.edu
References: <3qdvqh$kf2@news.wco.com>, <econnect.snowcrest.net-3005952056480001@ppp0.yreka.snowcrest.net>
Subject: Re: Solar a/C
content-length: 555
Status: O
X-Status: 

Bob-O Schultze <econnect.snowcrest.net> wrote:

>Air conditioners come in many different sizes and energy requirements. A
>small in-the-window for one room machine will draw about 1KW per hour.

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Sun Jun  4 11:29:50 1995
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To: london@sunsite.unc.edu
Date: 1 Jun 1995 05:29:51 -0400
From: nick@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu (Nick Pine)
Message-Id: <3qk1af$nmk@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu>
Organization: Villanova University
Sender: london@sunsite.unc.edu
References: <18480.usenet@merckx.graphics.cornell.edu>
Subject: Re: Converting An old House to Renewables
content-length: 17173
Status: O
X-Status: 

Steve Paschke  <AE%SJSUVM1.BITNET@cmsa.Berkeley.EDU> wrote:

>If your thinking of re-siding soon, add 2" of rigid foam to the exterior
>of your house. 

How about some solar siding? Put Dynaglas or Replex single wall corrugated
clear polycarbonate sheets on the house, with an inch air gap behind
them, a layer of 80% greenhouse shadecloth, another inch air gap, and
holes at the top and bottom of the wall, with plastic flap dampers, so
that in the wintertime, house air flows up between the glazing and the
shadecloth, sideways thru the shadecloth, and back into the house. In
summer, you'd want to vent air from the top of the wall to the outside,
and vent house air into the wall at the bottom, if the house is not
air-conditioned, otherwise vent outside air into the wall at the bottom.

>  The most cost effective solar power at present is solar hot water heating.

Really? I used to spend a lot more on space heating than water heating, 
and passive solar space heating is usually more efficient, since the
temperatures are lower, and cheaper, since there are no moving liquids,
pumps, heat exchangers, plumbing, etc.

>If your going to change your water heater, buy a solar heater.

Or better yet, perhaps, try making a water heater as described in Q7
of the second posting below...

Article: 2080 of alt.architecture.alternative
From: nick@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu (Nick Pine)
Subject: One way to build a high-performance passive solar house
Date: 9 Feb 1995 08:56:54 -0500 [updated 4/25/95]
Organization: Villanova University

Step 1.

Look up the average outdoor temperature in December, where you live.

The nice new, free book, _Solar Radiation Data Manual for Flat-Plate
and Concentrating Collectors_, from the National Renewable Energy
Laboratory at (303) 275-4099, has this information, as well as some
solar information, for many places in the United States. (They also
have a CD, with *hourly* solar weather data for 247 US cities over the
last 30 years, that might be used for passive solar house simulations.)

For example, where I live, in the northeast, the average December
temperature is about 32 degrees F, and the average amount of sun falling
on a south wall is about 1,100 Btu per square foot per day.

Step 2. 

Estimate how many Btu/day you need to heat your house at that average
outdoor temperature.

For example, if you have a 30' x 30' 2-story house, you have about
3,000 square feet of walls and roof. If the R-value of that surface is,
say, 30, it takes about 3,000/30 = 100 Btu per hour to heat the house to
68 degrees, if it is 67 degrees outside. Subtract the average outdoor
temperature from the indoor temperature and multiply by 24 hours, then
multiply this by the sum of each surface area divided by its R-value.

Our example house takes (68-32) x 24 x 100 = 86,000 Btu per day to heat. 
Call it a hundred thousand, a nice round number that is about the same
amount of heat as a gallon of oil burned in an old oil burner.

Step 3. 

Calculate how much south-facing glazing you need on your low-thermal-mass
sunspace, to supply that amount of solar heat, on an average day.

Where I live, each square foot of south facing wall receives about 1,000
Btu/day, another nice round number. If the low-thermal-mass sunspace has an
insulated low-thermal-mass wall between it and the house, with a big window
fan in one window, to suck most of the warm air into the house during the day,
and you let the sunspace get icy cold at night, the sunspace will be about
68 F during the day, as a first approximation. So the heat lost from each
square foot of glazing in the sunspace to the outside, during the day, in our
example house, will be about (68-32) x 5 hours, or 180 Btu, if the sun shines
for 5 hours on a winter day. So each square foot of sunspace glass provides
about 800 Btu/day to the house, net, on an average winter day. Another way
to figure this is that each square foot of south-facing glazing collects the
heat-equivalent of 1-2 gallons of oil per year. If your present oil bill
indicates that you need a thousand square feet of glazing or more, perhaps
more house insulation and caulking are needed before solar heating, or you
could just use the sunspace to reduce the oil heat, with no thermal store.

Our example house would need about 100,000/800 = 125 square feet of glazing
in the low-thermal-mass sunspace glass to keep it warm on an average day.
Say, an 8' high x 16' wide window, with an insulated wall between that window
and the rest of the house. The sunspace might be quite shallow, eg some
cost-effective "solar siding," instead of, say, vinyl siding, as in the solar
closet wall below. Or it might be a bit deeper, extending out from the house
8', and used for growing ripe, red tomatoes and basil in December, perhaps
with a couple of extra hours of 90% high-pressure sodium and 10% mercury
vapor light, and a little heat leaked from the house on freezing nights.

Step 4.

Take a guess at how many cloudy days there are in a row in December, where you
live, and what the outdoor temperature is during those days. In many places,
cloudy days are warmer than sunny days in December.

(If you wanted to be more precise, the weather bureau, or perhaps NREL or NOAA
could help. Or you could calculate Gaussian statistics using the CD data.)

Let's say that our example house is in a climate with 5 cloudy days in a row,
in December, and that the average temperature during those days is 32 F.

Step 5.

Calculate how many 55 gallon drums full of water you need to keep the house
warm for that cloudy day period.

In our example house, this would be 5 x 100,000 = 500,000 Btu, about the same
as 5 gallons of oil. If the water in the drums is hot, say 130 F, and the
drums can keep the house warm until the water cools to, say, 80 F, then
each drum stores about 25,000 Btu, about the same as a quart of oil. So
5 gallons divided by one quart is 20 drums (talk about apples and oranges :-)

How do you keep the drums that hot? You build an insulated solar closet behind
the sunspace, in the house, with an air heater as part of the insulated wall
between the sunspace and the house, with a transparent vertical cover of glass
or transparent "solar siding," eg Dynaglas or Replex ((800) 726-5151)
polycarbonate plastic, which costs about a dollar a square foot, and comes
in long sheets, about 4' wide.

Behind that siding, you staple some 80% greenhouse shadecloth, which costs
about 14 cents per square foot, leaving a 1" air gap between the siding and
the shadecloth, and you leave another 1" air gap between the shadecloth and
the 3 1/2" of fiberglass insulation in the 6" wall, and you put small vents
(about 1% of the overall area, eg 1 square foot in our example house) at the
top and bottom of this air heater, to allow warm air from the solar closet to
flow into the outside air gap through the vent hole at the bottom of the air
heater, _through_ the shadecloth, and back through the upper vent hole into
the insulated solar closet. The vent holes should have plastic-film backdraft
dampers to keep the air from flowing when the sun is not shining. These might
be made from chicken wire and a thin (1 mil) plastic film like that used for
dry cleaner bags. 

The inside wall of the closet could be the foil face of the fiberglass
insulation. The floor might be dirt, covered with a layer of plastic.
There should be an air space between the drums and the walls of the
solar closet, to allow air to circulate around the drums. There should
also be a vent to the house, to be slightly opened on cloudy days. This
could be an electric air damper controlled by a thermostat. (Another
approach might be to put the 55 gallon drums on a strong attic floor as
an overhead "warmstore," a la Norman Saunders, for new construction.)

In our example house, if the 2' diameter x 3' long drums were stacked up
horizontally, 4 high, the solar closet would be 8' high x 10' long x 4' deep.
I would make it 6' longer, and use the non-drum space for a sauna. The
solar closet should also have 3 1/2" of fiberglass insulation in its ceiling,
ie the second floor of the house, and in its back (north) wall, inside the
house. Note that most of the "waste heat" from this solar closet ends up
in the house via the sunspace from the front glazing, when it is collecting
heat, and via most of the insulated surface the rest of the time. Note
that the solar closet does not usually provide heat for the house, except
during cloudy day periods, so it stays hot like a stagnant solar collector.

The sauna might have a very small woodstove, for burning newspapers, junk
mail, old paper towels, college committee recommendations, letters from
congressmen, and press releases announcing amazing new price breakthroughs
in photovoltaic technology.

Nick

Article: 2127 of alt.architecture.alternative
From: nick@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu (Nick Pine)
Subject: Passive solar house evolution
Date: 13 Feb 1995 09:49:42 -0500
Organization: Villanova University

Question 1: If you put a 55 gallon drum full of water in a 2' square x 4' tall
uninsulated box in the shade in Philadelphia, in January, what would the
average temperature of the drum be? 

Answer 1: According to the NREL _Solar Radiation Data Manual_, the average
January temperature in Philadelphia is -0.9 degrees C, or about 30 degrees F.

Q2: What would the average box temperature be if it were in the sun,
in Philadelphia, in January, and if it were painted white?

According to the 1993 ASHRAE Handbook of Fundamentals, the "sol-air
temperature," or equivalent air temperature, Te, of a vertical surface
in the sun, is the outdoor temperature + 0.15 x U, IF the surface is painted
a light color, and the amount of sun falling on the surface is U Btu/hour.

According to the NREL book, a south-facing wall in Phila in January receives
about 3.3 kWh/m^2/day, ie 3300 x 3.41 Btu/10.76 ft^2/m^2 = 1000 Btu/ft^2/day
of sun. This is an average daily insolation of about 40 Btu/ft^2/hour. So
assuming the sun only shines on the south side of the box, if it were painted
white, the average temperature of the south side would be 30 + 0.15 x 40 = 36
degrees. The interior temperature should be the average temp. of all of the
outside surfaces, I think. Each face of the box has a surface area of 8 ft^2,
and the top and bottom have areas of 4 ft^2, so the average drum temperature
should be about (8x36+3x8x30+2x4x30)/(8+3x8+4+4) = 1248 / 40 = 31.2 F, 1.2
degrees warmer than the drum in the shade.

Q3. What would the drum temperature be if the box were painted black?

The ASHRAE HOF says that the sol-air temperature of a DARK vertical surface
is the outdoor temperature + 0.3 * U, so if the black box were receiving 
the same amount of sun as the white box, the average temperature of the
south wall would be 30 + 0.3 x 40 = 42 F. So you can raise the effective
average outdoor temperature of a white south-facing wall in Philadelphia by
an average of 6 degrees, in January, just by painting it darker. Not bad... 

In the above case, the average temperature of the drum/box would be 

(8x42+3x8x30+2x4x30)/40 = 32.4 F, just above freezing.

Q4. Suppose the box had a single-pane glass south wall, with no insulation?

In this case, the solar energy, Ein, that goes into the box would be about

Ein = 2 x 4 ft^2 x 1,000 Btu/ft^2/day = 8,000 Btu/day,

assuming the glass transmits 100% of the solar energy.

If the drumwater has an average temperature of Tw, and the walls and glass
front of the box have an R-value of 1, the energy that goes out of the box
in one day is Eout = (Tw-30) x 24 hours x 40 ft^2/R1. If energy is conserved,
ie Ein = Eout, then Tw = 30 + 8,000/(24x40) = 38.3 degrees F. An improvement.
Six degrees warmer than the unglazed box...

Q5. How about if we add R-14 insulation to the other three sides and the top
and the bottom?

In this case, the solar energy that goes into the box is the same, but
the solar energy that goes out of the box, into the outside air, is

Eout = (Tw-30) x 24 hours x (8 ft^2/R1 + 32ft^2/R14) = (Tw-30) x 247, so if
Eout = Ein, then Tw = 30 + 8,000/247 = 62 degrees F, a livable temperature,
when the sun is shining, which begins to decrease when the sun stops shining.
This is often as far as passive solar house designs go, with the house getting
colder and colder on cloudy days, as a lot of heat leaks out of the south-
facing windows. One of the problems with this design is that you have to
*live* inside the "heat battery," so you can't make it too warm. 

Q6. But then suppose we make the glazed side an ideal air heater, so it
collects the sun's heat during the day, but the drum is insulated at night?

Now Eout = Es + Eother, where Es is the heat lost through the ideal south wall
air heater. Say the sun shines for 6 hours a day in January... Then
Es = (Tw-30) x 6 hours x 8 ft^2/R1 + (Tw-30) x 18 hours x 8 ft^2/R14.

Eother is the heat lost through the east, north and west walls of the box,
as well as the top and bottom. Eother = (Tw-30) x 24 hours x 32 ft^2/R14. 

So, if the energy into the box equals the energy out of the box, then

(Tw-30)(48+10+55) = 8,000, so Tw = 30 + 8,000/113 = 103 degrees F. But wait!
This is no good... This passive solar house has too much south-facing glass!
It overheats! At this point, the thing to do is open the windows in January,
or (better) move out of the little box with the drum in it, and build a house
behind it, using the hot water in the drum as a heat battery for cloudy days.

If the drum and its air heater are inside a sunspace, and the air from the
sunspace heats the house during sunny-day periods, the heat lost from the south
side of the air heater will help heat the house during sunny day periods. If
the house is built around an insulating solar closet containing the warm drum,
the heat lost from the drum will help heat the house too... So the heat that
leaks out of the heat battery during sunny-day periods is not wasted.

Q7. Now suppose we make the box 8' tall instead of 4' tall, so that the air
heater collecting area is 16 ft^2, and the drum on top still gets all the
collected heat, but none of the collected heat goes out through the lower half
of the box or the uninsulated glass at night?
                                                 g: glass       giii
Ein = 16 ft^2 x 1,000 Btu/day = 16,000 Btu/day.  D: drum        giDi
                                                 i: insulation  giii
Eout = Es + Eother                                              giii

       Es = (Tw-30)x6x16ft^2/R1 + (Tw-30)x18x8ft^2/R14 = (Tw-30)(96+10).

       Eother = (Tw-30)x24x32/R14 = (Tw-30)x55, as before.

So Ein = Eout ==> Tw = 30 + 16,000/(96+10+55) = 131 degrees. This is getting
interesting... We could not possibly live inside this solar closet, except
for a few minutes at a time, as a sauna, but it is good to have a heat battery
like this sitting around, charged up to a high temperature, because that will
make the useful heat that we can get out of it last for a long time, during
periods of cloudy days. Along with a bit more glazing, one might also put an
electric water heater inside this closet, and preheat its cold water input
with about 20' of 1 1/4" copper pipe or fin tube running along the ceiling of
the closet, to heat water for taking showers, etc... If the input water is
preheated, and the water heater is in a 130F room, the electric heating
element should rarely turn on.

Q8. Suppose we used two layers of glazing instead of one, above?

Ein would be the same, in this simple model.

Es would be about (Tw-30)(48+10), and Eother would be the same.

So Tw = 30 + 16,000/(48+10+55) = 174 degrees F.

Q9. Then suppose we add a reflecting pool or shutter in front, which
increases the solar input by 50%?

Tw = 30 + 16,000x1.5/(48+10+55) = 242 F. (Which of course, would make
the water steam. Maybe these drums should be full of sand. But then you
would need about 3 times more of them, since masonry has about a third
the heat capacity of water, and a higher thermal resistance.)

Q10. But wait, we were going to put the solar closet inside the sunspace,
right? So during the day, when the solar air heater is working, the south
side of the air heater will be exposed to, say, 68 F house air, not 30 F air,
and the other walls of the solar closet will also be exposed to 68 F air,
not 30 F outside air. So what would the "water temperature" be in this case?

It's roughly the same little calculation, using 68 F instead of 30 F:

Tw = 68 + 16,000x1.5(48+10+55) = 280 F.

Q11. Then suppose we lay the drum/box down horizontally, and put the air
heater side at the focus, under an ideal 4:1 reflective linear parabolic
concentrator? Or use an R-14 movable reflective shutter to cover the glass
over the drum when the sun is not shining?

Ein = 16,000 x 4 = 64,000 Btu/day.

Eout does not change.

So Tw = 68 + 64,000/(48+10+55) = 634 degrees F.

...

So, it seems to me that it isn't too hard to arrange for a passive solar house
to have a "solar closet" with a few high temperature 55 gallon drums full of 
water, a "heat battery" that can be discharged in a controlled way, to provide
heat for a house during cloudy days...

Nick

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Sun Jun  4 12:59:53 1995
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To: london@sunsite.unc.edu
Date: 1 Jun 1995 05:42:21 -0400
From: nick@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu (Nick Pine)
Message-Id: <3qk21t$no6@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu>
Organization: Villanova University
Sender: london@sunsite.unc.edu
References: <26711.usenet@merckx.graphics.cornell.edu>
Subject: Re: AE Digest - 27 May 1995 to 29 May 1995
content-length: 3173
Status: O
X-Status: 

Alpha Lee Rainbow Light Cloud, Messenger/Prophet from the Seven Stars,
who appears to lack a sense of humor or humility, further froths:

> Description of Ekotecture Structures

>(5) maintains comfortable interior temperatures, year round in all
>climates, by utilizing the gravity geothermal convection  double air
>envelope  =81 and the gravity solar convection chimney    =81 eliminating
>mechanical and electrical  systems for  day lighting, heating, cooling,
>space conditioning, ventilation and  humidity control, all of which
>combined,  help to eliminate "sick building syndrome" and retard the growth
>of  molds, fungus, bacteria and germs.  (7) utilizes the organic atomic
>spiraling dodecahedral  stacking crystalline structures...

Before the millenium, some of us might want to try a nice new electronic air
filter made by Aqua-Air Technologies, at (410) 489-5288. The ESSA electronic
filter comes in 14 standard sizes, and slips in place of a normal air filter
in a hot air heating system. It has a retail price of about $200. It's an inch
thick, and it uses three metal screens with two filter pads between the
screens. The center screen has a potential of 7,000 VDC, and the outer two
are grounded. The filter pads cost about a dollar, and need replacing about
every two months. The device comes with a small 110-24V transformer which
plugs into a wall socket, and the power consumption is listed as 24VAC at
1.6 VA, ie less than two watts. 

Here is the basic filter performance:

Typical Ambient Particle                
Size distribution (in microns) per m^3       Particle Removal Rates 
                                         
                       % by    % by          Electrostatic   ESSA
Size (um.)   Count     count   weight        ($800-1200)     ($200)

10+          1,000     .005%   28%  xxx x    99%             99+%
5-10        35,000     .175%   52%    x x    95%             99+%
1-5        264,000    1.32%    17%    x x    85%             99+%
.5-1     1,352,000    6.78%     2%    xxx    60%             90+%
.01-.5  18,280,000   91.72%     1%    xxx    40%             65%

                                    |||||_ bacteria/viruses/spores
                                    ||||_ cooking/tobacco smoke
                                    |||_ household dust
                                    ||_ pollen/mold/spores
                                    |_ dander/hair

Average synthetic dust weight arrestance: 79%

Single pass efficiency: 33% @0.3 um, 75% @0.5 um, 95% @1 um, 99% @3 um

Pressure drop: 0.05" @150 lfm, 0.1" @225 lfm, 0.15" @300 lfm, 0.22" @375 lfm

ASHRAE dust holding capacity: 20 gm/ft^2

Does not produce ozone

More than one person with severe asthma has told me that these really work,
that they have had their first night of good sleep in years, after spending
one night in a bedroom with one of these devices.

The air filter product is available now, and Aqua Air will soon have a
stand-alone console model with built-in fan, prefilter and charcoal filter.
One low-cost way of using the air filter now is to buy a $15 20" box fan and
mount a 20" ESSA filter on the suction side, with duct tape...

Nick 

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Sun Jun  4 13:59:51 1995
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To: london@sunsite.unc.edu
Date: 2 Jun 1995 02:46:41 -0400
From: nick@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu (Nick Pine)
Message-Id: <3qmc4h$3db@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu>
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Subject: Re: Bubble Wrap as Insulation
content-length: 677
Status: O
X-Status: 

MShadowfax <mshadowfax@aol.com> wrote:

>     While uncartoning some new electronics today, I began to wonder if
>anyone has used or considered using bubble wrap as a form of insulation
>and, if so, what kind of results they had. 

Seems to work OK, especially behind glass or flat fiberglass glazing.
I helped build a solar wood kiln that way, with some 4' wide Sealed Air Corp
bubble pack, which cost 5-10 cents/ft^2, and it worked fine for years. They
used to stick bubble pack up on the inside of glass greenhouses. Less than R2,
as I recall, and no UV inhibitors, unlike "solar pool covers," which cost more
and have that blue color that makes them less efficient. 

Nick

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Sun Jun  4 13:59:52 1995
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Date: 2 Jun 1995 03:04:13 -0400
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Subject: Re: moters to alternaters?
content-length: 840
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James VanBokkelen <jbvb@elf.com> wrote:
 
>A motor can only act as a generator if 1) the field is generated
>by permanent magnets (many small DC motors, specialized alternators
>used in micro-hydro and wind generators) or 2) there's some
>external "exciter" which supplies current for a wound field coil.

Date: Fri, 2 Jun 95 02:53:24 EDT
From: Mailer-Daemon (Mail Delivery Subsystem)
Subject: Returned mail: User unknown

   ----- Transcript of session follows -----
Connected to elf.com:
<<< 550 <jbvb@elf.com>... User unknown

   ----- Unsent message follows -----
From: nick (Nick Pine)
To: jbvb@elf.com
Subject: Re: moters to alternaters?

Seems to me that self-excitation is possible. In fact, that's one of
the things Intelligen seeks to avoid.

I'd very much like to talk with you more about Intelligen...

Nick     (610) 489-0545 

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Sun Jun  4 14:30:00 1995
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Date: 1 Jun 1995 08:01:20 -0400
From: nick@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu (Nick Pine)
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Subject: Re: Web-LESS SOlar Column = Solar electric + generator
content-length: 1382
Status: O
X-Status: 

Charles Collins <CharlieC@netins.net> wrote:
 
>Dear Mr. Solar; I have a cabin in a beautiful remote location that
>unfortunately does not have any power lines. We are currently running a
>gasoline generator many hours a day. How can I start on solar?

Add a low-thermal-mass sunspace :-) I wonder how the house is heated...
It would be nice if the waste heat from the generator ended up heating
the house or its hot water...

>   The next step is to get a large compatible inverter which is used to
>change your 12 DC volt into 110 AC current.

I wonder if it might be better to buy two 24V or 48V smaller inverters,
in light of your following statement? It seems to me that a typical inverter
would fail twice a year, if it has, say, a 5,000 hour Mean Time Between
Failures (MTBF), and it might take a few hours to fix, each time, but with
two of them, each, say, half the capacity, the unavailability of both would
approach that of the grid, or telephone unavailability, which is carefully
designed to be unavailable for at most a few seconds a year, max, using
redundant systems. This way you can repair one inverter while still using
the other, if you know that one is broken. As I recall, the outputs
of some Trace inverters can be connected, if you have a synchronizing
cable between them...

>This approach will give you a chance to build a reliable electrical system

Nick

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Mon Jun  5 16:30:23 1995
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Date: 2 Jun 1995 07:53:21 -0400
From: nick@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu (Nick Pine)
Message-Id: <3qmu3h$46o@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu>
Organization: Villanova University
Sender: london@sunsite.unc.edu
Subject: Saunders Patents
content-length: 2407
Status: O
X-Status: 

Issued patents of Norman Saunders (copies of which are available for $3 each
from The Commissioner of Patents and Trademarks/Washington, DC 20231,
or $2 each from Norman Saunders, P.E./15 Ellis Road/Weston MA 02193.

3,952,947  4/27/76 Solar heating system employing controlled
                   introduction of outdoor air via a special window
                   (window, triple glazed, with air flow in or out.)

4,018,214     ?    Water store behind double glass.

4,018,947  4/19/77 Heating and ventilation system (a division of
                   3,952,947 above.)

4,078,603  3/14/78 Skylight-type collector with storage and
                   distribution systems (transparent ceiling
		   collector/radiator.)

4,123,002 10/31/78 System for controlling air temperature, humidity
                   and ventilation with use of ground coupling (earth-
		   tempered air in and heat recovery on exhaust.)

4,129,120 12/12/78 Heating and ventilation system (a CIP of 3,952,947,
                   more fully describing a solar steam generator with
		   very low thermal loss.)

4,157,639  6/12/79 Seals for vertical and sloping windows or glazing
                   (very inexpensive permanent glazing system.)

4,201,189   5/6/80 South window solar-radiation absorbing element (selective
                   absorber, window, thermosyphon collector, as in Shrewsbury
		   House and All-Solar-Too House.)

4,296,733 10/27/81 Transparent roof employing reflective louvers that
                   admit much solar radiation in winter and admit little
		   solar radiation in summer (Solar Staircase (TM) and
		   all its variants.)

4,305,379 12/15/81 Solar energy fluid heating system (simple pressurized
                   drain-back solar DHW system.)

4,398,530  8/16/83 Solar collector and heating and cooling system (cont. of
                   4,078,603, describing monitor lighting and heating for
		   shops and markets.)

4,452,205 11/12/85 Dual storage heating and cooling system (one way to build
                   a house with a warm store in the attic and a cool store
		   in the basement. My copy has this note at the bottom,
		   "License fee is ten cents per square foot of floor area
		   of building. Payment permits use of this and all other
		   Suanders solar patents. Subject to change without notice.")

Note: US patents are normally valid for 17 years from date of issue.

Nick

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Mon Jun  5 00:30:03 1995
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Date: Thu, 1 Jun 1995 20:53:17 GMT
From: Marge Wood <mwood@ACUVAX.ACU.EDU>
Message-Id: <25915.usenet@merckx.graphics.cornell.edu>
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Subject: Sustainable Cities/TX
content-length: 1788
Status: RO
X-Status: 

I just received a nice packet of information from the Sustainable Energy
Development Council in Austin.  They are having a Sustainable Cities
Roundtable on June 5 in Austin.  Here's a bit of the brochure:

The Texas Sustainable Energy Development Council envisions a Texas
responsibly powered by its sustainable energy resource base and serving as
a model to others in equitable prosperity, environmental health, advanced
technology, innovative government, and respect for future generations.

[the roundtable] is the fifth in a series of statewide roundtables designed
by the TXDC to [discuss energy efficiency and sustainability].

For information on the TX Sustainable Energy Development Council call
512 463 1745.

This day long roundtable on June 5 is only $35 and you call
512 471 1922 to register.

I know this is short notice, but it seems like it might be a good place to
meet folk interested in sustainability and related issues.  It is
sponsored by the UT School of Architecture.  No, I'm probably not going, but
folks who live near Austin might want to go over there.  One of the sessions
is about energy.  This brochure was only a tiny part of the contents of the
nice packet I got from the SEDC.  One of the brochures points out that Texas
has always exported energy, and if we switch to wind and solar and other
forms of renewable energy, we can continue to export energy.

For more information, call Charlotte Banks, SEDC, 512 463 1745. (that's for
the entire packet.)

Any of us scurrying around yesterday, unplugging all the electric stuff and
hunting new batteries, know there is plenty of wind; getting folk to buy it
in a more usable form is the challenge.

Marge
no, Abilene (our side of town anyway) didn't have any tornadoes.
Sweetwater did.
Sustainable Cities/TX

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Wed Jun  7 00:00:42 1995
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Date: Sun, 4 Jun 1995 03:43:59 GMT
From: Marge Wood <mwood@ACUVAX.ACU.EDU>
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Subject: new issue of HOME POWER
content-length: 2863
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X-Status: 

This has to be the best issue yet.  Or maybe I'm just able to understand
more of it!  There is a nice long article about wind power and the various
types of wind generators and what can reasonably be expected.  I skipped
the stuff about hydro, but the pictures are nice.  And the article about
renewable energy and politics is great.  I'm going to wave it under the
noses of all my friends.  Hope y'all keep the phone numbers of your
legislators and the White House comments line taped to the edges of your
monitor....
I also received  the third issue of CSW RENEWS, about renewable energy
in Texas.  I wish Fort Davis weren't so far west; I want to go see the wind
farm out there.  I noticed that Cummins Solar Dish Stirling Engine installation
at the solar park is supposed to happen in July.  Maybe we can talk Cummins
into doing some sort of display next year at Earth Day!  hmmmmm....and it
sounds like WTU (MY utility!) is making positive noises about renewable
energy.  Also, on page 3, there is an article about a new kind of solar pump
patented by Charles McAnally.  It is much more efficient and less likely to
pull in sand.  He says "We use a much lighter fiberglass rod and polyurethane
casing...."  ...the Solamotor design can actually allow water wells to be
drilled at a 90 degree angle.  (pp. 3-5, CSW RENEWS, Vol. 1, Number 3,
Spring 1995).  Of course, wouldn't you know, McAnally is located in Fort
Davis.  But those of you who read this might live close enough to go take a
look at his pumps before he's so busy you can't get near them.  Y'all who
would like to receive this publication can subscribe for free by calling
214 77-RENEW.
In case some of you missed the ways to contact Charlotte Banks, PLEASE email
her or call her with your comments by Monday some time.  Of course, email
will be easiest for you and her, since Monday she'll be busy all day in the
last of the 5 roundtables about the development of energy policy in Texas.
Please send her your ideas about what would benefit the Texans where you are.
Her address is

cbanks@glo.texas.gov

and she will see that your email goes to the council, which includes the
governor of Texas.

I also chatted briefly with the person who will be working with vocational
tech. here in the AISD starting in the fall, and I suggested that renewable
energy would be great to include in the curriculum, and also that the bright
academics ought to be teamed with the clever and bright kids who are good at
figuring out how to make things happen, and offer scholarships for kids and
for teachers.  Anyone out there have any good renewable energy curriculum
that could be used for movable hands-on experience, or short presentations?
I noticed that WTU gave scholarships for essays on renewable energy done by
Ft. Davis high school students.
Well, see y'all another day!
Marge
new issue of HOME POWER

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Wed Jun  7 09:00:43 1995
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Date: 6 Jun 1995 11:27:50 -0400
From: nick@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu (Nick Pine)
Message-Id: <3r1s5m$1nf@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu>
Organization: Villanova University
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Subject: Re: Aesthetics of solar housing
content-length: 2165
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X-Status: 

William Robert HINDLE  <hindle@hndl.demon.co.uk> wrote:

>I've read all the items about shadecloth behind glazing but what does it 
>look like?

Most glazing looks dark, black from a distance, the color of what is inside
from closer up. Solar glazing with black shadecloth behind it looks black too.
The new 600 ft^2 clear corrugated polycarbonate plastic, steep-sloping, south-
facing attic roof on my 1820 stone farmhouse has gone un-noticed by most,
since it looks a lot like the north-facing, corrugated metal roof of the house
from a distance. With a light inside at night, it is more noticable. 

The only neighbor of mine who has actually noticed my new roof is himself
a roofer. He said he envied the low labor cost, vs. asphalt shingles, as he
watched the contractor attach the 4' wide x 12' long clear panels with
hex-head screws on 4' centers.

>I have visions of a greenhouse with sagging, fading sackcloth 
>inside - am I unduly pessimistic?

This seems unrealistic to me. If you put the shadecloth behind the glazing,
and look at it thru the glazing, it will just look black. Period. I've
tried this. There may be some sags or fades, but you won't see them much.

OTOH, I just hung a temporary 16' tall x 32' wide single piece of 80% black
shadecloth over the front of my house, which faces the road, 100' away. It
looks a bit odd from the road, but it keeps the house cool, since it covers up
the 512 ft^2 Trombe wall and all of the windows in that wall. The view from
the inside is fine. Attenuated, but clear, with a little moire pattern,
like looking through a window screen. Or two.

>Would my local authority give planning permission?

I suppose so. One hopes they would be concerned with safety and health energy
savins, vs. consumed by aesthetics. If not, that should be changed.

>Where can I see pictures of solar housing?

One nice little book is _Sun Angles for Design_, by Robert Bennett, PE
and architect. The book is mainly has lots of graphs that help to calculate
overhangs for shading, but it also has lots of nice solar house pictures.
Copies are available for $5 each from the author at 6 Snowden Road/Bala
Cynwyd, PA 19004.

Nick

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Sat Jun 10 17:31:45 1995
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Date: 7 Jun 1995 03:59:06 -0400
From: nick@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu (Nick Pine)
Message-Id: <3r3m8a$92p@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu>
Organization: Villanova University
Sender: london@sunsite.unc.edu
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Subject: Re: Bubble Wrap as Insulation -Reply
content-length: 505
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X-Status: 

In article <D9rqHy.84B@dcs.ed.ac.uk>, Neil Ferguson <ngf@dcs.ed.ac.uk> wrote:
 
>    It should certainly be possible to reduce your refrigerator 
>power consumption by wrapping it in insulation (eg. bubble wrap) 
>- basically you'd just be adding to the refrigerator's already-
>fitted insulation, which should reduce heat entry.

Seems like this would make condensation on the colder metal surfaces. I wonder
how you'd keep them from rusting? Seems like you need a vapour barrier on the
warm side.

Nick

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Sat Jun 10 17:31:49 1995
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To: london@sunsite.unc.edu
Date: Fri, 9 Jun 1995 19:36:12 GMT
From: "Association of Management (AoM)" <aomgt@INFI.NET>
Message-Id: <11342.usenet@merckx.graphics.cornell.edu>
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Reply-To: aomgt@infi.net
Subject: AoM Red Eye Call for Completed Camera-Ready Papers
content-length: 1722
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X-Status: 

AoM RED EYE CALL FOR COMPLETED CAMERA-READY PAPERS
June 28th Postmarked Deadline

The Association of Management (AoM) has 18 spaces available for
paper presentation, and proceedings publication in its forthcoming
August 2-5, 1995, 13th Annual International Conference being held at
the Waterfront Centre Hotel in Vancouver, BC, Canada.

The referee committee will accept two copies of finished camera-ready,
single-spaced manuscripts ( 6-10 pages) for internal blind review up until June
28th, 1995 (postmarked date).  Accepted manuscripts will be published
in both the AoM electronic proceedings publication and the traditional
bound AoM proceedings  book.  Manuscripts are to be accompanied by a disk
done in MSWord or WordPerfect.  The disk will be used for electronic
publication.

Categories of interest are:  human resource management,
organizational management, educational related topics, business,
management functions and applications, transportation, computer
machinery, information technology, information systems, information
resources, leadership and leaders, global health and ecology,
alternative energy and multidisciplinary topics related to all of the above.

Interested persons should contact <aomgt@infi.net>, Dr. Stephen LeMah
for information, instructions and conference materials inclusive of
registration fees, hotel reservation rates and so forth.

Two copies of your manuscripts and the disk may be sent to:

Dr. Stephen LeMah, Chairperson
Association of Mangement (AoM) Blind Review Committee
5309 Sidney Court, P. O. Box 64841
Virginia Beach, Virginia 23464-0841 USA
Tel: 804-479-5363     Fax: 804-479-0656
Internet email:  <aomgt@infi.net>

AoM Red Eye Call for Completed Camera-Ready Papers

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Sun Jun 11 14:05:10 1995
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Date: 7 Jun 1995 19:51:59 GMT
From: stanb@sr.hp.com (Stan Bischof)
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Organization: Hewlett Packard Sonoma County
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Subject: Re: Aero-Gel
content-length: 819
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X-Status: 

David Tashima (tash) wrote:
: This is true, but it is conceivable to coat the surfaces of the bubbles with
: conductive material in such a way as to create a substantial capacitance.  

Considering that this is probably a closed cell material and 
you need _two_ electrodes for a capacitor it is not at all
obvious how you would go about this!

Any even conceptual suggestions about how you might do this?

If it's an open cell design then making a battery electrode becomes
pretty obvious, but even for open cell I don't see an obvious
way to create two opposed electrodes.

But who knows? any ideas?

--
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Stan Bischof   Hewlett Packard Company   707-577-3994  stanb@sr.hp.com
----------------------------------------------------------------------

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Mon Jun 12 00:35:25 1995
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Date: 8 Jun 1995 13:54:28 GMT
From: conover@max.tiac.net (Harry H Conover)
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Organization: The Internet Access Company
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Subject: Re: Aero-Gel
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Stan Bischof (stanb@sr.hp.com) wrote:

: Considering that this is probably a closed cell material and 
: you need _two_ electrodes for a capacitor it is not at all
: obvious how you would go about this!

Once again: "The Devil is in the details."  :-)

Can someone contrast an Aero-Gel with conventional closed cell
structural foam and highlight the major differences?

: If it's an open cell design then making a battery electrode becomes
: pretty obvious, but even for open cell I don't see an obvious
: way to create two opposed electrodes.

I'm still trying to understand which parts of this configuration are
insulating and which are conductive, and how the difference is determined
during manufacturing.  Can anyone help with this?

                                      Harry C.

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Mon Jun 12 05:35:28 1995
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Date: Thu, 8 Jun 1995 10:15:30 -0500
From: Paul Dietz <dietz@comm.mot.com>
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Organization: University of Rochester Computer Science Dept
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Subject: Re: Aerogel
content-length: 1996
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stanb@sr.hp.com (Stan Bischof) wrote:
> David Tashima (tash) wrote:
>  : This is true, but it is conceivable to coat the surfaces of the bubbles
with
>  : conductive material in such a way as to create a substantial capacitance.

>  Considering that this is probably a closed cell material and
>  you need _two_ electrodes for a capacitor it is not at all
>  obvious how you would go about this!

>  Any even conceptual suggestions about how you might do this?

>  If it's an open cell design then making a battery electrode becomes
>  pretty obvious, but even for open cell I don't see an obvious
>  way to create two opposed electrodes.


Aerogels are open cell.

You'd make a capacitor with them the same way you make an
electrolytic capacitor.  One electrode is the aerogel, the other
is the electrolyte itself.  The electric field is across the
electrolytic "double layer" at the interface between the two.
This double layer is very thin, about one Debye length (a couple
of atomic radii).

The aerogel in question would likely be a carbon aerogel, formed
by pyrolysis of an organic polymer aerogel.  Carbon aerogels are
conductive.  Work has been done on these in California, at Livermore,
I think.

One interesting application is capacitive deionization.  The idea
here is to pass water containing some ionic species through the
aerogel.  An electric charge is applied.  This attracts ions to
the interface to neutralize the charge.  The surface area of the
aerogel is so large that large quantities of ions can be immobilized
this way, enough to desalinate seawater.  The ions are flushed later
at higher concentration in a purge stream by removing the electric
field.  Projections are that this could be five times more energy
efficient at deionizing seawater than reverse osmosis, and even better
on brackish water.  Other applications are removal of trace metal
pollutants, water softening without sodium, and removal of radioactive
contaminants in nuclear reactor waste water.

	Paul

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Mon Jun 12 19:35:39 1995
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Date: 5 Jun 1995 16:56:06 GMT
From: David Tashima <tash@bigblue.oit.unc.edu>
Message-Id: <3qvcv7$e2e@nntp4.u.washington.edu>
Organization: University of Washington
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Subject: Re: Aero-Gel
content-length: 1544
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X-Status: 

Peter Graham Thomas <Peter@mold.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>There was an article on "Aero-Gel's" a few days ago on the radio.
>
>They seem to have remarkable insulating properties, but I havn't heard
>of this 'material' before or since. Can anyone enlighten me?
> 
>-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
>Pete Thomas           |  "First you forget their names, and then their faces
>Yr Wyddgrug           |   Next you forget to pull your zipper up
>Wales UK              |   Then you forget to pull your zipper down"....
>-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

A friend of mine who once worked in a place that had something to do with them
told me that aero-gels are a whole class of substances that ( I guess ) are
gel-like and are light ( hence the name - they are used in aero-type situations
)  They do, however also have the property of containing many little bubbles,
which gives the internal structure a very large surface area (similar to a
sponge).  Surface area, if you recall your first-year physics, is very
important in determining the capacitance of a capacitor.  So, if aero-gel
technology develops, super-capacitors would become a possible contender for
electric car- technology.  I believe the goal was 1 Farad at 100 V, which would
give you an energy density greater than that of gasoline.  I think that the
original intent was to employ that tremendous energy density for bombs (you
could probably time the release better with a capacitor).

-- 
-dave

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Mon Jun 12 23:06:00 1995
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Date: 8 Jun 1995 19:29:20 GMT
From: Brent Coles <nef@xmission.com>
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Subject: On-line Energy/Envir. Materials WebSite
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X-Status: 

National Energy Foundation Catalog Now Available on Internet

The National Energy Foundation is pleased to announce that information 
about the Foundation, including its Materials Catalog, is now available
at the NEF World Wide Web site:

http://www.xmission.com/~nef

NEF, one of the nation's premier nonprofit developers of energy, 
natural resource, and environmental education materials and programs, is
pleased to make these resources more accessible to members of the
Triangle Coalition.  Using the latest technologies afforded users of the
Internet, NEF's Internet-version of the catalog includes full-color, high
resolution images of all NEF educational materials, along with product
descriptions and other information.  Users who access the site can even
place orders directly from the scene.  

For more information about the Foundation's "home page," contact Gary
Swan at NEF; (801) 539-1406, or fax: (801) 539-1451.; or e-mail
nef@xmission.com.

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Tue Jun 13 01:05:59 1995
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Date: Thu, 8 Jun 1995 23:32:44 GMT
From: "Association of Management (AoM)" <aomgt@INFI.NET>
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Subject: AoM Red Eye Call for Completed Camera-Ready Papers
content-length: 1664
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X-Status: 

AoM RED EYE CALL FOR COMPLETED CAMERA-READY PAPERS
June 28th Postmarked Deadline

The Association of Management (AoM) has 18 spaces available for
paper presentation, and proceedings publication in its forthcoming
August 2-5, 1995, 13th Annual International Conference being held at
the Waterfront Centre Hotel in Vancouver, BC, Canada.

The referee committee will accept 2 finished camera-ready,
single-spaced manuscripts ( 6-10 pages) for internal blind review up until June
28th, 1995 (postmarked date).  Accepted manuscripts will be published
in both the AoM electronic proceedings publication and the traditional
bound AoM proceedings  book.  Manuscripts are to be accompanied by a disk
done in MSWord or WordPerfect.  The disk will be used for electronic
publication.

Categories of interest are:  human resource management,
organizational management, educational related topics, business,
management functions and applications, transportation, computer
machinery, information technology, information systems, information
resources, leadership and leaders, global health and ecology and
multidisciplinary topics related to all of the above.

Interested persons should contact <aomgt@infi.net>, Dr. Stephen LeMah
for information, instructions and conference materials inclusive of
registration fees, hotel reservation rates and so forth.

Manuscripts (2 copies and 1 disk) may be sent to:

Dr. Stephen LeMah, Chairperson
Association of Mangement (AoM) Blind Review Committee
5309 Sidney Court, P. O. Box 64841
Virginia Beach, Virginia 23464-0841
Tel: 804-479-5363     Fax: 804-479-0656
email: aomgt@infi.net

AoM Red Eye Call for Completed Camera-Ready Papers

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Tue Jun 13 03:35:56 1995
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Date: Tue, 13 Jun 1995 05:57:36 GMT
From: f690133@erlb.erl.itri.org.tw
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Subject: Re: Announcement of new data resource on Eco-Materials.
content-length: 1739
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X-Status: 

In article <emrp-0906952140020001@dyna-3.net7f.io.org> emrp@io.org writes:
>From: emrp@io.org
>Subject: Announcement of new data resource on Eco-Materials.
>Date: Fri, 09 Jun 1995 21:40:02 -0500

>     This is to announce the existence of a new data resource called the
>Eco-Materials Research Project.  The EMRP is a new, non-profit
>organization based in Toronto, Canada, dedicated to stimulating the use of
>environmentally benign materials in construction on a regional basis. 
>Presently, information about a wide range of eco-materials can be supplied
>by the project in response to specific inquiries e-mailed to
>emrp@io.org.   Soon there will be a quantity of information available
>through the page itself, and a more extensive database may possibly be
>offered in individually purchasable CD-roms.  An automatic faxback
>infoline is also being installed.  Rates for research in response to
>e-mail inquiries have not yet been determined, but will be hourly, most
>questions likely requiring less than one hour to answer.  Presently the
>project is in a testing stage, and minor inquiries will receive responses
>free of charge.  The information provided by the project will be found
>useful by builders, designers, materials engineers, environmentalists,
>consumers, retailers, regulators, students, and others.  We hope that
>there will be some use found in the project by the subscribers to this
>newsgroup, the theme of which holds some relationship with that of the
>project.

>The EMRP page can be found on the WWW at: http://www.io.org/~emrp

>--
>The Eco-Materials Research Project
>100 Broadview Ave, Suite 412, Toronto ON, M4M 2H3
>voice: (416) 466-2236, fax: (416) 466-1224
>email:emrp@io.org, http://www.io.org/~emrp

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Thu Jun 15 05:07:41 1995
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Date: 14 Jun 1995 15:24:28 -0400
From: nick@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu (Nick Pine)
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Subject: Re: Warmstore water heaters
content-length: 795
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Jim Baranski wrote:

>nick@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu (Nick Pine) wrote:
>
>  One way to heat domestic hot water in a warmstore or solar closet of a
>  passive solar house is to put an electric water heater in the warmstore...
>
>You would, of course, want the electric water heater to be *uninsulated*...

I'm not sure about that. Yes, during sunny times, maybe no, during not
so sunny times. I thought about taking the skin and insulation off my
electric water heater...

>How is this different (better?) from using a warm water heat storage tank, and
>just use that water for the domestic hot water?

Sounds good to me. How do you get the water warm tho? A "warmstore" (Norman
Saunders' term) or a solar closet can be a completely passive, simple thing,
with no solar collectors, pumps, etc. 

Nick

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Thu Jun 15 05:07:45 1995
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Date: 14 Jun 1995 14:46:21 -0400
From: nick@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu (Nick Pine)
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References: <beartoe-1306952351550001@ivy-a3.aip.realtime.net>, <3rmh1o$ev@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu>, <gooleyDA63w0.B3D@netcom.com>
Subject: Re: Skylights: The Flourescent Conspiracy
content-length: 1306
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X-Status: 

Mark. Gooley <gooley@netcom.com> wrote:
 
>A sunscoop might not be necessary, but a lot of summer overhang would
>be a good idea.

Well, a sunscoop can provide both, as well as easily concentrate the
heat and light gain in winter by 2 or 3:1, while using a smaller aperture
into the building for heat loss in the winter and heat gain in the summer.

>In the summer you'd get at least as much light as from
>a northern exposure, and in the winter some solar gain as well.

Vy does everyone want to have North-facing skylights? The sun is in the South!

>Do fluorescents dim well even with a special ballast?

I think you need new ballasts to dim them completely. Lutron makes a
nice dimmer. And somebody makes a whole system with a serial addressable
digital interface, to control individual units in small increments, with
one serial bus.

>Maybe a "digital" approach is better: use a lot of those new 34-watt thin
>tubes rather than the big 8-footers, and shut some of them off completely
>when there's enough daylight.

Sounds good. Perhaps more efficient.

>I take it we're pretty much agreed that conventional skylights (as
>opposed to cleretories) leak, lose too much heat, and provide too much
>direct light in summer, yes?

No... At least not ones equipped with Zomeworks sunscoop reflectors.

Nick

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Fri Jun 16 00:39:15 1995
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Date: 15 Jun 1995 18:14:18 -0400
From: nick@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu (Nick Pine)
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Subject: Skylights, again...
content-length: 1640
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Am I doing this right?

I'm not sure how to compare skylights to fluorescent lights. In principle,
1 square foot of skylight should provide 10,000 footcandles of sun over
1 square foot, and I suppose that is equal to 50 fc over 200 ft^2, if you
spread it out nicely. Let's see, would you need 1 double tube fixture,
80 watts of flourescent to do the same job? 2 tubes for a 10' x 20' area?

That sounds a bit small. Maybe 4 tubes, 160 watts, vs. 1 ft^2 of double
glazing, which, where I live, with no insulating night shutter, lets out
about 5500 degree days/year x 24 hours/day x 1/R1 = 132,000 Btu/year. About
$1's worth of oil, vs. 160 watts burning 8 hours a day for 200 days, which
is 160 x 1/1000 w/kW x 8 hours x 200 days = 256 kWh/year, which is about
$25 worth of electric power. Looks pretty good so far. If you add a 2:1
concentrator above, it's better by twice, and a night-insulating shutter
would lower heat loss, and we still haven't counted any winter heat gain...

>...even the best windows (triple pane, argon, fancy coatings)
>have only R10 (???guessing).  That's compared to the R40 or R60 the rest of
>the wall/roof should have (superinsulated).

But we seem to be $24 ahead, even with R2...

>One advantage of a skylight in a hotter climate is that it can be opened
>to create a nice chimney, sucking the hottest air out.  That works only
>if you give up air conditioning!  (Same problem as the fluorescents!)

One way around this might be to make the roof transparent, over a flat
insulated ceiling, vented in summertime. In that case, I guess the
concentrator could go inside, a simple white poly film funnel.

Nick

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Sat Jun 17 16:38:42 1995
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Date: 12 Jun 1995 21:07:34 -0400
From: nick@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu (Nick Pine)
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Subject: Skylights: The Flourescent Conspiracy
content-length: 6672
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X-Status: 

by Steve Baer, Zomeworks Corporation

This article originally appeared in "Solar Mind," Issue 15--1993.

New discoveries in photovoltaic cells and solar thermal power plants
are announced every few months, but unfortunately we are forgetting
old uses of the sun faster than we are discovering new ones.

Why do new stores have no skylights? A few weeks ago I visited an enormous
new single story toy store. Shelves of plastic toys reached up towards a
heaven of rows of flourescent lights. The huge store was using 50 to 100
horsepower of electricity to light unpleasantly what a few percent of the roof
in skylights would light pleasantly. (At 1 watt per square foot the same power
running electric motors could lift cars parked bumper-to-bumper over the same
enormous floor about 1 foot a minute.) At least 100 acres of these toy stores,
grocery stores, fabric stores, dime stores, drug stores and auto supply stores
have been put up in the last few years in Albuquerque. They gave forgotten
how to use natural lighting. Ten megawatts of electricity need never have been
generated if the architects could remember how single story buildings were
made 75 or 100 years ago.

Why have we forgotten how to use the sun? If you shine enough flourescent light
on me, I also forget. I come under a spell, a new outline to my personality
appears under the strong electric lights, like a picture revealed under UV
lights. Struggling with my flourescent form in the huge new stores, I notice
strange people in the aisles, the flourescent gang, figures you don't see
elsewhere--a deeply tanned 60-year-old blonde with a low-cut blouse, a man
dressed as if he were an assistant cowboy. I am not myself. I simply don't
form the sentence for the store manager, "I wish you would put in skylights
or clerestories and turn off these unpleasant electric lights."

Today if you read the press you find our hope for solar energy is placed on
new photovoltaic panels, not on old-fashioned skylights, but if you take a
typical photovoltaic panel and pull the expensive silicon crystals away from
the front glass and use the plain glass in a skylight, it will admit not twice
as much, but at least ten times a much light as could be produced by the
photovoltaic cells powering electric lights--and most of us prefer the quality
of natural light.

Is there a force weaning us from mother nature's free and natural sun so
we will grow up to purchase an electric substitute? If you discuss the matter
of lighting with a store manager while 100 kilowatts of electricity glow 
around him, you suspect that your protests about electricity and desire
for the sun suggest the tiresome whining of a child being weaned.

God gave us the sun long ago. It is no use questioning whether the sun is
a good energy source or whether it would have been better if he'd used
flourescent bulbs. I felt the question was out of reach until a conversation
with a man who works for astronomers and materials scientists setting up
heliostats which reflect sun onto targets and solar furnaces. I was unsettled
by his offhand answer that it would be impossible to use a giant heliostat
to light and thaw a north entrance of a shopping center:

He: It's too bright.

Me: But with reflective losses the reflected sun is less bright than
    the real sun.

He: Yeah, you got a good point, but I tell you it's just too bright.

Me: Maybe, if you have both the real and the reflected sun shining, but
    this spot is otherwise in shadow.

He: Well, you'll see.

This was the first man I'd ever met competent to discuss the sun as if it were
simply a fixture, a huge incandescent bulb. He only dealt with it because his
job required it. I was able to look at the sun through his eyes. I saw that
except for habit the sun would never be accepted today. Sure there would be
a few fans, but not enough to even test-market it--think of the glare, the
sun burn, its unpredictable appearance. How many people die every day from
accident because the sun gets in their eyes? Mother nature would be swamped
with lawsuits.

Is the unnecessary use of electricity in endless rows of flourescent lights
like the self-imposed exercise of someone doing calisthenics? Are we training
for an adventure to come, where there will be no sun? Will we move underground
into enormous clammy galleries or set off in space through the dark on the way
to a new star?

Is our society more interested in expensive photovoltaic power plants than
cheap skylights because solar power plants could be switched to nuclear power
without the public knowing?

I found in investigating these stores with their endless flourescent ceilings
I began to invest in the problem, savoring the insult of each new flourescent
bulb glowing during the bright day. When finally, on my third visit, I overcame
the flourescent spell and protested to a store manager, something in me was
delighted at his guarded hostility. For a moment I thought he might throw me
out of Walmart for my impertinence in questioning their judgement bathing their
customers in the 60 cycle electric illumination and refusing the sun. The tense
moment passed like a huge ocean swell that you anticipate breaking in a wave,
but merely lifts you up and lets you down. As we sank in a trough the manager
confided that, although helpless to use the sun here, he had added skylights
to his own house and that he had suspected I was snooping for their competitor
K-Mart.

Further upsetting in my quest to corner the flourescent conspirators in their
acres of chain stores was a visit to the Price Club. The Albuquerque Price Club
has 3 per cent of the roof in skylights. That should be light enough on this
sunny day, but here all the lights were on anyway. I found the manager and
more-or-less demanded that he turn the lights off. No, he wouldn't. He pointed
to the new addition where he had been able to double the skylights (but the
electric lights were on there too) and explained that all the new stores were
like this new addition. Phoenix, L. A., Denver--all skylights, no need for
daytime electric lights. But did they leave their electric lights on anyway,
as he did?

There must be a flourescent conspiracy, but as I discovered when I thought
I had trapped a conspirator by the coffee shop at Walmart, the conspiracy's
energy and information are in waves, not objects. When you counter a
conspirator, you catch nothing, since the problem is the wave, caused by a
distant economic storm, not the store manager who merely rides the wave.
Everything is still a mystery. Why would the Price Club manager pay $10 per
hour to keep a light switch on, even though the store is flooded with sunlight?

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Sun Jun 18 06:08:47 1995
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Date: 14 Jun 1995 07:26:48 -0400
From: nick@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu (Nick Pine)
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References: <3rk3a0$ahs@eplet.mira.net.au>, <Pine.PTX.3.91j.950613115504.2670A-100000@carson.u.washington.edu>, <beartoe-1306952351550001@ivy-a3.aip.realtime.net>
Subject: Re: Skylights: The Flourescent Conspiracy
content-length: 956
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X-Status: 

Robert Anderson <beartoe@ddg.com> wrote:
 
>...south-facing glass in clerestories is problematic, don't you think?

No... Or maybe yes, but the problems seem solvable.

>Yes, it does induce solar gain when needed, but strongly beamed
>light, hot spots and shadows, etc.

Seems like some diffuse reflection would help here.

>Give me north-facing clerestory lights any day, well-insulated in the north.

Less light that way, and not much solar heat gain. Net losers. Facing south,
perhaps with a reflective parabolic sunscoop that acts as a summertime
overhang, skylights could be net gainers in wintertime. (Although Norman
Saunders' house had some North-facing solar collectors, as an experiment...)

>Nice even sky illumation, predictable, diffuse....

Nature is somewhat unpredictable. Perhaps you could make the store lighting
more predictable by adding some flourescents that dim when daylight is
available, making a more constant illumination.

Nick

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Thu Jun 22 14:19:52 1995
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Date: 20 Jun 1995 04:50:49 -0400
From: nick@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu (Nick Pine)
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Subject: Re: A very good nuclear debate book...
content-length: 122
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This posting seems to have nothing to do with renewable energy.
How about taking it over to alt.too.cheap.to.meter?

Nick

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Thu Jun 22 14:21:07 1995
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Date: 20 Jun 1995 06:19:23 -0400
From: nick@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu (Nick Pine)
Message-Id: <3s67bb$ffa@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu>
Organization: Villanova University
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References: <9847.usenet@merckx.graphics.cornell.edu>, <3s4q3q$c8p@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu>
Subject: Re: Trombe wall efficiency
content-length: 5328
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Nick Pine <nick@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu> wrote:
 
>>Is the air between the glazing and the insulation only at 70 degrees?
 
>To a first approximation... Not much more than that. I calculated the
>temperature rise for some "solar siding" recently, and it came out to
>be about 7 degrees F. To calculate this, you can look at the sunspace
>as a thermal chimney, and use the empirical formula CFM = 16.6 Av x
>sqrt((Tu-Tl)h), where Av is the vent area at the top and the bottom in ft^2,
>Tu and Tl are upper and lower sunspace temperatures in degrees F, and
>h is the sunspace height in feet. And you might figure that in full sun,
>the chimney is receiving about 300 Btu/ft^2/hour, and that 1 Btu heats
>up about 5 ft^3 of air 1 degree F (which tells you how much the sun
>warms a certain CFM, which in turn determines the CFM that flows.)

Oops. Let me do this again: this solar siding is about 16' high, and it has
a continuous 1 1/2" wide airspace at the top and the bottom, so a 1' wide
section would have cfm = 16.6 Av sqrt((Tu-Tl)h), where Av = 1.5/12 x 1'
and Tu-Tl is about U/cfm, and h = 16', and

U = 300 Btu/hr x 16 ft^2 - (68F-32F) x 16 ft^2/R1  =  4200 Btu/hr,
    full sun received      loss thru single glazing

so cfm = 539/sqrt(cfm) or cfm = 539^(2/3) = 66 cfm per horizontal linear foot
of siding, per 16' tall x 1' wide section of solar chimney. Not bad... But,
the temperature rise is about 4200/66 = 64F, not 7F, as I miscalculated above.
So if the air in the room behind it is 68F, it looks like the air will emerge
at the top of the siding at about 132F.

And the solar collection efficiency of this siding appears to be about
4200/(311 Btu/hr x 16 ft^2) = (66 cfm x 64F)/(311 x 16) = 84%. Not bad...

>In the design I just finished, it seems that the air leaving the house at
>68F (Tl) will return to the house at 75F (Tu.) The average air temp in the
>sunspace will be about 72F, but in this case, most of the warmed air that
>returns to the house will be North of some greenhouse shadecloth, not in
>contact with the cold glazing, and most of the unwarmed house air flowing
>out of the house will be South of the shadecloth, between the shadecloth
>and the glazing. So the air that is exposed to the cold glazing will be
>the 68F unwarmed house air, before it flows from South to North, sideways,
>through the shadecloth. This is good, but it doesn't matter much.

The above paragraph is still true, mostly :-)

Here's a small picture, a view from the East, say:

---------------       ^
132F <=O= <|   |      up        32F                    311 Btu/hr/ft^2
       |  <| ^ |                                 < --- Sun
   |   | ^<|   |<-Polycarbonate plastic
   |   |  <| ^ |
 house | ^<|<--|--80% shadecloth
  16'  z   z   z i                          South
       |  <| ^ |
   |   |<--|---|--Original house wall                  (clear enough? :-)
       | _<| ^ |
 68F ==I====>  |
-------------------------------------------
       |  3"   |

The plastic flap dampers are located at I and O, in the above picture,
and they look like this:

      .                      .
    p .                      .p
   p  .                      . p 
  p   .  <===  O             .  p  ===> I     
 p    .                      .   p
p     .                      .    p
      ^ hardware cloth ------^     
^                                 ^
|__ 1 mil polyethylene film ______|

The top one (O) will have a plywood door, hinged at the top, over the
plastic film, to close it off in summertime. When you close the upper
inner door, a link will open an upper outer door from the glazing cavity
to the outside, to make this work as a solar chimney in summertime,
cooling the room inside with some natural ventilation, and keeping
the sun off the original wall... If the house were air-conditioned,
the summer cooling air input could come from the outside, at the
bottom of the South wall. 

This house won't have a solar closet, but in general, a house with a
sunspace (or solar siding) and a solar closet might look like this:

   East view                 ^                      South view
---------------              up              ----------------------- 
               |d                           |     |                 |
               | d <--clear polycarbonate   |     |                 |
               |  d                         |     |    sunspace     |
    house      |   d       South            |     |                 |
 -  -  -   ----|    d                       |     |         --------|
          | SC |     d                      |     |        |  solar |
          |    |  SS  d                     |     |        | closet |
          |    |       d    srp?            |     |        |        |
--------------------------------        --------------------------------

               ^--dark surfaced, insulated wall   


--------------- ------- ..............
	  |    |       |              .
          | SC |       |              .
          |    |       |   shallow    .
          |    |  SS   |  reflecting  .       South             
   house   ----|       |    pool?     .
               |       |              .
               |       |              .
               |------- ..............
               |    ^  
               |    |__ dark, low-thermal-mass floor
---------------

Nick

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To: london@sunsite.unc.edu
Date: 19 Jun 1995 17:27:22 -0400
From: nick@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu (Nick Pine)
Message-Id: <3s4q3q$c8p@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu>
Organization: Villanova University
Sender: london@sunsite.unc.edu
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Subject: Re: Trombe wall efficiency
content-length: 30394
Status: O
X-Status: 

Will Stewart, <to whom I would reply by email, were his address either
mentioned in his posting, or not obscured by our dumb listserver>, wrote:

>>  A "Trombe wall" with insulation on the outside, and 1 square foot of
>>South-facing single-glazed area and an R-value of 20, will receive about
>>1000 Btu/day of heat on an average 32F December day, where I live.
>
>How will this heat be absorbed?

The sun will heat up some surfaces in the low-thermal-mass sunspace of this
"Trombe wall," (which is not really a Trombe wall, but an improvement on a
Trombe wall) by either striking a piece of greenhouse shadecloth or striking
the dark insulated back wall of the sunspace. The shadecloth or back wall of
the sunspace will heat up the air in the sunspace, and during the day, the
warmed sunspace air will go into the house through some passive plastic film
dampers, as invented by Doug Kelbaugh in Princeton in about 1978, described
on page 47 of the 1982 Time-Life book, _Energy Alternatives_. During the
night, the sunspace will get icy cold (UNlike a Trombe wall, which uselessly
heats the outdoors all night through the glazing) and the warm air in the
house will not flow backwards through the sunspace, because the plastic film
dampers will prevent that.

>What about using glazing that has R values over 4 and using less area for
>the trombe wall?

That would probably help a conventional Trombe wall, but in this kind of
passive air heater, not much energy is lost through the glazing at night,
because the space gets cold at night. Glazing with R-values greater than 4
may be more expensive and transmit less sun than simpler single or double
glazing, in this case. If you look at the numbers below, for this air heater,
only a small fraction of the energy collected is lost over a day, only while
the sun is actually shining. So higher R-value glass can't improve it a lot,
and may hurt it, by making it more expensive and cutting down on the amount
of sun that gets through the glass. A conventional Trombe wall (with no
quotes) would have to be about 25 times bigger in area to supply the same
amount of heat as this sort of passive air heater system, I think.

>> ....If the
>>room behind it has a constant temp of 70F, and the sun shines 6 hours a
>>day, on the average, the energy that leaks out of the glass will be about
>>6 hours x (70F-32F) x 1 ft^2/R1 = 228 Btu during the day,

[ie only about 30% of the net energy collected per day is lost through
the glass, so improving the glass can increase the efficiency by about 30%,
at most, not counting losses due to decreased solar transmission.]

>Is the air between the glazing and the insulation only at 70 degrees?

To a first approximation... Not much more than that. I calculated the
temperature rise for some "solar siding" recently, and it came out to
be about 7 degrees F. To calculate this, you can look at the sunspace
as a thermal chimney, and use the empirical formula CFM = 16.6 Av x
sqrt((Tu-Tl)h), where Av is the vent area at the top and the bottom in ft^2,
Tu and Tl are upper and lower sunspace temperatures in degrees F, and
h is the sunspace height in feet. And you might figure that in full sun,
the chimney is receiving about 300 Btu/ft^2/hour, and that 1 Btu heats
up about 5 ft^3 of air 1 degree F (which tells you how much the sun
warms a certain CFM, which in turn determines the CFM that flows.)

In the design I just finished, it seems that the air leaving the house at
68F (Tl) will return to the house at 75F (Tu.) The average air temp in the
sunspace will be about 72F, but in this case, most of the warmed air that
returns to the house will be North of some greenhouse shadecloth, not in
contact with the cold glazing, and most of the unwarmed house air flowing
out of the house will be South of the shadecloth, between the shadecloth
and the glazing. So the air that is exposed to the cold glazing will be
the 68F unwarmed house air, before it flows from South to North, sideways,
through the shadecloth. This is good, but it doesn't matter much.

This is similar to the new Conserval air heater, which uses a thin aluminum
absorber plate with holes and transverse airflow, to achieve a measured 80%
(quite high for an air heater) solar collection efficiency, with no glazing
at all. The Conserval people say that adding some glazing would cut their
efficiency to 60%. And high-R glazing would cost more and further lower
efficiency, with its lower solar transmission. Of course if you have no
glazing, you have to start with ambient air temperature, eg warming up 32F 
outside air to 39F air, which isn't much good for passive solar heating...
So it's better to have some glazing, I think, even if that cuts down on
the solar collection efficiency, so you can start with 68F air and heat
it up to 75F, or more.

>Again, how does the heat energy get into the house.

Through holes in the insulated wall between the low-thermal-mass sunspace
and the house. These holes have simple dampers which automatically open up
during the day and close at night.

>>and 18 hours x (70-32) x 1 ft^2/R20 = 34 Btu at night, a net gain of 1000
>>-228 -34 = 738 Btu/day.
>
>What happens at night, with no sun?  Does the house get cold?

That depends on the design. It may be desirable to have the house cool off
at night, when most people are asleep in bed, to save energy, and reduce
the heat storage requirements for long strings of cloudy days. 

One way to store heat in the house is to insulate the "Trombe wall" on
the outside and leave it uninsulated on the inside, so that heat that
comes into the house during the day, via the warm air that comes into the
house, is stored in the wall during the day, from the inside of the house.
In this case, a small mass wall area may overheat the room behind it.
Trombe walls are good at not overheating during the day, since the
mass is exposed to the sun directly. Unfortunately, this means the
mass is exposed to cold glazing at night.

Another way to store heat in the house is by filling it up with
concrete furniture :-) Lots of it... And masonry walls and floors
and big piles of rocks here and there. ("Here, come sit on this boulder.")
Remember the Dick Van Dyke show with the boulder in the living room?

If the house is superinsulated, with lot of thermal mass inside, which
has lots of surface area, the daily temperature swing will be almost zero.
The house will be like my friend's underground house. He gets ready for
winter in November, by closing the windows, to make the inside temperature
rise from 70F to 72F, over two weeks... 

A better way is to somehow isolate the warmstore from the living area,
so that the living temperature can be controlled separately, and so
that the warmstore temperature can vary widely, and it can be charged up
to MORE THAN ROOM TEMPERATURE on sunny winter days, using lots of South
glass area. You can't live in a 130F room, but it is desirable to be able
to charge up a heat battery to higher than room temperature, in order to
maximize its discharge life, when the sun goes in for a few days. This can
be done by making another insulated wall between the mass wall and the
living space, and circulating the sunspace air between the mass wall and 
that inside wall during the day.

Even better, I think, is to make the back wall of the sunspace an
ordinary insulated frame wall, except for a part of it, which is glazed,
with a passive air heater and high-thermal-mass "solar closet" behind that.

The solar closet would ideally be full of sealed containers of water,
that are heated by airflow from the air heater on the south side. It
would be insulated all-round, including on the air heater side. The
warm air would get into the solar closet from its air heater in the same
way that the warm air from the sunspace gets into the house, via holes
at the top and bottom of the insulated South wall, equipped with simple
plastic flap backdraft dampers.

Containers of water are better than masonry for thermal mass, because
you can store about 3 times more heat in a cubic foot of water than in 
a cubic foot of masonry, and water has a lower thermal resistance than
masonry, which makes it easier to get heat into and out of water quickly.
Water may also be cheaper than masonry, eg in 55 gallon drums. Let me
say that again: the thermal store can be about a third as big, if it's
water instead of masonry. And containers of water can have smoother airflow
around them, with less air resistance than rockpiles, so the fans or blowers 
can use less electrical power, to transfer heat to or from air. ("To" usually 
requires a higher heat transfer rate, since the sun shines less than half
the day in the winter.) A solar closet can have a more compact shape than
a mass wall, so a given amount of insulation can be more effective, with
the lower surface to volume ratio of a solar closet, compared to a mass wall.

>Many passive solar houses that do not store the solar energy gained overheat
>in the daytime and become cold at night.

True. They are badly designed, and one answer to this problem has been
to invent rules of thumb like, "the South-facing glass area should not
exceed 25% of the floor area." This prevents overheating (although opening
a window is one solution to that), but it may also limit the house to make it,
say, 30% solar heated, at most, especially in cloudy climates. I think it's
better to use lots of South-facing glass and put the extra heat into a heat
battery on sunny days. Of course a large enough house with small enough
South-facing glass needs no heat storage at all.

>The trombe wall is one answer to this problem.

A fairly inefficient one. Think of a Trombe wall as a car that gets 2 miles
per gallon, or goes 10 mph. Not bad in the days when there were no cars...
(Trombe walls were actually invented by Morse, long before Trombe, in 1881.)

>Another answer is to have a masonry wall, table/bench, or floor of some sort
>inside the residence

Ah, concrete furniture! :-)

>(possibly containing phase change materials)

Phase change materials have their problems. For instance, Glauber's salts
get tired, and have to be stirred up mechanically, and only work over a 
limited temperature range, as I recall.

>to even out the daily swings in energy gain.

Yes, to even out daily temperature swings. (Did I mention that I can sell 
you a 100% solar heated house, in any climate, with no windows, even, if
you give me the freedom to pick the indoor temperature swing? :-)

BUT, you don't want to live inside the heat battery, unless you are a Venusian.
If you live inside the heat battery, you can't charge it up to more than about
80F, which severely limits the usable heat you can store in the heat battery,
vs a heat battery that can be charged up to, say 130F, and discharged down
to a usable temperature of 80F, which is about where people-occupied heat
batteries run out of sweat.

When the sun goes in for a few days, if you live inside the heat battery,
you have little control over the house temperature. It just gets colder and
colder. Whereas with a solar closet, you can open or close a damper with 
a thermostat, even a setback thermostat, to let some warm air into the
house as needed... The higher temperature of a solar closet or warmstore
(Norman Saunders' attic version) can also provide a large fraction of the
hot water needs of a house, if it has a water heater within, with a preheat
pipe near the ceiling.

>>  A standard unvented Trombe wall (Table IV-14b of Mazria's book says
>>vented ones don't work much better) with a very large uninsulated thermal
>>mass right behind the glass and an R-value of, say 2 (roughly 1' of
>>masonry), would have an average temperature at the outside wall surface
>>of about 32F + R1 x (70F-32F)/(R2+R1) = 45F, if there were no sun. If you
>>add a heatflow of 1000 Btu/day of sun to that model, falling on the
>>outside of the wall, the outside wall surface will have an average
>>temperature of about 45F + 1000/24 x (R=2/3) = 72.4F, which contributes
>>24 hours x (72.4F- 70F) x 1 ft^2/R2 = 29 Btu/day to the room behind the
>>wall.
 
>Of course, these are average values, and the actual values vary according
>to time of day, and interior heat loss.

Sure, but I think the average values are reasonably accurate, and
represent what we care about.

>These calculations truly require calculus, which Nick as an engineer
>will readily admit,

Nonono. I won't admit that :-) The average passive solar house in this
country is so ill-designed that even applying simple arithmetic, with
assumptions that are within 2:1 of real values, can make a dramatic
performance improvement. Given the present situation, I think we should
forget about calculus completely for a few years, and then perhaps start
nit-picking over the 12th decimal place, once our Pentiums get repaired:-)

A lot of engineers don't know how to do things on the back of an envelope.
They believe that if an answer is not good to 1%, it is useless. Or that
something that is 75% efficient, and costs $10 per square foot, is a lot
better than something that is 60% efficient, and costs $1 per square foot.
It is, in a sense...

A lot of architects do simplified beam calculations now. Why not simplified
passive solar calculations? We need to get better at knowing what mathematical
details can be ignored, and which ones are important... This may change
as the art evolves.

Voltaire said "The best is the enemy of the good," which I interpret
to mean that if you keep looking for the best solution all your life,
you may never get around to implementing a good solution.

>...working out the formulas can be tedious!  :-)

There's that, too :-) And in a lot of cases, it's better to build things
and measure them than try to calculate them. High-powered math is only
useful if you have high-powered physical models to go with it, and in
many cases, those don't exist.

>>  So the "improved Trombe wall" above, (actually an air heater with the
>>  thermal storage inside the house) is more than 25 times as efficient
>>  (738/29) at collecting and keeping heat in the room behind it, than
>>  the usual Trombe wall. This is somewhat oversimplified, of course...
>
>I'm curious to hear more about this once you address the above points.
>Don't stop innovating, continuously refine!

I'm trying. I'd like to see more of these built, so we can measure how
they work and improve them, and learn some newer tricks :-)

Nick

Here are a couple of earlier postings describing how this works...

Article: 2080 of alt.architecture.alternative
From: nick@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu (Nick Pine)
Subject: One way to build a high-performance passive solar house
Date: 9 Feb 1995 08:56:54 -0500 [updated 4/25/95]
Organization: Villanova University

Step 1.

Look up the average outdoor temperature in December, where you live.

The nice new, free book, _Solar Radiation Data Manual for Flat-Plate
and Concentrating Collectors_, from the National Renewable Energy
Laboratory at (303) 275-4099, has this information, as well as some
solar information, for many places in the United States. (They also
have a CD, with *hourly* solar weather data for 247 US cities over the
last 30 years, that might be used for passive solar house simulations.)

For example, where I live, in the northeast, the average December
temperature is about 32 degrees F, and the average amount of sun falling
on a south wall is about 1,100 Btu per square foot per day.

Step 2. 

Estimate how many Btu/day you need to heat your house at that average
outdoor temperature.

For example, if you have a 30' x 30' 2-story house, you have about
3,000 square feet of walls and roof. If the R-value of that surface is,
say, 30, it takes about 3,000/30 = 100 Btu per hour to heat the house to
68 degrees, if it is 67 degrees outside. Subtract the average outdoor
temperature from the indoor temperature and multiply by 24 hours, then
multiply this by the sum of each surface area divided by its R-value.

Our example house takes (68-32) x 24 x 100 = 86,000 Btu per day to heat. 
Call it a hundred thousand, a nice round number that is about the same
amount of heat as a gallon of oil burned in an old oil burner.

Step 3. 

Calculate how much south-facing glazing you need on your low-thermal-mass
sunspace, to supply that amount of solar heat, on an average day.

Where I live, each square foot of south facing wall receives about 1,000
Btu/day, another nice round number. If the low-thermal-mass sunspace has an
insulated low-thermal-mass wall between it and the house, with a big window
fan in one window, to suck most of the warm air into the house during the day,
and you let the sunspace get icy cold at night, the sunspace will be about
68 F during the day, as a first approximation. So the heat lost from each
square foot of glazing in the sunspace to the outside, during the day, in our
example house, will be about (68-32) x 5 hours, or 180 Btu, if the sun shines
for 5 hours on a winter day. So each square foot of sunspace glass provides
about 800 Btu/day to the house, net, on an average winter day. Another way
to figure this is that each square foot of south-facing glazing collects the
heat-equivalent of 1-2 gallons of oil per year. If your present oil bill
indicates that you need a thousand square feet of glazing or more, perhaps
more house insulation and caulking are needed before solar heating, or you
could just use the sunspace to reduce the oil heat, with no thermal store.

Our example house would need about 100,000/800 = 125 square feet of glazing
in the low-thermal-mass sunspace glass to keep it warm on an average day.
Say, an 8' high x 16' wide window, with an insulated wall between that window
and the rest of the house. The sunspace might be quite shallow, eg some
cost-effective "solar siding," instead of, say, vinyl siding, as in the solar
closet wall below. Or it might be a bit deeper, extending out from the house
8', and used for growing ripe, red tomatoes and basil in December, perhaps
with a couple of extra hours of 90% high-pressure sodium and 10% mercury
vapor light, and a little heat leaked from the house on freezing nights.

Step 4.

Take a guess at how many cloudy days there are in a row in December, where you
live, and what the outdoor temperature is during those days. In many places,
cloudy days are warmer than sunny days in December.

(If you wanted to be more precise, the weather bureau, or perhaps NREL or NOAA
could help. Or you could calculate Gaussian statistics using the CD data.)

Let's say that our example house is in a climate with 5 cloudy days in a row,
in December, and that the average temperature during those days is 32 F.

Step 5.

Calculate how many 55 gallon drums full of water you need to keep the house
warm for that cloudy day period.

In our example house, this would be 5 x 100,000 = 500,000 Btu, about the same
as 5 gallons of oil. If the water in the drums is hot, say 130 F, and the
drums can keep the house warm until the water cools to, say, 80 F, then
each drum stores about 25,000 Btu, about the same as a quart of oil. So
5 gallons divided by one quart is 20 drums (talk about apples and oranges :-)

How do you keep the drums that hot? You build an insulated solar closet behind
the sunspace, in the house, with an air heater as part of the insulated wall
between the sunspace and the house, with a transparent vertical cover of glass
or transparent "solar siding," eg Dynaglas or Replex ((800) 726-5151)
polycarbonate plastic, which costs about a dollar a square foot, and comes
in long sheets, about 4' wide.

Behind that siding, you staple some 80% greenhouse shadecloth, which costs
about 14 cents per square foot, leaving a 1" air gap between the siding and
the shadecloth, and you leave another 1" air gap between the shadecloth and
the 3 1/2" of fiberglass insulation in the 6" wall, and you put small vents
(about 1% of the overall area, eg 1 square foot in our example house) at the
top and bottom of this air heater, to allow warm air from the solar closet to
flow into the outside air gap through the vent hole at the bottom of the air
heater, _through_ the shadecloth, and back through the upper vent hole into
the insulated solar closet. The vent holes should have plastic-film backdraft
dampers to keep the air from flowing when the sun is not shining. These might
be made from chicken wire and a thin (1 mil) plastic film like that used for
dry cleaner bags. 

The inside wall of the closet could be the foil face of the fiberglass
insulation. The floor might be dirt, covered with a layer of plastic.
There should be an air space between the drums and the walls of the
solar closet, to allow air to circulate around the drums. There should
also be a vent to the house, to be slightly opened on cloudy days. This
could be an electric air damper controlled by a thermostat. (Another
approach might be to put the 55 gallon drums on a strong attic floor as
an overhead "warmstore," a la Norman Saunders, for new construction.)

In our example house, if the 2' diameter x 3' long drums were stacked up
horizontally, 4 high, the solar closet would be 8' high x 10' long x 4' deep.
I would make it 6' longer, and use the non-drum space for a sauna. The
solar closet should also have 3 1/2" of fiberglass insulation in its ceiling,
ie the second floor of the house, and in its back (north) wall, inside the
house. Note that most of the "waste heat" from this solar closet ends up
in the house via the sunspace from the front glazing, when it is collecting
heat, and via most of the insulated surface the rest of the time. Note
that the solar closet does not usually provide heat for the house, except
during cloudy day periods, so it stays hot like a stagnant solar collector.

The sauna might have a very small woodstove, for burning newspapers, junk
mail, old paper towels, college committee recommendations, letters from
congressmen, and press releases announcing amazing new price breakthroughs
in photovoltaic technology.


Article: 2127 of alt.architecture.alternative
From: nick@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu (Nick Pine)
Subject: Passive solar house evolution
Date: 13 Feb 1995 09:49:42 -0500
Organization: Villanova University

Question 1: If you put a 55 gallon drum full of water in a 2' square x 4' tall
uninsulated box in the shade in Philadelphia, in January, what would the
average temperature of the drum be? 

Answer 1: According to the NREL _Solar Radiation Data Manual_, the average
January temperature in Philadelphia is -0.9 degrees C, or about 30 degrees F.

Q2: What would the average box temperature be if it were in the sun,
in Philadelphia, in January, and if it were painted white?

According to the 1993 ASHRAE Handbook of Fundamentals, the "sol-air
temperature," or equivalent air temperature, Te, of a vertical surface
in the sun, is the outdoor temperature + 0.15 x U, IF the surface is painted
a light color, and the amount of sun falling on the surface is U Btu/hour.

According to the NREL book, a south-facing wall in Phila in January receives
about 3.3 kWh/m^2/day, ie 3300 x 3.41 Btu/10.76 ft^2/m^2 = 1000 Btu/ft^2/day
of sun. This is an average daily insolation of about 40 Btu/ft^2/hour. So
assuming the sun only shines on the south side of the box, if it were painted
white, the average temperature of the south side would be 30 + 0.15 x 40 = 36
degrees. The interior temperature should be the average temp. of all of the
outside surfaces, I think. Each face of the box has a surface area of 8 ft^2,
and the top and bottom have areas of 4 ft^2, so the average drum temperature
should be about (8x36+3x8x30+2x4x30)/(8+3x8+4+4) = 1248 / 40 = 31.2 F, 1.2
degrees warmer than the drum in the shade.

Q3. What would the drum temperature be if the box were painted black?

The ASHRAE HOF says that the sol-air temperature of a DARK vertical surface
is the outdoor temperature + 0.3 * U, so if the black box were receiving 
the same amount of sun as the white box, the average temperature of the
south wall would be 30 + 0.3 x 40 = 42 F. So you can raise the effective
average outdoor temperature of a white south-facing wall in Philadelphia by
an average of 6 degrees, in January, just by painting it darker. Not bad... 

In the above case, the average temperature of the drum/box would be 

(8x42+3x8x30+2x4x30)/40 = 32.4 F, just above freezing.

Q4. Suppose the box had a single-pane glass south wall, with no insulation?

In this case, the solar energy, Ein, that goes into the box would be about

Ein = 2 x 4 ft^2 x 1,000 Btu/ft^2/day = 8,000 Btu/day,

assuming the glass transmits 100% of the solar energy.

If the drumwater has an average temperature of Tw, and the walls and glass
front of the box have an R-value of 1, the energy that goes out of the box
in one day is Eout = (Tw-30) x 24 hours x 40 ft^2/R1. If energy is conserved,
ie Ein = Eout, then Tw = 30 + 8,000/(24x40) = 38.3 degrees F. An improvement.
Six degrees warmer than the unglazed box...

Q5. How about if we add R-14 insulation to the other three sides and the top
and the bottom?

In this case, the solar energy that goes into the box is the same, but
the solar energy that goes out of the box, into the outside air, is

Eout = (Tw-30) x 24 hours x (8 ft^2/R1 + 32ft^2/R14) = (Tw-30) x 247, so if
Eout = Ein, then Tw = 30 + 8,000/247 = 62 degrees F, a livable temperature,
when the sun is shining, which begins to decrease when the sun stops shining.
This is often as far as passive solar house designs go, with the house getting
colder and colder on cloudy days, as a lot of heat leaks out of the south-
facing windows. One of the problems with this design is that you have to
*live* inside the "heat battery," so you can't make it too warm. 

Q6. But then suppose we make the glazed side an ideal air heater, so it
collects the sun's heat during the day, but the drum is insulated at night?

Now Eout = Es + Eother, where Es is the heat lost through the ideal south wall
air heater. Say the sun shines for 6 hours a day in January... Then
Es = (Tw-30) x 6 hours x 8 ft^2/R1 + (Tw-30) x 18 hours x 8 ft^2/R14.

Eother is the heat lost through the east, north and west walls of the box,
as well as the top and bottom. Eother = (Tw-30) x 24 hours x 32 ft^2/R14. 

So, if the energy into the box equals the energy out of the box, then

(Tw-30)(48+10+55) = 8,000, so Tw = 30 + 8,000/113 = 103 degrees F. But wait!
This is no good... This passive solar house has too much south-facing glass!
It overheats! At this point, the thing to do is open the windows in January,
or (better) move out of the little box with the drum in it, and build a house
behind it, using the hot water in the drum as a heat battery for cloudy days.

If the drum and its air heater are inside a sunspace, and the air from the
sunspace heats the house during sunny-day periods, the heat lost from the south
side of the air heater will help heat the house during sunny day periods. If
the house is built around an insulating solar closet containing the warm drum,
the heat lost from the drum will help heat the house too... So the heat that
leaks out of the heat battery during sunny-day periods is not wasted.

Q7. Now suppose we make the box 8' tall instead of 4' tall, so that the air
heater collecting area is 16 ft^2, and the drum on top still gets all the
collected heat, but none of the collected heat goes out through the lower half
of the box or the uninsulated glass at night?
                                                 g: glass       giii
Ein = 16 ft^2 x 1,000 Btu/day = 16,000 Btu/day.  D: drum        giDi
                                                 i: insulation  giii
Eout = Es + Eother                                              giii

       Es = (Tw-30)x6x16ft^2/R1 + (Tw-30)x18x8ft^2/R14 = (Tw-30)(96+10).

       Eother = (Tw-30)x24x32/R14 = (Tw-30)x55, as before.

So Ein = Eout ==> Tw = 30 + 16,000/(96+10+55) = 131 degrees. This is getting
interesting... We could not possibly live inside this solar closet, except
for a few minutes at a time, as a sauna, but it is good to have a heat battery
like this sitting around, charged up to a high temperature, because that will
make the useful heat that we can get out of it last for a long time, during
periods of cloudy days. Along with a bit more glazing, one might also put an
electric water heater inside this closet, and preheat its cold water input
with about 20' of 1 1/4" copper pipe running along the ceiling of the closet,
to heat water for taking showers, etc... If the input water is preheated, and
the water heater is in a 130F room, the electric heating element should rarely
turn on.

Q8. Suppose we used two layers of glazing instead of one, above?

Ein would be the same, in this simple model.

Es would be about (Tw-30)(48+10), and Eother would be the same.

So Tw = 30 + 16,000/(48+10+55) = 174 degrees F.

Q9. Then suppose we add a reflecting pool or shutter in front, which
increases the solar input by 50%?

Tw = 30 + 16,000x1.5/(48+10+55) = 242 F. (Which of course, would make
the water steam. Maybe these drums should be full of sand. But then you
would need about 3 times more of them, since masonry has about a third
the heat capacity of water, and a higher thermal resistance.)

Q10. But wait, we were going to put the solar closet inside the sunspace,
right? So during the day, when the solar air heater is working, the south
side of the air heater will be exposed to, say, 68 F house air, not 30 F air,
and the other walls of the solar closet will also be exposed to 68 F air,
not 30 F outside air. So what would the "water temperature" be in this case?

It's roughly the same little calculation, using 68 F instead of 30 F:

Tw = 68 + 16,000x1.5(48+10+55) = 280 F.

Q11. Then suppose we lay the drum/box down horizontally, and put the air
heater side at the focus, under an ideal 4:1 reflective linear parabolic
concentrator? Or use an R-14 movable reflective shutter to cover the glass
over the drum when the sun is not shining?

Ein = 16,000 x 4 = 64,000 Btu/day.

Eout does not change.

So Tw = 68 + 64,000/(48+10+55) = 634 degrees F.

...

So, it seems to me that it isn't too hard to arrange for a passive solar house
to have a "solar closet" with a few high temperature 55 gallon drums full of 
water, a "heat battery" that can be discharged in a controlled way, to provide
heat for a house during cloudy days...

Nick

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Date: 20 Jun 1995 14:20:39 -0400
From: nick@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu (Nick Pine)
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Subject: Re: Trombe wall efficiency
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Will Stewart  <AE%SJSUVM1.BITNET@cmsa.Berkeley.EDU, not!> wrote:
 
>>Oops. Let me do this again: this solar siding is about 16' high, and it has
>>a continuous 1 1/2" wide airspace at the top and the bottom, so a 1' wide
>>section would have cfm = 16.6 Av sqrt((Tu-Tl)h), where Av = 1.5/12 x 1'
>>and Tu-Tl is about U/cfm, and h = 16', and
>>
>>U = 300 Btu/hr x 16 ft^2 - (68F-32F) x 16 ft^2/R1  =  4200 Btu/hr,
>>    full sun received      loss thru single glazing
>
>why are you using 68F instead of an average?

Because, Will, like I said before, the air that is near the cold glazing is
mostly unwarmed house air, with a temp of 68F. This siding has two vertical
airflow passages, each 1 1/2" wide (Norman Saunders improves on this by having
one passage, divided by a diagonal porous absorber.) The unwarmed house air 
passes vertically up through the Southern passage, from South to North through
the shadecloth, and further up and North through the Northern passage, closer
to the house, and farther from the glazing.

But go ahead and use an average if you like. It doesn't make an enormous
difference. The average temp is 100F, which would make the 4200 above about
3200, and lower the solar collection efficiency from about 85% to 66%. Who
cares? Houses need siding anyhow, and the solar collection efficiency of
vinyl siding is about 0, only slightly worse than a conventional Trombe wall,
and it doesn't do much to keep the sun from heating up the house in the summer,
or provide any natural summertime ventilation, either.

>Is the height 16' or the square footage 16 ft**2(i.e., a 1' wide glazing)?

Yes. As I said, I was talking about a 16' high x 1' wide piece of siding.

>It's been a few years since I had fluid mechanics, so I'm having trouble
>following your CFM estimates. 

I have the benefit of never having taken a course in fluid mechanics :-)
You probably learned how to do this more painstakingly. I did, however,
read Bill Yanda's book, _The Food and Heat Producing Solar Greenhouse_,
which has that nice little solar chimney formula in the back, on page 189,
cfm = 16.6 Av sqrt((Tu-Tl)h), which roughly agrees with the formula in
the 1993 ASHRAE HOF book, cfm = 407 Av sqrt((Tu-Tl)/(459+T)h), where T
is the average temp, as I recall. The two formulas agree when T is 142F.

The only other thing you need to "know" :-) is that 1 Btu heats about 55 ft^3
of air 1 degree F, which for large values of 55, means that Tu-Tl = U/cfm.
Substitute all this in the above equation, do a little algebraical cranking,
and voila, cfm=k^(2/3), or as you might say, cfm=xk**(0.6666666666666667) :-)

>Don't forget they have to overcome the plastic damper, no matter how light.

They, the teeny air molecules? If this bugs you a lot, perhaps you could
use a small fan, or a more diaphanous damper, or a manual damper or a Grainger
motorized damper controlled by a thermostat, or some Zomeworks Skylids (tm). 

>What is the heat loss from the damper area?

Not much, comparatively speaking.

>What are the kinetic energy losses around the damper?

I don't know. I suppose you could write a thesis about that. Or look it up in
the ASHRAE HOF, or go build one... Or better, a hundred. Do you want to help,
or stand around displaying your erudition and throwing darts at this idea?
As I said before, some solar engineers recognize that it's often better to 
build something and measure it, than to calculate forever and ever.

>Are you only considering radiative losses?

Not even. Just R-value losses. Simple arithmetic.

>If not, are you assuming laminar flow on your convection losses at the
>glazing and on your heat gain at the shadecloth?

I assume that a still air film has an R-value of 1. And that the air in
the sunspace is still. (Is it? 66 cfm passing through 3" x 1' is 264 fpm,
which would make an air film R-value of about 1/(1+264/176) = 0.4. But
the plastic glazing is horizontally corrugated, so the air near the plastic 
is probably still (0 velocity, if laminar flow), but the plastic has more
than 1 ft^2 of area/ft^2 of glazing, because of the corrugations, etc.
Where do we stop? With some reasonable assumptions and simple models.)

And that the glazing has an R-value of 1 on the inside surface, 0 in the
middle, and 0 on the outside surface. To a first approximation, the heat that
comes in through the glazing has nowhere to go but into the air, and into the
house. If you want to refine this, see Duffie and Beckman's _Solar Engineering
of Thermal Processes_, 2nd edition, 1991, figure 6.4.4(b), page 261, which
says that the R-value of a single piece of glass varies from about 0.75 to
1.5 for an absorber plate temperature of 0 to 200C. I call that R1. Recall
Voltaire: "The best is the enemy of the good." Recall Keynes, "In the long
run, we are all dead." As I said, passive solar houses are so disastrously
ill-designed now that I don't think it pays to get too picky about the math,
in improving their design. A little arithmetic goes a long way, for now. 

>Won't the shadecloth at the top transfer less heat to the air and more to the
>glazing due to the smaller tempature differential?

Sure. Or maybe it will just run hotter than the shadecloth below. As I said,
to a first approximation, the solar heat that enters the glazing has nowhere
else to go, except into the house. BTW, you mispelled "temperature" :-)

Regards,

Nick

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Fri Jun 23 20:01:33 1995
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Subject: "translucent insulation" available in California, USA?
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I've seen good info on uses of translucent panels that pass dayligWE
while holding heat, but only from European countries.

Is it available in the US?

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Sat Jun 24 02:01:38 1995
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Date: 22 Jun 1995 05:59:36 -0400
From: nick@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu (Nick Pine)
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Subject: Re: Efficient fridge/freezer idea
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In article <DAJy7x.9ux@magi.com>, Jumbuliah <elias@magi.com> wrote:

>In places where it gets very cold in the winter, would it not be extremely 
>efficient to cool food with the outdoor air?  A simple fan connected to a 
>thermostat would do the trick...

>What do you think?

I think we need a FAQ.

I used to work at a place with a turnover rate in the engineering dept
of about 50%/year. It was amusing to watch things being reinvented all
the time...

Nick

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Sat Jun 24 05:01:39 1995
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When will Real Goods start selling a solar tent for wintertime camping or
sunbathing? An 8' x 4' x 4' pup tent, say, with a UV-transparent Tedlar wall,
an R4-padded North wall, and a space blanket to make a ground reflector on
the South side. This would collect about 16K Btu/hour in full sun, and with a
sleeping bag on the floor, most of the losses would be through the South wall:
(70F-Ta) x (32ft^2/R1 + 32ft^2/R4) = 16K ==> Ta = 70 - 16K/40 = -330F, which
should work at the beach in the wintertime, except when it's REALLY cold...

Nick

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Date: 21 Jun 1995 14:28:07 GMT
From: steve_paschke@msmgate.mrg.uswest.com (Steve Paschke)
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Subject: Re: Trombe wall efficiency
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In article <3s67bb$ffa@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu>, nick@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu
(Nick Pine) wrote:

> Nick Pine <nick@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu> wrote:
> 
> Here's a small picture, a view from the East, say:
> 
> ---------------       ^
> 132F <=O= <|   |      up        32F                    311 Btu/hr/ft^2
>        |  <| ^ |                                 < --- Sun
>    |   | ^<|   |<-Polycarbonate plastic
>    |   |  <| ^ |
>  house | ^<|<--|--80% shadecloth
>   16'  z   z   z i                          South
>        |  <| ^ |
>    |   |<--|---|--Original house wall                  (clear enough? :-)
>        | _<| ^ |
>  68F ==I====>  |
> -------------------------------------------
>        |  3"   |
>  
> Nick

Wouldn't black painted metal be better than shadecloth at absorbing heat
and radiating the heat absorbed?

I've built a unit several years ago with painted beverage cans with mild
success.  I think that a large heat sink (made from scrap sheet metal)
would be most effective.

-- 
  *   /\  *  ^  /\  * /\         
\/\  /  \   / \/  \/\/  \   *
 \ \/    \ /   \  /  \   \       steve_paschke@msmgate.mrg.uswest.com
 *\/      /     \  *   *  \     
    *  * /       \               standard disclaimer goes here
 *        (  _  )    *
   *      ( | | )        *
**********(_|_|_)**************

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Sat Jun 24 12:03:01 1995
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Bob Taylor  <AE%SJSUVM1.BITNET@cmsa.Berkeley.EDU, not!> wrote:

>I've got 4 ea 12 watt rabbits, does that count? =:-)

Soitenly. Table 7, "Heat Generated by Laboratory Animals" on Page 9-12 
of my trusty ASHRAE HOF says a 5.41 lb, normally active wabbit makes 
39.22 Btu/hr of sensible heat, according to data taken by Runkle (1964),
Kleber (1961), Besch (1973), Woods and Besch (1974), Woods et al (1974),
Bond et al [who is this al guy?] (1959) and Ott and McNully (1961.)
 
>Cows as space heaters???  You could also use the waste products to make
>methane to heat the house, and I understand cows make a fair amount of
>methane directly as well.

Impractical, I'd say. Maybe methane for cooking ("WHAT is that smell?"/
"Oh I don't know, just je ne sais quoi.") But for methane space heating,
I believe you'd need about 200 cows.

>ps- how many watts is 2 ea 16 lb cats?

Exactly 2 x 27.21/3.41, according to Table 7, if they weigh 6.61 pounds
each, which would be true for small values of 16, or large values of 2.

Nick

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Sat Jun 24 23:01:59 1995
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Subject: Re: Trombe wall efficiency
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Steve Paschke <steve_paschke@msmgate.mrg.uswest.com> wrote:

>> Nick Pine <nick@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu> wrote:
 
>> Here's a small picture, a view from the East, say:
 
   ---------------       ^
   132F <=O= <|   |      up        32F                    311 Btu/hr/ft^2
          |  <| ^ |                                 < --- Sun
      |   | ^<|   |<-Polycarbonate plastic
      |   |  <| ^ |
    house | ^<|<--|--80% shadecloth
     16'  z   z   z i                          South
          |  <| ^ |
      |   |<--|---|--Original house wall                  (clear enough? :-)
          | _<| ^ |
    68F ==I====>  |
   -------------------------------------------
          |  3"   |
 
>Wouldn't black painted metal be better than shadecloth at absorbing heat
>and radiating the heat absorbed?

The idea here is that the cool air rises up through the passage between
the glazing and the shadecloth, moves ***through*** the shadecloth,
from right to left, becoming warmed in the process, as in the Conserval
wall, and goes back into the house at the top. If the black-painted metal
had no holes in it, it would probably not work as well as the shadecloth.
If it did, it might work better, like the Conserval wall.

>I've built a unit several years ago with painted beverage cans with mild
>success.  I think that a large heat sink (made from scrap sheet metal)
>would be most effective.

Lots of absorbing surface area is nice, altho it's curious that
in a linear model, it looks like that doesn't matter at all.

Nick

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Will Stewart  <AE%SJSUVM1.BITNET@cmsa.Berkeley.EDU, not!> wrote:
 
>>>why are you using 68F instead of an average?

Will, if you are still interested in discussing this further in private, vs.
these sort of public pontifications regarding things that I have already
(largely un-)learned, actually doing engineering for the last 25 years,
could you please send me the next iteration by email, nick@ece.vill.edu,
so we don't have to keep wasting bandwidth in this group? Or post your
email address again...

>>Like I said before, the air that is near the cold glazing is mostly
>>unwarmed house air, with a temp of 68F.
 
>Unless you have laminar flow, turbulent flow will result, lowering the
>boundary layer flow effect that gives the R1 value for still air on a
>surface.

Well _you_ could do a calculation with turbulent air, or air at the average
velocity of about 64cfm/(1.5"/12 x 1') = 512 fpm, which gives an R-value of
about 0.3. If you have a hypercube processor or Cray-2, and you want to go
do an aerodynamic study, the glazing has a corrugation pitch of 3" and a
corrugation height of about 0.6", and the corrugation sides are straight
slants with an angle of 45 degrees with respect to the overall surface.
There are 1" 10-32 screws every foot or so, along the horizontal seams, and
vertical 2 x 2 sleepers every 4'. And the shadecloth blocks 80% of the sun,
with what looks like a square grid with 50% open area, with holes that look
to be about 1/32" on a side. To me, this seems like over-refinement, for
various reasons, among them (1) that we are now wasting oil like crazy, and
(2) we are not doing much to save that with solar siding now, and (3)
we all have finite lives to live, especially those who live in Iraq...

>>...use an average if you like. It doesn't make an enormous difference.
>>The average temp is 100F, which would make the 4200 above about 3200,
>>and lower the solar collection efficiency from about 85% to 66%. Who cares?
 
>Engineers care partly because they have to satisfy their clients and
>they prefer to get as close to reality as possible.

Some clients would be very happy if warm air came out of their walls for a
change. In the winter :-) Some engineers wish to avoid the complications of
reality at as high a level as is reasonable, focusing on what really matters,
ignoring what can be ignored, happy with order of magnitude answers, almost,
consistent with building something that works  fairly  well, given constraints
(1), (2) and (3) above. Others are happy to do calculations forever, esp. if
they are being paid by the hour for that, and there is no danger that anything
will ever be built, that might not work :-)

>The disasters of the past have come back to bite us in the backsides,

Disasters? You mean this siding might catch on fire, or collapse?
I was in a Swiss rail disaster once. The train from Luzerne left 14
seconds late. Of course they made up for it, by the next stop.

>so the application of engineering calculations to build models can give
>us errors in the order of magnitudes if applied incorrectly.

Well (yawn) yes. But recall that this is a lot like wall warmers that
have been built since the 1881 patent by Morse... So there are unlikely
to be a lot of surprises. And the ones that pop up, like small water
leaks in driving rains, may be difficult to model mathematically :-)
It might be better to build one of these, rather than talk about it.

>My purpose is not to shoot down your thesis, but to provide a means
>for you to refine it and make it withstand similar questions in the future.

So you are helping me? :-) Fine, perhaps you will rework the numbers
while I go build one. I think this wall may have to withstand rain,
and heat, and cold, and wind, but not questions...

>Just consider this a friendly, egoless design review.

Perhaps there was talk like this in the time of the Spanish Inquisition... 

>Often, these calculations, along with empirical data, are used to
>identify payback periods.  If the capital equipment is very inexpensive
>and produces a fair amount of energy,

Or if you need siding on a house anyway? Yawn. Er, did you say something else?
This is like having a cogenerator in the basement instead of an oil burner.
People say, "Gee, 3 years is a long payback period." But the payback period
for an oil burner is "infinity years." It lasts for 20 years, maybe, and never
makes you a nickel, and then you buy a new one.

>then cost models are not as important.  However, if someone is planning to
>live off the grid, and makes just a few simple errors, then they could be
>out tens of thousands of dollars trying to correct the problem.

I doubt it. I put up my first wall-warmer with screws, so I could take
it apart if I wanted to fix it. I put a few slices in the foam seals,
in case I wanted to open some vents in the summer. So far, no fixes or
venting required. But screws are what you normally use to attach this stuff.
Hex head screws. You can take it all off in an hour or two if you like,
with an electric drill and a nut driver.

>>>Are you only considering radiative losses?

>>Not even. Just R-value losses. Simple arithmetic.

>Out of the three heat energy losses (conductive, convective, and
>radiative), why do you only consider conductive?

I don't. R-values are measured, and they include conductive, convective,
and radiative losses. Are you sure you're an expert?

>Since the air is moving, convective needs to be addressed.

Well then, perhaps you'd like to address it.

>And radiation losses must be considered if you are going to try to 
>calculation overall losses as well.

I disagree. At these low temps, R-values work fine. But if you'd like to go
calculate this to prove that to yourself, you might assume that the shadecloth
has an alpha of 1 and an epsilon of 1, for starters. This is all capable of
infinite elaboration... Polycarbonate does a fairly good job of blocking
longwave IR, I think. You can get a curve of transmission vs. wavelength
by calling Replex at (800) 726-5151, or Dynaglas at (408) 997-6100.

>>I assume that a still air film has an R-value of 1. And that the air
>>in the sunspace is still. (Is it? 66 cfm passing through 3" x 1' is
>>264 fpm, which would make an air film R-value of about 1/(1+264/176) =
>>0.4. But the plastic glazing is horizontally corrugated, so the air
>>near the plastic is probably still (0 velocity, if laminar flow), but
>>the plastic has more than 1 ft^2 of area/ft^2 of glazing, because of
>>the corrugations, etc.
>>
>>Where do we stop? With some reasonable assumptions and simple models.
>
>One way to refine your estimates is to build a device as you describe
>and then log the data.  That way, you can provide 'proof' of your assertions.

That would be dandy, if one required 'proof' :-)

This may happen in the fall, at a local college. Sometime after this
particular wall is built. Those measurements might be useful in tweaking
the system's performance, but more likely it will just keep a student and
a physics professor employed for a while, and then they will forget all
about it, perhaps having added a paper to our vast scientific literature,
thus meeting another pressing need of society. 

I also sent a copy of the drawing to Norman Saunders, PE, who seems to
have learned pretty well, over the years, what to ignore and what to
study in all this...

>Don't let my questions deter you, make it happen!

My Kentucky grandmother used to say, "If you can't help, don't hinder."

Feel free to help.

Nick

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Sun Jun 25 05:31:57 1995
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Date: Wed, 21 Jun 1995 23:04:46 GMT
From: jacq@indirect.com (Rosemary  & Glenn Jacques)
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Sender: london@sunsite.unc.edu
Subject: Sun oven
content-length: 467
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Cook entirely with the power of the sun.  Keep 
your kitchen cool while your meal cooks in the Burns Milwaukee Sun Oven.
You can find out more at the following site: 
http://www.primenet.com/~alts/main.htm/
(If you are new to the internet and don't know how to make
the ~ sign in a web address, press the shift key & the key to
the left of your number 1 key.)
If you have trouble locating this site, send me an E-Mail 
and I will E-Mail you the information.
Rosemary

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Sun Jun 25 20:32:31 1995
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Date: 23 Jun 1995 23:21:05 -0400
From: nick@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu (Nick Pine)
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Subject: Re: The Gowanus Canal
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I've heard Jimmy Hoffa is in there too...

Nick

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Tue Jun 27 01:33:22 1995
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To: london@sunsite.unc.edu
Date: 23 Jun 1995 17:27:17 -0400
From: nick@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu (Nick Pine)
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References: <steve_paschke-2106950830480001@steve_paschke.mrg.uswest.com>, <3s9tvr$1f2@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu>, <JLA.95Jun23090856@babblefish.cs.indiana.edu>
Subject: Re: Trombe wall efficiency
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jason almeter <jla@cs.indiana.edu> wrote:
 
>Is there a group of retailers that usually carry shadecloth?  I would
>like to try an experiment, but would like to find a local supplier.
>Would greenhouses or nurseries have this stuff?

You could try some local nursery or greenhouse suppliers, but the best
price I found was from Stuppy in Kansas City, MO, at (800) 877-5025 voice/
(800) 423-1512 fax. I just got a 16' x 32' piece of their item # 23691
80% shadecloth, with large grommets and hems on the edges. The cost was
$71 as I recall, incuding UPS shipping from Atlanta. Delivery time was
about 10 days.

Nick

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Tue Jun 27 01:33:24 1995
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Date: 23 Jun 1995 17:08:47 -0400
From: nick@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu (Nick Pine)
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References: <steve_paschke-2106950830480001@steve_paschke.mrg.uswest.com>, <3s9tvr$1f2@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu>, <3sd8nh$k2g@giga.bga.com>
Subject: Re: Trombe wall efficiency
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Woodrow W. Baker <knapper@bga.com> wrote:
>Nick Pine (nick@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu) wrote:
>
>: The idea here is that the cool air rises up through the passage between
>: the glazing and the shadecloth, moves ***through*** the shadecloth,
>
>expanded lath (expanded metal used on stucco and some rockwork usually 
>embedded in the cement) painted black is what I have been told works best.

Steve Baer mentions that 4 or 5 layers of metal lath work nicely for
natural convection, in _Sunspots_. I think the Jersey Devil used something
like that in an early solar house. "Air hair" (fiberglass insulation,
painted black, with transverse flow?) or black fabric air filter material
should work too. But shadecloth is very cheap and durable, and in a
linear model, the heat that comes into the glazing has nowhere else to
go but out the R1 glazing or into the airflow...

Nick

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Tue Jun 27 03:33:28 1995
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Date: 23 Jun 1995 18:10:00 -0400
From: nick@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu (Nick Pine)
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Subject: Re: Heat loss question
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Robert Vesalga <rpv@compumedia.com> wrote:

>Is there a simple answer to this question?

Yes :-)

>If I were designing a house in a 32 degree climate, how much insulation 
>(in R-value) would it take to have no heat loss through the walls, while 
>maintaining a 72 degree interior? (Assume this to be like a walk-in freezer;
>doors, windows, infiltration, etc., notwithstanding. Just pure wall).

R-oo should do the trick, ie infinity. But that is expensive.

If the house were two stories, 16' x 32' x 32', ie about 3000 square feet
of surface area exposed to the weather, and it had no windows or air
infiltration, and there were two 100-watt people living inside, using
500 kWh of electricity per month, there would be a continuous internal
heat generation of (2x100 + 500x1000/(30x24)) = 894 watts, which is
equivalent to 894 x 3.41 Btu/hr/watt = 3000 Btu/hr. Since the temperature
rise from one side of a wall to another is equal to the heatflow times
the thermal resistance ("Ohm's law for heatflow"), the R-value of the walls
would have to be such that 72F-32F = 40 = 3000 x R/3000, so R40 should do.

If you had a 50 watt dog, you could use R38.

>Would the floor and ceiling be the same ?

The floor would have less heat loss than the ceiling, if the insulation were
the same, because the temperature under the floor is higher in wintertime. 
I usually figure the ground temperature as 55F and the thermal resistance
of the earth as R10, so you might want to put more insulation in the ceiling.

Or you might keep cows in the basement, as do the Swiss. Figure 11 on page 9.7
of my 1993 American Society of Heating, Refrigeration and Air-Conditioning
Engineers Handbook of Fundamentals (ASHRAE HOF), inch-pound edition, indicates
that at 72F, an average Dairy cow, say a 1000 pound Jersey, stantioned in an
enclosed stable, produces about 2000 Btu/hr of latent heat, so with 5 cows
in the basement, the above house would only need R = (72F-32F) x 3,000ft^2/
13,000 Btu/hr = R9 walls. This could probably be less with free-range basement
cows. In either case, you might want a vapor barrier under the first floor.

Hope this helps.

Nick

In article <3sa82u$eo7@news.compumedia.com>,
Robert Vesalga <rpv@compumedia.com> wrote:
>Is there a simple answer to this question?
>
>If I was designing a house in a 32 degree climate, how much insulation 
>(in R- value) would it take to have no heat loss through the walls, while 
>maintaining a 72 degree interior ? ( assume this to be like a walk-in 
>freezer; doors, windows, infiltration, etc., notwithstanding. Just pure 
>wall).
>
>Would the floor and ceiling be the same ?
>
>I guess that's 2 questions.
>
>Bob V
>--
>


From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Wed Jun 28 14:03:49 1995
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Date: 27 Jun 1995 10:08:46 -0400
From: seiaopps@access4.digex.net (Solar Energy Industries Assoc.)
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Subject: Re: solar products
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Give us a call at 202-383-2600 and ask for our membership directory.  
Also, you can find the same information at crest.org.

Dana Mellecker
Solar Energy Industries Association

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Wed Jun 28 19:33:49 1995
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Date: 27 Jun 1995 06:36:45 -0400
From: nick@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu (Nick Pine)
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Subject: Re: Heat loss question
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Will Stewart <will1000@ix.netcom.com> wrote:

>...The basic formula for heat transfer is;
>
>Q = -kA(T1-T2)/X
>
>Where
>    Q is the heat transfer rate
>    k is the thermal conductivity
>    T1 is the inside temp
>    T2 is the outside temp
>    X is the thickness of the insulating material

It looks like A must be the surface area of the wall, in ft^2, and perhaps X
would be measured in inches (?) Using a negative sign in the equation seems
an odd convention, for houses. Sorta makes sense, tho. Heat out of the house
is minus, and heat in, from an oil burner, the sun, etc., is plus.

>To apply this formula, one just needs some thermal conductivity values for
>various materials, as the following in Btu/hr*ft*degreeF

Seems like these are in Btu/hr-ft^2-F-INCH of thickness, not as above.
Then again, perhaps they are per foot... That would make sense for most
of the numbers in your left column below...
 
I've added some numbers to the right, for thermal conductivities, per inch,
from the ASHRAE Handbook of Fundamentals and other sources.

>Cork                .o4         0.29 
>Glass wool(fine)    .31 avg     0.32 (close, per INCH...)
>Masonry Brick       .38         5.0
>Glass              ~.45         31   (air films make insulation)
>Rock Wool           .017        0.25

Nick

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Fri Jun 30 00:04:23 1995
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Date: 29 Jun 1995 12:48:40 GMT
From: David Paxton <dlpaxton@gate.net>
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Sender: london@sunsite.unc.edu
Subject: Biogas
content-length: 750
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For those of you that were interested in the file methane.zip it has been 
made available at the following locations:

          ftp://clark.net/pub/alan_s   Choose methane.zip
          htttp://www.clark.net/alan_s/index.html   At bottom of page

Both of these will give you methane.zip downloaded to your hard drive. If 
you do not have  the pkunzip program the zip package is available here on 
the internet. Be carefull, I do not think any of the internet boards have 
it but some of the local boards have a pkz300. Avoid this file at all 
costs, it is a virus and will remove all of your software on your 
computer. The latest version of pkz is 204G I think. If there is a newer 
one someone will tell you. AVOID PKZ300 at all cost.

Enjoy
Dave

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Mon Jul  3 05:35:59 1995
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Date: Sun, 02 Jul 1995 22:15:07 GMT
From: rcole@iprolink.ch (Ray C. Cole)
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I expect to go to Indonesia in the near future with the Earth Watch
organization. I will be on one of three teams building about 100 solar
ovens and introducing these to the residents of Lombok island, off of
Bali. In theory, this should make an impact on the number of trees
being burned to make charcoal as the current source of energy.

Is there anyone in this group that has had experience in such projects
in the past. I am trying to get as prepared as possible prior to
departure in mid-July.

I would appreciate an early reply.

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Wed Jul  5 02:06:57 1995
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To: london@sunsite.unc.edu
Date: 4 Jul 1995 11:27:31 -0400
From: nick@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu (Nick Pine)
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Subject: Re: Envelope house
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Jack Koestner <jack.koestner@aquila.com> wrote:

>Has anyone here heard of the "double-envelope," passive solar house?

Sure... I think that anything you can do with an envelope house, you can do
with some other kind of house, better or cheaper.

Here are some excerpts from two articles in Rodale's New Shelter magazine,
of September, 1980, which has the words "Hard data on double-shell homes"
on the cover.

The first article is "Double Shell Houses," subtitled "Finally, some facts,"
on pp 72-82, in which Larry Stains says:

  A promotional brochure for Ekose'a, a San Francisco firm that sells double
  shell house plans, says its homes "prove it is practical to design and build
  a structure which maintains any desired range of temperatures through any
  range of climatic conditions at any place on the earth [above the arctic
  circle in wintertime, with no sun at all for 6 months? --Nick] without the
  necessity of mechanical, electrical or fossil fuel back-up systems."

  That's a mighty big claim...

  Last winter, two double shell houses were monitored by researchers.
  Their findings indicate:

  1) The houses _did_ depend on auxiliary heat; thus the design is not
  a guarantee of energy self-sufficiency.

  2) No way does the earth underneath the house store the majority of
  the solar heat collected in the greenhouse.

  Don't misunderstand. Double shell houses are good houses that use a fraction
  of the energy consumed by conventional designs. But the double shell design 
  should be understood for what it is, not for what it is cracked up to be.
  So, for the facts, let's examine two homes...

  A detailed record of temperatures in the Burns house from mid-October to
  early February was compiled... then studied by three Boston-area solar
  engineers... The monitoring equipment consisted of temperature sensors
  at some 30 points throughout the house, and a data logger to keep track
  of it all. The findings are revealing. For one thing, temperatures in the
  living room sometimes fluctuated from the mid 70s on a sunny afternoon to
  the mid 50s by dawn, when it was 0 F outside...

  Another double shell given close scrutiny last winter was Robert and
  Elizabeth Mastin's house in Middletown, Rhode Island... Last January
  the house was monitored for 12 days by scientists from Brookhaven
  National Laboratory. To find out how much heat the house required to
  stay warm, the scientists installed three 1500-watt heaters in the
  house, one on each floor. They were controlled by a thermostat which
  the Mastins were requested to keep at 65 F. Daily records tabulated
  the electricity used by the heaters. In addition, sensors kept
  round-the-clock track of household temperatures. Let's look at one
  of the 12 monitored days: January 18. It was overcast; the outside
  temperatures ranged from 30 F, at 12:01 a. m. to 41 F at 2 p. m.,
  and back down to 37 F by midnight. The Brookhaven equipment showed
  that the average "inner house" temperature stayed between 62 and 65 F.
  It also showed that the three heaters were tapped for 193,707 Btus
  of back-up heat that day. That's the same as burning two gallons of oil.
  On a fairly mild winter's day, no less.

  The figures for the Burns and Mastin houses help to settle part of the
  controversy about double shell homes. But details need to be hammered out...
  Everyone has his pet theory, and one double shell aficionado in California
  actually talks of "holism" and "loopiness" when explaining the design.
  [Gee, I wonder who that was...]

There is a side-box that describes complete working drawings for a series
of double shell houses, sold by Tom Smith and his partner, John Hofacre,
for less than $100. The sidebox also says:

  Ekose'a sells blueprints for $500, a semi-custom design service for
  $4,000, and a full custom design service for 15% of construction costs.
  In order to get plans, you must purchase their $25 book.

The second article is an interview with the same Tom Smith, "The Double Shell:
An owner's Perspective," beginning on page 82. He says, inter alia:

  Avoiding confusion about the "envelope" requires only a little deprogramming
  from the Higher Order of Convective Loopers. The solar function of the house
  is only part of the story, and _there is no significant storage of excess
  heat for use during the heat losing times of the day_." [his emphasis]
   
When asked, "What's the future of the "envelope" system?" (in 1980), he said:

  I do not forsee any of the systems we now have surviving past the next few
  years. We have created a bit of a Frankenstein with my house here because it
  launched the field of envelope homes and is seen in competition with other
  systems. Nothing could have been further from my intentions...

  I would feel most proud if my house is remembered for being a step in the
  evolution toward mass energy-efficient design, rather than for introducing
  the "most efficient system."

  After working on, literally, hundreds of passive designs, and living in
  this house over the past three years, I am convinced that energy efficiency
  will become considerably less exotic in the future. It is my belief that
  if we just study closely what is going on inside a house, we'll come up with
  some very simple, if prosaic, solutions. If you have ever spent any time
  living in other parts of the world you'd realize that a lot of our energy
  problems stem from just plain doing it wrong. It's a snap to save energy
  in this country. As soon as more people become involved in the basic math
  of heat transfer and get a gut-level, as well as intellectual, grasp on
  how a house works, solution after solution will appear.

So it seems to me Jack, that if you pick a definite performance goal or
functional spec for a house, eg, "a two story house with at least 2000 ft^2
of interior space, with a max temp swing of 55-75F, and a maximum annual
backup heating requirement of 20 gallons of oil, or the equivalent, and
continuous internal heat generation of 1 kW, with at least 4 12 ft^2 windows
on each side on each floor, in the Philadelphia area" that if you design an
envelope house and I design another kind of house, the non-envelope house will
be cheaper to build than the envelope one. Care to take up the challenge?
First we'd need a functional spec or performance goal... And we'd have to
agree on some basic ground rules about labor and materials costs...

It would also be interesting to do this exercise with a Trombe wall house...

>. . . and no, I have no idea why all my posts get duplicated.

I only saw this one once...

Nick

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Wed Jul  5 04:06:43 1995
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Date: Tue, 04 Jul 1995 14:28:16 GMT
From: starwulf@ix.netcom.com ()
Message-Id: <3tbeps$eut@ixnews3.ix.netcom.com>
Organization: Netcom
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References: <clsojourner-230695134846@131.243.168.72>, <3snvd4$qfo@mack.rt66.com>
Subject: Re: Appropriate Techology Pubs
content-length: 593
Status: RO
X-Status: 

Ray Bahm <r.bahm@ieee.org> wrote:

>VITA - Volunteers In Technical Asssistance
>Has an address in the Washington DC area.  Maybe McLean, VA.

>They have published hundreds of handbooks, brochures and other 
>training materials over the past decade.  They were working on
>their own satellite communications network a couple of years
>back.  They surely have an internet e-mail address.
>Ray Bahm

does anyone have their address? (email or smail)
is there anything that we as people cant 
make a mess off, better yet why is it we
cant clean them up afterwards and learn
not to make them again?

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Wed Jul  5 06:42:07 1995
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Date: 4 Jul 1995 09:59:29 -0400
From: nick@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu (Nick Pine)
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Subject: Re: Solar Ovens/Water distilation
content-length: 1203
Status: O
X-Status: 

Horacio Gasquet  <gasquet@fusion.ph.utexas.edu> wrote:

>There is also a need in the third world for water treatment.  There are 
>efforts to use solar to distil water.

There's a need here too. About 90% of the land in Pennsylvania is unsuitable
for a conventional septic system, and sand-mound-compatible sites are scarce 
too. I read about an interesting system for sewage disposal for a group of
26 houses in a new development, that got around regulatory problems by
building a large greenhouse and growing reeds, which _evaporated_ all the
influent from the houses. This "evapotranspiration system" was designed by
a local PE. Since the greenhouse had an impervious rubber floor, the PA
Dept of Env. Resources didn't have much to say about permissible effluent
limits, in the form of Biological Oxygen Demand (BOD), suspended solids
or nitrogen as ammonia... But it seems to me that this is a great waste
of solar energy, compared to a closed system that is capable of recovering
most of the heat (some 1000 Btu/pound) that is used to evaporate the water,
eg by heating incoming water, and recycling the distilled water. 

Does anyone know of a system for solar water distillation like that?

Nick

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Wed Jul  5 07:37:12 1995
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Date: 4 Jul 1995 10:51:02 -0400
From: nick@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu (Nick Pine)
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Subject: Re: Thermal loss through the back of panel?
content-length: 2929
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X-Status: 

Horacio Gasquet  <gasquet@fusion.ph.utexas.edu> wrote:

>     What I want to know is whether anyone has factual information 
>quantifying how much energy is re-radiated out the front of a solar 
>collector vs the losses through the back side due to conduction and 
>radiation of the heat that builds up in the box. 

You can find some facts and more elaborate calculations in the second
edition of Duffie and Beckman's _Solar Engineering of Thermal Processes_,
but you might look at it this way, for starters:

Assume the absorber plate heats up to a certain temperature T
       the ambient temp is Ta, say Ta = 0F, for simplicity
       the box has a surface area of A on the front and A on the back,
           ignoring the sides, say A = 1 ft^2
       the box has an R-value on the back side of, say R10
       there is no heat Qu, being withdrawn from the box by liquid flow
           through the tubing, ie Qu = 0 
       full sun puts about 300 Btu/ft^2/hr into the front of the box
	   (if Qu is not zero, you might want to subtract it from this
	   solar input, using 300 - Qu in the calc below, instead of 300)
       the single glazing has an R-value of 1, to the still outside air

Then in full sun, 300 Btu/hr goes into the box thru the glass, and 300 Btu/hr
goes out, thru the front and back. What must T be to make this happen?

(T-0)x(1 ft^2/R1 + 1 ft^2/R10) = T/1.1 = 300 ==> T = 272F.

In this case, about 90% of the heat flows out of the box thru the front. 

The model above could be further simplified by ignoring the heatflow
out of the back. Or it could be further complicated and refined by
considering that a hot surface radiates heat according to the equation
U = Aes(T+460)^4, where U is in Btu/hr, A is the area of the surface in ft^2,
e is the emissivity of the surface, eg 1, s = 0.174 x 10^-8 is the
Stefan-Boltzman constant and T + 460 is the absolute temperature of
the surface in Rankine degrees. In this next step, I'd assume that all
of the heat that is radiated by the absorber is absorbed by the glass,
which then heats up and loses heat by convection to the outside world...
This would probably reduce the calculated absorber plate temperature.

Let's see, ignoring the heat loss thru the back this time...

    0.174 E-8 ((T+460)^4 - (0 + 460)^4)) = 300 
                            ^--the outside world radiates heat to the
                               collector too, which warms it up...

so, 0.174 E-8 (T+460)^4 = 300 + 0.174E-8 x (460^4) = 378, 

or  (T + 460)^4 = 378/0.174E-8 = 2.17 E11,

or   T + 460 = (2.17 E11)^(1/4) = 683,

so   T = 683 - 460 = 223F.

>It seems that insulation on all sides except the glass would greatly
>increase the temperature of the interior of the collector.  

True, but the front glass is the big heat leaker. Adding more insulation
to the back and sides may not help much. Coating the absorber plate
with a selective surface might help a lot.

Nick

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Thu Jul  6 02:37:13 1995
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Date: 5 Jul 1995 14:30:58 -0400
From: nick@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu (Nick Pine)
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Subject: Alumimum
content-length: 161
Status: O
X-Status: 

I think it takes about 10 kWh to make a pound of alumimum, which is
why it's mostly made in Canada, where electricity is 5 times cheaper
than in the US...

Nick

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Wed Jul  5 22:37:20 1995
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Date: Wed, 5 Jul 1995 11:14:50 -0400
From: Tu and Bob Myers <tuandbob@acy1.digex.net>
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Subject: Re: Solar Ovens/Water distilation
content-length: 1530
Status: RO
X-Status: 

Try:  Back Home (Magazine)
      Backwoods Home (Magazine)
      Home Power (Magazine)
      Mother Earth News (Magazine)
      Kansas Wind Power (Company)
      Lake Michigan Wind and Sun (Company)

There were articles on solar distillation in the Caribbean (sp?) in one 
or more of the magazines.  I believe one of the two companies sells/sold 
commercially built versions of the distiller described below, in 3 or 
four sizes.
 
Solar Distiller Description

Basicly the distiller is a flat table 4' by '4' (4' by 8') with walls.  
The walls are about 6" high in front and about 12" in back, and slanting 
on the sides.  The distiller is covered with glass pane(s).  There is a 
fresh water collection trough on the front wall about 1" below the 
glass.  It has a hose leading to a fresh water container.

Operation

The table/distiller is filled about half height with salt water.  The sun 
heats the water which evaporates and collects on the glass (which is 
colder than the air and water in the distiller).  Because the glass is 
slanted from the front of the distiller, the condensed water moves to the 
front of the glass/collector and falls into the unsalted water collector, 
thence to the fresh water container.

At, or after, sunset the distiller is drained to get rid of the salty 
water which is saltier because of the water that was removed.  Rinsing 
with new (less) salty water helps.  Then the distiller is refilled with a 
new charge of salty water for the next day.

I don't remember the average daily output.

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Thu Jul  6 13:07:34 1995
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Date: Wed, 5 Jul 1995 19:53:44 GMT
From: hnng@coulomb.uwaterloo.ca (Harrison Ng)
Message-Id: <DB9Dy6.Huz@watserv3.uwaterloo.ca>
Organization: University of Waterloo
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Subject: Electric Utility Mailing Lists
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Hello,

Does anyone out there know of any electrical utility mail lists
which detail information on power distribution or generation?

Thanks,

Harrison Ng

:wq

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Thu Jul  6 21:07:42 1995
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Date: 6 Jul 1995 12:27:13 -0700
From: cdoig@gladstone2.uoregon.edu (Christopher William Doig)
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Subject: Solar radiation data search
content-length: 1950
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	The National Renewable Energy Laboratory(NREL) is sponsoring a 
search to locate as many good quality, broadband solar radiation 
monitoring sites as possible in the US  The data will be used for many 
purposes including validation for a computer model that NREL is 
developing that can make a complete 40 km grid of solar irradiance data 
throughout the entire US, Mexico, and the Caribbean given existing cloud 
cover measurements.

	NREL is also going to catalog all sources of solar radiation data 
regardless of quality.  This catalog will also include data not included 
in the data grid validation project.

	NREL also plans on making the information, both modeled and 
measured, available to the public.  If a source is against giving its 
data out through this method, it can be arranged for the data to be 
limited to only the computer model validation.  The information will be 
available on the Internet when it has been collected and catalogued.
	
	I am trying to locate as many sites as possible in the states of 
Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Montana, North and South Dakota, Nebraska, 
Kansas, Colorado, Wyoming, Utah, Alaska, and Nevada.  I am just trying to 
discover potential sources for the solar data.  NREL will assess the data 
to see if it fits their needs.

	The information we are seeking most actively is from sites that 
measure two or three broadband solar irradiance components.  (i.e. total 
global horizontal, direct normal, and/or diffuse horizontal.)  Also we 
have several questions to ask about the site or sites to help determine 
the quality of the data.

	We are trying to find several sites in each state, so if you know 
of anyone who is monitoring solar radiation for any purpose let us know.  

	You can contact me at cdoig@freek.uoregon.edu or phone (503)347-4745.
		Snail mail at
		Chris Doig
		Solar Monitoring
		Physics Department
		1274 Univ. of Oregon
		Eugene,  OR  97403

	Any help is appreciated.


From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Fri Jul  7 07:38:18 1995
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Date: 7 Jul 1995 04:13:41 -0400
From: nick@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu (Nick Pine)
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Subject: Re: Selling electricity back into the public grid
content-length: 876
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X-Status: 

Harry H Conover <conover@max.tiac.net> thus misinforms us: :-)

>The problem is, on the scale of your operation, your cost to produce
>the electricity is (when you amortize the cost of your equipment
>into your overall cost), is far less than the wholesale electric
>prices that the electric company will pay you.

In many states, eg Pennsylvania, the PUC interpret the PURPA law to mean that
the electric company must buy back electricity from even the smallest 
producers at the retail rate, ie the same price they sell it for, until
the producer reaches zero net monthly consumption, at which point they start
paying a lower wholesale rate...

Residential, home-heating-oil-burning Intelligen cogeneration systems
typically pay for themselves in 3-5 years, by zeroing out peoples' electric
bills, without even counting income from net overproduction of electricity. 

Nick

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Fri Jul  7 13:38:26 1995
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Date: 7 Jul 1995 10:30:27 -0400
From: nick@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu (Nick Pine)
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Subject: Re: Efficient Wind turbine: Modified Darius Rotor
content-length: 1445
Status: O
X-Status: 

One might modify number1@xs4all.nl (number1)'s drawing:

               |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  
  ||generator--|--|--|--|--|--|--|--|--|--|--|--swivel--||
  ||           |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |          ||
  ||                                                    ||
  ||                                                    ||
  ||                                                    ||
  ||<-pole                                              ||
  ||                                                    ||     \
  ||                                                    ||
  ||                                                    ||    guy wire
  ||                                                    ||
  ||                                                    ||
  ||                                                    ||
  ||                                                    ||
  ||                                                    ||
-----------------------------------------------------------------------

Seems like this might work nicely with transverse airflow between the poles,
or between Swiss mountaintops in some valley, with flexible plastic Savonius
rotors attached to triple power line conductors using slip rings, or a couple
of telephone poles lined up with the strongest prevailing winds in a region,
with those little propellors that you often see on peoples' lawns, actually 
doing something for a change.

Nick

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Fri Jul  7 13:38:27 1995
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Date: 7 Jul 1995 10:12:30 -0400
From: nick@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu (Nick Pine)
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Subject: Re: Trombe wall efficiency
content-length: 3486
Status: O
X-Status: 

Johnathan Sawyer <jfsawyer@csn.net> writes:

>I am building a house outside Boulder Co with an unvented  16 x 28 ft Trombe
>wall. The masonry wall is 12" thick and the glazing is single pane...

Pretty far into it, huh? 32 tons of masonry... Perhaps it isn't too late to
soup it up by adding some vents, and some insulation between this Trombe wall
and its glazing? :-)

>I am using an expensive ($3.20/sqft) selective coating made by an
>outfit in New Jersey.

I'd be interested to know their name, address and phone number. I wonder
how this $tuff can be attached to a masonry wall. What will the R-value be
at the interface where it attaches, if the selective surface is a metal
film with an adhesive backing? If the interface R-value is not 0 (and it
may be difficult to attach it well to roughish masonry), the film may
heat up a lot more than the wall, when the sun is shining. 

>They claim this coating gives the wall an
>equivalent of a R12 insulation value at night.

Sounds great, altho pricey, but have you asked about the temperature range?
Trombe walls usually have low temperatures, since they lose heat to the
outside world and the inside of the house, 24 hours a day, through fairly
low thermal resistances, and selective coatings usually help with high
temperature radiation losses. The formula for radiation loss is

Ur = 0.174 x 10^-8 A e ((Tw+460)^4 - (Ta+460)^4), where U is in Btu/hr,
     A is in ft^2, e is a number called emissivity, which is close to 1
     for a non-selective surface and perhaps 0.1 for a selective surface,
     and Tw and Ta are wall and outside surrounding temps in degrees F.
     (I may be doing this wrong, and I would be pleased if someone were to
     post better calculations, vs. posting talk about better calculations.) 

This is on top of convection loss, which is roughly R2, with a still
air surface and a single pane of glass and an airspace. R-values are
supposed to include some radiation loss, but roughly speaking, the total
loss per square foot is Ut = Ur + Uc, where Uc is (Tw-Ta)/R2, so if it's
0 degrees F outside, and the wall has temperature Tw, and e = 0.1,

Tw,   Ut,  Uc, Urs, Urs/Ut and Reff (the effective R-value) would be:

70    41   35  6    15%        1.7 = (70F-0F)/41
80    47   40  7    15%        1.7      ...
90    53   45  8    15%        1.7
100   59   50  9    15%        1.7

>I wonder how the thermal calculations will come out using R12 instead
>of R2 heatloss.

Much better, but it seems to me that convection will make up such a large part
of the total heat loss that the real picture will be about R = 1.7, 24 hours
a day, so the wall temp in the above case, with, say 1000 Btu/ft^2/day falling
on the wall, if it were perfectly insulated on the inside, would be such that 

1000 = 24 Ut, so Ut = 42, and the wall would have a temp of about 70F,
according to the above table.

But of course the wall is not perfectly insulated on the inside--the masonry
has a thermal resistance of about R2. Then again it may be warmer than 0 F
outside, most of the time... In this case, it looks to me like the thermal
resistance of the wall doesn't matter much during sunny days, since it will
have about the same temp as the inside of the house. It won't add much heat
to the house, but it won't be a thermal disaster either, unless the sun goes
in for a few days in a row. Another 32 ton car that gets 2 mpg, while going
10 mph, max :-) Perhaps it can still be helped, tho, into the 20th century.

Nick

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Fri Jul  7 19:38:36 1995
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To: london@sunsite.unc.edu
Date: Fri, 07 Jul 95 12:47:35 GMT
From: A Salem <amr@asalem.demon.co.uk>
Message-Id: <805121255snz@asalem.demon.co.uk>
Sender: london@sunsite.unc.edu
References: <3t8u21$fif@geraldo.cc.utexas.edu>, <3tb6r5$abm@empire.texas.net>, <Pine.SUN.3.91.950705104836.1588A-100000@acy1.digex.net>
Reply-To: amr@asalem.demon.co.uk
Subject: Re: Solar Ovens/Water distilation
content-length: 1847
Status: RO
X-Status: 

In article <Pine.SUN.3.91.950705104836.1588A-100000@acy1.digex.net>
           tuandbob@acy1.digex.net "Tu and Bob Myers" writes:

> Try:  Back Home (Magazine)
>       Backwoods Home (Magazine)
>       Home Power (Magazine)
>       Mother Earth News (Magazine)
>       Kansas Wind Power (Company)
>       Lake Michigan Wind and Sun (Company)
> 
> There were articles on solar distillation in the Caribbean (sp?) in one 
> or more of the magazines.  I believe one of the two companies sells/sold 
> commercially built versions of the distiller described below, in 3 or 
> four sizes.
>  
> Solar Distiller Description
> 
> Basicly the distiller is a flat table 4' by '4' (4' by 8') with walls.  
> The walls are about 6" high in front and about 12" in back, and slanting 
> on the sides.  The distiller is covered with glass pane(s).  There is a 
> fresh water collection trough on the front wall about 1" below the 
> glass.  It has a hose leading to a fresh water container.
> 
> Operation
> 
> The table/distiller is filled about half height with salt water.  The sun 
> heats the water which evaporates and collects on the glass (which is 
> colder than the air and water in the distiller).  Because the glass is 
> slanted from the front of the distiller, the condensed water moves to the 
> front of the glass/collector and falls into the unsalted water collector, 
> thence to the fresh water container.
> 
> At, or after, sunset the distiller is drained to get rid of the salty 
> water which is saltier because of the water that was removed.  Rinsing 
> with new (less) salty water helps.  Then the distiller is refilled with a 
> new charge of salty water for the next day.
> 
> I don't remember the average daily output.
> 
Does anyone have a copy of any of the above named articles or know the address
of the above magazines/companies?

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Sat Jul  8 03:38:53 1995
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To: london@sunsite.unc.edu
Date: 7 Jul 1995 16:49:47 GMT
From: witsotn@winternet.com (Raul Almquist)
Message-Id: <3tjojb$i1b@blackice.winternet.com>
Organization: StarNet Communications, Inc
Sender: london@sunsite.unc.edu
Subject: Solar Powered (PV) Bug-Zappers
content-length: 961
Status: O
X-Status: 


  We are looking desperately for Bug-Zappers that will work off of 12VDC 
to hook up to PV panels with a small regulator and battery, this is for 
installation in remote areas where 120VAC is NOT available (10 miles to 
the NEAREST utility gridline and VERY unlikely to be available anytime in 
the next 25 years:()

  We have had several requests for this product in both its forms, a 
straight zapper style and the combination fan-zapper which sucks the bugs 
into the zapper coil via a fan.

  So far our searchs have turned up nill, as some of our customers for 
some reason dislike the idea of their children being picked up and flown 
away by hungry Minnesota State Birds (Mosquitos) and the like <G>  so we 
are turning to the net to see if ANYONE out there has seen bug-zappers 
that will work on 12VDC.

  If you know of such zappers please Email me with a product's info and 
whom to contact so that we can get a few of these in stock ASAP.

Thanks!

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Sat Jul  8 04:09:17 1995
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To: london@sunsite.unc.edu
Date: Fri, 07 Jul 1995 20:49:38 -0700
From: WESTALEY@Oregon.uoregon.edu (William Staley)
Message-Id: <WESTALEY-070795204939@lanrover4-line7.uoregon.edu>
Organization: University of Oregon
Sender: london@sunsite.unc.edu
References: <3tjojb$i1b@blackice.winternet.com>
Subject: Re: Solar Powered (PV) Bug-Zappers
content-length: 745
Status: O
X-Status: 

In article <3tjojb$i1b@blackice.winternet.com>, witsotn@winternet.com (Raul
Almquist) wrote:

> 
>   We are looking desperately for Bug-Zappers that will work off of 12VDC 
> to hook up to PV panels with a small regulator and battery, this is for 
> installation in remote areas where 120VAC is NOT available (10 miles to 
> the NEAREST utility gridline and VERY unlikely to be available anytime in 
> the next 25 years:()
> 
I have considered this same issue for work in the tropics. I have not found
anything that will work off a stock system. The best solution I have come
up with is using a inverter to get 120. If you use between 25 and 40 watts
which most of the ones I have seen are you can get a fairly cheap inverter
<$50.

bill staley

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Sat Jul  8 05:38:55 1995
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To: london@sunsite.unc.edu
Date: Fri, 07 Jul 1995 23:26:05 -0700
From: alancrab@halcyon.com (Alan Crabtree)
Message-Id: <alancrab-0707952326050001@evt-pm0-ip23.halcyon.com>
Organization: Northwest Nexus Inc.
Sender: london@sunsite.unc.edu
References: <3tb6r5$abm@empire.texas.net>, <Pine.SUN.3.91.950705104836.1588A-100000@acy1.digex.net>, <805121255snz@asalem.demon.co.uk>
Subject: Re: Solar Ovens/Water distilation
content-length: 2458
Status: O
X-Status: 

In article <805121255snz@asalem.demon.co.uk>, amr@asalem.demon.co.uk wrote:

> In article <Pine.SUN.3.91.950705104836.1588A-100000@acy1.digex.net>
>            tuandbob@acy1.digex.net "Tu and Bob Myers" writes:
> 
> > Try:  Back Home (Magazine)
> >       Backwoods Home (Magazine)
> >       Home Power (Magazine)
> >       Mother Earth News (Magazine)
> >       Kansas Wind Power (Company)
> >       Lake Michigan Wind and Sun (Company)
> > 
> > There were articles on solar distillation in the Caribbean (sp?) in one 
> > or more of the magazines.  I believe one of the two companies sells/sold 
> > commercially built versions of the distiller described below, in 3 or 
> > four sizes.
> >  
> > Solar Distiller Description
> > 
> > Basicly the distiller is a flat table 4' by '4' (4' by 8') with walls.  
> > The walls are about 6" high in front and about 12" in back, and slanting 
> > on the sides.  The distiller is covered with glass pane(s).  There is a 
> > fresh water collection trough on the front wall about 1" below the 
> > glass.  It has a hose leading to a fresh water container.
> > 
> > Operation
> > 
> > The table/distiller is filled about half height with salt water.  The sun 
> > heats the water which evaporates and collects on the glass (which is 
> > colder than the air and water in the distiller).  Because the glass is 
> > slanted from the front of the distiller, the condensed water moves to the 
> > front of the glass/collector and falls into the unsalted water collector, 
> > thence to the fresh water container.
> > 
> > At, or after, sunset the distiller is drained to get rid of the salty 
> > water which is saltier because of the water that was removed.  Rinsing 
> > with new (less) salty water helps.  Then the distiller is refilled with a 
> > new charge of salty water for the next day.
> > 
> > I don't remember the average daily output.
> > 
> Does anyone have a copy of any of the above named articles or know the address
> of the above magazines/companies?

Home Power magazine has archives at the URL below and has had several
articles on solar cooking (and possibly distillation) in the past. There
is also contact info for them.

ftp://sunsite.unc.edu/pub/academic/environment/alternative-energy/energy-resources/homepower-magazine/

-- 
Alan Crabtree  (alancrab@halcyon.com)
Visit The Gorby Files
Newton, Snohomish County (WA), renewable energy and Gorby!
http://www.halcyon.com/alancrab/gorby.files.html

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Sat Jul  8 09:08:53 1995
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To: london@sunsite.unc.edu
Date: 8 Jul 1995 08:25:23 -0400
From: nick@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu (Nick Pine)
Message-Id: <3tltfj$hpu@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu>
Organization: Villanova University
Sender: london@sunsite.unc.edu
References: <3tiobt$sbq@news-2a.csn.net>, <3tjfce$71s@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu>, <DBCyHG.E5A@unixsoft.demon.co.uk>
Subject: Re: Trombe wall efficiency
content-length: 3067
Status: O
X-Status: 

Leo Hendry  <leo@unixsoft.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>Nick Pine <nick@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu> wrote:
>>The formula for radiation loss is
>>Ur = 0.174 x 10^-8 A e ((Tw+460)^4 - (Ta+460)^4), where U is in Btu/hr...

>>     (I may be doing this wrong, and I would be pleased if someone were to
>>     post better calculations, vs. posting talk about better calculations.) 
 
>Are American R values something other than the m2K/W we use, or are you
>mixing units in a near-masochistic manner?

There's actually no mixing above, just pure infernal English units, as
Norman Saunders, PE, says. He uses MKS in this country, and perhaps this
is one reason so few people know of his work. Our colonial R-values are in
hr-ft^2-F/Btu, about 6 times bigger than the R-values in the rest of the
world. We are thinking of exporting them, which will reduce world energy
consumption by 83%, if we don't export the rest of the units. 

>What's the matter with metres, degrees Kelvin and watts?

They are nice for electrical engineering, but it seems to me that people who
build things in this country are already confused or ignorant enough about
passive solar heating mathematics and performance, that it isn't a good idea
to go switching the system of units around as well, yet. (Or perhaps it would
be a good idea (?), to help people get a fresh perspective, and unlearn what
they think they know, but I think it would just further isolate the solar
ranters who use numbers from the builders and spenders who use numbers.)

One basic grounding is that our R-values are what you see stenciled on big
rolls of insulation for sale in stores in this country. Most people here
think R-19 is pretty good, vs R-3, and superinsulated houses with R-40 walls
are pretty good, and 68 is a good house temperature. People here still measure
things in feet, too.

And most people don't give much of a hoot about energy conservation anymore.
It would be nice if passive solar house heating were to aquire the same hobby
status as sailing, something a body does that a body is not obliged to do, a
capital-intensive sport where performance matters. I've seen lots of passive
solar palaces that use 70% or more of the yearly backup heat of a conventional
home the same size. Would that for every million dollar earthship of such ilk,
there were 10 slick $200K houses with smiling owners enjoying close to 100%
solar space and hot water heating. 

I'm used to this system right now. I know a lot of the numbers by heart, and
it's easy to look at new numbers and recognize patterns right away. This would
take a while to relearn in a new system, just for me, ignoring the additional
problem of communicating with others via a new language barrier. To me, a
kitchen match has 1 Btu, and a gallon of oil and a ccf of natural gas contain
about 100K Btu, a therm, and a cord of wood is a hundred gallons of oil. And
windows and still air films have an R-value of 1, and a pound of water needs
1 Btu to warm up 1 degree, as do 50 ft^3 of air. 

>(Posting talk about better calculations)

We are not amused...

Nick

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Sat Jul  8 09:38:48 1995
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To: london@sunsite.unc.edu
Date: 8 Jul 1995 09:03:42 -0400
From: nick@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu (Nick Pine)
Message-Id: <3tlvne$hvk@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu>
Organization: Villanova University
Sender: london@sunsite.unc.edu
References: <3ti12i$72o@sundog.tiac.net>, <3tiqbl$5it@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu>, <masimoDBDv8D.Dv6@netcom.com>
Subject: Re: Selling electricity back into the public grid
content-length: 1698
Status: O
X-Status: 

Michael Maas <masimo@netcom.com> wrote:
>Nick Pine (nick@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu) wrote:
>
>: Residential, home-heating-oil-burning Intelligen cogeneration systems
>: typically pay for themselves in 3-5 years, by zeroing out peoples' electric
>: bills, without even counting income from net overproduction of electricity. 
>
>I believe the price of the intelligen system is right around 10k.  A 5 year
>payoff would mean 2k per year.  2k seems like a lot of electricity to me.
>How are you figuring this payback?

Electricity where I live is about 12 cents/kWh, max. There are a lot of people
with electric bills of $150/month or more, especially those with electric heat,
many of whom have grown to hate electric companies with a passion. I wrote a
little computer program to estimate payback periods, using electric company
step-tarrifs, and some previous electric and oil bills for a house. Several
calcs for proposed systems showed payback periods of 1-6 years. The best was
for two neighbors, sharing a system for home and swimming pool heating. The
worst was for a small auto repair shop, with demand service, a welder and an
air compressor.
 
Payback is better if you already need a new oil burner. Of course plain oil
burners have an infinite payback period, and seldom operate with Intelligen's
93% efficiency. Their unit has a 150F exhaust gas temp, and uses a 1 1/2" PVC
fluepipe.

Yes, $2K is a lot of electricity. I could find better investments than an
Intelligen system, with my monthly electric bill of less than $50, but I'm
an energy miser, with a tankful of oil in the basement that I haven't used
in two years, and I rant more about telephone rates than electric rates... :-)

Nick

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Tue Jul 11 18:40:56 1995
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To: london@sunsite.unc.edu
Date: 11 Jul 1995 15:34:15 -0400
From: nick@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu (Nick Pine)
Message-Id: <3tujnn$i4b@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu>
Organization: Villanova University
Sender: london@sunsite.unc.edu
Subject: Used solar panels?
content-length: 926
Status: O
X-Status: 

Solar panels are not the way to go, but if these were free... :-)

Date: Mon, 10 Jul 95 17:33:42 EST
From: mimhoff@austinc.edu (mimhoff)
To: cur-l@mcs.anl.gov
Subject: Solar Energy System

     Our administration informed me that they are scrapping our solar 
     energy system and asked me to post this advertisement.
     
     "Austin College of Sherman, Texas offers for sale and removal at the 
     buyer's expense a solar energy system that was installed about ten 
     years ago.  The system includes 128 flat plate collectors, related 
     piping, valves and equipment.  The system was installed to heat the 
     swimming pool and domestic hot water in the gym.  Interested parties 
     should contact George Rowland, Vice President for Business Affairs at 
     (903) 813-2235."
     
     Mike Imhoff
     Chemistry Department
     Austin College
     Sherman, TX  75090
     
     email:  mimhoff@austinc.edu

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Wed Jul 12 20:11:40 1995
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To: london@sunsite.unc.edu
Date: 12 Jul 1995 07:44:13 -0400
From: nick@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu (Nick Pine)
Message-Id: <3u0cid$nmh@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu>
Organization: Villanova University
Sender: london@sunsite.unc.edu
Subject: A wall warmer with a fan
content-length: 8575
Status: O
X-Status: 

A local siding contractor gave me a verbal quote of $2 per square foot
including materials, to build my passive wall-warmer, which I thought was
pretty good... But when I asked for that in writing, he came back with
a reluctant $5/ft^2, and other contractors wanted more like $10 or $12. Yipes.
This is supposed to replace vinyl siding. Who woulda thunk it was 90% labor...

So I've redesigned it now, adding an $11 fan and changing the 4 32' long slots
along the top and the bottom and the 2 long plywood doors and 32' piano hinges
at the top for passive airflow, to a couple of 2' x 2' holes in the wall at
the top and the bottom diagonal corners. I guess it can't be called passive
anymore (sniff), but that doesn't seem too important. The wall can now be
controlled by thermostats, which is nice. The total cost of materials is
about $800, or about $1.50/ft^2, and the wall should save about 600 gallons
of oil per year, at a cost of about (63 cents + $12 (Gulf War)) per gallon,
as well as a few human lives. Below is an ascii picture. 

                        32'
                 s4                            
      ---------------------------------------      --------------------
     |    |    |    |    |    |    |    |fvfv|   plywood  / f. f .6T2 g fv
     |           s3                     | fan|     Door /  f . a .7\  g
     |----|----|----|----|----|----|----|----|        /  f    -n--2   g
     |    <-4'->                             |               w   w  c g
     |           s2                          |            T1 w   w  c g
16'  |----|----|----|----|----|----|----|----|     (inside)  w   w  c g S ->
     |                                       |               w   w  c g
     |           s1                          |               w   w  c g
     |----|----|----|----|----|----|----|----|               w   w  c g
     |    |                                  |             .f    6    g
     |vent|      s0                          |             . f   7 /  g
     |____l____|____|____|____|____|____|____|        _________f_2______

                                                      f is plastic film 
S4:  wwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww        c is shadecloth
     |    |    |    |    |    |    |    |    |        g is rigid plastic
     |    |    |    |    |    |    |    |    |        . is hardware cloth
3.5" |    |    |    |    |    |    |    |    |        w is the original wall
     |    |    |    |    |    |    |    |    |     
     cccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccc             The fan is a Holmes
     ggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggg        20" Slimline, 3-speed
                                                      HABF-20 box fan,
               (views from above)                     $11 from K-Mart.
S3:  wwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww
     |    |    |    |    |    |    |    |    |        fv are Leslie-Locke
2.6" |    |    |    |    |    |    |    |    |        FV-1B automatic
     |    |    |    |    |    |    |    |    |        foundation vents,
     ccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccc        $10.83 each from
0.9" |    |    |    |    |    |    |    |    |        Home Depot.
     ggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggg
                                                      T1 is a an attic fan
                                                      thermostat, 2E340
S2:  wwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww        $15.48 from Grainger
     |    |    |    |    |    |    |    |    |
1.75"|    |    |    |    |    |    |    |    |        T2 is a house 
     ccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccc        thermostat, 2E158
     |    |    |    |    |    |    |    |    |        $14.05 from Grainger
1.75"|    |    |    |    |    |    |    |    |
     ggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggg        To the left of these
                                                      words, air rises up
                                                      between the shadecloth,
S1:  wwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww        c and the glazing g,
0.9" |    |    |    |    |    |    |    |    |        moves sideways from
     ccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccc        South to North through
     |    |    |    |    |    |    |    |    |        shadecloth c and then 
2.6" |    |    |    |    |    |    |    |    |        further up and sideways
     |    |    |    |    |    |    |    |    |        from West to East until
     ggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggg        it is pulled into the
                                                      house by the fan.

S0:  wwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww        At the bottom of the 
	  cccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccc        wall, the shadecloth
     |    |    |    |    |    |    |    |    |        is stapled to the 
3.5" |    |    |    |    |    |    |    |    |        original wall sheathing
     |    |    |    |    |    |    |    |    |        At the top, it is 
     |    |    |    |    |    |    |    |    |        stapled to the vertical
     ggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggg        spacer just under
                                                      the glazing.

The glazing could be Dynaglas (408) 997-6100, or Replex (800) 726-5151 
clear corrugated polycarbonate plastic, which comes in standard lengths,
12' long and a bit over 4' wide, eg from D & L Grower Supplies in Leola, PA
(800) 732-3509, and custom lengths up to 38' long in large quantities. It
costs a bit over $1 per square foot in small quantities and overlaps and
requires support on 4' centers. Replex also makes this in a flat form,
0.20" thick, sold in rolls 4' wide and 50' long. This material has a 10 year 
guarantee against yellowing and an expected solar transmission lifetime
of at least 25 years. It is widely used in commercial greenhouse roofs.
In fact, the South roof of my house is now covered with this stuff, and
it just survived some golf-ball-sized hail with no damage. You could also
use glass for the glazing...

Shadecloth is available from Stuppy Greenhouse Mfg. at 1212 Clay Street,
North Kansas City, MO 64116, (816) 472-1512 or (800) 877-5025 voice/
(800)423-1512 fax. They sell black polypropylene Sundown 80%-absorbing
shadecloth as item number 23691 for a basic price of $0.139 per square
foot. Shadecloth also comes in other colors, like red and green. (Stuppy
also sells plastic film greenhouses for 55 cents per square foot :-)

The vertical spacer/sleepers could be ripped from 2 x 4s. I would make
them about 1' long, with a 3' gap between them. The items marked 672
are Hart and Cooley 672 30" x 30" return air grills, $24.05 each, wholesale,
installed with the 40 degree vanes pointing up towards the outside at the
bottom of the wall, and up towards the inside of the house at the top of
the wall. Each 30" x 30" vent hole in the wall would have one stud of the
original house wall running through it vertically, up the center.

Here is a wiring diagram for the fan and thermostats:

                  T1, 70F        T2, 100F
         ---------|--------------X-----------------
                  house          fan              |
                  thermostat     thermostat      --- 
110 VAC           opens on       closes on      |fan|
                  temperature    temperature     ---
                  rise           rise             |
         ------------------------------------------

I would guess that the free air delivery of the fan is about 2000 CFM,
so in full sun, with the wall receiving 300 x 512 = 150K Btu/hour (that's
about 44 kW, or 18 cents per peak watt, for you PV people :-), if the air
goes into the wall at 68F, it will emerge at about 68 + 150K/2K = 140F.

When the house is warm enough, the fan will stop and the wall will continue
to heat up, until perhaps the automatic foundation vents open, if their
bimetallic springs have a little bit of wall air flowing over them. The
polycarbonate plastic can easily withstand 130F on a continuous basis,
with higher peak temperatures. In the summer, the vents will open to let
warm air flow out of the wall to the outside. Each vent is about 8" x 16",
not enough area to cool the wall very well, so it might be a good idea to put
some screw eyes through the glazing or hang some ropes or wires from the eaves
and grow some grapes, runner beans, trumpet vines, or clematis in front of
the wall. Or add an overhang. Or hang another piece of shadecloth over the
front, perhaps as an awning that goes to some guyed poles on the lawn...

Who will be the first to build one of these?

Nick

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Wed Jul 12 21:11:34 1995
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Date: 12 Jul 1995 19:20:26 -0400
From: nick@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu (Nick Pine)
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Subject: Re: A wall warmer with a fan
content-length: 1121
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X-Status: 

Scott Martin <effeng@io.org> wrote:

>There is a product on the market called a "Solarwall." Made by Conserval...
>It consists of a black metal cladding with small holes in it...

Right. Thin black painted aluminum with about 2% of the area covered with
1/32" holes. I've talked with them and looked at their literature. This is
usually used in warehouses, etc, as the exterior skin, with suction from a
blower bringing air into the wall transversely, with no glazing! Since it
warms outside air, it is not too useful for houses. It attains an impressive
solar collection efficiency of 80%, and they say that glazing would reduce
that by at least 20%, but with some glazing, you could make indoor air hotter,
instead of just heating outdoor air from, say 32F to 40F. I think NREL is
doing some closed system testing, to evaluate this product for heating indoor
air, with glazing. That will probably work fine, BUT...

It costs $4/ft^2, vs greenhouse shadecloth at 13 cents/ft^2. Perhaps
shadecloth won't be as efficient as a transverse airflow solar absorber,
but it probably still makes more sense, at that price.

Nick

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Thu Jul 13 04:41:39 1995
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Date: Wed, 12 Jul 1995 16:43:59 GMT
From: jacq@indirect.com (Rosemary  & Glenn Jacques)
Message-Id: <jacq.135.0085FDBC@indirect.com>
Organization: indirect
Sender: london@sunsite.unc.edu
Subject: Sun Oven
content-length: 374
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X-Status: 

Cook entirely with the power of the sun.  Keep your
 kitchen cool while your meal cooks in the Burns Milwaukee Sun Oven.
You can find out more at the following site: 
You can find out more about sun ovens at the following site: 
http://clever.net/coyote/oven.htm. 
If you have trouble locating this site, send me an E-Mail 
t and I will E-Mail you the information.
Rosemary

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Thu Jul 13 13:11:52 1995
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Date: Wed, 12 Jul 1995 18:35:50 -0400
From: Tu and Bob Myers <tuandbob@acy1.digex.net>
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Subject: Re: Solar Ovens/Water distilation, ADDITIONAL , INFORMATION~~~+++~~~ATS0=1
content-length: 526
Status: O
X-Status: 

The article I refered to describing the solar distillation is "Fresh 
Water from the Sea using solar distillation & PVs for pumping" by Horace 
McCraken.  The article is in Home Power #10, April/May 1989.

As of May 1989, Mr. McCraken could be reached at:

McCraken Solar Company
329 West Carlos
Alturas CA 96101

   Phone:  916-233-3175

Home Power magazine may be reached at:

Home Power
POB 520
Ashland OR  97520-0520

Subscriptions/Back Issues:
TollFree:  800-707-6585
   Phone:  916-475-0830
     FAX:  916-475-0941

Bob

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Fri Jul 14 06:12:38 1995
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Date: 13 Jul 1995 13:30:11 GMT
From: David Paxton <dlpaxton@gate.net>
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Sender: london@sunsite.unc.edu
Subject: Methane.zip and paxmil.zip
content-length: 874
Status: O
X-Status: 

Those interested in the methane.zip digester construction info it is now 
also available on:
       http://www.gate.net/~dlpaxton
if that doesn't get you there (it does locally) you may have to add 
/index.html. 
Also, I have put up for download paxmil.zip my original plans some years 
back for a verticle axis windmill. I had to shelv the idea for a few 
years but now am able to play with it a little in my spare time. I have 
found that atleast one more blade is needed. I have built a small mock up 
mill and found that the pole it is on vibrates (pulses) because there is 
never more than one blade under power at a time. So my mock up is going 
to 5 blades at 75 degrees apart. If that does not do it I will have to go 
to 6 I guess.

After a couple of weeks I will present my reasons for designing it the 
way I have here in this echo if anyone is interested.

Dave

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Sat Jul 15 17:13:29 1995
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Date: 15 Jul 1995 11:34:54 -0400
From: nick@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu (Nick Pine)
Message-Id: <3u8n6u$o3n@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu>
Organization: Villanova University
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Subject: Cooling a house with ice
content-length: 3115
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It's 85 F so far here today, and it's supposed to hit 100...
How much ice does it take to keep a house cool in the summer?

Suppose it's a completely shaded two-story house, 32' on a side, 16' tall,
with R20 walls and R40 ceiling, and 20% of the walls have R2 windows, and the
house leaks 1 air change per hour, and two people live in the house, and use
500 kWh/month of electricity, ie 500 kWh/30 days/month/24 h/day = 700 Watts,
all of which goes into heating the house, so the house itself is heated in
summertime by about (2 people x 100 W + 700 W) x 3.4 Btu/W = 3K Btu/hour. 

The thermal conductance of the house is the sum of each area divided by its
R-value. The walls contribute 4 x 0.8 x 512 ft^2/R20 = 82 Btu/hour/F, and
the windows 4 x 0.2 x 512/R2 = 205 (more than twice as much heat gain, even
with no sun...) The roof only adds 32' x 32'/R40 = 26 to that number, and
the volume of the house is 32' x 32' x 16' = 16384 ft^3, so air infiltration 
adds another 16384 ft^3/55 ft^3/Btu/F = 298 Btu/F, the biggest heat gainer
of all. The total above is about 600, so when it's 100 F outside and 80 F
inside, it takes (100-80) x 600 = 12K Btu/hr to keep the house cool, plus the
3K of internal heat gain in the house, ie 15K Btu/hr total, ignoring humidity.

It takes about 144 Btu/pound to melt ice, and warming the water from 32 F
to say, 72, requires another 40 Btu. Say 200 Btu/lb in round numbers. So
each hour of summer AC requires 75 pounds of ice to begin with, ignoring the
heat leaks to the ice battery itself. A month of AC requires 30 x 24 x 75
pounds of ice, 54K pounds or 27 tons, with a volume of 54K/62 = 870 ft^3,
a cube 9.5 feet on a side, not counting insulation, or a 32' x 32' basement
with 10" of ice in a perfectly insulated tank, under the floor, a tank in
the corner, 8' high x 10.43' square, not counting insulation.

I live near Philadelphia, which has average daily minimum temperatures of 
-5.1C, -4.0 and -2.2 in Jan, Feb and Dec of each year, according to NREL.
Say it's this cold, ie 25 F, average, for 4 hours a day for 90 days, ie
2,440 cooling degree hours, with a 32 F base temperature. How large would
our low-thermal mass, shallow anti-freeze pond have to be, ie how much shaded 
surface area do we need, with an R1 still-air film resistance, to somehow
collect 54,000 pounds of ice, or 7.8 million Btu in the winter? This looks
like Ohm's law for heatflow to me, ie Q = delta T x delta t x Area/R-value,
with Q = 7.8 million = 2,440 Area/R1, so Area = 7,800,000/2440 = 3200 ft^2,
eg a square pond, 56 feet on a side... This would work better on a night
with some wind, or on a clear night with no clouds and no wind. 

Or perhaps some snowmaking machines in a tent, over an insulated pit, with open
tent flaps in the winter, or... Let's see, if an auto radiator with a fan can
get rid of the heat from a gallon of gasoline in an hour, ie 100K Btu/hr, with
200 F water and 100 F air, that's 1000 Btu/hour/degree F, 1000 times better
than a square foot of pond surface, so we'd need 320 of them. 

Once again, some numbers on the back of an envelope seem helpful.

Nick

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Sat Jul 15 17:13:27 1995
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Date: 15 Jul 1995 15:54:19 GMT
From: David Paxton <dlpaxton@gate.net>
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Sender: london@sunsite.unc.edu
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Subject: Re: Methane.zip and paxmil.zip
content-length: 392
Status: O
X-Status: 

Sorry, I can only post where I am. If anyone wants to take the files and 
post them anywhere else they are welcome to, but I can't spend my life 
trying to place pages or areas evreywhere that can't access me.

I know the feeling. All these TV shows give you information how to access 
them on AOL or other private company and those of us on the outside have 
no way of accessing them.

Dave

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Sun Jul 16 11:44:12 1995
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Date: 16 Jul 1995 11:30:01 -0400
From: nick@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu (Nick Pine)
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Subject: Re: Cooling a house with ice
content-length: 2285
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Mike Allenbau <allenbau@aol.com> wrote:

>Simpler solution - carefully cut the house into 150 pound pieces, number
>them, UPS them to Fort Yukon, Alaska, reassemble the house, and then it
>will be cool.

You gotta worry about your girth limits too, if you want to be practical
about this. I seem to recall UPS accepts a max of 108" length and perimeter
combined, with ovals and circles counted by the rectangles they inscribe.
Doesn't it get hot in Alaska sometimes?

Barrow looks coolish too, with a 1% dry bulb max summer temp of 57F, and
average temperatures of -13 F and -15 F in December and January, with an
average of 0.00 Btu/ft^2/day of sun. Perhaps there is a version of Murphy's
law that says, "If it's cool enough in the Winter to easily make enough ice
to cool your house in the Summer, you won't need to do that."

I keep picturing a shallow swimming pool, or perhaps a crawl space foundation
or a literal "floating slab" basement floor, insulated on the bottom--this
is the most expensive part to imagine--perhaps just some perimeter insulation
and a layer of plastic, on the ground, with a foot or so of dry soil on top
of that, then a little plastic pipe, then a layer of EPDM rubber, then a foot
or so of plain water, then a thermal cover of some sort, eg a building or
grass or a parking lot on top of some kind of low, thin, concrete roof mound
with a radiant barrier, over the water, and lots of those $10.83 Leslie-Locke
or $19.95 Solar Tex automatic foundation vents around the perimeter, with the
bimetallic springs reversed so the louvers  open  when the air gets below
freezing outside. Of course most people wouldn't want to live inside this
cold store...

Or perhaps we can change our metabolism... My grandmother used to tell me
about a local character in Kentucky: "Frozen Usher" used to come to town
in a horse-drawn wagon, once a year, on the hottest day of the year, all
wrapped up in layers of sweaters and coats and hats and gloves...

>I'm impressed by all that math, though - is any of it correct?

I think I done it right, within an order of magnitude, except for that there
last number. And I'm not sure how well that 0.2 radiator will work...
My grandmother also used to yell "Turn down the radiator!"
when we had the station up too loud.

Nick

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Sun Jul 16 19:13:56 1995
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Date: 16 Jul 1995 02:25:20 -0400
From: nick@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu (Nick Pine)
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Organization: Villanova University
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Subject: Re: Cooling a house with ice
content-length: 505
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Nick Pine <nick@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu> wrote:

>... Ohm's law for heatflow...  ie Q = delta T x delta t x Area/R-value,
>with Q = 7.8 million = 2,440 Area/R1, so Area = 7,800,000/2440 = 3200 ft^2,
 
>... Let's see, if an auto radiator with a fan can
>get rid of the heat from a gallon of gasoline in an hour, ie 100K Btu/hr, with
>200 F water and 100 F air, that's 1000 Btu/hour/degree F, 1000 times better
>than a square foot of pond surface, so we'd need 320 of them. 

Oops. Perhaps 3.2 of them...

Nick

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Tue Jul 18 08:44:52 1995
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Date: 16 Jul 1995 22:46:47 -0400
From: georgep749@aol.com (GeorgeP749)
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Organization: America Online, Inc. (1-800-827-6364)
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Subject: Wanted: Old water pumping windmill
content-length: 224
Status: RO
X-Status: 

I'm looking for an old water pumping windmill and steel tower for a
restoration project.  I will remove the windmill.  Should be located no
more than 2-3 hours from Washington DC.

Please reply by email...

Thanks,

-George

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Tue Jul 18 20:45:23 1995
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Date: 18 Jul 1995 16:27:14 -0400
From: nick@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu (Nick Pine)
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Organization: Villanova University
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References: <daniel-1507950940420001@dystr.laser.net>, <3ufpjt$m0@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu>, <settl001-1807951047190001@harp.cellbio.duke.edu>
Subject: Re: A wall warmer with a fan
content-length: 4344
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X-Status: 

Dan Settles <settl001@mc.duke.edu> wrote:
>nick@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu (Nick Pine) wrote:
>><daniel@daystar.laser.net> wrote:

>Why did you use glazing on the roof? 

Mainly, I wanted to blow down some warm air into the rest of the house from
this 32' long (E-W) x 14' high attic during the winter. But it also seems
to have made it a much more interesting space. I'm not sure what's next. 

>I suppose this might be nice in the winter on a sunny day, but doesn't
>this turn your attic space into an oven in the summer?  

That's what the two 1' turbine vents near the ridge are for, combined
with the 4 2' x 3' attic windows near the floor. But you are right, it
still gets up to 120 F or so when the sun is shining in the summer, altho
it's reasonably cool at night. I had planned on 2 4' x 4' skylights for
ventilation originally, but when those seemed expensive and not great 
ventilators, since they only opened a few inches, I switched to turbine vents,
3 as planned, 2 as installed, after the contractor started complaining and
re-interpreting the specs. I shoulda stuck to my guns. The summer venting
and shading up there can still be improved, tho.

>I was wondering how you plan to actually build this with the sloping shade
>cloth.  In the original plan the vertical shade cloth could be easily
>attached between the glazing and the side of the house.  How will you now
>attach the glazing to this sloped surface.  I know this is not impossible,
>but I'm wondering what you may have thought of that I haven't considered
>as yet.

Perhaps it was not clear from my last posting, but the vertical sleepers
in this case would not be continuous, they would be only say, 1' long, with
3' vertical gaps between them, still on 4' centers. The center of each sleeper
would be located at horizontal seams in the glazing panels. 

The one at the bottom would be a solid 2 x 4 on edge, with the shadecloth
underneath, stapled to the original wall, and the glazing 4" away from
the original wall. The next one, 4' up, would be a 2 x 4 ripped into a
1' piece and a 3" piece (nominally) with the 1" piece attached to the wall,
then the shadecloth, then the 3" piece, then the glazing on top of that
sandwich. The next one up would be 2 2 x 2's with the shadecloth in the
middle. Etc. So the glazing would attach to a plumb vertical surface, a
constant 4" away from the wall, even tho the shadecloth is sloped.
 
At some point (soon I hope) I'll have another big detailed drawing
from my architect. Perhaps this time he will include the lap fasteners
along the horizontal glazing seams, every foot or so.

>I was also wondering if you plan to cut out the shade cloth in front of
>the 2' X 2' vents as I saw in a previous post?  Is this just so you can
>reach the exterior vents through this area?
 
It seems like a good idea to have no shadecloth in front of either vent,
so the airflow resistance would be smaller in that particular area, which
is the bottleneck. That was the idea, at least. In this redesign, there is
no need to operate the (upper) exterior vent manually. It uses a couple of
$10 automatic foundation vents instead. 

>> >Another thought, if you reversed flow to make the warm air enter the room
>> >from floor level, it would have to travel past furniture and people on
>> >it's way up, possibly increasing the effective performance.
>
>Yes, warm air rises, but since this is no longer a passive system maybe
>there could be some benefit from reversing the air flow with the fan if
>you'd rather have the warm air on the bottom floor.

Maybe. It isn't hard to make warm air flow downhill with a fan, but
why do that? I'd still like this thing to be able to operate by natural
convection without a fan, at low solar intensities. And it seems to me
that either way, the air will be pretty well mixed up in the room, a
fairly uniform temperature, when the sun is shining.

>An alternative would be to just attach the outflow to new or present air
>ducts and distribute the heat through the whole house.

Well, yes. Or add an oil burner, and put new vinyl siding back on :-)
This particular house has a fairly open plan, and a hot air heating system,
so it should work pretty well without extra ducting.

>> >> Who will be the first to build one of these?
>
>Maybe me.

Wonderful! :-)

>> I wouldn't mind being the second... :-)

Nick

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Wed Jul 19 21:16:03 1995
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Date: Tue, 18 Jul 1995 16:34:23 GMT
From: john orrells <john@g6dqy.demon.co.uk>
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Subject: Re: Parabolic Reflector Curve
content-length: 1052
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X-Status: 

In article <3uf8kr$cfd@warp.cris.com> Whipsnap@cris.com (WHIPPERSNAPPER) wrote:

> A brief search having revealed nothing, I'll put the question to all and
> sundry:  What is the mathematical formula of a parabola?
> 
> I'd like to produce an accurate template for each of several parabolic
> reflectors with varying focal lengths.
> 
> I have no less than three separate applications for these things; a
> small solar oven, an IR sensor (with a weak and distant source) and a
> directional microphone.
> 
> Thanks in advance to the many I know will kindly respond.
> ---
>   OLX 2.1 TD  Proofread carefully to see if you any words out.
>                                                                                                             
y^2=4kx where k is the focal length.
springs to mind



-- 
        internet:- john@g6dqy.demon.co.uk   ax25:- g6dqy@gb7pmb.#28.gbr
        located nr Shrewsbury, Shropshire, England.
        using Acorn A3000 (no Intel inside) & USRobotics Sportster.
  ... Are those cookies made with real Girl Scouts?

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Tue Jul 18 19:15:48 1995
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Subject: Parabolic Reflector Curve
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A brief search having revealed nothing, I'll put the question to all and
sundry:  What is the mathematical formula of a parabola?

I'd like to produce an accurate template for each of several parabolic
reflectors with varying focal lengths.

I have no less than three separate applications for these things; a
small solar oven, an IR sensor (with a weak and distant source) and a
directional microphone.

Thanks in advance to the many I know will kindly respond.
---
 þ OLX 2.1 TD þ Proofread carefully to see if you any words out.
                                                                                                            

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Thu Jul 20 09:16:23 1995
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Date: 18 Jul 1995 03:58:53 -0400
From: nick@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu (Nick Pine)
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Subject: Re: A wall warmer with a fan
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<daniel@daystar.laser.net> wrote:
 
>I'm real confused.

Doesn't stop you from stating the "facts" that follow, Dan :-)
But it's a free country, this net-world, with lots of virtual soap boxes... 

>(Nick Pine) wrote:
>> This is supposed to replace vinyl siding.
> 
>Why not leave the siding in place to protect the sheathing when [not if,
>when] the glazing begins to leak?

I suppose in time, everything will leak, even this stuff, which they say has
a 25 year lifetime for solar transmission, which I assume is shorter than the
mechanical lifetime. By that time, we may have basement fusion power or mostly
superinsulated houses, and I may be dead. I spent part of this evening lying
in a hammock strung between the collar beams in my attic, watching the rain
and lightning through the new roof, 14' up, which so far doesn't leak a drop,
even through the turbine vents, with the doors open underneath, even after
an afternoon of golfball-sized hail. The main reason for taking the old siding
off is that it is hard to attach anything on top of it, since it is neither
flat nor rigid, and it is cracking and falling off anyway.

>What about condensation?

What about condensation? Would you expect a lot of condensation in an air
heater, when the sun is shining and air is flowing through it, being heated 
to a higher temperature than when it went in? Or when the sun is not shining,
and no air is flowing through it?
                                                             
>What is the purpose of sloping the shade cloth [absorber ?] futher away
>from perpendicular to the sun?                    (yes)   a--^^--r

It's not a matter of solar geometry, but of increasing the cross-sectional
area of the "duct" to allow more airflow or less pressure drop. BTW, the
fan manufacturer (800) 5-HOLMES says their $11 HABF-20 20" box fan makes
500, 950 and 1350 CFM free air delivery, with both grilles on, at speeds
1, 2 and 3, whilst consuming 0.68, 1.08 and 2.08 amps at 110VAC. 

>>if the air
>>goes into the wall at 68F, it will emerge at about 68 + 150K/2K = 140F.

I guess I should double that temperature rise now, since the fan doesn't
make as many CFM as I thought, altho taking the grilles off should help.
Or maybe I need to spend more than $11 for a fan. Or use two of them.
Norman Saunders uses 1/4 HP motors with his fans.
 
>Whoa! At what ambient air temp? 

Whoa! At 32 F, like I said in the original posting. You have my numbers, Dan.
Where are your numbers? Do you believe in "Ohm's Law for Heatflow," or are
you possessed of a Higher Thermal Consciousness? If so, I stand in awe.

>Maybe if it's 70°-80° F outside already.

Assuredly so. But then the warmed air, if any, considering the wall will be
shaded, will flow out of the wall to the outside world, not into the house.
 
>What is the R value of this glazing?

About 1.

>Is this anything like the double glazed Lexan?

It's only one layer of polycarbonate plastic, strong, corrugated, and very
clear, at least to begin with, not milky or fibrous. It needs support on
4' centers as a roof, but I built a small wall warmer in January, with
vertical sleepers on 5 1/2' centers. I suppose you could go farther apart,
if it's not in a windy location and you don't mind floppy walls. 

>>  They sell black polypropylene Sundown 80%-absorbing shadecloth
>
>I respectfully submit that 80%-absorbing shadecloth is no such thing.

Ah, what is it then? Please tell me the true nature of this substance.
Once again, I stand in awe, respectfully. 

>The people who market this product [and those that buy it] couldn't care less
>if 80% of the light is absorbed, reflected, refracted, reradiated or eaten
>by little green light monsters. All they care about is that only 20% of
>the light passes thru the sheet to further heat the greenhouse.

True, but this stuff is black, so I think it really will absorb most of the
80% that does not get through. And my greenhouse engineering book says the
polycarbonate glazing will pass less than 4% of any long-wave reradiation.
Tell me more about your little green light monsters, Dan...

>A vinyl sheet with 20% holes

This is carbon-impregnated polypropylene, and it looks like about 50% of
the area is holes, but I haven't attempted to measure them. I just naively
believe what I read in the nice Stuppy (800) 877-5025 catalog (just got
a new one, 3/4" thick :-), lacking your shattering insight into the True
Ground of Polypropylene. Or do you only speak ex-cathedra on vinyl? :-)

Stuppy sells Ludvig Svensson aluminum/polyester "environmental screens" in
30, 40, 50, 65, 75 and 99.9% opacity, as well as black Sundown polypropylene
shade fabric in 30, 47, 55, 63, 73, 78, 80, 92 and 100% opacity. There is a
price jump above 80%, which costs $0.139/ft^2, and the more absorbent kinds
are less porous for airflow, so I'm using the 80% kind. This is a compromise. 
Stuppy now has a new product called Reemay spun poly 45% shadecloth, which
comes in pieces 148' wide x 300' long (wow), item number 2352, costing $130.
That's 0.292 cents/ft^2, 341 ft^2 for a dollar :-) They also sell 66% green 
shadecloth for 22 cents/ft^2, item number 23810.

"California Fire Marshall Approved" 78% fire retardant green shadecloth goes
for a hideously-expensive 55 cents per square foot. Fire is another story...
Asphalt shingles burn really well, and I've seen burned vinyl siding. The
polycarbonate glazing is difficult to get started, but once going, it burns
well too, if you hold it at the right angle, dropping off little liquid
fireballs that make an interesting buzzing sound in the air. I would not
recommend doing this with a house.

>will come no where near the absorbtion capacity of copper or aluminium
>[or any metal for that matter] with no holes and covered with a selective
>surface.

Yawn. This sounds expensive. And what do you mean by "absorption capacity"?
Is this something to do with the little green light monsters? Or perhaps
the plastic army soldiers you mentioned in your previous posting? I'm still
not sure what to do with them, and the hot water... Army soup?

>Come to think about it, why not cover the outer surface of the wall with
>aluminium foil to reflect that 20% back to the shade cloth?

My architect thought of that... I dissuaded him, saying that 20% of that
20% will keep on going through the shadecloth, back out of the wall. It
might look weirder that way too, altho that's never deterred me.

>Don't get me wrong Nick, I'm not discounting your device, but I do think
>that you have WAY overestimated it's potential.

So where are YOUR numbers, Dan? Or better yet, how would you improve the
price/performance ratio of this design? I'm looking hard for labor-saving
ideas... Perhaps you can help, instead of just throwing rocks here,
rhetorically-speaking. 

>At 30°F ambient air temp, 90°-100° is a lot closer to real

Ah, numbers. Where do these come from?

>[certainly nothing to sneeze at].

Faint praise! :-)

>Another thought, if you reversed flow to make the warm air enter the room
>from floor level, it would have to travel past furniture and people on
>it's way up, possibly increasing the effective performance.

Perhaps in Australia, where hot air sinks. Or we could crazy-glue little
plastic army men all over the ceiling, upside down. That might help.
This is somewhat outside of my expertise. What do you think? 
 
>> Who will be the first to build one of these?
>
>You!

I wouldn't mind being the second... :-)

Nick

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Thu Jul 20 19:16:57 1995
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From: nick@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu (Nick Pine)
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Subject: Re: Cooling a house with ice
content-length: 7952
Status: O
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Jonathan M. Elson <jmelson@artsci.wustl.edu> wrote:

>Big math is not needed here, because residential air conditioners are rated
>in TONS.  Tons of what?  ICE, of course!  If you have a 2 ton air conditioner
>which runs 50% of the time, you are getting 1 ton of air conditoning.  That
>means the equivalent of one ton of ice delivered per day! 

Hey, that's pretty simple :-)

24 hours x 12K Btu/hour /144 Btu/pound = 2000 pounds.

I knew a ton of ice was involved, but I didn't realize it was this simple.
How ignorant. I imagined there were a lot of other ad-hoc factors, somehow,
or that the ton of ice just sat there in the room somewhere, and one measured
the RATE of cooling at 12K Btu/hour, from some sort of standard surface area,
not that one measured the ice CONSUMPTION. That makes a lot more sense.
Thanks for explaining this...

>Practical?

Sure... :-)

>Remember that after melting, there will be one TON of cold water,

That's a lot.

>or if you melt it into brine, one ton of salty water to get rid of!

I've been thinking about plain water, in a shallow tank somewhere in the
ground. I wouldn't get rid of it. I would just let it sit there, liquid,
until the next year. Perhaps win some sort of major water recycling award
for thinking of this :-)

>That's 1250 gallons, every day! 

Let's see... 2000/8 = 250? Without the 1? About 32 ft^3, a cube 3' on a side,
or a layer of water 32' x 32' x 0.4" ? 4" for 10 days, 40" for 100 days...?

>What does a ton of ice, delivered daily cost?

I don't know. But if it is delivered by cold air... There is a tradeoff
between having a large surface area for good ice production by direct
exposure of a layer of water to cold air, and having a small surface to
volume ratio for efficient ice storage. Some sort of heat pipe might help,
a la permafrost freezers in Alaskan pipeline foundations, but cheaper.
Or some sort of insulated underground storage with a radiant barrier above, 
with doors that open or fans that turn on when it is cold. If it's fairly
large and flat, one could use the top for something else.

>I don't know, but it probably costs more than the equivalent electrical
>air conditioning.

Doubtless. About $2 for a 10 lb bag.

>besides, where will you put the "Ice Chute"?

In the basement, I guess.

>Sort of like the coal chute, only bigger - lots bigger!

I'm not sure that I made myself clear...

>One ton of coal will heat a reasonable house all winter, but the ice man
>will come DAILY!

Just like the play. We might need more than one ice man. Perhaps an army 
of Girl Scouts, all working on renewable energy merit badges, saving the
ice from their Diet Cokes all summer. ("Extra ice, please.")

>A whole new infrastructure to build!

Awesome. They could sing cheerful ice-delivery songs, as they marched along
in their white socks.

>No, how about a SOLAR-powered air conditioner?

Sounds good to me...

>A hotel in Minnesota (I think) built an ice house, which was to spray water
>in the air all night (and cold days) all winter, and build an ice block the
>size of a football field and 30 feet thick.  Then, in the spring, a prefab 
>building would be placed over the block, and the water spray would melt 
>the ice and cool the hotel.

This might have worked better if they had layed a few plastic pipes in the
basement or under a parking lot, so they could suck the cool out from below
the ice with some more plain water running through the plastic pipes, and
put a layer of EPDM rubber over that, and opened the basement windows or
turned on a fan when it was cold out, while adding water on top in 2" layers
every week or so. I have a paper somewhere with models and data for maximum
winter ice production in reed beds used for municipal sewage treatment,
as used in one of our local sewage treatment plants, where the ice helps
a lot in sludge dewatering. Ice forms faster if you add the water in layers.
Or spray it on in droplets. But that's more complicated, and then it might
end up snow, not ice. Heaped up in the middle. Less compact. More compact,
in surface to volume ratio, but not what I had in mind. 

Cooling and sludge dewatering might be a nice combination, on a smaller scale,
except that in that case, one relies on the reeds to evaporate the water from
the sludge. They get cut back in the early spring, and grow to 12' tall or so
by fall, when they are cut down and burned right in the reed bed.

I guess this requires more thought.

>What happened?  The warmest winter in recorded history!  Very little ice.

Bad luck.

>I never heard what happened the next winter.

Perhaps this was not a design problem. Perhaps the accountants acted in haste. 

Here's a quote from Steve Baer's nice little 1979 book, _Sunspots_ 
"An Explanation of Solar Energy Through Fact and Fiction." Some of the
numbers have changed since 1979, of course. He's talking about potable 
ice production, where the ice has to be physically moved, and sold
somewhere else, and the water must be replaced, vs. just forming and
reforming the ice in one place:

  One business that needlessly consumes millions of dollars of electrical 
  energy is the production of ice. It used to be common practice to harvest 
  ice from ponds and rivers, but with the advent of refrigeration and
  machinery this fell out of fashion. We should get back into the business,
  this time exploiting modern insulation and methods of moving materials.

  Over the entire country ice is made with mechanical refrigerators powered
  by electricity. Here in Albuquerque ice sells for 3 cents a pound in
  blocks and 7 cents a pound crushed. Firewood, hauled from miles away and
  cut into stove-sized pieces, sells for $0.015/pound; adobe bricks, cured
  and stacked, sell for $0.005/pound. It is strange that ice is so expensive.
  In Albuquerque at least six feet of ice can be harvested from shallow ponds
  of water-filled trays during a year. This is over 300 pounds per square
  foot of pond. If the value of ice were 1 cent/pound, each square foot would
  yield a harvest of $3, or $125,000 per acre. The production of ice with
  electrically powered refrigerators requires approximately $0.15 per 100
  pounds of ice, so an acre of ice ponds would save approximately $19,000 
  in electricity each year.

  What work must one do to make the ice? One method is to fill plastic trays
  with a hose during the afternoon and lift off the ice in the morning. During
  very cold weather two layers can be harvested each day. Some people would
  object at first to shards of ice from the top of a pond. "Why, this looks
  like it was pulled off the top of a puddle." Eventually users of such ice
  would realize that the texture of a bag of ice chunks is interesting itself;
  it can tell them of the severity of the previous winter, just as the variety
  of a bag of oranges is more interesting than a can of orange juice.

  The storage of such an ice harvest is the most difficult part. If the ice
  were stored in a huge insulated pit, the mass of ice might lose a rind two
  feet thick during a year as heat travelled through the walls and melted it.
  An efficient ice ranch would require considerable capital to make the
  insulated storage shed, and would also require an efficient way to handle
  the daily harvesting of the ice. Who wouldn't rather work at an ice ranch,
  with its own peculiar reversed harvesting weather, than in a refrigeration
  plant?

  There is a texture to reality, good and bad, a mixture of fortune and
  misfortune. If this texture is presented to people always through other
  people, machinery, or prices, then eventually we become bitter about our own
  species. If it appears as an unavoidable part of reality, a result of the
  weather, we do not have others to blame.

  An enterprise such as an ice ranch, especially if the activities are visible
  to passersby, is interesting. Cold weather is then useful to someone in a
  productive way.

Nick

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Subject: Re: Parabolic Reflector Curve
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y^2 = 4 f x works, for a parabola aimed at the horizon with focal length f.

Nick

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Sat Jul 22 02:47:38 1995
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Subject: Re: Cooling a house with ice
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Paul Bixel <bixelps@mhsgate.salem.ge.com> wrote:
 
>  I picture a hocky rink.  It would be interesting to investigate the
>type of equipment used to run those things.  It would be much
>larger than you need of course in BTU/hour but the principle
>applies.  The phase change of water seems important in your
>calculations.  You must make ice for it to work.

It works a lot better that way, but I was thinking of natural ice, not
heat pump ice...

>  I know of such an installation as you descibe.  This guy had a heat 
>pump and a large in-ground vat lined with plastic topped with an 
>insulated shed.  The coils of his heat pump we supposed to freeze the ice 
>in winter and melt it in summer.

Sounds interesting. Now, could one do that in reverse, using winter ice and 
summer heat to power a Stirling engine, with a cycle time of one year? Or
a high thermal mass sunspace with a cycle time of one day?

Nick

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Subject: Re: source for small 14V >=30mA PV?
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Moshe Braner <braner@walden.snr.uvm.edu> wrote:

>I am looking for a small PV (up to about 5-by-6 inches) that
>will charge a "12V" battery (actual voltage before the diode
>up to 15V) with at least 30 mA in full sunlight...

Perhaps it's too big, but you might try the $14.95 6 x 12 x 3/32" TM91SED1934
panel from Herbach and Rademan at (800) 848-8001. The catalog says 20V open
circuit, 14V at 110 mA and 140 mA short circuit. Comes with a foam backing and
pretinned solder leads. H & R has a $25 minimum order. They also sell a small
$9.95 solar demo kit, TM92SED2057, with a motor, propeller and 0.46 V, 1.5 A
photovoltaic cell, and N.O. and N.C. thermostats TM92HVC2162 and TM94HVC2563
for $1 and $1.25. 

They used to sell 50 horsepower WWII surplus air raid sirens for about $300,
but for some reason, my parents would not let me buy one... 

Nick

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Sun Jul 23 17:48:07 1995
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Date: 20 Jul 1995 00:29:24 GMT
From: David Paxton <dlpaxton@gate.net>
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Subject: Re: Methane.zip and paxmil.zip
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I'll give it some thought. Right now I am busy adding the 5th blade to 
paxmil to see if the pulsation goes down.

Dave

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Sun Jul 23 18:18:10 1995
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Subject: Re: --New World Polar Turbine
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Seems to me like the gov't spent a lot of money to find out what they 
already knew! There was a Jacobs windmill up and operational (3KW if 
memory serves me correctly) for decades and as far as I know is still 
there. This was not right at the pole though, just about half way between 
the pole and the ocean if I am still dredgeing up facts from way down 
deep. The gov't mentioned it in one of those Ed. TV videos they put out 
about 5 or 10 years back. The old Jacobs still up there churning away in 
the wind. The batteries had had it but the mill was still operational. 
Seems to me like one of the Byrd expiditions put it up orriginally. 
Couldn't kill one of those Jacabos without a machine gun!

Dave

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Thu Jul 27 19:20:31 1995
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Date: 26 Jul 1995 19:56:37 -0400
From: nick@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu (Nick Pine)
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Subject: Steve Baer on Air Loop Rock Storage Systems
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From his 1979 Cloudburst Press book, ISBN 0-88930-062-3, pp 62-66,
_Sunspots_ "An Exploration of Solar Energy Through Fact and Fiction."

Air Loop Rock Storage Systems

Much work still needs to be done on the behavior of convective air loop
rock storage systems. The way they work flies in the face of the typical air
conditioning engineer who can't believe such systems could operate without
fans.

At a solar energy conference in 1968, Farrington Daniels mentioned the letters
he had received from someone in New Mexico building solar chimneys that pushed
air through rock storage bins. He was told by an engineer in the audience that
the chimneys would have to be as tall as the Empire State Building. I was very
pleased to report on the performance of the just-completed Drop City heater
where the chimney was only 14 feet high.

More recently, Paul Davis and I were told by engineers at the Los Alamos Lab,
who had been studying fan-driven air loop rock storage systems, that
convective systems were "way down in the mud," with little to recommend them.
Paul Davis' house is heated by such a system and functions satisfactorily
with no fans. After talking to the Los Alamos group we found that they had
never actually experimented with any rocks, but instead were using only
computer simulations.

I can't help dwelling on these petty slights at the hands of the engineers,
probably because there is an element of truth in what they say. Designing
a convective air loop system is a somewhat tricky and difficult task. If
you aren't very respectful of the will of the air, the system won't work.

The collector should have a great deal of surface area through which to
transfer heat to the slow flowing air stream. We have found that multiple
layers of expanded metal lath work well for this purpose. The flow channel
within the collector should have a large cross section so that even at
slow velocities enough air moves to transport the heat. The rocks should
be arranged so that they place little resistance in the path of the air.

During experiments at Zomeworks in 1969 we were able to demonstrate that,
with a collector and storage bin at the same elevation, it is possible to
store an average of about 750 Btu/square foot/day during December weather
in Albuquerque.

It is very easy to measure collection efficiency and quantity of heat stored
in water systems: a tank of water can be mixed and its temperature measured
with one thermometer; with air and rock systems you need numerous temperature 
probes that can be placed within the rock bin...

Solar Chimney

Air heated by the sun in a sloping, glass-covered channel acts like air in
any chimney--it rises. But solar chimneys differe from other chimneys. The
heat is added to the air as it travels along the chimney rather than at
the bottom. This complicates chimney design. In a normal chimney you have
a round channel with smooth sides so the air may flow quickly to the top.
A solar chimney would like to be this same shape, but it must also collect 
sunlight and transfer the heat to the flowing air.

There are contradictions that must be balanced. You want to put surfaces
in the path of the moving air in order to transfer heat, but then you are
sorry to have to do this because the added surfaces in the flow channel
slow the air down.

The air has a limited budget of energy that it can spend circulating itself
from one place to another. It is fairly easy to calculated what this is.
The air is warmed as it rises in the solar chimney and is cooled as it
descends through a storage bin. The difference in the average absolute
temperatures on the two sides of this loop creates the pressure difference
that drives it.

The pressure drops through ventilating ducts and other resistances to
atmospheric air are normally given in inches of water. Inches of air become
the natural units for the solar chimney designer. It is very convenient
that water weighs lbs. per cubic foot and air weighs about 1/1000 this
amount (at sea level, air at 175 F weighs 0.625 lbs/ft^2; at 5,000 ft
air at 62 F weighs 0.625 lbs/cu ft.)

Example: If a solar chimney is 8 feet high,              ffffffffffffffffff
the average temperature of the air rising in             .    ===>        f
the chimney is 130 F, and the average temperature        .      f thermal f
of the air descending on the storage side is 90 F,       .      f  mass   f
then the pressure difference driving the loop is         . 130F f.........f
40/550 x 96 inches = 7 inches of air, or about           .      f         f 
0.005 inches of water. Unfortunately, engineering        .      f     fffff
tables rarely give figures for flow rates with           .      f     f
such low resistances.                                    .      f 90F f
                                                         .      f     f
Convective systems balance themselves. The chimney side  .      f     f
will continue to increase in temperature until the air   .      f     f
flow increases enough to carry away the heat from the    .      f     f
collector. If it is Self-Balancing, What's the Problem?  .    <===    f
                                                         ffffffffffffff
A poorly designed convective air loop system may have
to get so hot in order to transport heat to storage that the collector
losses become large and the whole system becomes inefficient. The problem
is how to have low resistance to air flow and also to have rapid heat
transfer from the collector to the air and from the air to the storage. 

Chimney Design

We have found that multiple layers of expanded metal lath work well as
heat exchangers in convective systems. The sunlight filters through the
layers and warms up each of them. Heat is transferred from the sunny
exposed spots in the matrix to the shaded parts, so the entire surface
transfers heat. 

Each square foot of lath (counting both sides) has about 3/4 square foot
of transfer surface. Se have successfully used 5 layers of mesh. Counting
the channel back and sides, the total transfer area to the air stream
is about 5 square feet per square foot of glass.

The U factor between the slow moving air and the mesh is probably only
about 1.5. The delta T between the mesh and the air when the solar flux
equals 240 Btu/square foot/hour is then equal to 32 degrees F.

The mesh should be placed diagonally across the            hot air 
collector so that the rising air must flow through       .   out    f
it before it leaves. The mesh can also be placed on      .        . f
repeated diagonals. I do not know which arrangement      .          f
is best.                                                 .       .  f
                                                         .          f
Design tips                                              .      .   f
                                                         .          f
1.  Make the width of the flow path at least L/15.       .     .    f
2.  Make rocks (h) 2 feet deep if small gravel (1"),     .          f
    and up to 4 feet deep if large rock (6").            .    .     f
3.  Make collector slant at least 45 degrees.            .          f
4.  Insulate storage with at least 6 inch batt.          .   .      f
5.  Make collector at least 6 feet long [tall].          .          f
6.  Keep all flow channels at least 1/15 of the          .  .     . f
    collector area.                                      .       .  f
7.  Avoid corners in flow channels.                      . .    .   f
8.  Make storage cross section at least 1/3 of           .     .    f
    collector area.                                      ..   .     f
9.  Insulate divide between down flow and up flow        .   .      f
    with at least 1 inch duct board.                     .  .       f
10. Double glaze collectors if 7,000 degree day          . .        f
    climate or more.                                     ..         f
11. Hand place rock if possible to avoid layers          .          f
    of dirt in bin.                                      .       .  f
12. Place all of storage rocks above collector,          .     .    f
    or use damper.                                       .   .      f
13. Build house above storage bin.                       . .      . f
14. Build vent flap at top of collector to open          .     .    f
    in summer to prevent overheating.                    .  .       f
15. Heat house with trap door to rock bin and duct       .          f
    to cold underneath for return air.  
                                                            cool 
(Most of these rules are probably too strict,               air in
while some of them may not be strict enough.)

Steve also mentions further work on such systems in UN Solar Energy
publications, volume 5, as well as work by Dunkel in Australia and
Scott Morris in Santa Fe, NM.

Nick

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Wed Aug 30 13:41:54 1995
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Date: 30 Aug 1995 07:11:43 GMT
From: htr@nedernet.nl (R.J. Holtrop)
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Subject: Workshop on Catalytic Combustion
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Announcement

Third International Workshop on Catalytic Combustion
23-25 September 1996
Amsterdam, the Netherlands

GASTEC, the Dutch Centre of Gas Technology, will host the 1996 International 
Workshop on Catalytic Combustion. The event is supported by the Association of 
energy distribution companies in the Netherlands (EnergieNed) and Gaz de 
France.
The workshop will be the third in the series of international workshops which 
were  held earlier in the United States (1992) and Japan (1994). It offers a 
platform for presentation and discussion of fundamental and applied research on 
production of heat by catalytic combustion of natural gas.
The main optics are:
1. Development, Performance and Stability of Catalysts
2. Development and Stability of Supporting Materials
3. Mechanisms and Modelling
4. Applications of Catalytic Combustion
The workshop is intended for university and corporate researchers, as well as 
R&D managers in the energy field.

Contact:
GASTEC NV, Rosalien Kiestra, P.O.Box 137, NL-7300 AC APELDOORN, The 
Netherlands. Tel. +31-55-494 521, Fax +31-55-418 963.
As from october 10, 1995: Tel. +31-55-5393 521, Fax +31-55-5393 494.




From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Wed Aug 30 17:11:51 1995
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Date: Wed, 30 Aug 1995 02:07:55 -0700
From: cetfers@cco.caltech.edu (Caltech Environmental Task Force)
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Subject: Re: Simple bioenergy questions
content-length: 834
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At a meeting of the American Society for Solar Energy a few years ago, I
heard about a fantastic project in Malaysia.

It seems that made export commodities for Malaysia are products made from
the coconut.  One problem with this is that coconut shells do not degrade
very easily.  Soon the "countryside" was littered with mounds of shell.

A private company came in and oversaw the construction of a biomass
gasification plant that could use the shells.

check the following web pages to get in touch with folk who've done similar work

"Solar Energy Industries Association"
   http://solstice.crest.org/renewables/seia/index.html
"American Solar Energy Society"
   http://www.engr.wisc.edu/centers/sel/ases/ases2.html
"International SES"
   http://www.ises.org/
"National Renewable Energy Labs"
   http://www.nrel.gov/

g'luck

chuk

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Fri Sep  1 12:43:09 1995
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Date: 31 Aug 1995 22:02:06 -0400
From: nick@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu (Nick Pine)
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Subject: Aluminum blackening...
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Still haven't learned how to oxidize aluminum faster.

Where are you, chemists?

Nick

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Thu Sep  7 23:46:02 1995
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From: nick@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu (Nick Pine)
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Subject: Re: Solar Energy
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As I read this discussion, it seems to me even in context, this discussion
of solar electric power ("solar energy") may be giving solar thermal power
a bad name, especially when the sweeping conclusions fail to mention the
difference. It seems to me that it would be nice to point out once in a while
that solar electricity is not the same as solar thermal power, rather than
just lumping everything under the sun into the word "solar," as in "solar
energy is not economically practical today."

Stephen Lajoie <lajoie@eskimo.com> wrote:
>Will Stewart  <will1000@ix.netcom.com> wrote:
>>>lajoie@eskimo.com (Stephen Lajoie) writes: 
>>
>>[Steve believes that use of solar energy for future energy needs of the
>>US would take up an area the size of Colorado]

"Solar energy" to me is heat energy, not electricity. We need to heat houses.
That is a present and future energy need, that is best served by small
distributed systems. In most cases, the south side of a house has more than
enough surface area to heat the house, at a solar thermal collection
efficiency of about 50%.

>Irrelevant. That is not solar power.

Solar power to me is thermal power, not electrical power.

>>>Then, when we figure the cost of solar...

The cost of solar to me is the cost of glazing and 55 gallon drums, systems
that cost 25 cents per peak watt or less, including storage and conversion. 

>>>Furthermore, the cost of the additional land, the cost of materials 
>>>needed to build the collector

Collectors to me are inexpensive thermal collectors, not electrical collectors.

>>...You seem obsessed with a centralized solar facility

You seem obsessed with electricity, not solar thermal power, but the language
you use seems to cover both, and your generalizations seem overreaching.

>>Again, you seem stuck on centralized solar as the only possible solution.

Both of you seem stuck on electrical energy, vs heat energy.

>... when the engineering guys at the utility do a study to see if the thing
>is going to be profitable, they always give it the thumbs down. Solar sells
>good vibes and karma, not practical energy alternatives.

Maybe the wrong guys are evaluating the wrong technology. If you gave
the Ford engineering guys a new Chevy to take apart, do you think they
would be objective in their assesment of the Chevy?

"Solar," as I use the word, works nicely. It is easy to use the warmth
of the sun to heat houses, and perhaps water. Making electricity may be
economically practical for more than a few people, in a hundred years.
 
>>>As far as solar goes, it's barely half a percent in the U.S. energy equation.

Are you counting clothes drying, food production, or rain production, to name
a few ways the sun helps us without our having to put it through wires? Let's
do an energy pie that includes all the ways the earth uses the sun, and see
how big a slice all other forms of energy get. Can you imagine making rain
with electrical pumps and hoses and giant sprinklers attached to high altitude
balloons? One can calculate the annual energy required to do that rainmaking
job, and the cost, if the pumps are PV powered...

>>...I will not dismiss solar from helping to meet those needs in the future.

What kind of "solar"?

Nick

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Thu Sep 14 14:48:29 1995
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To: london@sunsite.unc.edu
Date: 14 Sep 1995 02:13:27 -0400
From: nick@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu (Nick Pine)
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Subject: Some modular sheds with solar closets
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Looking for a nice Fall project? 

How about an inexpensive, 100% solar heated shed for the back yard?

Below is a test box, a 4' x 4' "house" attached to a solar closet.

                        8'
                               R14                      
         ---------------.---------------        30 F
        |               |               |
        |               |               |
        |      70 F    Vr      Tw       |
    4'  |               |               |
        |    "house"    |  solar closet |
        |               |               |
         ------Vs------- ------Vc-------
        |               |               | 4"
        |      Ts        ggggggggggggggg
        |           sunspace            | 4"
         ggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggg 

                     south


It could be built of 8 4' x 8' modular panels, each made from a 1 x 3
frame with a 4 x 8 sheet of Thermo-Ply attached to the inside face and
a 4 x 8 x 2" piece of Styrofoam cut to fit into the 1 x 3 frame. Thermo-Ply
is a 1/8" thick structural hardboard sheathing with one aluminized face
and one white face, that costs about 20 cents a square foot. It is made
by Simplex Corp at PO Box 10, Adrien, Michigan 49221 (517) 263-8881.
Such panels would have an R-value of 14. This would be a poorly-insulated
house, by today's standards. Each panel weighs 31 pounds, and can be
easily lifted by one person.
 
The sun shines in through the glazing over the air heater, which is
attached to the front of the solar closet, and a plastic film backdraft
damper Vc allows solar heated air to enter the closet and heat some 55
gallon drums full of water, when the passive air heater is warmer than
the drums. 

The glazing could be Replex ((800) 726-5151) 20 mil flat, clear,
polycarbonate plastic, which comes in rolls 48" wide x 50' long,
and costs about $1.50/ft^2.

Vr is a $12 Leslie-Locke AFV-1B automatic foundation vent, available
from Home Depot, attached to a rectangular hole at the top of the closet,
with its bimetallic spring reversed and adjusted so the louvers are
fully closed when the house is above 60 F. This will allow warm air
from the solar closet to heat the house on a cloudy day. An open slot
at the bottom of the closet serves as the return air path. 

Vs is another foundation vent, adjusted so the louvers are fully closed
at 70 F (or lower.) When the house temperature is less than 70 F, Vs will
open to allow sunspace air to warm the house. Vs has another plastic
backdraft damper in front of it so that air can only flow through Vs
from the sunspace into the house, not in the other direction. (In this
4 x 8 structure, Vs may be closed most of the time, since the heat that
leaks through the inside west wall of the solar closet will keep the
"house" warm until the closet cools to about 120 F. Perhaps that inside
wall should have more insulation, or there should be another vent from
the house to the outside, that opens whenever the house air temperature
is more than 70 F.)


Steady-state performance
------------------------

It is interesting to calculate two temperatures above: Ts is the average
sunspace temperature when the sun is shining on an average day, and Tw is
the steady-state solar closet temperature after a string of average days,
with some sun. The sunspace in this scheme overheats to act as a parasitic
or slave heater, helping the solar closet achieve a higher temperature,
while the losses from the hot glazing on the solar closet make the air
in the sunspace hotter. The sunspace air is used to heat the house on
an average day, with some sun. (This is similar to "Khanh's Radically
New Approach to Increasing the Useful Output of a Flat-Plate Collector
Panel..." as described on pages 118-125 of William Shurcliff's 1979 book
_New Inventions in Low-Cost Solar Heating_, Published by Brick House,
except that not all the "slave heat" is lost to the outside world.)

With these assumptions:

1. The average wintertime outdoor temperature is 30 F;
2. On an average winter day, the sunspace receives 1000 Btu/ft^2 of sun
   over 6 hours;
3. The average house temperature is 70 F, with no air infiltration or
   internal heat generation;
4. The water and air in the solar closet and the passive air heater all have
   the same temperature (approaching this requires careful design); and 
5. Each layer of glazing has an R-value and solar transmittance of 1,

on an average winter day, the 8' x 8' sunspace would receive

(1) Eins =  8' x 8' x 1000 Btu/ft^2 = 64K Btu,

and this would be lost to the outside world through the sides and roof of
the structure as

(2) Eouts =  6 hours (Ts - 30) 64 ft^2/R1     Sunspace, daytime
          + 18 hours (70 - 30) 32 ft^2/R14    West sunspace, nightime
          + 18 hours (Tw - 30) 32 ft^2/R14    East sunspace, nightime
          + 24 hours (Tw - 30) 80 ft^2/R14    Solar closet, daily 
          + 24 hours (70 - 30) 80 ft^2/R14    House, daily 
          --------------------------------
          = 384 Ts + 178 Tw - 9736.

On an average winter day, the solar closet would receive

(3) Einc = 4' x 8' x 1000 Btu/ft^2 = 32K Btu,

and this would be lost through the outside world and the rest of the
house as approximately

(4) Eoutc =  6 hours (Tw - Ts) 32 ft^2/R1     To the sunspace, daytime
          + 18 hours (Tw - 30) 32 ft^2/R14    To the sunspace, nightime
          + 24 hours (Tw - 30) 80 ft^2/R14    To the outside, daily
          + 24 hours (Tw - 70) 32 ft^2/R14    To the house, daily.
          --------------------------------
          = -192 Ts + 425 Tw - 9188.

Setting (1) = (2) and (3) = (4), and adding (2) to (1) twice,

128K = 1,028 Tw - 28,112, so Tw = (128K + 28,112)/1,028 = 151.8 degrees F.

Substituting Tw back into (1), 64K = 384 Ts + 17,295, so Ts = 121.6 F.

So after a string of average days with some sun, the closet will be about
30 degrees warmer than the peak daytime sunspace temperature, but it will
stay at that temperature 24 hours a day, "just coasting," vs. the low-
thermal mass sunspace, which will get icy cold every night. 

Cloudy-day performance
----------------------

On the first of several days with no sun, the structure will lose about 

(2) Ens = 24 hours (70  - 30) 32 ft^2/R14     West sunspace
        + 24 hours (152 - 30) 32 ft^2/R14     East sunspace
        + 24 hours (152 - 30) 80 ft^2/R14     Solar closet
        + 24 hours (70  - 30) 80 ft^2/R14     House
        ---------------------------------
        = 31,103 Btu.

If a 4' x 4' x 8' solar closet contains 8 55 gallon drums full of water,
along with some cement blocks and plastic soda bottles, it might have a
thermal mass of 4647 Btu/F (see below) so on the first day with no sun,
the water temperature would decrease by about Ens/C = 6.5 degrees F. If
the closet lost heat at this rate every day until it reached a minimum 
usable temperature of say, 80 F, (as the closet cools down, it actually
loses heat more slowly), it could provide useful heat for the "house"
for at least (152-80)/6.5 = 11 days in a row with no sun. Taking account
of the fact that the closet cools more slowly as time goes on, it should
provide heat for about 14 days without sun. Adding an extra layer of
2" Styrofoam to make all sides of the closet to make it an R24 box,
should extend the time it takes to cool to 80 F, while keeping the
"house" warm, to about 26 days:

10 '4' x 8' solar closet carryover
20 '        find steady-state closet temp
30 EINS=64000!'sunspace solar gain (Btu/day)
40 EINC=32000'closet solar gain (Btu/day)
50 CWS=18*32/24+24*80/24'sunspace Tw factor
60 CWC=6*32/1+18*32/24+24*80/24+24*32/24'closet Tw factor
70 CS=6*30*64/1+18*30*32/24+24*30*80/24'sunspace constant
80 CS=CS-18*(70-30)*32/14-24*(70-30)*80/14'more sunspace constant
90 CC=18*30*32/24+24*30*80/24+24*70*32/24'closet constant
100 TW=(EINS+2*EINC+CS+2*CC)/(CWS+2*CWC)'initial solar closet temperature
140 C=4647'thermal mass of solar closet (Btu/F)
150 CLOSS=24*(70-30)*32/14'constant daily west sunspace heat loss (Btu)
160 CLOSS=CLOSS+24*(70-30)*80/14'constant daily house heat loss (Btu)
163 PRINT "         Temp at"
165 PRINT "Day      end of day"
170 FOR D=2 TO 30 STEP 2'calc closet temp for 30 days without sun
180 TLOSS=24*(TW-30)*(32+80)/24'solar closet daily heat loss
190 HEATLOSS = CLOSS+TLOSS
200 TW=TW-2*HEATLOSS/C'new solar closet temperature
210 PRINT D,INT(TW+.5)
220 NEXT D

RUN

        Temp (F) at
Day     end of day

 2      181
 4      171
 6      161
 8      151
 10     142
 12     133
 14     125
 16     117
 18     109
 20     102
 22     96
 24     89
 26     83
 28     77
 30     72


Larger sheds
------------

Each R14 4 x 8 panel loses about 2,200 Btu/day to the outside, which is
approximately the amount of heat one can collect from 3 ft^2 of sunspace
under the above conditions, approximating Philadelphia area weather in
December, so a larger shed, with N panels exposed to the outside air,
should have about N/10 panels with sunspace glazing, as a rule of thumb.
The 22,000 Btu/day needs to be collected over 6 hours, ie 3600 Btu/hour.
With 100 F air and a 70 F room, this requires an airflow rate of about
120 cfm, or an opening with area Av at the top and bottom of each 4 x 8
panel such that 120 cfm = 16.6 Av sqrt(8'(100-30)) (see appendix), ie
Av = 0.47 ft^2, so one 8" x 16" foundation vent per panel (0.89 ft^2)
may work.

Each panel loses about 12K Btu in 5 days, about the same as the heat
stored in half a 55 gallon drum full of water at 130 F, or 1/20 of a
4' x 4' x 8' solar closet module. So as another rule of thumb, for every
20 exterior panels used in the shed, one should include 1 4' x 4' solar
closet space, 8' high. On a cold winter night when it's -10 F outside,
the solar closet needs to provide about 3600 Btu/hour, to keep the shed
at 70 F, which it might do with an internal temperature of 100 F, with
one foundation vent, as above, or at 80 F with 3 foundation vents.

Below are some possible sheds, and their approximate characteristics: 

10 'Modular solar closet compiler (MSCC)
20 PA=4*8'panel area (ft^2)
30 RP=14'R-value of panel
40 TIN=70'temperature inside shed (F)
50 TA=30'temperature outside shed (F)
60 SUN=1000'sun shining on south wall on an average 6-hour day (Btu/ft^2)
70 DPL=24*(TIN-TA)*PA/RP'daily heat loss from one panel
80 DPG=SUN*PA-6*PA*(TIN-TA)'average daily solar gain for a glazed panel
90 PRINT "1000'"
100 PRINT"Daily panel loss (Btu):        "; INT(DPL+.5)
110 PRINT"Daily glazed panel gain (Btu):"; INT(DPG+.5)
120 PRINT"
130 PRINT"                             matl  SS    Closet  percent  min # days"
140 PRINT" Size     NP  NRP  NGP  NSC  Cost  temp  temp    floorsp  carryover"
150 PRINT"
160 FOR W=20 TO 32 STEP 4'width of shed
170 FOR L=W TO W+8 STEP 4'length of shed
175 N=N+1
180 NPP = 2*(L/4+W/4)'number of perimeter panels
190 NPPC=6+3+16+6'cost of perimeter panel, including battens
200 NRP=INT(L*W/32+.5)'number of roof panels
210 NP =INT(NPP+NRP+.5)'total number of exterior panels
220 NGP=INT(NP/10)+1'number of sunspace panels required
230 NSC=INT(NP/20)+1'number of 4' x 4' x 8' solar closet modules
240 TCOST=INT(NP*NPPC+NRP*.28*32+NGP*32+NSC*32+.5)'materials cost
250 EINT=SUN*PA*NGP'solar heat received by glazed panels
260 EOUTF=18*(TIN-TA)*NGP*PA/RP+24*(TIN-TA)*PA*(NP-NGP)/RP-6*30*NGP*PA
270 TS=INT((EINT-EOUTF)/(6*NGP*PA)+.5)'average daytime sunspace temp
280 EINS=SUN*PA*NSC'sun falling on solar closet
290 EDEN=6*NSC*PA+18*NSC*PA/RP+24*NSC*48/RP+24*(NSC+1)*PA/RP
300 EOUTF=NSC*(6*TS*PA+18*TA*PA/RP+24*TA*PA/RP+24*TIN*(NSC+1)*PA/RP)
310 TC=INT((EINS+EOUTF)/EDEN+.5)'steady-state solar closet temperature
320 ENS=24*(TIN-TA)*NP*PA/RP'energy lost during a day without sun
330 EST=NSC*4647*(TC-80)'useful energy stored in solar closet
340 CAR=INT(EST/ENS+.5)'number of days without sun supported
350 PCT =INT(100*NSC*16/(L*W)+.5)
360 PRINT W;"X";L;TAB(17);NP;TAB(21);NRP;TAB(26);NGP;TAB(31);NSC;TAB(36);TCOST;
370 PRINT TAB(42);TS;TAB(48);TC;TAB(56);PCT;TAB(65);CAR
380 NEXT L
390 NEXT W
400 PRINT

RUN

Daily panel loss (Btu):         2,194
Daily glazed panel gain (Btu): 24,320

                             matl  SS    Closet  percent  min # days
 Size     NP  NRP  NGP  NSC  Cost  temp  temp    floorsp  carryover

 8 X 8'   10  2    2    1    424   142   164     25       18
 8 X 12   13  3    2    1    526   125   157     17       13
 8 X 16   16  4    2    1    628   108   149     13       9
 12 X 12  17  5    2    1    668   102   146     11       8
 12 X 16  20  6    3    2    834   123   176     17       20
 12 X 20  24  8    3    2    976   108   169     13       16
 16 X 16  24  8    3    2    976   108   169     13       16
 16 X 20  28  10   3    2    1118  93    162     10       12
 16 X 24  32  12   4    2    1292  108   169     8        12
 20 X 20  33  13   4    2    1331  105   167     8        11
 20 X 24  37  15   4    2    1473  94    162     7        9
 20 X 28  42  18   5    3    1719  104   181     9        15
 24 X 24  42  18   5    3    1719  104   181     8        15
 24 X 28  47  21   5    3    1901  92    175     7        13
 24 X 32  52  24   6    3    2115  100   179     6        12
 28 X 28  53  25   6    3    2155  99    178     6        12
 28 X 32  58  28   6    3    2337  89    173     5        10
 28 X 36  64  32   7    4    2623  95    188     6        14
 32 X 32  64  32   7    4    2623  95    188     6        14
 32 X 36  70  36   8    4    2877  100   191     6        13
 32 X 40  76  40   8    4    3098  91    186     5        12


Some sketches of larger sheds
-----------------------------

                        12'
              -------.-------.-------           30 F
             |                       |
             |                       |
             |                   4'  |
          8' .         70 F   ---Vr--.
             |               |       |    
             |             4'| 157 F |
             |               |       |
              -------.--Vs---.---Vc--
                     |       |       | 4"
                     | 125 F  ggggggg
                     |               | 4"
                      ggggggggggggggg

                       
                            24'
      -------.-------.-------.-------.-------.-------         30 F
     |                                               |
     |                                               |
     |                                               |
     .                                               .
     |                                               |
     |                                               |
     |                                               |
  16'.                      70 F                     .
     |                                               |
     |                                       8'      |
     |                                               |
     .                                ---Vr--.---Vr--.
     |                               |               |
     |                             4'|     169 F     |
     |                               |               |
      -------.-------.---Vs--.---Vs--.---Vc--.---Vc--
                     |               |       |       | 4" 
                     |      108 F     ggggggg ggggggg
                     |                               | 4"
                      ggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggg


                   28'
      ---.---.---.---.---.---.---         30 F
     |                           |
     .                           .
     |                           |
     .                           .
     |                           |
  24'.            70 F           .
     |                           |
     .                           .
     |                    12'    |
     .               .-Vr.-Vr.-Vr.
     |             4'|   175 F   |
      ---.---.-Vs.-Vs.-Vc.-Vc.-Vc
             |       |   |   |   | 4"
             |  92 F  ggg ggg ggg
             |                   | 4"
              ggggggggggggggggggg


                            36'
      ---.---.---.---.---.---.---.---.---.---.---.---       30 F
     |                                               |
     .                                               .
     |                                               |
     .                                               .
     |                                               |
     .                                               .
  28'|                       70 F                    |
     .                                               .
     |                                               |
     .                                               .
     |                                      16'      |
     .                                -Vr.-Vr.-Vr.-Vr.
     |                             4'|      188 F    |  
      ---.---.---.---.---.-Vs.-Vs.-Vs.-Vc.-Vc.-Vc.-Vc
                         |           |   |   |   |   | 4"
                         |   95 F     ggg ggg ggg ggg
                         |                           | 4"
                          ggggggggggggggggggggggggggg


Air heater performance
----------------------

Below is a small theoretical air heater exploration...

10 'Some simplified solar air heater calculations, with radiant heat loss.
20 '     (in a linear model, the collector heat loss only depends on the
30 '     air temperatures, not on the collector plate area...)
40 '
50 'Assumptions: uniform air and plate temperatures inside collector
60 '             shadecloth has 2 ft^2 heat xfr area/ft^2 surface area
70 '             rough plate surfaces, smooth glazing surfaces
80 '             all absorptivities and emissivities = 1
90 '             shortwave glass transmission = 1
100 '            longwave glass transmission = 0
110 '            no back or edge losses
120 '
130 ' Model:                             large air gap
140 '                                  /
150 '      |             shadecloth  /    |   outside air
160 '      |<-absorber plate->|           |   temp at Ta = 80 F
170 '      | with area        |           |   moving at 0 mph
180 '      | Ap (ft^2) and    |           |
190 '      | temp Tp (R)      |           |   <--Io = 147 Btu/hr/ft^2 lw rad
200 '      |                  |           |           from 80 F surround 
210 '      | Tp               | Tp        | Tg
220 '      |                  |<----------|------Is= 300 Btu/hr sw rad 
230 '      |          ^       |           |              from sun
240 '      |          |       |           |   Ugo
250 '      | airspeed V       |           |---www--- Ta (R)
260 '      |                  |           |
270 '      |      air temp    |           |   1 ft^2 glazing
280 '      |       Tc (R)     |           |   with temp Tg (R)
290 '      |  Up     |        |      Ugi  |
300 '      |--www-------------|------www--|
310 '      |                  |           |
320 '      | Ir-->            |     <--Ig | Ig--> lw heat radiated 
330 '      |  lw heat         |           |          from glazing
340 '         radiated by
350 '         plate to glazing
360 '
370 'at equilibrium,
380 '  (1) Is - Ir + Ig - (Tp-Tc)UpAp = 0, for the plate surface, and
390 '  (2) Io + Ir - 2Ig - (Tg-Tc)Ugi - (Tg-Ta)Ugo = 0, for the glazing
400 '
410 B=1.74E-09'Boltzman's constant
420 IS = 300'Btu/ft^2/hour peak sun input
430 UGI = 3/2'U-value of glazing to slow-moving inside air
440 UGO = 3/2+0/5'U-value of glazing to fast-moving outside air
450 TA = 460 + 80'outside air temperature (R)
460 IO = B*TA^4'rad from outside world to glazing
470 FOR AP = 1 TO 5 STEP 2'collector plate area (ft^2)
480 PRINT INT(AP/2);"shadecloth layers"
490 FOR V=0 TO 4 STEP 2'air velocity in mph
500 UP = 2 + V/2'U-value of surfaces exposed to air
510 FOR TCC=80 TO 140 STEP 20'solar closet air temp (F)
520 TC=460+TCC'solar closet air temp (R)
530 TP = 600'initial guess at Tp (R)
540 TG = 500'initial guess at Tg (R)
550 IG = B*TG^4'heat radiated by glazing in each direction
560 TPL=TP'overall last Tp
570 GOSUB 700'determine new Tp
580 TGL=TG'overall last Tg
590 GOSUB 750'determine new Tg
600 IF ABS(TP-TPL)>1 OR ABS(TG-TGL)>1 THEN GOTO 560
610 EFF = 100*((TP-TC)*UP*AP+(TG-TC)*UGI)/IS'solar collection efficiency
620 PRINT TAB(2);"V = ";V;"  ";"Tc =";TCC;TAB(22);"Tp =";INT(TP-459.5);
630 PRINT TAB(33);"Tg =";INT(TG-459.5);TAB(44);"EFF =";INT(EFF+.5);"%"
640 NEXT TCC
650 PRINT 
660 NEXT V
670 IF V < 4 THEN PRINT #1
680 NEXT AP
690 END
700 IR = B*TP^4'heat radiated by absorber plate to glazing
710 TPH = TC + (IS-IR+IG)/(UP*AP)'solving (1) for Tp
720 TP = TP + .1*(TPH-TP)'adjust Tp
730 IF ABS(TP-TPH)>1 GOTO 700' stop when Tp converges to 1 degree F
740 RETURN
750 IG = B*TG^4'heat radiated by glazing in each direction
760 TGH = (IO+IR-2*IG+TC*UGI+TA*UGO)/(UGI+UGO)'solving (2) for Tg
770 TG = TG + .1*(TGH-TG)'adjust Tg
780 IF ABS(TG-TGH)>1 THEN GOTO 750'stop when Tg converges to 1 degree F
790 RETURN

RUN

 0 shadecloth layers

 V =  0   Tc = 80    Tp = 176   Tg = 105   EFF = 76 % |
 V =  0   Tc = 100   Tp = 189   Tg = 115   EFF = 67 % |  No fan...
 V =  0   Tc = 120   Tp = 203   Tg = 125   EFF = 58 % |
 V =  0   Tc = 140   Tp = 216   Tg = 135   EFF = 48 % |
 
 V =  2   Tc = 80    Tp = 153   Tg = 98    EFF = 82 %
 V =  2   Tc = 100   Tp = 169   Tg = 108   EFF = 73 %
 V =  2   Tc = 120   Tp = 184   Tg = 118   EFF = 63 %
 V =  2   Tc = 140   Tp = 199   Tg = 129   EFF = 54 %
 
 V =  4   Tc = 80    Tp = 139   Tg = 94    EFF = 86 %
 V =  4   Tc = 100   Tp = 156   Tg = 104   EFF = 76 %
 V =  4   Tc = 120   Tp = 172   Tg = 115   EFF = 67 %
 V =  4   Tc = 140   Tp = 188   Tg = 125   EFF = 57 %
 
It looks to me that a fan might increase the efficiency of an air
heater with no mesh absorber, ie a box with a black surface inside,
with air flowing between the glazing and the surface, by a few percent
(48-->57% at 140 F), but when you add a mesh absorber, with air flowing
through the absorber, the fan only seems to help by 2 or 3%:

 1 shadecloth layers

 V =  0   Tc = 80    Tp = 122   Tg = 89    EFF = 89 % <--
 V =  0   Tc = 100   Tp = 140   Tg = 100   EFF = 80 %    |
 V =  0   Tc = 120   Tp = 157   Tg = 110   EFF = 70 %    |
 V =  0   Tc = 140   Tp = 175   Tg = 121   EFF = 60 % <--|-- the fan
                                                         |   doesn't 
 V =  2   Tc = 80    Tp = 109   Tg = 86    EFF = 91 %    |   help 
 V =  2   Tc = 100   Tp = 128   Tg = 97    EFF = 82 %    |   much
 V =  2   Tc = 120   Tp = 146   Tg = 107   EFF = 72 %    |   here
 V =  2   Tc = 140   Tp = 164   Tg = 118   EFF = 62 %    |   |
                                                         |   | 
 V =  4   Tc = 80    Tp = 102   Tg = 85    EFF = 92 %    |   |
 V =  4   Tc = 100   Tp = 121   Tg = 95    EFF = 83 %    |   |
 V =  4   Tc = 120   Tp = 140   Tg = 105   EFF = 73 %    |   |
 V =  4   Tc = 140   Tp = 159   Tg = 116   EFF = 63 % <--|---
                                                         |
                                                         |
 2 shadecloth layers                                     |
                                                         |
 V =  0   Tc = 80    Tp = 107   Tg = 86    EFF = 91 % <-----additional
 V =  0   Tc = 100   Tp = 125   Tg = 96    EFF = 82 %       layers of  
 V =  0   Tc = 120   Tp = 144   Tg = 106   EFF = 72 %       mesh don't
 V =  0   Tc = 140   Tp = 162   Tg = 117   EFF = 62 %       seem to 
                                                            help much 
 V =  2   Tc = 80    Tp = 98    Tg = 83    EFF = 91 %       either
 V =  2   Tc = 100   Tp = 117   Tg = 94    EFF = 83 %
 V =  2   Tc = 120   Tp = 136   Tg = 104   EFF = 73 %
 V =  2   Tc = 140   Tp = 155   Tg = 115   EFF = 63 %
 
 V =  4   Tc = 80    Tp = 93    Tg = 83    EFF = 91 %
 V =  4   Tc = 100   Tp = 113   Tg = 93    EFF = 81 %
 V =  4   Tc = 120   Tp = 132   Tg = 103   EFF = 73 %
 V =  4   Tc = 140   Tp = 151   Tg = 114   EFF = 62 %
 

How long will it take a solar closet to charge up?
--------------------------------------------------

If it is fully discharged to a minimum usable temperature of 80 F, it looks
like a solar closet will take about 20 days to charge back up to 130 F:

10 'solar closet simulation, with natural convection
20 C=4647'thermal mass of solar closet (Btu/F)
30 TA=70'ambient temp of closet surroundings (F)
40 SUN=32*1000/6'solar input (Btu/hr)
50 TW=80'initial water temp (F)
60 Q=300'initial assumption for airflow (cfm)
70 SAR=(32*3+16)/14'back loss factor
80 PRINT"Day  Tw   airflow  Tmax   Tmin"
90 FOR DAY=1 TO 20
100 BOXLOSS=(TW-TA)*SAR*24+(TW-30)*32/14*18'daily heat loss from solar closet
110 HTRLOSS=(TW+DT/2-TA)*32/1'air heater loss (Btu/hr)
120 DT=(SUN-HTRLOSS)/Q'delta T from solar input
130 QL=Q'last estimate of Q
140 Q=94*SQR(DT)'new estimate of Q
150 IF ABS(QL-Q)/Q>.01 GOTO 110'iterate until < 1% change
160 NTU=539*1.5/Q'heat exchange xfr units per p. 3-4 of 1993 ASHRAE HOF
170 EFF=1-EXP(-NTU)'heat exchanger effectiveness
180 TMAX=TW+DT/EFF'max air temp entering closet
190 TMIN=TMAX-EFF*(TMAX-TW)'min air temp leaving closet
200 DTG=TMAX-TMIN'delta T of air through closet
210 SGAIN=6*Q*DTG'daily solar gain
230 PRINT DAY;TAB(12);INT(TW+.5);TAB(17);INT(Q+.5);
232 PRINT TAB(26);INT(TMAX+.5);TAB(33);INT(TMIN+.5)
235 TW=TW+(SGAIN-BOXLOSS)/C'new water temp (F)
240 NEXT DAY

Day  Tw   airflow  Tmax   Tmin

 1   80   349      95     82
 2   85   344      100    87
 3   90   342      105    92
 4   95   336      109    96
 5   99   335      113    100
 6   102  332      116    104
 7   106  327      119    107
 8   109  324      122    110
 9   111  322      124    112
 10  114  320      126    115
 11  116  318      129    117
 12  118  317      130    119
 13  120  315      132    121
 14  122  313      134    123
 15  123  312      135    124
 16  125  311      136    126
 17  126  310      138    127
 18  127  308      139    128
 19  128  307      140    129
 20  129  307      141    130

Will this make the shed 100% solar heated? I don't know. A simulation
with hourly weather data over a few years would answer this question.


One way to build an R14 4 x 8 panel
-----------------------------------

The panels might look like this:     1   Styrofoam  1             
                                     x ------------ x
 s are 1/2" x 2" foam strip spacers  3s      s     s3
                                     ---Thermo-Ply---
                                       (white side)

Find a 4' x 8' flat surface to work on.

Cut 2 46.5" pieces off of a 1 x 3, and combine them with 2 8' 1 x 3s to make
a 4 x 8' frame of 1 x3s joined along the 2.5" edges, with 2 2 1/2" drywall
screws and some adhesive in each corner. 

Put a bead of adhesive along the .75" top edge of the 1 x 3 frame, and
place the Thermo-Ply on top of the frame, white side up, aluminized side down.

Screw on the Thermo-Ply with 1 drywall screw every 16" around the frame.

Make and stack up some more frames on top of this one.

Allow the adhesive to dry.

Cut a 1 1/2" strip off the short edge of the Styrofoam.

Cut 3 strips off long edge of Styrofoam, each 94.5" x 2" x .5".

Glue 2 of the 94.5" strips flat, along the long edges of the printed
side of the piece of Styrofoam.

Cut 2 44" pieces off the other 94.5" strip.

Glue the 44" strips flat along the short edges of the piece of Styrofoam.

Glue the small remainder of the last 94.5" strip onto the middle
of the Styrofoam.

Place the large piece of Styrofoam into a 1 x 3 frame, with the
spacers against the Thermo-Ply.

After assembly, the Thermo-Ply will be on the inside of the shed and the
Styrofoam will be on the outside. 


Glazed panel construction
-------------------------

Front panels for solar closets may be made as above, substituting 1 x 10s
for the 1 x 3s, and adding a diagonal layer of 80% black greenhouse
shadecloth a few inches south of the Styrofoam, and a layer of flat
polycarbonate glazing 9.25" in front of the Thermo-Ply sheet, as
sketched below.

Glazed sunspace panels may be conveniently made with a layer of flat
polycarbonate glazing attached to a 1 x 3 frame with some 1/16" thick
x 3/4" or 1 1/2" wide x 96" aluminum batten strips, with no foam or other
sheathing on the frame. The sunspace panels would sit on an extension of
the 2 x 4 foundation boards, about 16" from the front of the solar closet
panels, and they could be covered and supported on the tops and sides
by a 16" strip of plywood or exterior flakeboard, as shown below. The
EPDM rubber roof should cover the top of the plywood.


                          4'                    4'
--------------|1|1|----------------|1|1|-------------------|1|p| -- 0"
    foam      |x|x|      foam      |x|x|       foam        |x|l|
--------------|3|3|----------------|3|1|-------------------|1|y| -- 2.5"
              |p|1x3|    1 x 3       |0|       1 x 3       |0|w|
              |l| |                  | |                   | |o|
              |y|1|    shadecloth    | |     shadecloth    | |o|
              |w|x|                  | |                   | |d|
              |o|3|                  | |                   | | |
              |o|--------------------| |-------------------| | | -- 6.75"
              |d|        1 x 3       | |       1 x 3       | | |
              | |--------------------| |---------------------| | -- 9.25"
              | |     no glazing     ---      glazing     ---| |
              | |                     Al                   Al| |
              | |                                            | |
              | |                                            | |
              | |                                            | |
              | |1|----------------|1|1|-------------------|1| | -- 13.5"
              | |x|                |x|x|                   |x| |
              | |3|----------------|3|3|-------------------|3| | -- 16"
              -----     glazing    -----      glazing      -----
                Al                   Al                      Al


It would look something like this from the west side:

        0"     2.5"       6.75"  9.25"         13.5"      16"
        |       |          |       |              |       |
     
         -------------------------------------------------   
        |                p l y w o o d                    |
         -------------------------------------------------
        | 1 x 3 |         .| 1 x 3 |              | 1 x 3 |
        |-------|          |-------|              |-------|
        .       .          |       |              |       |
        .   1   .          |   1   | s            |   1   | s
     Vc .   x   . 8"       |   x   | o            |   x   | u
        .   3   .        . |   3   | l            |   3   | n
        . ----- .          |       | a            |       | s
        |       |          |       | r            |       | p
        |   f   |     s    |       |              |       | a
        |   o   |     h    |       | c            |       | c
        |   a   |     a .  |       | l            |       | e
       T|   m   |     d    |       | o            |       |  
       h|       |     e    |       | s            |       | g
       e|       |     c    |       | e            |       | l   |
       r|       |     l    |       | t            |       | a   
       m|       |     o.   |       |              |       | z   8'
       o|       |     t    |       | g            |       | i
       -|       |     h    |       | l            |       | n   |
       P|       |          |       | a            |       | g
       l|       |          |       | z            |       |  
       y|       |     .    |       | i            |       |  south-->
        |       |          |       | n            |       |
        |       |          |       | g            |       |
	|       |          |       |              |       |

	|       |          |       |              |       |
	|   f   |          |       |              |       |
	|   o   |1|.       |       |              |       |
	|   a   |x|.       |       |              |       |
	|   m   |3|.       |       |              |       |
        |------ |.         |       |              |       |
        .       .          |       |              |       |
	.       .          |       |              |       |
      8".       .Vc        |       |              |       |
	.       .          |       |              |       |
	.       .          |       |              |       |
        |-------|          |-------|              |-------|
	| 1 x 3 |          | 1 x 3 |              | 1 x 3 |
	 -------------------------------------------------
        |                 p l y w o o d                   |
-------- -------------------------------------------------
                      pressure-treated 2 x 4              |
----------------------------------------------------------
                      pressure-treated 2 x 4              |
-------------------------------------------------------------------------


Solar closet construction
-------------------------

It is important that the thermal mass in the solar closet be large and
thermally conductive, and have a large surface area compared to the glazed
area of the closet, so that the sun-warmed air is not much warmer than the
thermal mass. It is also important that the airflow path through the thermal
mass have a large cross section, at least, say, 5% of the glazed area of
the closet, so that air flows freely and with a large volume through the
closet by natural convection. Section A of the diagram below shows an open
area for vertical airflow, Av, of approximately

Av = 4'x 4' - 4 pi (23"/2')^2/144 - 25 pi ((4.25"/2)^2)/144 = 2 ft^2,

which is about 6% of the glazed area of the closet.

The diagram below shows several kinds of water containers and materials
with various sizes in inches, weights in pounds, thermal masses in Btu/F 
and surface areas in ft^2.

                appr           approx     spec  ther   surf 
Container       size      #    weight     heat  mass   area  location

55 gal drum     23 D      8    450        1     3,600  200   D
  (plastic)     x 35 H

2 liter bottle  4.25 D  150      4.2      1       630  136   B, around drums
  (plastic)     x 12 H   36                       151   33      on top

Blocks          8 x 8    24     30        0.16    115  120   C
  (cement)      x 16

1 liter bottle  3 D      72      2.1      1       151   50   b
                x 11 H                            --------

                                          Totals 4647  539   

                            4'
      ----------|-----------|-----------|---------- --96"
     |                                             | 
     |                                             |
     |                                             |
   A-|     -     -     -     -    -    -    -    - |---cross section A
     |  B  B  B    B  B  B     B  B  B    B  B  B  |
     -------------------------------------------------86" 
     |                     | |                     |
     |                     | |                     |
     |                     | |                     |
     |                     | |                     |
     |                     | |                     |
     -                     | |                     -
     |                     | |                     |
     |                     | |                     |
     |           D         | |         D           |
     |                     | |                     |
     |                     | |                     |
     -                     | |                     -
     |                     | |                     |
     |                     | |                     |
     |                     | |                     |
     |                     | |                     |
     |                     | |                     |
  8' =---------------------------------------------=--51"
     | C             | C           | C             |
     |               |             |               |
     |   b   b   b   |  b   b   b  |   b   b   b   |
     |---------------------------------------------|--43"
     |                     | |                     |
     -                     | |                     -
     |                     | |                     |
     |                     | |                     |
     |                     | |                     |
     |                     | |                     |
     |                     | |                     |
     -           D         | |         D           -
     |                     | |                     |
     |                     | |                     |
   B-|   -    -    -    -  | |   -    -     -    - |---cross section B
     |                     | |                     |
     |                     | |                     |
     -                     | |                     -
     |                     | |                     |
     |---------------------------------------------|--8"
     | C             | C           | C             |
   C-|               |             |               |---cross section C
     |   b   b   b   |  b   b   b  |   b   b   b   |
      -----------|----------|----------|----------- --0"
  |   |            |   |         |   |            |   |
   ---              ---           ---              ---

    ^--- 2 pressure-treated 2 x 4s laid flat on ground 


Cross section A, showing the top of the solar closet, with 4 vertical
drums supporting 36 horizontal 2 liter bottles, with an optional fan
blowing room air in at the top of the closet, so that warmer air will
flow out of the bottom of the closet:

      -----------|----------|----------|-----------
     |         . . .  |   (fan?)  |  . . .         |
     |    .            -----------            .    |
     |  .                .     .                .  |  
     | .B  B  B    B  B  B.   .B  B  B   B  B  B . |     
     |.                    . .                    .|  
     -.          D         . .         D          .-
     |.                    . .                    .|
     | .B  B  B    B  B  B.   .B  B  B   B  B  B . |
     |  .                .     .                .  |
     |    .            .          .           .    |
     |         . . .                 . . .         |
     -                                             -
     |         . . .                 . . .         |
     |    .            .         .            .    |
     |  .                .     .                .  |
     | .B  B  B    B  B  B.   .B  B  B   B  B  B . |
     |.                    . .                    .|
     -.          D         . .         D          .-
     |.                    . .                    .|
     | .                  .   .                  . |
     |  .                .      .               .  |
     |    .           .            .         .     |
     |     p l a s t i c  f i l m  d a m p e r     |
      ----------|-----------|-----------|----------


  Cross section B, showing 4 drums and 25 vertical 2 liter bottles
  surrounding the drums:

      -----------|----------|----------|-----------
     | B       . . .       B B       . . .        B|
     |    .            .    B    .            .    |
     |  .                .     .                .  |  
     | .                  .   .                  . |     
     |.                    . .                    .|  
     -.          D         . .         D          .-
     |.                    . .                    .|
     | .                  .   .                  . |
     |  .                .     .                .  |
     |     .           .    B     .          .     |
     | B       . . .       B B       . . .       B |
     -  B                 B B B                B   -
     | B       . . .       B B       . . .       B |
     |    .            .    B     .           .    |
     |  .                .     .                .  |
     | .                  .   .                  . |
     |.                    . .                    .|
     -.          D         . .         D          .-
     |.                    . .                    .|
     | .                  .   .                  . |
     |  .                .      .               .  |
     |    .           .     B      .         .     |
     |B       . . .        B B        . . .       B|
      ----------|-----------|-----------|----------


Cross section C, showing the lower part of the solar closet with an optional
charging fan and 12 blocks supporting 4 drums (36 1 liter soda bottles, not
shown, are lined up with the 3 north-south-running holes of each block):

     (plastic film damper, if a discharge fan is used) 
      -----------|----------|----------|-----------
     |---------------------------------------------|--46"
     | C  .          | C         . | C        .    |
     |  .            |   .     .   |            .  |  
     | .             |    .   .    |             . |     
     |---------------------------------------------|--38"  
     ------------D---------------------D--------------36"
     |.C             | C   . .     | C            .|
     | .             |    .   .    |             . |
     |  .            |   .     .   |            .  |
     |---------------------------------------------|--28"
     |         . . . |             | . . .         |
     -               |             |               -
     |         . . . |             | . . .         |
     |---------------------------------------------|--22"
     | C.            | C .     .   | C          .  |
     | .             |    .   .                  . |
     |---------------------------------------------|--14"
     ------------D---------------------D--------------12"
     |.C             | C   . .     | C            .|
     | .             |    .   .    |             . i
     |---------------------------------------------|--4"
     |    .            -----------            .    |
     |        . . .   |   (fan?)  |   . . .        |
      ----------|-----------|-----------|----------
          p l a s t i c  f i l m  d a m p e r 

This closet has 539 ft^2 of thermal mass surface area exposed to solar
heated air, ie about 17 square feet of thermal mass per square foot of
glazing. So if the passive air heater were 100% efficient, and the solar
closet were collecting 100% of the 300 Btu/ft^2/hour of energy falling
on it in peak sunlight, the air in the closet might be 300/17 = 18 F
warmer than the thermal mass. The drums used are made of plastic, with flat
bottoms, so they can conduct heat away from the cement blocks, which
act as fins for the drums. The vertical plastic bottles will be a tight
fit, so they will be in thermal contact with the drums as well.


Assembling sheds
----------------

Put two layers of pressure-treated 2 x 4s flat on the ground, to make an
8' x 12' frame, on top of some level crushed stone.

Place a 2 x 4 under the bottom edge of each panel, with the 4' outside
edge of the panel resting along the outside edge of the 2 x 4, and attach
the 2 x 4s to the 1 x 3 bottom of each frame with a drywall screw every
12". Tilt up the frames onto the layer of 2 x 4s on the ground, and screw
the top layer of 2 x 4's to the bottom layer, on the inside of the shed.
When this is done, the inside of the shed should have an 1" lip of 2 x 4
showing on the ground.

To join two frames along a wall, attach the vertical edges of the frames
with a 1 x 3 battens on the inside and the outside of each frame, using a
drywall screw every 16":

        1 x 3            1 x 3       corner detail  1 x 3
         1 1 - Styrofoam- 1 1                -Styrofoam-1
         x x              x x                           x        
	 3 3s      s     s3 3                Thermo-Ply-3 1 x 3 1
       ---.---Thermo-Ply---.--                            1 x 3 x
        1 x 3            1 x 3                            |   | 3
                                                         
Cut one 8' pressure treated 2 x 4 into several pieces.

Lay two pieces flat on the ground diagonally inside the SW, NE and NW corners
of the shed, and put a 55 gallon drum on top of the two pieces, with the
outside edges of the drum resting on the inside edges of the two 2 x 4s
under the corner panels. Fill the drums with water and cap them.


Roof details
------------

If the shed is constructed to have a interior dimensions that are
exact multiples of 4' and 8', and the roof panels are 4' x 8', the
roof panels should rest on top of the 1 x 3 horizontal battens on the
inside top edge of the wall panels (which would be screwed on edgewise
to the roof, as in the above corner detail.) The walls would extend
out 2 1/2" from the roof on every side, and the outside wall battens
would extend another 3/4". A large single piece of EPDM rubber would
overlap this joint where the walls meet the roof, and it would be
attached to the walls 3 1/4" below the top of the roof:

Place more panels on the roof, and cover the roof with a large single
piece of EPDM rubber roofing material (which costs about 30 cents/ft^2
and comes in rolls 20' wide.) Put some old tires on top of the rubber
to keep it in place and reduce summer heat gain and lend an attractive
"alternate energy" look to the shed. 

Tack the edge of the roof rubber over the 1 x 3 horizontal battens on
the outside of the wall panels. 

Paint all the exposed battens and Styrofoam with latex paint. Steve
Baer says that latex-painted foam will last practically forever outside.


Appendix
--------

Thermo-Ply is hard to find. It is strong and inexpensive, and made from
100% recycled fibers, but it also shrinks and delaminates unhappily if it
gets wet or hot, or both. One might also use thin plywood or flakeboard
for the 4 x 8 panels, with 3" vs 2" Styrofoam, or Thermo-Ply with two
polyethylene faces instead of the poly/foil-faced kind which is harder
to find. To this one might add a layer of 4' wide, double-sided "builder's
foil" such as the "Super R Radiant Barrier" (ES302--48" x 125' for $125)
sold by Jade Mountain at (800) 449-6601 or Innovative Insulation at
(800) 825-0123. With a 1/2" spacer in the center of the panel, between
the plywood and the foil, and a 1/2" spacer strip around the edge of the
panel, between the foil and the foam, a plywood/foil/foam panel should
have an R-value of about 16. One could also use thicker foam and wider
panels to get more insulation value.

Houses with better insulation require fewer sunspace and solar closet
modules. A house with an average exterior insulation value of R24
would only require about N/20 sunspace panels and N/40 solar closets,
if it had N exterior 4' x 8' panels, in the Philadelphia area. 

A real house built this way might use drywall on the inside of the panel
(which would add some desirable thermal mass to the house, for overnight 
heat storage), with more another vertical support in the middle, and
diagonal galvanized metal strips for cross-bracing each panel. It might
still use aluminum foil as additional insulation and a vapor barrier,
with beadboard or Styrofoam in the middle of the panel, and stucco,
Dri-Vit, or Flexlite on the outside. Or the foam might be covered with
T-111 or a thin sheet of galvanized metal or vinyl siding. 

The edges of the panel sheathing should be beveled at 45 degrees, if
the panels are to fit together at corners exactly on 4' x 8' centers,
in a completely modular way.
  
One might well increase the amount of insulation on the solar closet walls,
especially the east wall, by gluing on another Styrofoam panel to the outside
of that wall. One might also increase the roof insulation level, by laying
more beadboard or Styrofoam on top, under the rubber, or putting some
fiberglass insulation up under the rafters with curved wires.

Plastic soda bottles are good water containers to use in a solar
closet, because they have a large surface-to-volume ratio, vs eg 55
gallon drums, however they have some drawbacks: they require a support
structure; they become weak and shrink at temperatures above 130 F;
and they are time-consuming to fill.

Greenhouse shadecloth is cheap, about 15 cents per square foot from
Stuppy (800) 423-1512, for 80%-absorbing, porous, black, polyethylene
shadecloth, but it too has drawbacks: it shrinks about 20% at 212 F,
although it stays fairly strong. Other "transpired absorbers" might be
a layer of 50% black shadecloth behind a layer of 50% green shadecloth,
for aesthetics. Or black aluminum window screen or painted black metal
lath. Simply painting the Styrofoam black would probably not be a good
idea, because it might melt.

Other things that may melt include the plastic flap dampers Vc, inside
the solar closet. It is a good idea to use a high temperature, lightweight
plastic for the dampers, such as 1 mil Tedlar film.

Suppose there is more than one solar closet module, as in the 28' x 36'
structure above, and there is a fin-tube pipe, say 20' long, near the
ceiling of the closet to make hot water in a conventional water heater
with an insulated tank above the closet, using a convective water loop. 
Then, in order to maximize the solar hot water fraction provided by the
closet during cloudy weather, one might build the internal (north-south)
closet partitions every 4', and set the Vr vents on the east side of the
building to open at a higher temperature than the ones in the middle,
so that the closet module temperatures are stratified, ie the modules
near the center of the building are progressively warmer than the eastern
one. Then cold water could enter the eastern closet module, and be
progressively preheated until it leaves the western one, leaving to
circulate back to the water heater above the closet at a high temperature,
even after several cloudy days. Two additional solar closet modules,
beyond the N/20 rule of thumb above, should supply close to 100% of the
hot water needs of a house, as well as the space heating needs of the
house, even during long periods of cloudy winter weather. 

Interior ground stakes could be used instead of 55 gallon drums at the
corners of the shed, to hold it down in the wind. A suitable ground stake
might be a 3' long, 1" diameter galvanized pipe with a lag bolt into
one of the pressure treated 2 x 4s on the ground.

The sunspace could be a lean-to sunspace, instead of shallow glazed panels,
extending out from the front of the structure. This might work better
thermally, and it might be easier to build, and provide a place to grow
plants or store things, or put a reflector in front of the solar closet,
that stays clean, out of the weather. It would also probably cost more,
and it would have larger thermal losses, since it would have a larger area
exposed to the cold outside air. A taller sunspace would naturally go along
with making the roof higher in front and pitching it back from south to
north, (a shed roof) instead of making it flat. 

As a less expensive alternative, the sunspace glazing might be 3-year
poly greenhouse film, which costs about 5 cents per square foot, and
comes in very large sheets. It is easily attached with aluminum
extrusion clamps, and takes about a hour to change, every 3 years. It
is recyclable.

The tires on the roof might contain dirt, and the roof itself might
have 2-3" of dirt on top, which would require that it be stronger.

Two-story structures lose less heat per square foot of floorspace than
one-story structures, since they have better surface to floorspace-volume
ratios. And for the same solar area, a taller sunspace or solar closet,
eg a two-story version, should work better than a wider one, since there
would be more convective airflow. According to one approximate formula, the
natural airflow in a chimney is Q = 16.6 Av sqrt(H*dT), where Q is in cfm,
Av is the vent area at top and bottom in ft^2, H is the chimney height
in feet and dT is the difference (F) between the air temperature at the
top and bottom of the chimney (sqrt means "square root," above.) To find
the amount of airflow in a sunspace, one can use the facts that full sun 
adds about 300 Btu/ft^2/hr of heat through the glazing to the sunspace,
some of which heat passes back out of the glazing, and 1 Btu can heat
55 ft^3 of air 1 degree F. 

One might use a fan and thermostat or differential or setback thermostats
in lieu of the foundation vents and plastic film dampers. This would allow
more precise temperature control. A suitable fan might be the $60 Grainger
4C688 10" fan, which has a free air delivery of 540 cfm at 36 watts at
110 VAC, with a maximum temperature rating of 149 F. The fans could also
be PV-powered, with a 12 V battery for the solar closet discharge fan,
so it can run at night. 

Another interior venting alternative is to make the interior closet
doors and sunspace panels open gradually and automatically, or have
the panels swivel on a horizontal axis, halfway from top to bottom,
using some sort of motor with a leadscrew and thermostat.

Disclaimers
-----------

I've haven't built one of these yet...

These sheds are fairly flammable. One needs to be careful about fires inside.

Larger roofs need rafters, posts, or loadbearing walls under the roof panels. 

These structures may not comply with local code requirements, but being
sheds, they may not have to. I believe they do comply with BOCA code
insulation requirements, if you count the solar heating, as the code allows.

Note
----

Villanova has recently discontinued all alt newsgroups, so if you see
this cross-posting in alt.energy.renewable, alt.architecture.alternative,
or alt.solar.thermal, and you post something about it there, that is
not crossposted to sci.energy or sci.engr.heat-vent-ac, I won't see it.

I would appreciate feedback though, so feel free to send comments by
email. I would be especially pleased if some people were to build some
of these solar closets or sheds, soon, and I'd be pleased to help with
that effort in any way that I can.

Nicholson L. Pine                      System design and consulting
Pine Associates, Ltd.                                (610) 489-0545 
821 Collegeville Road                           Fax: (610) 489-7057
Collegeville, PA 19426                     Email: nick@ece.vill.edu

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Sun Sep 17 09:48:45 1995
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To: london@sunsite.unc.edu
Date: 17 Sep 1995 05:32:47 -0400
From: nick@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu (Nick Pine)
Message-Id: <43gpvv$3li@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu>
Organization: Villanova University
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Subject: New energy newsgroup: sci.energy.renewable?
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X-Status: 

Now that our site has stopped getting all alt groups, for reasons
related to volume, I realize that a lot of other sites are in this
boat. And now that alt.energy.renewable has grown from a mailing list
to a well-distributed alt group with a largish volume, and since
sci.energy still seems to be full of political discussions, etc,
it seems to me that it may be time to create a new mainstream group,
SCI.ENERGY.RENEWABLE, which being a sci.group, would be better distributed
than the alt.group, and perhaps have a little more scientific flavour.

Would someone please send me a copy of the original charter for
alt.energy.renewable, so I can try to get this ball rolling?

Thanks,

Nick

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Mon Sep 18 17:19:43 1995
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Subject: Re: Solar Energy
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X-Status: 

Stephen Lajoie <lajoie@eskimo.com> again conflates solar thermal and
electrical energy, while miscalculating the US energy pie: 

>>> But, you neglect the losses in the battery...

About 10%, BTW. You have to put in about 10% more energy in charging a
battery than you get out when discharging it. Not very important, I'd say. 

>... I note that there is no large scale 
>presence of solar energy in the U.S., less than 1/2 of one percent.

Au contraire, I think that with proper accounting, over 99% of the
energy present in the US would be called "solar."

>>... it looks worse, i.e., less economical, when you insist that solar must
>>exist completely independent from the current structures. 

"Solar" what?

>Excuse me for using good engineering practices.

OK, but I haven't seen that yet.

>I didn't know that solar engineers were suppose[d] to throw that book out.

Ie economics? Some of us don't.

>But when you crunch the numbers, solar just doesn't cut it.

"Solar" what? A 2 year payback for space heating seems nice to me. Regardless
of context, it still seems unfair to baldly state these conclusions in
overly-general language. It gives some economically-practical solar
applications a bad name, among undiscerning readers.

>Only by considering a completely independent solar energy system can the 
>cost of reliability be factored into solar.

Bullshit. Users want reliable electricity, say an availability of at least
0.999999, ie an expected outage period of less than 30 seconds a year, with
or without the grid. It's cheaper to do it with. But a properly-designed 
solar-electric system with enough batteries and some redundancy (eg two
inverters) can be more reliable than today's grid, at a higher cost.

>Solar, in some cases, is practical in limited and small scale systems to
>supplement power grid usage.

This seems unlikely, even with synchronous inverters instead of batteries
and inverters, assuming you mean "economically-practical." Economically-
practical solar electric systems tend to be far from the grid. 

>While this lowers demands on the grid when the solar conditions are
>favorable, the variation in the power demand on the grid becomes greater,

Agreed.

>with the peak power requirements becoming just as
>high as if there were no solar.

I doubt the peak power requirements would be just as high. It seems to me
that if a lot of people made solar electricity, and used a few batteries,
the peak power requirements for the grid would be lower than if that were
not the case, not counting the fact that solar-electric people tend to be
electrically frugal. How often do you think everyones' batteries would all
be discharged at the same time? That's possible, but not too likely. Once
in a hundred years? It would be interesting to try to work out some numbers
and probability distributions. 

>The effect is to pass on more of the non-recurring cost to the other grid
>consumers.

Sure. And that's one of the reasons utilities have minimum monthly bills,
eg to cover the cost of meter reading, even if the reading this month
is the same as the reading last month.

>But consider, what if everyone had a solar system? The advantage over your 
>neighbors would be lost. The cost of the grid, which is needed to provide
>the reliability, would increase for everyone,

It seems to me that the cost of the grid would stay the same, but the
cost of centrally generating the electricity would decrease, because
there would be less of that needed.

>and this would be the hidden cost of solar. 

Of "solar" what?

>Thus people would buy more solar, and the grid would increase in cost more,

No. The cost of wires and poles and transformers does not increase if
people make solar electricity and sell it back to the grid. In fact, it
may decrease, if there is more electrical energy being decentrally generated
in an area, so there is less transport capacity needed from the outside,
on a statistical basis. 

>until the entire energy system went to hell, and power became unreliable. 

Seems to me that in principle, decentralized electricity sources should
make the network more reliable, not less reliable.

Nick

(Still hoping someone will send me an a.e.r. charter or description,
so I can start creating sci.a.e.)

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Mon Sep 18 23:22:05 1995
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To: london@sunsite.unc.edu
Date: 18 Sep 1995 19:17:33 -0400
From: nick@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu (Nick Pine)
Message-Id: <43kumd$nda@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu>
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Subject: A.E.R. Charter?
content-length: 56705
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X-Status: 

Would someone kindly send me a copy of the alt.energy.renewable
charter/description?

Thanks,

Nick

Article: 2283 of sci.engr.heat-vent-ac
From: nick@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu (Nick Pine)
Newsgroups: sci.energy,sci.engr.heat-vent-ac,alt.energy.renewable
            alt.architecture.alternative,alt.solar.thermal
Subject: Some modular sheds with solar closets
Date: 14 Sep 1995 02:13:27 -0400 [updated 9/15/95]
Organization: Villanova University

Looking for a nice Fall project? 

How about an inexpensive, 100% solar heated shed for the back yard?

Below is a test box, a 4' x 4' "house" attached to a solar closet.

                        8'
                               R14                      
         ---------------.---------------        30 F
        |               |               |
        |               |               |
        |      70 F    Vr      Tw       |
    4'  |               |               |
        |    "house"    |  solar closet |
        |               |               |
         ------Vs------- ------Vc-------
        |               |               | 9"
        |      Ts        ggggggggggggggg
        |           sunspace            | 7"
         ggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggg 

                     south


It could be built of 8 4' x 8' modular panels, each made from a 1 x 3
frame with a 4 x 8 sheet of Thermo-Ply attached to the inside face and
a 4 x 8 x 2" piece of Styrofoam cut to fit into the 1 x 3 frame.
Thermo-Ply is a 1/8" thick structural hardboard sheathing with one foil
and one white face, that costs about 20 cents a square foot. It is made
by Simplex Corp at PO Box 10, Adrien, Michigan 49221 (517) 263-8881.
Such panels would have an R-value of 14. This would be a poorly-insulated
house, by today's standards. Each panel weighs 31 pounds, and can be
easily lifted by one person.
 
The sun shines in through the glazing over the air heater, which is
attached to the front of the solar closet, and a plastic film backdraft
damper Vc allows solar heated air to enter the closet and heat some 55
gallon drums full of water, when the passive air heater is warmer than
the drums. 

The glazing could be Replex ((800) 726-5151) 20 mil flat, clear,
polycarbonate plastic, which comes in rolls 48" wide x 50' long,
and costs about $1.50/ft^2.

Vr is a $12 Leslie-Locke AFV-1B automatic foundation vent, available
from Home Depot, attached to a rectangular hole at the top of the
closet, with its bimetallic spring reversed and adjusted so the louvers
are fully closed when the house is above 60 F. This will allow warm air
from the solar closet to heat the house on a cloudy day. An open slot
at the bottom of the closet serves as the return air path. 

Vs is another foundation vent, adjusted so the louvers are fully closed
at 70 F (or lower.) When the house temperature is less than 70 F, Vs will
open to allow sunspace air to warm the house. Vs has another plastic
backdraft damper in front of it so that air can only flow through Vs
>from  the sunspace into the house, not in the other direction. (In this
4 x 8 structure, Vs may be closed most of the time, since the heat that
leaks through the inside west wall of the solar closet will keep the
"house" warm until the closet cools to about 120 F. Perhaps that inside
wall should have more insulation, or there should be another vent from
the house to the outside, that opens whenever the house air temperature
is more than 70 F.)


Steady-state performance
------------------------

It is interesting to calculate two temperatures above: Ts is the average
sunspace temperature when the sun is shining on an average day, and Tw is
the steady-state solar closet temperature after a string of average days,
with some sun. The sunspace in this scheme overheats to act as a parasitic
or slave heater, helping the solar closet achieve a higher temperature,
while the losses from the hot glazing on the solar closet make the air
in the sunspace hotter. The sunspace air is used to heat the house on
an average day, with some sun. (This is similar to "Khanh's Radically
New Approach to Increasing the Useful Output of a Flat-Plate Collector
Panel..." as described on pages 118-125 of William Shurcliff's 1979 book
_New Inventions in Low-Cost Solar Heating_, Published by Brick House,
except that not all the "slave heat" is lost to the outside world.)

With these assumptions:

1. The average wintertime outdoor temperature is 30 F;
2. On an average winter day, the sunspace receives 1000 Btu/ft^2 of sun
   over 6 hours;
3. The average house temperature is 70 F, with no air infiltration or
   internal heat generation;
4. The water and air in the solar closet and the passive air heater all
   have the same temperature (approaching this requires careful design);
   and 
5. Each layer of glazing has an R-value and solar transmittance of 1,

on an average winter day, the 8' x 8' sunspace would receive

(1) Eins =  8' x 8' x 1000 Btu/ft^2 = 64K Btu,

and this would be lost to the outside world through the sides and roof of
the structure as

(2) Eouts =  6 hours (Ts - 30) 64 ft^2/R1     Sunspace, daytime
          + 18 hours (70 - 30) 32 ft^2/R14    West sunspace, nightime
          + 18 hours (Tw - 30) 32 ft^2/R14    East sunspace, nightime
          + 24 hours (Tw - 30) 80 ft^2/R14    Solar closet, daily 
          + 24 hours (70 - 30) 80 ft^2/R14    House, daily 
          --------------------------------
          = 384 Ts + 178 Tw - 9736.

On an average winter day, the solar closet would receive

(3) Einc = 4' x 8' x 1000 Btu/ft^2 = 32K Btu,

and this would be lost through the outside world and the rest of the
house as approximately

(4) Eoutc =  6 hours (Tw - Ts) 32 ft^2/R1     To the sunspace, daytime
          + 18 hours (Tw - 30) 32 ft^2/R14    To the sunspace, nightime
          + 24 hours (Tw - 30) 80 ft^2/R14    To the outside, daily
          + 24 hours (Tw - 70) 32 ft^2/R14    To the house, daily.
          --------------------------------
          = -192 Ts + 425 Tw - 9188.

Setting (1) = (2) and (3) = (4), and adding (2) to (1) twice,

128K = 1,028 Tw - 28,112, so Tw = (128K + 28,112)/1,028 = 151.8 degrees F.

Substituting Tw back into (1), 64K = 384 Ts + 17,295, so Ts = 121.6 F.

So after a string of average days with some sun, the closet will be about
30 degrees warmer than the peak daytime sunspace temperature, but it will
stay at that temperature 24 hours a day, "just coasting," vs. the low-
thermal mass sunspace, which will get icy cold every night. 

Cloudy-day performance
----------------------

On the first of several days with no sun, the structure will lose about 

(2) Ens = 24 hours (70  - 30) 32 ft^2/R14     West sunspace
        + 24 hours (152 - 30) 32 ft^2/R14     East sunspace
        + 24 hours (152 - 30) 80 ft^2/R14     Solar closet
        + 24 hours (70  - 30) 80 ft^2/R14     House
        ---------------------------------
        = 31,103 Btu.

If a 4' x 4' x 8' solar closet contains 8 55 gallon drums full of water,
along with some cement blocks and plastic soda bottles, it might have a
thermal mass of 4647 Btu/F (see below) so on the first day with no sun,
the water temperature would decrease by about Ens/C = 6.5 degrees F. If
the closet lost heat at this rate every day until it reached a minimum 
usable temperature of say, 80 F, (as the closet cools down, it actually
loses heat more slowly), it could provide useful heat for the "house"
for at least (152-80)/6.5 = 11 days in a row with no sun. Taking account
of the fact that the closet cools more slowly as time goes on, it should
provide heat for about 14 days without sun. Adding an extra layer of
2" Styrofoam to make all sides of the closet to make it an R24 box,
should extend the time it takes to cool to 80 F, while keeping the
"house" warm, to about 26 days:

10 '4' x 8' solar closet carryover
20 '        find steady-state closet temp
30 EINS=64000!'sunspace solar gain (Btu/day)
40 EINC=32000'closet solar gain (Btu/day)
50 CWS=18*32/24+24*80/24'sunspace Tw factor
60 CWC=6*32/1+18*32/24+24*80/24+24*32/24'closet Tw factor
70 CS=6*30*64/1+18*30*32/24+24*30*80/24'sunspace constant
80 CS=CS-18*(70-30)*32/14-24*(70-30)*80/14'more sunspace constant
90 CC=18*30*32/24+24*30*80/24+24*70*32/24'closet constant
100 TW=(EINS+2*EINC+CS+2*CC)/(CWS+2*CWC)'initial solar closet temperature
140 C=4647'thermal mass of solar closet (Btu/F)
150 CLOSS=24*(70-30)*32/14'constant daily west sunspace heat loss (Btu)
160 CLOSS=CLOSS+24*(70-30)*80/14'constant daily house heat loss (Btu)
163 PRINT "         Temp at"
165 PRINT "Day      end of day"
170 FOR D=2 TO 30 STEP 2'calc closet temp for 30 days without sun
180 TLOSS=24*(TW-30)*(32+80)/24'solar closet daily heat loss
190 HEATLOSS = CLOSS+TLOSS
200 TW=TW-2*HEATLOSS/C'new solar closet temperature
210 PRINT D,INT(TW+.5)
220 NEXT D

RUN

        Temp (F) at
Day     end of day

 2      181
 4      171
 6      161
 8      151
 10     142
 12     133
 14     125
 16     117
 18     109
 20     102
 22     96
 24     89
 26     83
 28     77
 30     72


Larger sheds
------------

Each R14 4 x 8 panel loses about 2,200 Btu/day to the outside, which is
approximately the amount of heat one can collect from 3 ft^2 of sunspace
under the above conditions, approximating Philadelphia area weather in
December, so a larger shed, with N panels exposed to the outside air,
should have about N/10 panels with sunspace glazing, as a rule of thumb.
The 22,000 Btu/day needs to be collected over 6 hours, ie 3600 Btu/hour.
With 100 F air and a 70 F room, this requires an airflow rate of about
120 cfm, or an opening with area Av at the top and bottom of each 4 x 8
panel such that 120 cfm = 16.6 Av sqrt(8'(100-30)) (see appendix), ie
Av = 0.47 ft^2, so one 8" x 16" foundation vent per panel (0.89 ft^2)
may work.

Each panel loses about 12K Btu in 5 days, about the same as the heat
stored in half a 55 gallon drum full of water at 130 F, or 1/20 of a
4' x 4' x 8' solar closet module. So as another rule of thumb, for every
20 exterior panels used in the shed, one should include 1 4' x 4' solar
closet space, 8' high. On a cold winter night when it's -10 F outside,
the solar closet needs to provide about 3600 Btu/hour, to keep the shed
at 70 F, which it might do with an internal temperature of 100 F, with
one foundation vent, as above, or at 80 F with 3 foundation vents.

Below are some possible sheds, and their approximate characteristics: 

10 'Modular solar closet compiler (MSCC)
20 PA=4*8'panel area (ft^2)
30 RP=14'R-value of panel
40 TIN=70'temperature inside shed (F)
50 TA=30'temperature outside shed (F)
60 SUN=1000'sun shining on south wall on an average 6-hour day (Btu/ft^2)
70 DPL=24*(TIN-TA)*PA/RP'daily heat loss from one panel
80 DPG=SUN*PA-6*PA*(TIN-TA)'average daily solar gain for a glazed panel
90 PRINT "1000'"
100 PRINT"Daily panel loss (Btu):        "; INT(DPL+.5)
110 PRINT"Daily glazed panel gain (Btu):"; INT(DPG+.5)
120 PRINT"
130 PRINT"                    matl  SS    Closet  percent  min # days"
140 PRINT"Size NP NRP NGP NSC Cost  temp  temp    floorsp  carryover"
150 PRINT"
160 FOR W=20 TO 32 STEP 4'width of shed
170 FOR L=W TO W+8 STEP 4'length of shed
175 N=N+1
180 NPP = 2*(L/4+W/4)'number of perimeter panels
190 NPPC=6+3+16+6'cost of perimeter panel, including battens
200 NRP=INT(L*W/32+.5)'number of roof panels
210 NP =INT(NPP+NRP+.5)'total number of exterior panels
220 NGP=INT(NP/10)+1'number of sunspace panels required
230 NSC=INT(NP/20)+1'number of 4' x 4' x 8' solar closet modules
240 TCOST=INT(NP*NPPC+NRP*.28*32+NGP*32+NSC*32+.5)'materials cost
250 EINT=SUN*PA*NGP'solar heat received by glazed panels
260 EOUTF=18*(TIN-TA)*NGP*PA/RP+24*(TIN-TA)*PA*(NP-NGP)/RP-6*30*NGP*PA
270 TS=INT((EINT-EOUTF)/(6*NGP*PA)+.5)'average daytime sunspace temp
280 EINS=SUN*PA*NSC'sun falling on solar closet
290 EDEN=6*NSC*PA+18*NSC*PA/RP+24*NSC*48/RP+24*(NSC+1)*PA/RP
300 EOUTF=NSC*(6*TS*PA+18*TA*PA/RP+24*TA*PA/RP+24*TIN*(NSC+1)*PA/RP)
310 TC=INT((EINS+EOUTF)/EDEN+.5)'steady-state solar closet temperature
320 ENS=24*(TIN-TA)*NP*PA/RP'energy lost during a day without sun
330 EST=NSC*4647*(TC-80)'useful energy stored in solar closet
340 CAR=INT(EST/ENS+.5)'number of days without sun supported
350 PCT =INT(100*NSC*16/(L*W)+.5)
360 PRINT W;"X";L;TAB(17);NP;TAB(21);NRP;TAB(26);NGP;TAB(31);NSC;
TAB(36);TCOST;
370 PRINT TAB(42);TS;TAB(48);TC;TAB(56);PCT;TAB(65);CAR
380 NEXT L
390 NEXT W
400 PRINT

RUN

Daily panel loss (Btu):         2,194
Daily glazed panel gain (Btu): 24,320

                          matl  SS    Clo   %   days of  matl
 Size     NP  RP  GP  SC  Cost  temp  temp  fl  storage  $/ft^2

 8 X 8'   10  2   2   1   424   142   164   25  18       6.63
 8 X 12   13  3   2   1   526   125   157   17  13       5.48
 8 X 16   16  4   2   1   628   108   149   13  9        4.91
 12 X 12  17  5   2   1   668   102   146   11  8        4.64
 12 X 16  20  6   3   2   834   123   176   17  20       4.34
 12 X 20  24  8   3   2   976   108   169   13  16       4.07
 16 X 16  24  8   3   2   976   108   169   13  16       3.81
 16 X 20  28  10  3   2   1118  93    162   10  12       3.49
 16 X 24  32  12  4   2   1292  108   169   8   12       3.36
 20 X 20  33  13  4   2   1331  105   167   8   11       3.33
 20 X 24  37  15  4   2   1473  94    162   7   9        3.07
 20 X 28  42  18  5   3   1719  104   181   9   15       3.07
 24 X 24  42  18  5   3   1719  104   181   8   15       2.98
 24 X 28  47  21  5   3   1901  92    175   7   13       2.83
 24 X 32  52  24  6   3   2115  100   179   6   12       2.75
 28 X 28  53  25  6   3   2155  99    178   6   12       2.75
 28 X 32  58  28  6   3   2337  89    173   5   10       2.61
 28 X 36  64  32  7   4   2623  95    188   6   14       2.61
 32 X 32  64  32  7   4   2623  95    188   6   14       2.56
 32 X 36  70  36  8   4   2877  100   191   6   13       2.50
 32 X 40  76  40  8   4   3098  91    186   5   12       2.42


Some sketches of larger sheds
-----------------------------

                        12'
              -------.-------.-------           30 F
             |                       |
             |                       |
             |                   4'  |
          8' .         70 F   ---Vr--.
             |               |       |    
             |             4'| 157 F |
             |               |       |
              -------.--Vs---.---Vc--
                     |       |       | 9"
                     | 125 F  ggggggg
                     |               | 7"
                      ggggggggggggggg

                       
                            24'
      -------.-------.-------.-------.-------.-------         30 F
     |                                               |
     |                                               |
     |                                               |
     .                                               .
     |                                               |
     |                                               |
     |                                               |
  16'.                      70 F                     .
     |                                               |
     |                                       8'      |
     |                                               |
     .                                ---Vr--.---Vr--.
     |                               |               |
     |                             4'|     169 F     |
     |                               |               |
      -------.-------.---Vs--.---Vs--.---Vc--.---Vc--
                     |               |       |       | 9" 
                     |      108 F     ggggggg ggggggg
                     |                               | 7"
                      ggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggg


                   28'
      ---.---.---.---.---.---.---         30 F
     |                           |
     .                           .
     |                           |
     .                           .
     |                           |
  24'.            70 F           .
     |                           |
     .                           .
     |                    12'    |
     .               .-Vr.-Vr.-Vr.
     |             4'|   175 F   |
      ---.---.-Vs.-Vs.-Vc.-Vc.-Vc
             |       |   |   |   | 9"
             |  92 F  ggg ggg ggg
             |                   | 7"
              ggggggggggggggggggg


                            36'
      ---.---.---.---.---.---.---.---.---.---.---.---       30 F
     |                                               |
     .                                               .
     |                                               |
     .                                               .
     |                                               |
     .                                               .
  28'|                       70 F                    |
     .                                               .
     |                                               |
     .                                               .
     |                                      16'      |
     .                                -Vr.-Vr.-Vr.-Vr.
     |                             4'|      188 F    |  
      ---.---.---.---.---.-Vs.-Vs.-Vs.-Vc.-Vc.-Vc.-Vc
                         |           |   |   |   |   | 9"
                         |   95 F     ggg ggg ggg ggg
                         |                           | 7"
                          ggggggggggggggggggggggggggg


Air heater performance
----------------------

Below is a small theoretical air heater exploration...

10 'Some simplified solar air heater calculations, with radiant heat loss.
20 '     (in a linear model, the collector heat loss only depends on the
30 '     air temperatures, not on the collector plate area...)
40 '
50 'Assumptions: uniform air and plate temperatures inside collector
60 '             shadecloth has 2 ft^2 heat xfr area/ft^2 surface area
70 '             rough plate surfaces, smooth glazing surfaces
80 '             all absorptivities and emissivities = 1
90 '             shortwave glass transmission = 1
100 '            longwave glass transmission = 0
110 '            no back or edge losses
120 '
130 ' Model:                             large air gap
140 '                                  /
150 '      |             shadecloth  /    |   outside air
160 '      |<-absorber plate->|           |   temp at Ta = 80 F
170 '      | with area        |           |   moving at 0 mph
180 '      | Ap (ft^2) and    |           |
190 '      | temp Tp (R)      |           |   <--Io = 147 Btu/hr/ft^2 lw rad
200 '      |                  |           |           from 80 F surround 
210 '      | Tp               | Tp        | Tg
220 '      |                  |<----------|------Is= 300 Btu/hr sw rad 
230 '      |          ^       |           |              from sun
240 '      |          |       |           |   Ugo
250 '      | airspeed V       |           |---www--- Ta (R)
260 '      |                  |           |
270 '      |      air temp    |           |   1 ft^2 glazing
280 '      |       Tc (R)     |           |   with temp Tg (R)
290 '      |  Up     |        |      Ugi  |
300 '      |--www-------------|------www--|
310 '      |                  |           |
320 '      | Ir-->            |     <--Ig | Ig--> lw heat radiated 
330 '      |  lw heat         |           |          from glazing
340 '         radiated by
350 '         plate to glazing
360 '
370 'at equilibrium,
380 '  (1) Is - Ir + Ig - (Tp-Tc)UpAp = 0, for the plate surface, and
390 '  (2) Io + Ir - 2Ig - (Tg-Tc)Ugi - (Tg-Ta)Ugo = 0, for the glazing
400 '
410 B=1.74E-09'Boltzman's constant
420 IS = 300'Btu/ft^2/hour peak sun input
430 UGI = 3/2'U-value of glazing to slow-moving inside air
440 UGO = 3/2+0/5'U-value of glazing to fast-moving outside air
450 TA = 460 + 80'outside air temperature (R)
460 IO = B*TA^4'rad from outside world to glazing
470 FOR AP = 1 TO 5 STEP 2'collector plate area (ft^2)
480 PRINT INT(AP/2);"shadecloth layers"
490 FOR V=0 TO 4 STEP 2'air velocity in mph
500 UP = 2 + V/2'U-value of surfaces exposed to air
510 FOR TCC=80 TO 140 STEP 20'solar closet air temp (F)
520 TC=460+TCC'solar closet air temp (R)
530 TP = 600'initial guess at Tp (R)
540 TG = 500'initial guess at Tg (R)
550 IG = B*TG^4'heat radiated by glazing in each direction
560 TPL=TP'overall last Tp
570 GOSUB 700'determine new Tp
580 TGL=TG'overall last Tg
590 GOSUB 750'determine new Tg
600 IF ABS(TP-TPL)>1 OR ABS(TG-TGL)>1 THEN GOTO 560
610 EFF = 100*((TP-TC)*UP*AP+(TG-TC)*UGI)/IS'solar collection efficiency
620 PRINT TAB(2);"V = ";V;"  ";"Tc =";TCC;TAB(22);"Tp =";INT(TP-459.5);
630 PRINT TAB(33);"Tg =";INT(TG-459.5);TAB(44);"EFF =";INT(EFF+.5);"%"
640 NEXT TCC
650 PRINT 
660 NEXT V
670 IF V < 4 THEN PRINT #1
680 NEXT AP
690 END
700 IR = B*TP^4'heat radiated by absorber plate to glazing
710 TPH = TC + (IS-IR+IG)/(UP*AP)'solving (1) for Tp
720 TP = TP + .1*(TPH-TP)'adjust Tp
730 IF ABS(TP-TPH)>1 GOTO 700' stop when Tp converges to 1 degree F
740 RETURN
750 IG = B*TG^4'heat radiated by glazing in each direction
760 TGH = (IO+IR-2*IG+TC*UGI+TA*UGO)/(UGI+UGO)'solving (2) for Tg
770 TG = TG + .1*(TGH-TG)'adjust Tg
780 IF ABS(TG-TGH)>1 THEN GOTO 750'stop when Tg converges to 1 degree F
790 RETURN

RUN

 0 shadecloth layers
                    
            /delta T ~100 F\
 V =  0   Tc = 80    Tp = 176   Tg = 105   EFF = 76 % |
 V =  0   Tc = 100   Tp = 189   Tg = 115   EFF = 67 % |  No fan...
 V =  0   Tc = 120   Tp = 203   Tg = 125   EFF = 58 % |
 V =  0   Tc = 140   Tp = 216   Tg = 135   EFF = 48 % |
	   \ delta T ~80 F /
 V =  2   Tc = 80    Tp = 153   Tg = 98    EFF = 82 %
 V =  2   Tc = 100   Tp = 169   Tg = 108   EFF = 73 %
 V =  2   Tc = 120   Tp = 184   Tg = 118   EFF = 63 %
 V =  2   Tc = 140   Tp = 199   Tg = 129   EFF = 54 %
 
 V =  4   Tc = 80    Tp = 139   Tg = 94    EFF = 86 %
 V =  4   Tc = 100   Tp = 156   Tg = 104   EFF = 76 %
 V =  4   Tc = 120   Tp = 172   Tg = 115   EFF = 67 %
 V =  4   Tc = 140   Tp = 188   Tg = 125   EFF = 57 %
 
It looks to me that a fan might increase the efficiency of an air
heater with no mesh absorber, ie a box with a black surface inside,
with air flowing between the glazing and the surface, by a few percent
(48-->57% at 140 F), but when you add a mesh absorber, with air flowing
through the absorber, the fan only seems to help by 2 or 3%:

 1 shadecloth layers

           / delta T ~40 F \
 V =  0   Tc = 80    Tp = 122   Tg = 89    EFF = 89 % <--
 V =  0   Tc = 100   Tp = 140   Tg = 100   EFF = 80 %    |
 V =  0   Tc = 120   Tp = 157   Tg = 110   EFF = 70 %    |
 V =  0   Tc = 140   Tp = 175   Tg = 121   EFF = 60 % <--|-- the fan
                                                         |   doesn't 
 V =  2   Tc = 80    Tp = 109   Tg = 86    EFF = 91 %    |   help 
 V =  2   Tc = 100   Tp = 128   Tg = 97    EFF = 82 %    |   much
 V =  2   Tc = 120   Tp = 146   Tg = 107   EFF = 72 %    |   here
 V =  2   Tc = 140   Tp = 164   Tg = 118   EFF = 62 %    |   |
                                                         |   | 
 V =  4   Tc = 80    Tp = 102   Tg = 85    EFF = 92 %    |   |
 V =  4   Tc = 100   Tp = 121   Tg = 95    EFF = 83 %    |   |
 V =  4   Tc = 120   Tp = 140   Tg = 105   EFF = 73 %    |   |
 V =  4   Tc = 140   Tp = 159   Tg = 116   EFF = 63 % <--|---
                                                         |
                                                         |
 2 shadecloth layers                                     |
                                                         |
           /delta T ~ 30 F \                             |
 V =  0   Tc = 80    Tp = 107   Tg = 86    EFF = 91 % <-----additional
 V =  0   Tc = 100   Tp = 125   Tg = 96    EFF = 82 %       layers of  
 V =  0   Tc = 120   Tp = 144   Tg = 106   EFF = 72 %       mesh don't
 V =  0   Tc = 140   Tp = 162   Tg = 117   EFF = 62 %       seem to 
                                                            help much 
 V =  2   Tc = 80    Tp = 98    Tg = 83    EFF = 91 %       either
 V =  2   Tc = 100   Tp = 117   Tg = 94    EFF = 83 %
 V =  2   Tc = 120   Tp = 136   Tg = 104   EFF = 73 %
 V =  2   Tc = 140   Tp = 155   Tg = 115   EFF = 63 %
 
 V =  4   Tc = 80    Tp = 93    Tg = 83    EFF = 91 %
 V =  4   Tc = 100   Tp = 113   Tg = 93    EFF = 81 %
 V =  4   Tc = 120   Tp = 132   Tg = 103   EFF = 73 %
 V =  4   Tc = 140   Tp = 151   Tg = 114   EFF = 62 %
 

How long will it take a solar closet to charge up?
--------------------------------------------------

If it is fully discharged to a minimum usable temperature of 80 F, it looks
like a solar closet will take about 20 days to charge back up to 130 F:

10 'solar closet simulation, with natural convection
20 C=4647'thermal mass of solar closet (Btu/F)
30 TA=70'ambient temp of closet surroundings (F)
40 SUN=32*1000/6'solar input (Btu/hr)
50 TW=80'initial water temp (F)
60 Q=300'initial assumption for airflow (cfm)
70 SAR=(32*3+16)/14'back loss factor
80 PRINT"Day  Tw   airflow  Tmax   Tmin"
90 FOR DAY=1 TO 20
100 BOXLOSS=(TW-TA)*SAR*24+(TW-30)*32/14*18'daily heat loss from closet
110 HTRLOSS=(TW+DT/2-TA)*32/1'air heater loss (Btu/hr)
120 DT=(SUN-HTRLOSS)/Q'delta T from solar input
130 QL=Q'last estimate of Q
140 Q=94*SQR(DT)'new estimate of Q
150 IF ABS(QL-Q)/Q>.01 GOTO 110'iterate until < 1% change
160 NTU=539*1.5/Q'heat exchange xfr units per p. 3-4 of 1993 ASHRAE HOF
170 EFF=1-EXP(-NTU)'heat exchanger effectiveness
180 TMAX=TW+DT/EFF'max air temp entering closet
190 TMIN=TMAX-EFF*(TMAX-TW)'min air temp leaving closet
200 DTG=TMAX-TMIN'delta T of air through closet
210 SGAIN=6*Q*DTG'daily solar gain
230 PRINT DAY;TAB(12);INT(TW+.5);TAB(17);INT(Q+.5);
232 PRINT TAB(26);INT(TMAX+.5);TAB(33);INT(TMIN+.5)
235 TW=TW+(SGAIN-BOXLOSS)/C'new water temp (F)
240 NEXT DAY

Day  Tw   airflow  Tmax   Tmin

 1   80   349      95     82
 2   85   344      100    87
 3   90   342      105    92
 4   95   336      109    96
 5   99   335      113    100
 6   102  332      116    104
 7   106  327      119    107
 8   109  324      122    110
 9   111  322      124    112
 10  114  320      126    115
 11  116  318      129    117
 12  118  317      130    119
 13  120  315      132    121
 14  122  313      134    123
 15  123  312      135    124
 16  125  311      136    126
 17  126  310      138    127
 18  127  308      139    128
 19  128  307      140    129
 20  129  307      141    130

Will this make the shed 100% solar heated? I don't know. A simulation
with hourly weather data over a few years would answer this question.
Building one might answer this question too.


One way to build an R14 4 x 8 panel
-----------------------------------

The panels might look like this:     1   Styrofoam  1             
                                     x ------------ x
 s are 1/2" x 2" foam strip spacers  3s      s     s3
                                     ---Thermo-Ply---
                                       (white side)

Find a 4' x 8' flat surface to work on.

Cut 2 46.5" pieces off of a 1 x 3, and combine them with 2 8' 1 x 3s to make
a 4 x 8' frame of 1 x3s joined along the 2.5" edges, with 2 2 1/2" drywall
screws and some adhesive in each corner. 

Put a bead of adhesive along the .75" top edge of the 1 x 3 frame, and
place the Thermo-Ply on top of the frame, white side up, foil side down.

Screw on the Thermo-Ply with 1 drywall screw every 16" around the frame.

Make and stack up some more frames on top of this one.

Allow the adhesive to dry.

Cut a 1 1/2" strip off the short edge of the Styrofoam.

Cut 3 strips off long edge of Styrofoam, each 94.5" x 2" x .5".

Glue 2 of the 94.5" strips flat, along the long edges of the printed
side of the piece of Styrofoam.

Cut 2 44" pieces off the other 94.5" strip.

Glue the 44" strips flat along the short edges of the piece of Styrofoam.

Glue the small remainder of the last 94.5" strip onto the middle
of the Styrofoam.

Place the large piece of Styrofoam into a 1 x 3 frame, with the
spacers against the Thermo-Ply.

After assembly, the Thermo-Ply will be on the inside of the shed and the
Styrofoam will be on the outside. 


Glazed panel construction
-------------------------

Front panels for solar closets may be made as above, substituting
1 x 10s for the 1 x 3s, and adding a diagonal layer of 80% black
greenhouse shadecloth a few inches south of the Styrofoam, and a
layer of flat polycarbonate glazing 9.25" in front of the Thermo-Ply
sheet, as sketched below.

Glazed sunspace panels may be conveniently made with a layer of flat
polycarbonate glazing attached to a 1 x 3 frame with some 1/16" thick
x 3/4" or 1 1/2" wide x 96" aluminum batten strips, with no foam or other
sheathing on the frame. The sunspace panels would sit on an extension of
the 2 x 4 foundation boards, about 16" from the front of the solar closet
panels, and they could be covered and supported on the tops and sides
by a 16" strip of plywood or exterior flakeboard, as shown below. The
EPDM rubber roof should cover the top of the plywood.


                          4'                    4'
--------------|1|1|----------------|1|1|-------------------|1|p| -- 0"
    foam      |x|x|      foam      |x|x|       foam        |x|l|
--------------|3|3|----------------|3|1|-------------------|1|y| -- 2.5"
              |p|1x3|    1 x 3       |0|       1 x 3       |0|w|
              |l| |                  | |                   | |o|
              |y|1|    shadecloth    | |     shadecloth    | |o|
              |w|x|                  | |                   | |d|
              |o|3|                  | |                   | | |
              |o|--------------------| |-------------------| | | -- 6.75"
              |d|        1 x 3       | |       1 x 3       | | |
              | |--------------------| |---------------------| | -- 9.25"
              | |     no glazing     ---      glazing     ---| |
              | |                     Al                   Al| |
              | |                                            | |
              | |                                            | |
              | |                                            | |
              | |1|----------------|1|1|-------------------|1| | -- 13.5"
              | |x|                |x|x|                   |x| |
              | |3|----------------|3|3|-------------------|3| | -- 16"
              -----     glazing    -----      glazing      -----
                Al                   Al                      Al


It would look something like this from the west side:

        0"     2.5"       6.75"  9.25"         13.5"      16"
        |       |          |       |              |       |
     
         -------------------------------------------------   
        |                p l y w o o d                    |
         -------------------------------------------------
        | 1 x 3 |         .| 1 x 3 |              | 1 x 3 |
        |-------|          |-------|              |-------|
       ..       .          |       |              |       |
     .  .   1   .          |   1   | s            |   1   | s
 .   Vc .   x   . 8"       |   x   | o            |   x   | u
        .   3   .        . |   3   | l            |   3   | n
        . ----- .          |       | a            |       | s
        |       |          |       | r            |       | p
        |   f   |     s    |       |              |       | a
        |   o   |     h    |       | c            |       | c
        |   a   |     a .  |       | l            |       | e
       T|   m   |     d    |       | o            |       |  
       h|       |     e    |       | s            |       | g
       e|       |     c    |       | e            |       | l   |
       r|       |     l    |       | t            |       | a   
       m|       |     o.   |       |              |       | z   8'
       o|       |     t    |       | g            |       | i
       -|       |     h    |       | l            |       | n   |
       P|       |          |       | a            |       | g
       l|       |          |       | z            |       |  
       y|       |     .    |       | i            |       |  south-->
        |       |          |       | n            |       |
        |       |          |       | g            |       |
        |       |          |       |              |       |

        |       |          |       |              |       |
        |   f   |          |       |              |       |
        |   o   |1|  .     |       |              |       |
        |   a   |x| .      |       |              |       |
        |   m   |3|.       |       |              |       |
        |------ |.         |       |              |       |
        .       ..         |       |              |       |
        .       . .        |       |              |       |
      8".       .Vc .      |       |              |       |
        .       .      .   |       |              |       |
        .       .          |       |              |       |
        |-------|          |-------|              |-------|
        | 1 x 3 |          | 1 x 3 |              | 1 x 3 |
         -------------------------------------------------
        |                 p l y w o o d                   |
-------- -------------------------------------------------
                      pressure-treated 2 x 4              |
----------------------------------------------------------
                      pressure-treated 2 x 4              |
-------------------------------------------------------------------------


Solar closet construction
-------------------------

It is important that the thermal mass in the solar closet be large and
thermally conductive, and have a large surface area compared to the glazed
area of the closet, so that the sun-warmed air is not much warmer than the
thermal mass. It is also important that the airflow path through the closet
have a large cross section, at least, say, 5% of the glazed area of the
closet, so that air flows freely and with a large volume through the closet
by natural convection. Section B of the diagram below shows an open area
for vertical airflow, Av, of approximately

Av = 4'x 4' - 4 pi (23"/2')^2/144 - 25 pi ((4.25"/2)^2)/144 = 2 ft^2,

which is about 6% of the glazed area of the closet.

The diagram below shows several kinds of water containers and materials
with various sizes in inches, weights in pounds, thermal masses in Btu/F 
and surface areas in ft^2.

                appr           approx     spec  ther   surf 
Container       size      #    weight     heat  mass   area  location

55 gal drum     23 D      8    450        1     3,600  200   D
  (plastic)     x 35 H

2 liter bottle  4.25 D  150      4.2      1       630  136   B, around drums
  (plastic)     x 12 H   36                       151   33      on top

Blocks          8 x 8    24     30        0.16    115  120   C
  (cement)      x 16

1 liter bottle  3 D      72      2.1      1       151   50   b
                x 11 H                            --------

                                          Totals 4647  539   
                                                 Btu/F ft^2
                            4'
      ----------|-----------|-----------|---------- --96"
     |                                             | 
     |                                             |
     |                                             |
   A-|     -     -     -     -    -    -    -    - |---cross section A
     |  B  B  B    B  B  B     B  B  B    B  B  B  |
     -------------------------------------------------86" 
     |                     | |                     |
     |                     | |                     |
     |                     | |                     |
     |                     | |                     |
     |                     | |                     |
     -                     | |                     -
     |                     | |                     |
     |                     | |                     |
     |           D         | |         D           |
     |                     | |                     |
     |                     | |                     |
     -                     | |                     -
     |                     | |                     |
     |                     | |                     |
     |                     | |                     |
     |                     | |                     |
     |                     | |                     |
  8' =---------------------------------------------=--51"
     | C             | C           | C             |
     |               |             |               |
     |   b   b   b   |  b   b   b  |   b   b   b   |
     |---------------------------------------------|--43"
     |                     | |                     |
     -                     | |                     -
     |                     | |                     |
     |                     | |                     |
     |                     | |                     |
     |                     | |                     |
     |                     | |                     |
     -           D         | |         D           -
     |                     | |                     |
     |                     | |                     |
   B-|   -    -    -    -  | |   -    -     -    - |---cross section B
     |                     | |                     |
     |                     | |                     |
     -                     | |                     -
     |                     | |                     |
     |---------------------------------------------|--8"
     | C             | C           | C             |
   C-|               |             |               |---cross section C
     |   b   b   b   |  b   b   b  |   b   b   b   |
      -----------|----------|----------|----------- --0"
  |   |            |   |         |   |            |   |
   ---              ---           ---              ---

    ^--- 2 pressure-treated 2 x 4s laid flat on ground 


Cross section A, showing the top of the solar closet, with 4 vertical
drums supporting 36 horizontal 2 liter bottles, with an optional fan
blowing room air in at the top of the closet, so that warmer air will
flow out of the bottom of the closet:

      -----------|----------|----------|-----------
     |         . . .  |   (fan?)  |  . . .         |
     |    .            -----------            .    |
     |  .                .     .                .  |  
     | .B  B  B    B  B  B.   .B  B  B   B  B  B . |     
     |.                    . .                    .|  
     -.          D         . .         D          .-
     |.                    . .                    .|
     | .B  B  B    B  B  B.   .B  B  B   B  B  B . |
     |  .                .     .                .  |
     |    .            .          .           .    |
     |         . . .                 . . .         |
     -                                             -
     |         . . .                 . . .         |
     |    .            .         .            .    |
     |  .                .     .                .  |
     | .B  B  B    B  B  B.   .B  B  B   B  B  B . |
     |.                    . .                    .|
     -.          D         . .         D          .-
     |.                    . .                    .|
     | .                  .   .                  . |
     |  .                .      .               .  |
     |    .           .            .         .     |
     |     p l a s t i c  f i l m  d a m p e r     |
      ----------|-----------|-----------|----------


  Cross section B, showing 4 drums and 25 vertical 2 liter bottles
  surrounding the drums:

      -----------|----------|----------|-----------
     | B       . . .       B B       . . .        B|
     |    .            .    B    .            .    |
     |  .                .     .                .  |  
     | .                  .   .                  . |     
     |.                    . .                    .|  
     -.          D         . .         D          .-
     |.                    . .                    .|
     | .                  .   .                  . |
     |  .                .     .                .  |
     |     .           .    B     .          .     |
     | B       . . .       B B       . . .       B |
     -  B                 B B B                B   -
     | B       . . .       B B       . . .       B |
     |    .            .    B     .           .    |
     |  .                .     .                .  |
     | .                  .   .                  . |
     |.                    . .                    .|
     -.          D         . .         D          .-
     |.                    . .                    .|
     | .                  .   .                  . |
     |  .                .      .               .  |
     |    .           .     B      .         .     |
     |B       . . .        B B        . . .       B|
      ----------|-----------|-----------|----------


Cross section C, showing the lower part of the solar closet with an optional
charging fan and 12 blocks supporting 4 drums (36 1 liter soda bottles, not
shown, are lined up with the 3 north-south-running holes of each block):

     (plastic film damper, if a discharge fan is used) 
      -----------|----------|----------|-----------
     |---------------------------------------------|--46"
     | C  .          | C         . | C        .    |
     |  .            |   .     .   |            .  |  
     | .             |    .   .    |             . |     
     |---------------------------------------------|--38"  
     ------------D---------------------D--------------36"
     |.C             | C   . .     | C            .|
     | .             |    .   .    |             . |
     |  .            |   .     .   |            .  |
     |---------------------------------------------|--28"
     |         . . . |             | . . .         |
     -               |             |               -
     |         . . . |             | . . .         |
     |---------------------------------------------|--22"
     | C.            | C .     .   | C          .  |
     | .             |    .   .                  . |
     |---------------------------------------------|--14"
     ------------D---------------------D--------------12"
     |.C             | C   . .     | C            .|
     | .             |    .   .    |             . i
     |---------------------------------------------|--4"
     |    .            -----------            .    |
     |        . . .   |   (fan?)  |   . . .        |
      ----------|-----------|-----------|----------
          p l a s t i c  f i l m  d a m p e r 

This closet has 539 ft^2 of thermal mass surface area exposed to solar
heated air, ie about 17 square feet of thermal mass per square foot of
glazing. So if the passive air heater were 100% efficient, and the solar
closet were collecting 100% of the 300 Btu/ft^2/hour of energy falling
on it in peak sunlight, the air in the closet might be 300/17 = 18 F
warmer than the thermal mass. The drums used are made of plastic, with flat
bottoms, so they can conduct heat away from the cement blocks, which
act as fins for the drums. The vertical plastic bottles will be a tight
fit, so they will be in thermal contact with the drums as well.


Assembling sheds
----------------

Put two layers of pressure-treated 2 x 4s flat on the ground, to make an
8' x 12' frame, on top of some level crushed stone.

Place a 2 x 4 under the bottom edge of each panel, with the 4' outside
edge of the panel resting along the outside edge of the 2 x 4, and attach
the 2 x 4s to the 1 x 3 bottom of each frame with a drywall screw every
12". Tilt up the frames onto the layer of 2 x 4s on the ground, and screw
the top layer of 2 x 4's to the bottom layer, on the inside of the shed.
When this is done, the inside of the shed should have an 1" lip of 2 x 4
showing on the ground.

To join two frames along a wall, attach the vertical edges of the frames
with a 1 x 3 battens on the inside and the outside of each frame, using a
drywall screw every 16":

        1 x 3            1 x 3       corner detail  1 x 3
         1 1 - Styrofoam- 1 1                -Styrofoam-1
         x x              x x                           x        
         3 3s      s     s3 3                Thermo-Ply-3 1 x 3 1
       ---.---Thermo-Ply---.--                            1 x 3 x
        1 x 3            1 x 3                            |   | 3
                                                         
Cut one 8' pressure treated 2 x 4 into several pieces.

Lay two pieces flat on the ground diagonally inside the SW, NE and NW corners
of the shed, and put a 55 gallon drum on top of the two pieces, with the
outside edges of the drum resting on the inside edges of the two 2 x 4s
under the corner panels. Fill the drums with water and cap them.


Roof details
------------

If the shed is constructed to have a interior dimensions that are
exact multiples of 4' and 8', and the roof panels are 4' x 8', the
roof panels should rest on top of the 1 x 3 horizontal battens on the
inside top edge of the wall panels (which would be screwed on edgewise
to the roof, as in the above corner detail.) The walls would extend
out 2 1/2" from the roof on every side, and the outside wall battens
would extend another 3/4". A large single piece of EPDM rubber would
overlap this joint where the walls meet the roof, and it would be
attached to the walls 3 1/4" below the top of the roof:

Place more panels on the roof, and cover the roof with a large single
piece of EPDM rubber roofing material (which costs about 30 cents/ft^2
and comes in rolls 20' wide.) Put some old tires on top of the rubber
to keep it in place and reduce summer heat gain and lend an attractive
"alternate energy" look to the shed. 

Tack the edge of the roof rubber over the 1 x 3 horizontal battens on
the outside of the wall panels. 

Paint all the exposed battens and Styrofoam with latex paint. Steve
Baer says that latex-painted foam will last practically forever outside.


Appendix
--------

Thermo-Ply is hard to find. It is strong and inexpensive, and made from
100% recycled fibers, but it also shrinks and delaminates unhappily if it
gets wet or hot, or both. One might also use thin plywood or flakeboard
for the 4 x 8 panels, with 3" vs 2" Styrofoam, or Thermo-Ply with two
polyethylene faces instead of the poly/foil-faced kind which is harder
to find. To this one might add a layer of 4' wide, double-sided "builder's
foil" such as the "Super R Radiant Barrier" (ES302--48" x 125' for $125)
sold by Jade Mountain at (800) 449-6601 or Innovative Insulation at
(800) 825-0123. With a 1/2" spacer in the center of the panel, between
the plywood and the foil, and a 1/2" spacer strip around the edge of the
panel, between the foil and the foam, a plywood/foil/foam panel should
have an R-value of about 16. One could also use thicker foam and wider
panels to get more insulation value.

Houses with better insulation require fewer sunspace and solar closet
modules. A house with an average exterior insulation value of R24
would only require about N/20 sunspace panels and N/40 solar closets,
if it had N exterior 4' x 8' panels, in the Philadelphia area. 

A real house built this way might use drywall on the inside of the panel
(which would add some desirable thermal mass to the house, for overnight 
heat storage), with another vertical support in the middle, and diagonal
galvanized metal strips for cross-bracing each panel. It might still use 
aluminum foil as additional insulation and a vapor barrier, with beadboard
or Styrofoam in the middle of the panel, and stucco, Dri-Vit, or Flexlite
on the outside. Or the foam might be covered with T-111 or a thin sheet
of galvanized metal, or vinyl siding. 

The thermal mass of a 4' x 8' sheet of 1/2" drywall is about 17 Btu/F,
so in an R14 wall, it has a time constant of about 8 hours (17x14/32),
which would keep a room with such walls above 60 degrees for about 2
hours (17 Btu/F (70F-60F)/92 Btu/hr) after the sun goes down, at 30 F
outside, with no help from a solar closet. For 2 layers of drywall inside
an R19 wall, RC is about 22 hours, so 18 hours after the sun goes down,
with no solar closet, such a room would have a temperature of about 48 F
= 30 F + (70F-30F) exp(-18/22). An 12' x 16' low-thermal mass room with
a bookcase along the 16' wall, supported with 48 cement blocks with 144
1 liter plastic soda bottles in the block holes would have a thermal mass
of about about 300 Btu/F for the bottles and 240 Btu/F for the blocks,
and its 20 exterior R14 panels would need about 1840 Btu/hr to stay at
70 F when it's 30 F outside, so that room would cool to 60 F in about
3 hours after the sun went down.

A room with more thermal mass lets the solar closet stay warmer in sunny
weather, because less closet heat is needed at night. On the other hand,
letting a room get cooler at night conserves backup closet heat during
cloudy weather. The closet has an easier time keeping a room 50 at night
than 60 or 70, in cloudy weather, but a room with a lot of thermal mass
may take a long time to cool down to 50, so the closet will have to supply
more heat to that room during cloudy times.

The edges of the panel sheathing should be beveled at 45 degrees, if
the panels are to fit together at corners exactly on 4' x 8' centers,
in a completely modular way.
  
One might well increase the amount of insulation on the solar closet walls,
especially the east wall, by gluing on another Styrofoam panel to the outside
of that wall. One might also increase the roof insulation level, by laying
more beadboard or Styrofoam on top, under the rubber, or putting some
fiberglass insulation up under the rafters with curved wires.

Plastic soda bottles are good water containers to use in a solar
closet, because they have a large surface-to-volume ratio, vs eg 55
gallon drums, however they have some drawbacks: they require a support
structure; they become weak and shrink at temperatures above 130 F;
and they are time-consuming to fill.

Greenhouse shadecloth is cheap, about 15 cents per square foot from
Stuppy (800) 423-1512, for 80%-absorbing, porous, black, polyethylene
shadecloth, but it too has drawbacks: it shrinks about 20% at 212 F,
although it stays fairly strong. Other "transpired absorbers" might be
a layer of 50% black shadecloth behind a layer of 50% green shadecloth,
for aesthetics. Or black aluminum window screen or painted black metal
lath. Simply painting the Styrofoam black would probably not be a good
idea, because it might melt.

Other things that may melt include the plastic flap dampers Vc, inside
the solar closet. It is a good idea to use a high temperature, lightweight
plastic for the dampers, such as 1 mil Tedlar or Teflon film.

Suppose there is more than one solar closet module, as in the 28' x 36'
structure above, and there is a fin-tube pipe, say 20' long, near the
ceiling of the closet to make hot water in a conventional water heater
with an insulated tank above the closet, using a convective water loop. 
Then, in order to maximize the solar hot water fraction provided by the
closet during cloudy weather, one might build the internal (north-south)
closet partitions every 4', and set the Vr vents on the east side of the
building to open at a higher temperature than the ones in the middle,
so that the closet module temperatures are stratified, ie the modules
near the center of the building are progressively warmer than the eastern
one. Then cold water could enter the eastern closet module, and be
progressively preheated until it leaves the western one, and rises to
circulate back to the water heater above the closet at a high temperature,
even after several cloudy days. Two additional solar closet modules,
beyond the N/20 rule of thumb above, should supply close to 100% of the
hot water needs of a house, as well as the space heating needs of the
house, even during long periods of cloudy winter weather. 

Interior ground stakes could be used instead of 55 gallon drums at the
corners of the shed, to hold it down in the wind. A suitable ground stake
might be a 3' long, 1" diameter galvanized pipe lag bolted into one of
the pressure treated 2 x 4s on the ground.

The sunspace could be a lean-to sunspace, instead of shallow glazed
panels, extending out from the front of the structure. This could work
better thermally, and it might be easier to build. It could provide a
place to grow plants or to store things, or to put a reflector on the
ground in front of the solar closet, that would stay clean, out of the
weather. It would also probably cost more, and it would have larger
thermal losses, since it would have a larger area exposed to the cold
outside air. A tall lean-to sunspace with a fan would naturally fit
with making the sunspace higher in front and and making the roof flat.
Without a fan, a tall sunspace would fit with a roof that is pitched
back from south to north, (a shed roof) instead of making a flat roof.

As a less expensive alternative, the sunspace glazing might be 3-year
poly greenhouse film, which costs about 5 cents per square foot, and
comes in very large sheets. It is easily attached with aluminum
extrusion clamps, and takes about a hour to change, every 3 years. It
is recyclable.

The tires on the roof might contain dirt, and the roof itself might
have 2-3" of dirt on top, which would require that it be stronger.

Two-story structures lose less heat per square foot of floorspace than
one-story structures, since they have better surface to floorspace-volume
ratios. For the same solar area, a taller sunspace or solar closet,
eg a two-story version, should work better than a wider one, since there
would be more convective airflow. According to one approximate formula, 
natural airflow in a chimney is Q = 16.6 Av sqrt(H*dT), where Q is in cfm,
Av is the vent area at top and bottom in ft^2, H is the chimney height
in feet and dT is the difference (F) between the air temperature at the
top and bottom of the chimney (sqrt means "square root," above.) To find
the amount of airflow in a sunspace, one can use the facts that full sun 
adds about 300 Btu/ft^2/hr of heat through the glazing to the sunspace,
some of which heat passes back out of the glazing, and 1 Btu can heat
55 ft^3 of air 1 degree F. 

One might use a fan and thermostat or differential or setback thermostats
in lieu of the foundation vents and plastic film dampers. This would allow
more precise temperature control. The $60 Grainger 4C688 10" fan may fit.
It has a free air delivery of 540 cfm at 36 watts at 110 VAC, with a max
temperature rating of 149 F. The fans could also be PV-powered, with a
12 V battery for the solar closet discharge fan, so it can run at night. 
Fans would allow smaller air passages, increasing the thermal efficiency
of the solar closet and reducing the depth of the sunspace and closet
glazed areas.

Another interior venting alternative is to make the interior closet
doors and sunspace panels open gradually and automatically, or have
the panels swivel on a horizontal axis, halfway from top to bottom,
using some sort of motor with a leadscrew and thermostat.

Disclaimers
-----------

I haven't built one of these yet...

These sheds are fairly flammable. One needs to be careful about fires inside.

Larger roofs need rafters, posts, or loadbearing walls under the roof panels. 

These structures may not comply with local code requirements, but being
sheds, they may not have to. I believe they do comply with BOCA code
insulation requirements, if you count the solar heating, as the code allows.

Note
----

Villanova has recently discontinued all alt newsgroups, so if you see
this cross-posting in alt.energy.renewable, alt.architecture.alternative,
or alt.solar.thermal, and you post something about it there, that is
not crossposted to sci.energy or sci.engr.heat-vent-ac, I won't see it.

I would appreciate feedback though, so feel free to send comments by
email. I would be especially pleased if some people were to build some
of these solar closets or sheds, soon, and see how they work. I would
help with that effort however I can.

Nicholson L. Pine                      System design and consulting
Pine Associates, Ltd.                                (610) 489-0545 
821 Collegeville Road                           Fax: (610) 489-7057
Collegeville, PA 19426                     Email: nick@ece.vill.edu

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Wed Sep 20 06:17:59 1995
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Date: 19 Sep 1995 16:06:28 -0400
From: nick@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu (Nick Pine)
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Subject: Re: Selling energy via the grid
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Mr. Nice Guy <rcanders@nyx10.cs.du.edu> wrote:
>will1000@ix.netcom.com (Will Stewart ) wrote:
>>In <DF15qr.E6D@eskimo.com> lajoie@eskimo.com (Stephen Lajoie) writes: 

>>...Today's converters no longer create a square wave, but a sine wave.

>No they don't produce a true sine wave, they produce a digital 
>approximation of a sine wave with additional higher harmonics.

I think that's true.

>If a user intends to sell power back to the grid they will have to 
>purchase a larger inverter than they would otherwise have needed, 

I think that's false. What do you mean by that? "Synchronous inverters"
connected to the grid can be a lot simpler and cheaper than stand-alone
inverters. Think of a backwards lamp dimmer, with a full wave triac bridge
in series with a choke, with the triacs triggering on for part of the
60 Hz cycle, when the DC source voltage is effectively at a higher
potential than the line. To vary the power delivered, vary the firing
angle. Pretty simple. These don't even need a 60 Hz frequency reference
That can come from the line. 

>inverters are expensive.  The big question is why anyone with 
>access to the grid would select solar power in the first place?

For fun, I guess. And to avoid having a houseful of batteries.

Nick

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Wed Sep 20 07:18:04 1995
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Subject: Re: A.E.R. Charter?
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Harry H Conover <conover@max.tiac.net> wrote:

>Nick Pine (nick@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu) wrote:
>: Would someone kindly send me a copy of the alt.energy.renewable
>: charter/description?
 
>Nick, surely you joke!

No, it seems to me that I've seen something like that somewhere. 
I'd like to edit and post it in news.newsgroups (?) in order to start
a discussion that leads to a vote about creating sci.energy.renewable,
since we no longer get alt.groups here.

Marge Wood sent me this, which seems like a good start:

Date: Tue, 12 Sep 1995 16:22:51 +0000
From: "Clyde R. Visser, KD6GWN" <dodeca!clyde@galaxy.ucr.edu>

AE on LISTSERV@sjsuvm1.sjsu.edu -  AE Alternative Energy
                                   Discussion Mailing List

The AE Alternative Energy Discussion Mailing List is intended  to 
provide  a  forum  to discuss the current state of  the  art  and 
future direction of alternative energy sources that are renewable 
and  sustainable.   It  is *not* intended to  discuss  either  AE 
appropriateness  or comparisons with conventional energy  sources 
such  as fossil or nuclear fuels.  Those "discussions"  are  best 
relegated to the appropriate usenet newsgroup.

An  alternative  energy source is taken to include  solar,  wind, 
geothermal,  tidal,  electro-chemical,  hydro-electric,  or   any 
renewable  and sustainable energy source.  It is also assumed  to 
exclude  fuels such as fossil and nuclear since  these  literally 
take an act of God to create.

>You've been around here for about the same time as me (about 1-2 years).

Or 8 or 9, depending on where you mean by "here" :-)

>In all that time I've yet to see a FAQ appear, let alone a charter.

Seems like charters are easier to create than FAQs, especially if one
only has to find one that exists somewhere.

>When I first stated reading the newsgroup, it was some sort of a 
>bizarre composite of an existing alternative energy mailing list
>and a group of FIDO types with an somewhat groupie relationship to 
>'Home Power' magazine...

Still is, sorta. Cept a lotta them moved to alt.solar.photovoltaic.
De mortui, nil nisi bonum.

>The FIDO/'Home Power' participants (cheered on by a Don Kuhla (sp?)

Yea, Don :-) He builds things...

>from, I believe, 'Home Power') vanished somewhat later.

Hmmm. I haven't seen much of him lately. Of course I haven't seen ANY of
the a.e.r. newsgroup lately, since our evil mother of all campus news,
perry@ece.vill.edu, decided to cancel all alt groups one afternoon,
in a peculiar fit of pique.
 
>Speaking as an individual, I believe a FAQ for this newsgroup would
>be a welcome addition, and I would consider you (as both an engineer
>and energy conservationist) well qualified to prepare and maintain 
>it.  Would you volunteer to take on the task (possibly co-anchoring
>the thing with Tom Gray - despite his bizarre philosophies :-)  ).

Why sure, do it blind, without being able to read the group or the
posted FAQ... :-) Or perhaps Rick Perry could do this better. He often
types on screenless terminals, as a nerdy tour-de-force.

>Anybody here willing to second this nomination?  Say 'Aye.'

I nominate Rick Perry. Barring that, everyone here should write Rick at
perry@ece.vill.edu and ask him to resubscribe to alt.energy.renewable.

>My suggestions (and only suggestions) --
 
>Keep the group open to ALL forms of alternative energy.  This includes
>not only passive solar, but PV, Wind, Hydro, geothermal, whatever.
 
Sounds good to me. Seems to me that the use of alt energy is increasing in
the world, so sci.energy deserves a sci.energy.renewable splinter. And maybe
someday there will be solar electric, solar thermal, wind, etc, subgroups of
sci.energy with appropriate and reasonable names in the heirarchy.

>Discourage discussion of pseudo-scientific, free energy schemes, since 
>these ideas are nearly always based on somewhat ignorant 
>misconceptions of scientific principles -- Science fiction has no
>place here IMHO. Distinguish emerging technogy from fantasy.  

I would also say "discourage political discussions," except that I
often get the feeling that what is holding back alt energy is
politics, not technics.

>How about it, Nick (and Tom)?

Sounds good to me.

Nick

(Back to my solar closet construction. 7 panels so far, and a Lambert
Data Trap with 5 temperature probes and a Licor pyroheliometer and a
modem on order. I may post the phone number :-) Real time temperature
graphs would look nice on a home page... Did you know that some 1 x 3s
are 2 1/4" wide, and some are 2 1/2"? And when you ask the Home Depot
folque to cut a piece of Aspenite in half, they give you one piece
that is 47 11/16" long, and and another that is 48 3/16?)

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Wed Sep 20 12:18:16 1995
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Date: 20 Sep 1995 08:40:26 -0400
From: nick@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu (Nick Pine)
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Subject: Reliability with redundancy
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There has been some discussion here lately about electrical network
reliability. With increasing deregulation, some electrical utilities have
made some economic decisions to save money at the expense of decreased
network reliability. For instance, some utilities deliberately undersize
new transformers in power-handling capability, with secondary fuses rated
for, say 10 times the sum of the primary loads. So, if all the customers
attached to a transformer, from 1-5 houses, where I live, were to turn on
all of their lights, electric stoves, etc, at once, the secondary voltage
would go down and the transformer might actually burn up before the
safety fuse on the pole blew. The fuses are there for fault safety,
not sustained load.

Utilities recognize that sustained maximum loads like this rarely happen,
perhaps only once in 10 years, and it is less expensive to suffer an outage
in this rare event (especially if people don't want to pay much for
reliability, as reflected in PUC policies) than to spend money providing
a more conservatively-designed, "worst-case" system, like an aircraft system.
So there is a small but non-zero failure rate built into this utility policy.
Of course additional failures result from acts of God.

Since this is SCI.energy, I'd like to talk for a moment about how to
calculate the reliability of redundant systems, eg 2 vs. 1, if either
can do the job, and we know when one breaks, and we fix it. Having
2 subsystems (I would say "2 redundant subsystems," but that would be
redundant :-) can greatly increase the reliability of an overall system,
roughly squaring the MTTF. MTTF means "Mean Time To Fail," and in most
systems, it is very close to the MTBF, the Mean Time Between Failures, which
is a little bit longer, because it includes the repair time of a system.
If a system works for a long time, then it fails, then it is fixed in a
relatively short time, and then it works for a long time again, the MTTF
is the average amount of time that it stays working, and the MTBF is the
average time between failures, including the average repair time, MTTR. 

If a single system with no redundancy has a 10,000 hour MTBF, it fails about
once every 10,000 hours, ie the average failure rate is 1/10,000 hours, or
about once a year. If fixing it takes an average of 8 hours (counting the
time for the repairperson to get some parts and drive to the system, etc.)
then we'd expect it to be down for about 8 hours a year. This corresponds
to an Availability, or probability that the system is working, of

A = MTBF/(MTTF+MTTR) = 10,000/(10,000+8) = 0.992 or an Unavailability of

U = 1-A = 0.0008,

which means that the system is not working about 0.08 % of the time. In
a year, we would expect the overall system to be down, ie unavailable, for
0.0008 x 366 days x 24 hours/day = 7 hours (which is a bit less than
8 hours because there are only 8766 hours in an average year.) Most
people are used to better electrical service than this, and much better
telephone service... US Telephone companies calculate and budget and try
to deliver user unavailabilities measured in seconds per year. They try to
design telephone networks so that an average telephone is out of order
less than 10 seconds a year. That may increase too, under deregulation.

What happens if we have 2 electrical systems? A power line and a solar
electric system, or a power line and a standby generator, or a power line
and a UPS, or a standby generator and a wind generator with some batteries
and an inverter. Or 2 telephone systems, or 2 cars, or 2 of any sort of
systems, (eg 2 heads, better than one?) If the systems are relatively
independent, and either can do the job by itself, the the reliability and
availability of the combined system goes up, the cost probably goes up, and
the unavailability can go down, which is good. For this to work well,
we have to know when one system is broken (an "alarm"), and we have to
fix it fairly quickly when it breaks. For this discussion, we might
say that a solar electric system is temporarily "broken," ie unavailable
when the batteries are discharged, or more permanently broken, in the
usual sense, when something goes wrong with the inverter. 

Suppose we have 2 electrical power systems, each with an MTTF of 10,000
hours and an MTTR of 8 hours, and they are independent, and we can easily
and quickly switch from one to the other, and we know when one is broken
and start fixing it right away, the overall system can be in one of 3
conditions: 2 systems are working, only 1 is working, and 0 are working,
ie both broken. This leads to the following simple Markov model and state
diagram for the overall system:

 ---------    2L    ---------    L     ---------
|     2   |------->|    1    |------->|    0    |
| (both   |        | (one    |        | (none   |
| working)|<-------| working)|<-------| working)|
 ---------    M    ---------     2M    ---------

At a particular time, the system can be only in 1 of 3 states, numbered 2
1 and 0. Each state has an associated probability, P(2), P(1) and P(0).
In states 2 and 1, we have electrical power. In state 0, we don't.

The unavailability of the system is P(0). We want to minimize that.
The model has state transition rates based on the failure rate L=1/MTTF
and repair rate M=1/MTTR of a subsystem. Since both subsystems are working
in state 2, and either can fail, the transition rate from state 2 to
state 1 is twice the rate of the transition rate from state 1 to 0. The
repair rate from state 0 to 1 is twice the repair rate from state 1 to 2,
assuming 2 repairpersons are at work, when both subsystems are broken. 

The unavailability is easy to calculate: since the overall system can only
be in 1 state at a time, and there are only 3 states, the probabilities
have to add up to 1:

P(2) + P(1) + P(0) = 1                  (1), and from the transition rates, 

P(1) = 2L/M P(2)                        (2), and

P(0) = L/(2M) P(1)                      (3), so

M/(2L) P(1) + P(1) + P(0) = 1           (4), from (1) and (2), and

M/(2L) 2M/L P(0) + 2M/L P(0) + P(0) = 1 (5), from (4) and (3), so

P(0) = 1/(M^2/L^2-2M/L+1).

We could do this calculation exactly, but the first term in the denominator,
M^2/L^2, is over a million, and the second term is 2,500 and the third is 1,
which is how these calculations usually turn out, so we can approximate
P(0) = 1/(M^2/L^2) = (L/M)^2 = (MTTR/MTTF)^2. In our example, this is
0.00000064. So the expected number of seconds a year of electrical outage,
when  neither  system is working, is

0.00000064 x 8766 hr/yr x 60 min/hr x 60 sec/min = 20 seconds.

Much better than 8 hours. Almost as good as the telephone company :-)

Nick

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Thu Sep 21 02:48:19 1995
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Subject: Re: Solar Energy
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Stephen Lajoie <lajoie@eskimo.com> intended to write:

>Your position is that because there is no solar technology that can provide 

			 ***electrical***

>power at reasonable cost (true cost, including reliability...) but its 
>just might be possible in the future...

Nick

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Thu Sep 21 12:48:30 1995
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Date: 21 Sep 1995 10:37:45 -0400
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Subject: Re: Solar Energy
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Stephen Lajoie <lajoie@eskimo.com> again overgeneralizes: 
 
>I gave solar the benefit of every doubt, and it still comes up as 
>impractical on any kind of meaningful scale. 

Solar what?

>>An active solar system is competitive with fossil fuel heating systems.
 
>GEEZE. You don't get it, do you? You have to collect that energy and put 
>it in some sort of usable form, and to do that takes equipment, and 
>equipment has a lifetime and a cost. It is *not* free, and to say so is 
>deceptive. 

Did someone say the equipment was free? I do get 40 plastic 55 gallon drums
a month free, from a local food processing plant. I could buy them elsewhere
for about $15 each. Even the metal ones should last 20 years. I just bought
a nice 560 cfm fan for $60, 36 watts, max, with a temperature rating of 149 F.
Grainger part number 4C688. They also sell $10 thermostats. Replex, GE and
Dynaglas sell long-life thin polycarbonate plastic glazing for about $1/ft^2,
and Home Depot sells automatic foundation vents for $12 each, 1 x 3s for 84
cents each and 1/4" Aspenite and 6" fiberglass insulation for 25 cents/ft^2.
It seems to me that a simple house heating system built out of things like
this can be competitive with a fossil fuel heating system.

Heating a house this way seems so simple to me, almost anywhere in the
country, that I wonder if we shouldn't change the building code to forbid
all use of fossil fuels for house heating. 

Nick

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Thu Sep 21 12:48:39 1995
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Date: 21 Sep 1995 11:16:07 -0400
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Subject: Re: Solar Energy
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Stephen Lajoie <lajoie@eskimo.com> wrote:
>Will Stewart  <will1000@ix.netcom.com> wrote:
>>meron@cars3.uchicago.edu writes: 
>>>nick@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu (Nick Pine) writes:

I do? I don't see anything quoted below that I wrote. Perhaps the >>>s
got confused somewhere... But as long as I'm here...

>>Kindly provide information showing the areas of the country that are
>>subject to two straight weeks of rain in a given year.  Now, what
>>percentage of the country is that?

I dunno. 30%? We seem to get 2 weeks of cloudy weather in January fairly
often around Philadelphia. Who cares, and why?

>At what reliability? We are talking probabilities here. How many sigma do
>we want to go out? And it doesn't have to be just rain; it can be simply
>cloud cover, snow cover or fog.

I'd like to know more about that. Norman Saunders, PE, estimates yearly backup
heat requirements of his solar houses based on house heating loads, the size
of the thermal store, and Gaussian weather statistics. I don't understand his
method, but his "100% solar houses" are nearly so, with predictions of backup
heating required every 40 years, in New England. Some of them have no backup
heating systems at all. He has elaborate temperature records from data logger/
fan controllers in these houses, with track records going back over 12 years.
This is sort of like 100 year flood predictions, with less dire consequences,
like having to wear a sweater indoors once every 40 years :-)

He doesn't use PVs or solar thermal panels, just glass, containers of water,
fans and insulation. I'd rather use plastic instead of glass, and I think
one could do almost as well without the fans, but it would cost more to build.

>[Cloudy weather] happens on a regular basis in these areas. It has less 
>of a probability in other areas but it CAN happen ANYWHERE, it is just a 
>matter of probability.

Then let's treat it as such, with numbers. It's not a disaster. It just
increases one's backup heating bill a bit. How much? Or drives purists to
wearing sweaters indoors. How often? I'd like to see numbers, not hand-waving.

>Maybe for the unreliable systems you envision, yeah, you don't have too
>many areas. But if you are trying to match the reliability of the grid,
>that would be another story. 

I think of the sun as fairly reliable. Moreso than the electrical grid.
It's been working longer, with no serious outages lately, and no major
repairs. It is very predictable, on a long time scale, and it seems to me 
that with proper statistics and careful design, we can build more houses
with thermal storage, that do not have any other form of heat. These might
be called "solar houses," a hundred years from now. 

>>Now, just because a tiny percentage of the country might have rain that
>>lasts two weeks, solar electrical generation is infeasible everywhere? 
>>I think your implications require re-examination.

It's nice to see the word "electrical" above.

>As usual, you ignore probability and reliability simply because it runs 
>counter to your beliefs.

Versus just talking about them? :-)

Nick

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Date: 20 Sep 1995 21:34:58 GMT
From: steen@x1.us.ohio-state.edu (Steen Hansen)
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Subject: EcoTips - Drain Cleaners
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EcoTips - Drain cleaners

A clogged drain is always a nuisance, but before you pull
out the caustic chemicals, consider a couple of
alternatives: 

  - A pot of boiling water can often clean up a minor
blockage. It has to be boiling to dissolve grease.

  - Pour a quarter cup of baking soda in the drain, and then
half a cup of vinegar. Cover the drain for the odors and
wait ten minutes before flushing.

  - For yet tougher drains, enlist help from enzymes. You can
buy a container with a brown powder, called "Enforcer -
Drain Care." Mix two spoons with a cup of warm water and
pour it down the drain. Then leave it undisturbed overnight.
Instead of harsh chemicals, enzymes slowly eat the gunk
(some washing detergents use other types of enzymes). This
method only works if there is some drainage, and not in
standing water. The procedure must usually be repeated three
times, sometimes more, before the drain is clean again. I
have used it twice with success, though more patience is
needed. A $10 can will last years and can be bought at Rouch
Hardware, and by mail order. Meijer's and Kmart sells
another brand of enzyme, called "Ultra Green enzyme
cleaner."

  - Some hardware stores sell a special hose to connect to a
faucet. The other end of the hose has nozzles that produce
high pressure water sprays. The nozzle end is pushed into
the drain where it can sluice its way through the gunk. This
hose is about 1/4 inch thick and will not fit into all
drains, some drains have fixed strainers the hose cannot
pass.

  An ounce of prevention is better than a pound of cure, as
Benjamin Franklin said. Before you notice any slow drainage,
pour boiling water down the drain, or do a single treatment
with the enzymes. This will keep the drains in good shape.




-- 
Steen Hansen (Hviid)    
Computer Specialist,    The Ohio State University
There is something fundamentally wrong in treating the earth as if it was
a business in liquidation.  -- Herman Daly, quoted in "Earth in the Balance"

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Thu Sep 21 20:18:35 1995
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Date: 21 Sep 1995 11:34:00 -0400
From: nick@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu (Nick Pine)
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Subject: Re: Solar Energy
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Stephen Lajoie <lajoie@eskimo.com> once more vaguely overgeneralizes:

>In short, Solar is a crack pot idea if proposed for large scale 
>applications. 

Perhaps once could construe this as "solar electricity is expensive,
compared to grid power, if that is available, and solar thermal power
is difficult to transport."

Large buildings are easy to heat with the sun. It is harder to heat small
buildings, but that doesn't matter, considering how large people are:
it is very hard to make a 2' cubical house that is 100% solar heated.
A 4' cube is easier, an 8' cube, easier still, and a 16' cube is a piece
of cake. This has to do with time constants and surface to volume ratios,
as well as the fact that taller passive solar collectors work better. 

Nick

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Thu Sep 21 21:48:34 1995
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Date: 21 Sep 1995 11:46:23 -0400
From: nick@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu (Nick Pine)
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Subject: Re: Solar Energy
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Stephen Lajoie <lajoie@eskimo.com> implacably waxes:

>...giving solar every benefit of a doubt...

Solar what?

Nick

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Thu Sep 21 22:48:40 1995
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To: london@sunsite.unc.edu
Date: 21 Sep 1995 13:02:12 -0400
From: nick@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu (Nick Pine)
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Subject: Re: Solar Energy
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Stephen Lajoie <lajoie@eskimo.com> wrote:

>How do you propose to save energy over a six month period?

How about a 16' solar closet? Some 55 gallon drums full of water inside
a cube, surrounded by 2' of insulation. The insulation would cost about
$1/ft^2 and the drums are free, sometimes, sometimes $15 each. The box
itself might cost 50 cents/ft^2 of all-around surface.

A cubical solar closet, L feet on a side, has a time constant of about
L^2 days. A 16' solar closet would take about 288 days to cool to 70 F,
if it sat outside at a constant temperature of 32 F, with no sun.

A 3' cube full of water surrounded by 6" of insulation has an RC time
constant of 432 hours, or 18 days. So if it starts out at, say 117 F,
and sits outside at 32 F, it will cool to 70 F according to the equation
70 = 32 + (117-32) exp(-t/18), where t turns out to be 14.5 days. 

An 8' solar closet with 18 55 gallon drums full of water, and 1' of
insulation, would cool from 145 F to 70 F in 46 days, sitting outside
in the same cold, cloudy weather.

>How do you plan to move all this energy about?

Moving heat is difficult. One can move air efficiently through large
ducts over short distances, say 20', and hot water over longer distances,
using air-water heat exchangers, but that is more expensive.

>For the UMPTEENTH time... There was NO allowances for reliability...

I wonder, when you say "reliability," Steve, are you talking about
the fact that some days are cloudy, or that solar equipment breaks? 

>There was NO allowance for clouds, fog, dust...

Clouds and fog are covered in NREL's solar data book, which gives averages
and extremes for amounts of sun and outdoor temperatures. Cloudy days
reduce solar input by about 50% where I live. This is fairly predictable,
over long times. I've read that dust on glass, even very dusty looking
glass, reduces the sun's intensity by at most 6%.

>I mention the need for storage, and someone says that they can save 90% of the
>energy put into a battery. Yeah, sure.

That was me, altho you are misparaphrasing. Having studied batteries and
patented one battery system, I recall that lead-acid battery charging is
about 90% efficient, ie if you do it right, you have to put 10% more energy
into a battery than what you can extract. That's for the battery itself.
That doesn't include the efficiency of the charging circuit.

>Over a period of three months?

Who said anything about 3 months? Of course batteries discharge over time,
altho not much if they are kept cold. But if they are cold, they have
limited capacity, until they are warmed up to room temperature, at which
point their capacity returns. Cold batteries are also difficult to charge,
and they last a lot longer than warm ones.

>Just the temperature difference between 80 F and 0 F (summer to winter) will
>reduce that down to 40%,

I wonder where you got that number? I wasn't aware that just temperature
cycling had any effect on battery capacity or state of charge, in itself.
Warm batteries do self-discharge more rapidly, but you seem to be saying 
something about temperature cycling...

>I think that most people that don't live in third world countries will 
>not accept the poor reliability that such small scale solar systems would 
>provide.

Again it seem strange to talk about the sun as being "unreliable." It is,
of course, in the short term, but over longer periods of time, measured
in weeks, it is very reliable. So if a solar system doesn't depend on
getting sun every day, like clockwork, eg if it stores heat for a few weeks
or months, it too can be very predictable and reliable. And if it runs out
of heat once in a while, that is not a disaster. That event may be part of
a design that makes sense, economically.

>...your numbers about the 
>cost of solar power are highly deceptive. Hidden is the cost of reliability.

Where is it then, exactly? What is the cost for a given level of reliability,
and what are the consequences of a "failure"? Buying some power from someone
else? Using up some reserve? Missing 8 hours of work? An airplane crash?

>I think it is important for people to know that solar power is not the 
>answer that some people make it out to be.

I think it's important for people to realize that there is more than
one form of solar power, when they read sentences like the one above.
Or perhaps the sentence might be phrased less misleadingly.

>In the small scale, yes, you can cheat out of paying your fair share of
>the power grid cost...

My electric company, which is not known for its benevolence, charges about
$8 per month to be connected to the grid, even if I consume no electricity.
Is this too little? Perhaps they should raise the minimum rate...

Nick

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Fri Sep 22 05:48:38 1995
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To: london@sunsite.unc.edu
Date: 22 Sep 1995 05:17:36 -0400
From: nick@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu (Nick Pine)
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Subject: Re: Reliability with redundancy
content-length: 6718
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Jim Fitzpatrick <jim@jfitz.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>nick@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu (Nick Pine) wrote:
>
>> A = MTBF/(MTTF+MTTR)
>
>no it isn't, A=MTTF/(MTTF+MTTR), since MTBF=(MTTF+MTTR)

Oops. Yes. Thanks for correcting this, Jim. Gee, somebody actually reads
these postings :-) Of course, the numbers are almost the same. BTW, there
was also a wrong sign in the original, and I've added a bit more explanation:

>>U = 1-A = 0.0008, which is approximately the MTTR/MTTF.

>>P(0) = 1/(M^2/L^2+2M/L+1).
                   ^
                   | this was a - , in error.

>>We could do this calculation exactly, but the first term in the denominator,
>>M^2/L^2, is over a million, and the second term is 2,500 and the third is 1,
>>which is how these calculations usually turn out, so we can approximate
>>P(0) = 1/(M^2/L^2) = (L/M)^2 = (MTTR/MTTF)^2. 

Sometimes I leave errors in postings to see if people read them closely.
Few do. More often I don't see them myself until later.

>>Most people are used to better electrical service than this
>
>how do you know? I have no idea how reliable my home electrical suppy
>is since I spend a large proportion of my year working 25 miles away.
>I have no idea how reliable my work electrical supply is because I
>spend a large proportion of my time at hone asleep! Unless you are in
>one place 24 hours a day 365 days a year with electrical appliance on
>(or, you have statistics supplied by the utilities....) you can't know.

I know when the power fails at home because I walk in and see a few
clocks blinking, the microwave oven, etc. I can tell how long the power
was off by how slow the clocks with hands are running. I know when
the power fails during the night in an office, because the net is down
the next morning, the system I left running all night rebooted, etc.
I have a odd friend who lives near a river, with such miserable service
that he has a battery system with inverters to keep his 11 PCs running.
(His hobby is weather prediction.) People make power line monitors to
detect even small outages. Dranetz (?)

>> and much better telephone service
>
>ditto

Yes, that's harder to tell, unless you use them a lot. 

>> the expected number of seconds a year of electrical outage,
>> when  neither  system is working, is .... 20 seconds
>
>this is fine as it stands, but it neglects one of the most important
>and troublesome aspects of reliability modelling - common cause
>(or common mode) failures. No matter how different your two systems
>may appear to be, they are not independent. At best, you could
>describe them as 'partially diverse'. There will be commom elements in
>both, such as contact breakers, fuses, even the wiring itself.

That's a deliberate neglection.

I think of this as a matter of degree. And some systems are easier and
cheaper to make redundant than others, and not uncoincidentally, more
reliable when made redundant that others. I'm thinking of power supplies
with diode-ORed outputs, or some other kind of paralleled outputs. Power
supplies are sometimes the most unreliable parts in a computer system,
and sometimes the items that can be most easily and reliably paralled. If
the switchover circutry were no more than two diodes, it would probably 
be a lot more reliable than the rest of a switching supply. 

I like to think about the marginal return on an investment in reliability:
where would you spend the first dollar, in making a system more reliable?
Where would you spend the next one? How hard is the switchover? How
fine-grained should the redundancy be? It's an interesting game to play
with a block diagram... And how does the cost of making a system more
reliable compare to the cost of a failure? I like to use numbers for this.

It seems to me that systems that handle significant power, eg AC inverters
(vs say, computers), often have costs that are proportional to their power-
handling capability, eg in their semiconductors and heat sinks and
transformers (vs. their cheap chip controllers), and easy switchover schemes
(compared to computers.) To me, that means that a redundant power supply
system which keeps working if N-1 out of N supplies work, may not cost a
lot more than one single larger supply, and it might be a lot more reliable.
It is easier to show this with numbers than words.

>The presence of common elements means that both systems could fail for the
>same reason. Take the example of two diesel generators, one running
>and one standby. This appears to be a redundant system, until you
>realise that they both require diesel oil, and this oil will very
>likely come from one source.

The Middle East?

>Dirty diesel oil will cause both generators to fail for the same reason,
>and at the same time (and this is a real example...). So, you cannot assume
>that all failures are independent.

I agree. And I'm not assuming that, but as a matter of degree, if things
can be arranged so that there are very few common elements compared to the
more complicated subsystems, with a much lower failure rate for the
common elements, then one is ahead of the game, however you would like
to describe the game in words. (Don't oil filters help?)

>Common cause failures are notoriously difficult to model. There is a
>whole branch of reliability modelling devoted to it.

I've seen some of that. Complicated, sometimes. 

>A simple way of modelling them is to say that a proportion of all failures
>in a system will be due to common causes. In a single system, of course, they
>wouldn't be recognised as such. Typical figures for this proportion
>are 20% for redundant systems, 6% for partially diverse systems, and
>2% for full diversity.

Interesting typical figures.

>In order to determine the unavailability due to common causes, this
>simple model allows us merely to take this proportion of the unavailability
>of a single system. In your example, the unavailability of a single system
>is 8E-4. The proportion of this that is due to common causes is 20%
>(for a redundant system)

It is?

>or an unavailability of 8E-4 x 0.2 = 1.6E-4, which equates to 1.4 hours
>per year. If we could argue partial diversity, then the systems would be
>unavailable for 25 minutes per year.

I'm thinking more about full diversity, with an attempt at clever design,
and picking the right things to diversify. 

>Of course, if the failures are coincident (cf the diesel generators)
>then the downtime is more likely to be the repair time, i.e. back to
>8 hours.

One would hope to avoid that in the design, no?

>Much more realistic, don't you think?

No.

>So, throwing lots of money at the problem in order to provide backup systems
>does not have the dramatic effect you suggested...

Aha, a conclusion :-)

Nick

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Fri Sep 22 21:48:54 1995
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Date: 22 Sep 1995 11:11:12 GMT
From: will1000@ix.netcom.com (Will Stewart )
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Subject: Steve Lajioe's Thesis
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In <DFA586.G57@eskimo.com> lajoie@eskimo.com (Stephen Lajoie) writes: 
>
>I haven't seen ONE credible response to my post about the cost or the 
>size of solar collectors needed to provide a significant amount of
>power to the U.S. energy grid. 

You have built a strawman thesis that attempts to prove that solar
energy is worthless or 'snake oil'.  There have been many here who have
provided details of actual residential usage of solar power and heat. 
You continue to ignore this, and espouse only one approach in your
strawman.

>What's more, certain solar advocates have not provided any sort of
>numbers or data, and simply say that I've been "discredited" in my ROM
>analysis via their flippant remarks and silly statements. 

And they are true.  Have you visited the referenced data sites?  If
not, I will repeat some of them for those who may have missed them;

http://www.nrel.gov/1/information/nrel/solar/
http://solstice.crest.org/renewables/solrad/index.html

>There is really no reason for me to continue. There is no discussion.

I notice this is posted to a.e.r only, which is just as well for the
folks at s.e.

Cheers,

Will Stewart

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Fri Sep 22 15:49:01 1995
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To: london@sunsite.unc.edu
Date: 22 Sep 1995 09:33:40 GMT
From: heller@attila.imo.physik.uni-muenchen.de (Helmut Heller)
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Subject: SUMMARY: rechargable batteries for hearing aids
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Hello,
About a month ago I asked for rechageable hearing aid batteries. I got  
several responses, others also expressed interest, but noone could definately  
say that such things exist. To make things worse, most responders said that  
they do NOT exist! Pretty disapponting, all in all.

Several people recommended trying to recharge the standard hearing aid  
batteries, and that this might or might not work.

In the meantime, there was a CFV for sci.chem.electrochem.battery
but the goup is not (yet?) there. It might be worth your effort to vote for  
it!
--
Servus, Helmut  (DH0MAD)    ______________NeXT-mail welcome_________________
FAX: +49-89-2394-4607       "Knowledge must be gathered and cannot be given"
heller@attila.imo.physik.uni-muenchen.de              ZEN, one of BLAKES7
Phone: +49-89-2394-4565     ------------------------------------------------
Helmut Heller, Ludwig Maximilians University                | G i b   D O S |
Institute for Medical Optics, Theoretical Biophysics Group  | k  e  i  n  e |

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Sat Sep 23 07:49:01 1995
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To: london@sunsite.unc.edu
Date: 23 Sep 1995 07:21:19 -0400
From: nick@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu (Nick Pine)
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Subject: Re: Reliability with redundancy
content-length: 4491
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Jim Fitzpatrick <jim@jfitz.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>nick@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu (Nick Pine) wrote:

>>Sometimes I leave errors in postings to see if people read them closely.
 
>Do I win a prize?  :-)

You have my gratitude for finding and fixing the mttf/bf error,
but not for finding the minus sign...

>>I like to think about the marginal return on an investment in reliability:
>>where would you spend the first dollar, in making a system more reliable?
>>Where would you spend the next one? How hard is the switchover? How
>>fine-grained should the redundancy be? It's an interesting game to play
>>with a block diagram... And how does the cost of making a system more
>>reliable compare to the cost of a failure? I like to use numbers for this.
 
>You seem to have identified the need for a cost-benefit analysis.

I'm thinking more about design, ie synthesis, than analysis. "Marginal
economic availability synthesis"? Seems like it could be done: take each
piece of a block diagram and ask questions like these:

"Suppose this block were doubly-redundant, or (N-1)/N redundant, or...?"
"What would be the new cost of the components that do that job?"
"Would they each do the whole job or share the job or be hot standbys?"
"How does the system performance degrade if one fails?"
"How would the alarm (if any) and switchover mechanisms work?"
"What would they cost, and how reliable would they be?"
"What would the unavailability improvement of the overall system be
 with this particular change?"

One might systematically go over a whole block diagram this way, with
some computer assistance, and explode each block down to the lowest level
and do it again and again. Not easy, and there are local optima. It would
probably be more complicated than a FMECA.

>I rather suspect that, in some instances at least, the benefit would be
>found to outweigh the cost. However, since (going back to the original
>scenario) it is the customer who is inconvenienced by a power outage,
>and 'captive' customers don't count for a bean in the eyes of a
>virtual monopoly, the money isn't spent.

OTOH, regulated utility monopolies sometimes have an public arrangement
where they earn a percentage of what they manage to spend on equipment, etc.
So if they decided to go bananas about reliability, we might have gold-
plated wires everywhere, at the public's expense. But in the US, we
seem to be going in the other direction.

>>if things can be arranged so that there are very few common elements 
>>compared to the more complicated subsystems, with a much lower failure 
>>rate for the common elements, then one is ahead of the game
>
>why not just build your original system with components that have a
>'much lower failure rate'?

That sounds like a good idea. What do they cost? What is the most
cost-effective arrangement to achieve a certain level of unavailability?
 
>>Interesting typical figures.
>
>Look up the 'Beta Factor' model.

Thanks. I may do that, if somebody pays me to do reliability work again :-) 

>>I'm thinking more about full diversity, with an attempt at clever design,
>>and picking the right things to diversify. 
 
>You can never get full diversity. No matter how different your systems
>may be, you'll still have wiring, switches, fuses...etc., in both. You
>can almost get there - for example, buy different types of switches
>from different manufacturers (in different countries, or on a
>different planet, if you like). But in the end, they're still
>switches, and so not fully diverse.

I have a nutty friend who lives in New York City. He just bought about 5 kW
of solar PVs and an inverter. He's planning to fill up his house with
batteries and a whole other set of 110V outlets, wiring, fuse boxes, etc.
(I think he still heats his house with oil :-) Now assuming the outlets
and wiring, etc. are in different places, that seems pretty diverse to me.

Of course, the battery explosions may not be good for the his grid
system wiring, and if his house catches on fire, one or both electrical
systems may stop working, and if a black cloud covers New York for a month,
everyone in the city will use lights more during the day, and that will put
some sort of strain on the grid system, as well as his solar system, and
if a tornado tears his house into little bits, or someone nukes New York,
both electrical systems may stop working, but will he care? Where do you
draw the line? How do you define the universe, in the probabilistic sense,
for common causes?

Nick

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Sun Sep 24 07:49:04 1995
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Subject: Re: Actual residential application of solar energy
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PVPAULSET <pvpaulset@aol.com> wrote:

>Here are 3 publications that can help you learn a lot about practical
>solar energy.

>HOME POWER MAGAZINE... "The hands on journal of home made power".
 
>SOLAR ELECTRICITY TODAY...

>"OFF THE SHELF, the spec sheet directory of renewable electricity"...

These are about "practical solar ELECTRICAL energy."
Sorta like "military intelligence."

Nick

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Subject: Re: New energy newsgroup: sci.energy.renewable?
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Douglas S. Gonder <soltherm@cdsnet.net> wrote:

>>>it seems to me that it may be time to create a new mainstream group,
>>>SCI.ENERGY.RENEWABLE, which being a sci.group, would be better
>>>distributed than the alt.group, and perhaps have a little more
>>>scientific flavour.
>>
>>I support this idea.  Let's make it happen.
>>
>>Cheers,
>>
>>Will Stewart
>>
>I support this idea.  Let's make it happen.
>>How?

There's a whole process described in places like news.announce.newsgroups,
with a posting name like create.FAQ, that involves posting a call for
discussion, then voting, etc. Would you like to create the group? 

You might edit this, to make a charter for sci.energy.renewable:

The AE Alternative Energy Discussion Mailing List is intended  to 
provide  a  forum  to discuss the current state of  the  art  and 
future direction of alternative energy sources that are renewable 
and  sustainable.   It  is *not* intended to  discuss  either  AE 
appropriateness  or comparisons with conventional energy  sources 
such  as fossil or nuclear fuels.  Those "discussions"  are  best 
relegated to the appropriate usenet newsgroup.

An  alternative  energy source is taken to include  solar,  wind, 
geothermal,  tidal,  electro-chemical,  hydro-electric,  or   any 
renewable  and sustainable energy source.  It is also assumed  to 
exclude  fuels such as fossil and nuclear since  these  literally 
take an act of God to create.

Nick

A recent posting of mine to the above list:

I would like to respond to Gary's message by posting some of my own
words (only) to him in some recent email we traded:

Hi Gary,

I didn't see Marge's original message, because I just started getting
this list again, since our site dropped alt.energy.renewable. 

What do you do at Real Goods? I guess you know Doug Pratt and Douglas Bath?
John Schaeffer suggested I visit them a month ago, when I drove down the
coast from Vancouver to Albuquerque. I spent several days talking with
Steve Baer in Albuquerque. I am even learning how to spell Albuquerque :-)

I showed up in Ukiah early Friday afternoon, just before the Real Goods
shareholder's meeting began, and there were few people left in the office.
I sent John and Doug quite a bit of the passive solar work that I've done
on paper, and got back a half-page letter from John, and nothing at all
from Doug or Douglas, not even a returned phone call. So I conclude that
solar space heating is not a big priority at Real Goods. Perhaps the new
Wisconsin division will do more of this, as the latest mailing suggests.

I was thinking about all this when RG had its stock offering, and almost
invested in that, but I got to thinking that RG is not a "pure play" in
alternate energy or energy conservation, as the people on Wall Street say. 

I have the impression that Jade Mountain is a more perfect alternate energy
company, a purer play, having spent a day in Boulder talking with Steve Troy.
It seems to me that he is seriously interested in saving energy and helping
backwoods and third world people, coming from his Peace Corps kind of
background, and most of their products do that, altho they sell a
few toys too. And while Steve's heart is in the right place, he's not
an engineer. But he knows that, and he doesn't pretend that he is.

A lot of people think they know all about how to design high-performance
passive solar houses, but very few do. A pity, since it isn't that difficult.
This has been complicated by government tax subsidies and research labs.
One might ask "if designing high-performance passive solar houses is easy,
why haven't all the government labs figured out how to do that, and why
aren't we doing that more?" Part of the answer lies in greed and politics.
Who is going to change this picture?

Howard Reichmuth, Professional Engineer: "To do good solar work, you have
to understand the flow of money (meaning large scale flows) as well as the
flow of heat." Howard used to work for Ecotope, where he designed a parabolic
concentrating solar greenhouse, 20 years ago ("Don't stand in the focus--
I almost melted a pair of boots") and he helped invent the Copper Cricket,
another dazzling design. Howard knows calculus, but he doesn't use it much.

For many people, "high-performance" means a 30 or 40% savings on an oil bill.
I just got the Passive Solar Industry Council's Guidelines for solar designs
in the Philadelphia area, and their target is something like that. But
I am beginning to agree with the Baers that if a house has any non-renewable
backup system, it should not be called a solar house. And a house that uses
more than a half-cord of wood for winter heat shouldn't be called a solar
house either. But here's an exception: my friends who live nearby in an 
underground solar house, who use $58 worth of electric resistance backup
heating per year. (For me, the challenge is to do that above ground.) Ditto
the non-underground, inexpensive New England houses of Norman Saunders, P. E.,
which have electric backup heaters that are almost never turned on. Norman
calculates that backup heat will be needed every 40 years, and his houses
have long track records from electronic data loggers to prove it. THAT
is serious solar engineering, not hype, not talk, not toys. But Norman's
work is largely unknown, partly because his writing is hard to understand.

The "solar builder" in my town is quite fond of Real Goods. I would say
that he is conspicuously wealthy, and intends to stay that way. He wears
Real Goods T-shirts. He tells people he is a solar builder, but he seems
to charge very high prices for his work, and his "solar houses" tend to
use almost as much energy as any other new houses. He thinks he knows all
about passive solar houses and how they work, but he hardly builds any
of them anymore, because in his heart and his experience, he knows they
don't work well. He did just send someone a proposal that included some
solar design work by me, but it was sort of a token thing, some window
dressing on an ordinary house, like a black person who sits near the door,
that might have reduced the oil consumed by the house by 10%. The customer
declined that option. He could build a 100% solar house, with no backup
heating system, but he does not do that. Why not, if he's a "solar builder"?

I think this builder is beginning to realize that he is ignorant, or worse,
that a lot of what he "knows" is not true. But he remains fairly arrogant...
I'd have to call him a yuppie. He seems very fond of money, and he seems
to be more into the form and hype of energy conservation and solar heating
than the substance. I don't think there is anything wrong with being young,
urban, and professional. OTOH, I am not fond of greedy, materialistic,
and superficial people who lie to themselves or others.
 
Both Real Goods and Jade Mountain seem to have guaranteed lowest prices
on PV stuff. Now if they would each guarantee to undercut the other by 10%,
like Home Depot, the stuff would eventually end up being free, right? :-)

I wasn't exactly aware that there were several Real Goods catalogs, altho
I seem to get a LOT of stuff from Real Goods in the mail, perhaps 5 pounds
of paper per year, which makes me suspicious of company motives, hype, etc.
When I paid to be a lifetime charter member of the energy club, or whatever
that's called, I got a lot more paper in the mail, for a little while.

I find the yuppie toy catalog amusing :-) Maddening too, of course.

Re this photovoltaic bias and blind spots, I've thought a lot about the
fact that solar space heating is not something you can ordinarily put on
a shelf in a box. It's too bad that you can't sell solar space heating
exactly that way, because it is so easy to do and economical, compared to
PVs and water heaters. So the fact that it's hard to put in a box as a
product limits its use, but it makes a lot of sense to DO, and to do first,
for many homeowners. This is some dilemma, isn't it? This is a product that
needs to be carefully packaged...

I try to sell my engineering consulting services on solar space heating,
but there is not much leverage in that, in designing one-of-a-kind things
for individual houses. Not much call for it either :-)

Real Goods CAN sell solar space heating books or plans, or perhaps kits, or
partial kits, with everything you need to build a space heating system
except some lumber... RG can also sell more components, like 3M SA-85 outdoor
aluminized mylar film or Dupont Tedlar (poly vinyl flouride) glazing, both
of which are sold by the manufacturers in large minimum orders of $3000 or so.
It is very nice that RG is selling radiant barrier insulation. That stuff
would probably make a nice solar oven, if you sprayed the weather side with
some sort of clear protective coating. The spray coating destroys the
insulation value of the foil, but it doesn't affect the reflectivity much. 

Jade Mountain has a solar air heater kit in their catalog, a $595 4' x 8'
Solar Airheater, item #SH451 on page 5, "The most practical, cost effective
and efficient way to reduce heating bills," which includes "everything except
labor and wire." It weighs 64 pounds. It has a thermostat and a fan and a
blower and an aluminum absorber plate and a 77% transmission Sun-Lite cover.
Steve Troy says he has never sold a single one. What is wrong here? 

It's not very cost-effective. $595 is a lot for a 32 ft^2 solar air heater.

It weighs a lot. We need to do more with less, as Bucky said. 

For $595 you can buy all the material for a 600 ft^2 sunspace from a
commercial greenhouse supplier like Stuppy: some curved steel pipes and poly
film that you can turn into a lean-to sunspace in a day or so. This sort
of arched lean-to structure is nicely described on pages 34-36 of William
Shurcliff's 1978 Brick House book, _New Inventions in Low-Cost Solar Heating--
100 Daring Schemes Tried and Untried_. (It would be very nice to see Real
Goods reprinting and selling this book.)

Dr. Shurcliff says "Here we discuss a scheme that may be ideally suited to
retrofit application to existing houses the south vertical faces of which
receive much solar radiation even in winter. The scheme is much like that
pioneered by S. R. Kenin and others of Solar Room Co./Box 1377/Taos, NM 87571.
There are already several buildings that use his scheme, or schemes reasonably
similar to it. An example is Egri House in Taos, NM. This house is described
in detail in my book _Solar Heated Homes of North America: 120 Outstanding
Examples_... ***It is hard to think of any other system that supplies so much
heat (to an existing house) at such a low cost***." He goes on to explain how
to make this a low-thermal-mass sunspace, eg by hanging a piece of greenhouse
shadecloth inside, which costs about 15 cents per square foot and comes in
rolls up to 30' wide and 300' long. (Yes, Marge, it comes in green too.)

In the summer, you could hang the greenhouse shadecloth over the poly film,
on the outside. This would prevent overheating and provide shade and make
the poly film last longer.

Dr. Shurcliff talks about using a thin layer of insulation on the north wall,
and says "Then, practically no heat is delivered to the massive components
of floor or wall; practically all of the heat is promptly transferred to
the air. And since the thermal capacity of the 100-200 lb. of air in the room 
is equal to that of one fourth as great a mass of water (about 25 to 50 lb.
of water), the air will heat up very rapidly. I estimate that its temperature
will rise about 40 F degrees in about two minutes, after the sun comes out
from behind a heavy cloud cover [unlike most solar collectors,] At the end
of the day, little heat will be "left on base" in the collector floor or
north wall and accordingly, the enclosure will cool off very rapidly [and
very little of that captured solar heat will be lost at night, unlike, say,
a Trombe wall.] 

This is more like a transparent tent than a structure, but the galvanized
steel pipes last at least 40 years, I'm told. Sounds great, doesn't it?
Whatever happened to this idea? Why aren't more people using it? Why
isn't real Goods selling it, somehow, or at least selling the book, or
at least talking about this very special kind of solar heating?

Each square foot of south glazing will capture the heat-equivalent of about
a gallon of oil per year, so 32 ft^2 will save you about 32 gallons of oil
per year. You can buy home heating oil where I live for 63 cents a gallon,
so this 32 ft^2 $595 Solar Airheater kit saves about $20 a year in oil, and
the cost of electricity to run it is $8/year, if it has a 50 watt blower
running 8 hours a day for 200 days, and electricity costs 10 cents/kWh. So
the net money saved is $12/year, so the simple payback period is $595/$12/year
= 50 years, not counting inflation or maintenance or shipping or sales taxes
or labor or the fact that the Sun-Lite panel will probably get all fuzzy and
wear out in 5 or 10 years. You would do better to put the $595 in the bank.

It is sad that this is billed as the "most practical, cost effective and
efficient way to reduce heating bills." That gives solar heating a bad name. 

I'm not a passive purist: I would probably put a $12 20" box fan in a second
floor window looking out into that sunspace, with a thermostat, and a plastic
film damper of course. This would make it work better, and it would be
cost-effective. (Fans move more air per watt than blowers, and larger fans
are more efficient than smaller ones. Norman Saunders says that the
efficiency of a fan is about the same as the blade diameter in inches.)

It is nice that Real Goods offers a variety of books on passive solar,
and encourages people to read, learn, and use the techniques. But you could
do a lot more. How about selling some sort of modular solar air heating kit?
A well-thought-out, lightweight, large, inexpensive version that could be
shipped UPS? Plastic film, shadecloth, etc. No blower. I just got a 10 pound
UPS package with an 16' x 32' piece of 80% black shadecloth, with hems and
grommets on all four edges, a part of a 500 square foot solar air heater,
(that's about 50 kW, for all you PV people) from PAK Unlimited in Norcross,
Georgia at (404) 448-1917. The cost was $71.25, including shipping. 

Does the Real Goods Sourcebook talk about low-thermal-mass sunspaces these
days? And the warmstores of Norman Saunders or my solar closets, ie insulated
boxes with containers of water inside them, heated by sun-warmed air?
With a fin tube just under the closet ceiling and a natural warm water
convection loop to a water heater upstairs that provides close to 100%
of the hot water for the house, even after a week or two of cloudy days,
while the solar closet provides 100% of the space heating? I'd be happy
to send you a paper I wrote about that, for a conference in Australia.
Does Real Goods sell Norman Saunders' book _Solar Basics_, 1974, 4th
edition, or William Shurcliff's book _Super Solar Houses_, a whole
book devoted to Norman's houses? I guess all I see these days from
Real Goods is the yuppie toy stuff.

BTW, I also noticed this very strong bias in the Independent Living book
that Marge lent me. Some of it is subtle and linguistic, like talking about
solar power over and over, without saying that what one is really talking
about is solar PHOTOVOLTAIC ELECTRICAL power, and ignoring the oil burner
in the basement, or the work and mess and smell and dangers and insult
to nature of heating a house with wood. That kind of talk is understandable
in context, but one forgets that it is a very limited context, and talking
that way seems to create an unfortunate narrow and overwhelming solar mindset.

I would say this discussion list is supposed to be about actually building
things that save energy, not just educating people on renewable energy issues. 
We can educate people till the cows come home, and there may still be another
Gulf war, because of the way we use oil in this country. We need to change.
For one thing, the oil will run out.

When I mention a company's telephone number here, I don't work for them and
I don't get a penny from them. In fact, this whole net thing is a net loss
for me :-) I spend considerable time and money looking into AE products
and companies, and there is no return from that, via the net. I do try to
share what I find out, though, because to me it isn't enough to just 
TALK about saving energy or to wear pith helmets with PV-powered fans, it's
more important to save significant energy, especially oil, in reasonable,
cost-effective ways, without depending on government subsidies... One
company did actually suggest giving me a 5% commission for any net.sales,
and I thought that was interesting, and it is against my religion to
turn down money, but I would "advertise" them anyway. And so far, not
a penny from them, so I still feel pure :-)

For some reason, this group and the sci.energy and alt.energy.renewable
groups bring to mind some words of the physicist Richard Feynman, the guy
who exposed the space shuttle O-ring design problem that caused the
Challenger disaster, as well as winning a Nobel Prize for his other work.
He used to say "Mathematics is to physics as masturbation is to sex."

It is wrong to think we are part of the solution to the energy problem
if we are merely talking about it, or buying toys, vs actually doing
something large and effective to solve it. 

Nick

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Sun Sep 24 09:49:06 1995
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Date: 24 Sep 1995 09:24:24 -0400
From: nick@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu (Nick Pine)
Message-Id: <443m68$5dt@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu>
Organization: Villanova University
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Subject: Re: Novice desires info for solar home & water heating
content-length: 1722
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X-Status: 

Will Stewart  <will1000@ix.netcom.com> wrote:

>>Novice desires info on how to build a solar heat collector for home
>>heating purposes. I want a 4ft by 8ft panel that has an air intake and
>>air output to the house with the air forced by a small fan...
 
>I did this 15 years ago...
 
>      ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++-|
>   <= heated air out                                   |
>   ----============================================    |
>   |    ###########################################    |
>   |                                                   |
>   |    ###############################################|
>   |   ------------------------------------------------|   
>   | ^
>     |
>cool air in
>
>- wood
>= metal plate with high absorbtive, low emissivity coating
># insulation
>+ duo pane glass (sliding door)

Seems like this might work better with some beer cans attached to the
metal plate, in the sun, perhaps without the upper layer of insulation above,
and it might be cheaper and more efficient if the air flowed through the
absorber with a fan putting cold air in on the south side in at the bottom,
and pushing warm air out thru the hole at the top of the north side of the
asorber, which might be made of black aluminum window screen or shadecloth,
and it might be bigger and cheaper if it were glommed onto the side of the
house, 16' tall, with holes in the wall instead of windows, and no insulation
inside it, and no wooden backplate, and a 16' long strip of 4' wide
polycarbonate plastic for glazing.

This seems like a very nice starting experiment... Nobody could argue about
the cost of your glazing materials. I have a big pile of old windows in the 
back yard too. 

Nick

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Tue Sep 26 16:19:47 1995
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Date: 26 Sep 1995 01:02:02 -0400
From: nick@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu (Nick Pine)
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Subject: Re: New energy newsgroup: sci.energy.renewable?
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Joseph Edward Bodden <j.bodden@internetmci.com> wrote:

>	how about an alt.energy.solutions.collaborative.coop for exchange
>of how to, what not to, when not to, why it does, where do i get, 
>why didnt it, i need help, 

Sounds great, but I won't be able to get it if it's an alt group...

Nick

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Tue Sep 26 16:19:55 1995
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Date: 26 Sep 1995 01:15:41 -0400
From: nick@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu (Nick Pine)
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Subject: Re: McCarthy's observations (Re: Wind power to expensive!!)
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Joe Dlhopolsky  <joed147@i-2000.com> wrote:

>I don't know about anyone else, but in my house (one-story ranch), the 
>insulation is in the ceiling of the living area.

That's like my attic.

>If I had the money to invest, I'd cover my entire 60 x 40 feet
>of sun-exposed roof with solar panels.

I got my 32' x 20' steep south attic roof replaced this summer with clear
polycarbonate plastic. So now the south side of the attic is transparent,
a 600 ft^2 solar air heater, which should have a peak power collection of
about 40 kW (thermal) at about 75% efficiency. It looks great from the
inside, with a 32' x 24' floor with wide pine floorboards and stone endwalls,
and conventional from the outside, unless I turn on a light at night. The
cost for labor (at $40/hour) and materials was $2200, including a couple
of large vents with operable doors underneath, near the roof peak. 

Nick

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Tue Sep 26 16:19:49 1995
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Date: 26 Sep 1995 01:30:31 -0400
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Subject: Re: Solar Energy
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Bob Apthorpe <apthorpe@delphi.com> wrote:

>Why would I want to generate my own electricity when I can pay someone else
>to do it for me?

I used to work for Western Union, 20 years ago. Many of the vice presidents
still had their old telegraph sounders on their desks. One of their corporate
goals was to "exploit the world of data communications, at 50 baud and below."

Early in the company's history, Alexander Graham Bell spoke with the president
of Western Union, offering to sell them his "telephone" invention for $8,000.
The president told him that was a ridiculous invention with a ridiculous
price, and said "Why would anyone want to use this 'telephone' of yours
to contact another person when he could simply send a telegram?"

Nick

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Date: 26 Sep 1995 08:56:59 -0400
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Subject: Re: New energy newsgroup: sci.energy.renewable?
content-length: 1801
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X-Status: 

Douglas S. Gonder <soltherm@cdsnet.net> wrote:
>j.bodden@internetmci.com says...

>>        how about an alt.energy.solutions.collaborative.coop
>>for exchange of how to, what not to, when not to, why it does, where do i 
>get, why didnt it, i need help, 
>>        ie, any and all comers working on solutions get together and trade 
>>assistance and data.

>          sci.energy.renewable.coop.graphics  (just a suggestion)

That would seem to indicate that it should only include graphics...

>prefix  "sci" will reach more people I understand... comments?

This is true. It would even reach our site, until our Evil Mother Of
All Campus News decided to cancel it some afternoon, in a fit of pique.

>Who started all this anyway?

God. ("Let there be light.")
 
>Who's the leader of the band..

We don't seem to have much of a leader, but I did suggest a while ago that
someone might edit the text below into a sci.energy.renewable charter and
post a call for discussion in the appropriate news newsgroup...  Perhaps our 
EMOACN would do that.

Nick

The AE Alternative Energy Discussion Mailing List is intended  to 
provide  a  forum  to discuss the current state of  the  art  and 
future direction of alternative energy sources that are renewable 
and  sustainable.   It  is *not* intended to  discuss  either  AE 
appropriateness  or comparisons with conventional energy  sources 
such  as fossil or nuclear fuels.  Those "discussions"  are  best 
relegated to the appropriate usenet newsgroup.

An  alternative  energy source is taken to include  solar,  wind, 
geothermal,  tidal,  electro-chemical,  hydro-electric,  or   any 
renewable  and sustainable energy source.  It is also assumed  to 
exclude  fuels such as fossil and nuclear since  these  literally 
take an act of God to create.

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Tue Sep 26 18:50:06 1995
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Date: 26 Sep 1995 09:19:02 -0400
From: nick@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu (Nick Pine)
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Subject: Re: Solar Energy
content-length: 5649
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Barry Smith  <barry@bluesky.com> wrote:
>lajoie@eskimo.com (Stephen Lajoie) wrote:
>>Nick Pine <nick@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu> wrote:
>>>Stephen Lajoie <lajoie@eskimo.com> implacably waxes:
>>>
>>>> ...giving solar every benefit of a doubt...
>>>
>>> Solar what?

>> Solar anything. I figured the area, then applied a thermodynamic 
>> efficiency to get the total area in shadow. It doesn't matter at all how 
>> you convert it. Someone threw out a 30% efficiency for PVs. Okay, so I 
>> used PVs. With an assumption of PVs, I showed that the cost would be 
>> far more than the country could spend.

In talking about costs, the efficiency and the technology do matter.
 
>By your statement, Edmund's price is $9375 per square meter, which most
>folks in the business would say is a bit high.  Your mark down brings
>that down to $4687.50, and your miracle factor of ten reduces that to
>$468.75 per square meter.

Which is about $40 per square foot. Polycarbonate glazing costs about
$1 per square foot in small quantities. You don't need much more than
that to collect solar hot air. In fact, you can do a good job collecting
solar hot air with some curved steel pipes, say 20' long, on 4' centers,
such as the ones used in commercial greenhouses, leaning against the south
wall of a two-story house, covered with a large piece of 5 cent/ft^2
polyethylene film, which is guaranteed for 3 years, with a large piece
of 15 cent/ft^2 greenhouse shadecloth inside the greenhouse. 

For $600 you can buy all the material for a 600 ft^2 sunspace from a
commercial greenhouse supplier like Stuppy: some curved steel pipes and poly
film that you can turn into a sunspace in a day or so. Three people can
put up a 3000 ft^2 commercial greenhouse in less than a day... This sort
of arched lean-to structure is nicely described on pages 34-36 of William
Shurcliff's 1978 Brick House book, _New Inventions in Low-Cost Solar Heating--
100 Daring Schemes Tried and Untried_. 

Dr. Shurcliff says "Here we discuss a scheme that may be ideally suited to
retrofit application to existing houses the south vertical faces of which
receive much solar radiation even in winter. The scheme is much like that
pioneered by S. R. Kenin and others of Solar Room Co./Box 1377/Taos, NM 87571.
There are already several buildings that use his scheme, or schemes reasonably
similar to it. An example is Egri House in Taos, NM. This house is described
in detail in my book _Solar Heated Homes of North America: 120 Outstanding
Examples_... ***It is hard to think of any other system that supplies so much
heat (to an existing house) at such a low cost***." He goes on to explain how
to make this a low-thermal-mass sunspace, eg by hanging a piece of greenhouse
shadecloth inside, which costs about 15 cents per square foot and comes in
rolls up to 30' wide and 300' long. (It comes in green too.)

In the summer, you might hang the greenhouse shadecloth over the poly film,
on the outside. This would prevent overheating and provide shade and make
the poly film last longer.

Dr. Shurcliff talks about using a thin layer of insulation on the north wall,
and says "Then, practically no heat is delivered to the massive components
of floor or wall; practically all of the heat is promptly transferred to
the air. And since the thermal capacity of the 100-200 lb. of air in the room 
is equal to that of one fourth as great a mass of water (about 25 to 50 lb.
of water), the air will heat up very rapidly. I estimate that its temperature
will rise about 40 F degrees in about two minutes, after the sun comes out
from behind a heavy cloud cover [unlike most solar collectors,] At the end
of the day, little heat will be "left on base" in the collector floor or
north wall and accordingly, the enclosure will cool off very rapidly [and
very little of that captured solar heat will be lost at night, unlike, say,
a Trombe wall.] 

This is more like a transparent tent than a structure, but the galvanized
steel pipes last at least 40 years, I'm told. You could also grow grapes on
them. Sounds great (or grape :-), doesn't it? Whatever happened to this idea?
Why aren't more people using it? Why isn't real Goods selling it, somehow?

I'm not a passive purist: I would probably put a $12 20" box fan in a second
floor window looking out into that sunspace, with a thermostat, and a plastic
film damper of course. This would make it work better, and it would be
cost-effective. (Fans move more air per watt than blowers, and larger fans
are more efficient than smaller ones. Norman Saunders says that the
efficiency of a fan is about the same as the blade diameter in inches.)

Why doesn't someone make some sort of modular solar air heating kit? A
well-thought-out, lightweight, large, inexpensive version that could be
shipped UPS? Plastic film, shadecloth, etc. No blower. I just got a 10 pound
UPS package with an 16' x 32' piece of 80% black shadecloth, with hems and
grommets on all four edges, a part of a 500 square foot solar air heater,
(that's about 50 kW, for all you PV people) from PAK Unlimited in Norcross,
Georgia at (404) 448-1917. The cost was $71.25, including shipping. 

Low-thermal-mass sunspaces seem like a good way to heat houses, perhaps
with the warmstores of Norman Saunders or my solar closets, ie insulated
boxes with containers of water inside them, heated by sun-warmed air.
With a fin tube just under the closet ceiling and a natural warm water
convection loop to a water heater upstairs that provides close to 100%
of the hot water for the house, even after a week or two of cloudy days,
while the solar closet provides 100% of the space heating...

Nick

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Thu Sep 28 06:50:52 1995
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Date: 28 Sep 1995 06:24:04 -0400
From: nick@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu (Nick Pine)
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Subject: Re: Cogeneration
content-length: 4166
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Bob Apthorpe <apthorpe@delphi.com> wrote:
 
>Cogeneration is becoming more popular and will continue until market forces
>make it noncompetitive. Still, this is currently only feasible for large
>consumers such as chemical plants and paper mills.

Gee, my Pennsylvania customer didn't mention that he had a paper mill in
the basement :-) The local electric utility has now approved the application
for the first Intelligen system in Pennsylvania. 

Article: 1086 of sci.engr.heat-vent-ac
From: nick@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu (Nick Pine)
Subject: Intelligen's 5 kW cogenerator
Date: 11 Jul 1995 06:56:04 -0400
Organization: Villanova University

Do the people in this group mostly already know about Intelligen's 5 kW
residential cogeneration system? Someone in the alternate energy newsgroup
requested that their address be posted, so I'll post some info here too...

Intelligen Energy Systems       Tom Sciacca, President
58 South Street                 Neil Slavin, Exec. VP
Hopkinton, MA 01748             (508) 435-9007

This is a clever "oil burner," that costs about $10K, but it can pay for itself
in 3-5 years, vs. the infinite payback period for an ordinary oil burner, by
making 5 kW of electricity while it is heating a house. The interface is an
ordinary circuit breaker in the service panel, the kind you would use for an
electric range.

Burning home heating oil, it's pretty efficient. About 93%, with a 1 1/2"
PVC fluepipe and a 150F exhaust gas temperature. Inside the 800 lb box is
an extremely reliable 11 HP diesel made by Lister-Petter, and an induction
generator. When the house thermostat calls for heat, the induction generator
acts as a motor to start the diesel from the 220 volt line. Then it becomes
a generator, making the meter run backwards, if legally permitted. (In some
states, you need two meters. In Pennsylvania, small power producers with
efficient (FERC certified) systems are paid at the retail rate for the power
they make, until their net monthly electrical consumption reaches zero, at
which point, the utility begins to pay a lower "avoided cost" per kWh. In
winter months, a typical house generates two or three times its electrical
needs, and the utility sends the owner a check, versus vice versa.) When
the house is warm enough, the diesel engine stops running.

Of course you have to put sandbags all over the kitchen floor, to keep the
dishes from rattling off the shelves... :-) No, it's actually fairly quiet,
60 dBA 2 meters away, with good shock mounts as well as acoustic skins.

The unit has a built-in circulator pump, which runs the engine block cooling
water thru baseboard radiators, a duct heat exchanger, a fan coil unit, an
indirect-fired water heater, a hot tub or swimming pool heat exchanger, etc.
55,000 Btu/hr. 85,000, max, in "turbo-mode" :-) if the microprocessor senses
more heat is needed and diverts the electrical output to turn on some heaters
in the water stream, instead of feeding it back to the electric company.
(Don't ask how 5 kW makes 30K Btu/hour, perhaps there's a bug in the spec.)

The company has about three dozen systems installed in New England now,
interfaced with about ten utilities. They would like to expand their
territory. I'm helping them get the first one installed in Pennsylvania.

The unit won't work in a stand-alone power mode. It won't start without grid
power, and it won't stay running on a dead line. This is a "safety feature."

Most cogen systems are at least a thousand times bigger, 5 megawatts and up.
One of the big problems with these small systems is lifetime. Some standby
power systems spec oil changing every 25 hours. Others wear out in 2000 hours.
Intelligen's diesel engine is very reliable. It's also used in the M1 tank
(for auxiliary power), the DEW line, military jet engine starting systems,
commercial fishing fleets, and offshore Coast Guard installations that only
get visited once a year or so. Intelligen has a 10 year guarantee. Maintenance
consists of changing the oil once a year. And perhaps gently enquiring how
the unit has been doing over the last year, perhaps by telephone, via its
non-volatile RAM and RS-232 interface :-)

Nick

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Thu Sep 28 06:50:48 1995
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Subject: Re: Polycarbonate roof
content-length: 869
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Joe Dlhopolsky  <joed147@i-2000.com> wrote:
>nick@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu (Nick Pine) wrote:

>>I got my 32' x 20' steep south attic roof replaced this summer with clear
>>polycarbonate plastic. So now the south side of the attic is transparent,
>>a 600 ft^2 solar air heater,

>How do you keep from cooking in the summer?

There's 8" of cellulose insulation under the wide pine floorboards, and
4 open windows in the stone walls, and 2 1' vents near the ridge, 14'
above the floor. The vents have some hinged and weatherstripped doors
underneath that are open now, but they will be closed in the winter. 

Still, it gets very hot up there on a sunny day, and quite warm on a
cloudy day. At the moment, I just use the attic for storage, altho
sometimes I sleep up there in a hammock strung from the collar beams,
and look out at the stars, after the sun goes down...

Nick

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Thu Sep 28 07:50:50 1995
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Subject: Re: Overhangs
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Ken Fischer <kfischer@iglou.iglou.com> wrote:
 
>         It is possible to place an overhang above south facing
>passive collectors so that the natural position of the Sun in
>summer does not let _any_ sun in.

Adaptable overhangs seem nice, since a fixed overhang that admits the
low-angle sun in April and May will also admit the low-angle sun in
August and September, when extra heat is unwanted.

An excellent $5 book about solar overhangs is _Sun Angles for Design_, 
published by Robert Bennett/6 Snowden Road/Bala Cynwyd, PA 19004. 
Mr. Bennett is a Registered Architect and Professional Engineer (with
a degree in space physics :-) and a former National Coordinator of the
American Section of the International Solar Energy Society. I believe
he now lives in Virginia.

Closable vents also help in the summer, as do deciduous trees, trumpet vines,
automatic insulated garage doors, clematis, runner beans or grapes. Vine-wise,
twiners are less damaging and more controllable than clingers. Perhaps grape
pruning and harvesting would be easier with a movable rope trellis over the
glazing, suspended from a board at the top which is in turn suspended from
an eave by a couple of ropes and pulleys.  

Nick

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Thu Sep 28 07:50:50 1995
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Date: 28 Sep 1995 07:05:33 -0400
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Subject: Re: Overhangs
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Ken Fischer <kfischer@iglou.iglou.com> wrote:
 
>         It is possible to place an overhang above south facing
>passive collectors so that the natural position of the Sun in
>summer does not let _any_ sun in.

Adaptable overhangs seem nice, since a fixed overhang that admits the
low-angle sun in April and May will also admit the low-angle sun in
August and September, when extra heat is unwanted.

An excellent $5 book about solar overhangs is _Sun Angles for Design_, 
published by Robert Bennett/6 Snowden Road/Bala Cynwyd, PA 19004. 
Mr. Bennett is a Registered Architect and Professional Engineer (with
a degree in space physics :-) and a former National Coordinator of the
American Section of the International Solar Energy Society. I believe
he now lives in Virginia.

Closable vents also help in the summer, as do deciduous trees, trumpet vines,
automatic insulated garage doors, clematis, runner beans or grapes. Vine-wise,
twiners are less damaging and more controllable than clingers. Perhaps grape
pruning and harvesting would be easier with a movable rope trellis over the
glazing, suspended from a board at the top which is in turn suspended from
an eave by a couple of ropes and pulleys.  

Nick

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Thu Sep 28 07:50:49 1995
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Date: 28 Sep 1995 07:30:58 -0400
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Subject: Re: Polycarbonate roof
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<chuck@utdallas.edu> wrote:
>snark@swcp.com (snark@swcp.com) wrote:
 
>> An overhang above the roof?
 
>Why not?  Trees provide a natural overhang...and are commonly used to 
>control solar gain.

I used to have a cherry tree that overhung my attic roof. The trunk is still
there, about 3' in diameter. It died. I had it removed a few years later,
very carefully. One of the long branches that overhung the roof was about
a foot in diameter. A tree would be safer shading a wall than a roof.

>An artificial one would be even more efficient, though if not designed
>properly it would be UGLY.

An artificial tree? Seems like it would have to drop its leaves in winter
to work... (?) People now make cellular telephone base station antennas
that look like trees, large fiberglass structures with co-linear array
antennas inside, I think. About $50K...

Nick

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Fri Sep 29 04:51:17 1995
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Date: 29 Sep 1995 03:51:24 -0400
From: nick@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu (Nick Pine)
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Subject: Re: Solar Energy
content-length: 2277
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Stephen Lajoie <lajoie@eskimo.com> wrote:

>Solar energy dates back to the 1970s when it became popular politically. 

It does? I thought the sun was much older than that :-)

Edward Morse patented what is now known as the Trombe wall in 1881.

I have an old book about "it" called _The Source and Mode of Solar Energy
Throughout the Universe_, by I. W. Heysinger, M.A., M.D, published by
J. B Lippincott in 1895.

Dr. Heysinger begins:

   In endeavoring to present a new and rational interpretation of the
   source and mode of solar energy, based upon the established
   principles of recent science, it becomes necessary to briefly cite
   the facts bearing upon the problem to be solved and the authorities
   for their support, as well as to describe concisely the different
   hypotheses at present in vogue, and to point out the well-established
   insufficiency of these theories, one and all, to account for or explain
   the difficulties encountered, and which so far have remained as an
   unsolved enigma. And this problem of solar energy is the grandest and
   most important problem of all physics, for upon the light and heat of
   the sun depend all physical life and its consequences, animal and
   vegetable, past, present and future. If within finite time, and relatively,
   compared with the enormous vistas of the past, a very brief time, this
   source of energy is to cease, and our whole system be involved in darkness
   and death, such darkness and death must be eternal; for the dead sun
   in his final stage of condensation will be as fixed and unchangeable
   as the operation of eternal laws can make it, and henceforth there can be
   no revival or reversals, no turning back of the hand upon the dial,
   while the laws of nature continue; and outside the uniform operation
   of the laws of nature there is no source, or mode, or continuance of
   solar energy conceivable. It is true that when our system shall have
   run down to its culmination in death, other present systems may continue
   for a time to exist and new ones spring into being; but these, too,
   must inevitably follow the same course, and likewise end in eternal
   darkness, until finally the great experiment of creation shall have
   ended in eternal failure.

Nick

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Date: 29 Sep 1995 05:37:13 -0400
From: nick@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu (Nick Pine)
Message-Id: <44geo9$2fc@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu>
Organization: Villanova University
Sender: london@sunsite.unc.edu
References: <DF8F2o.1zC@eskimo.com>, <43s5qk$i87@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu>, <1995Sep29.044738.29119@ke4zv.atl.ga.us>
Subject: Re: Solar Energy
content-length: 2024
Status: O
X-Status: 

Gary Coffman <gary@ke4zv.atl.ga.us> wrote:
>nick@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu (Nick Pine) writes:
>>Stephen Lajoie <lajoie@eskimo.com> wrote:
>>
>>>How do you propose to save energy over a six month period?
>[snip]
>>An 8' solar closet with 18 55 gallon drums full of water, and 1' of
>>insulation, would cool from 145 F to 70 F in 46 days, sitting outside
>>in the same cold, cloudy weather.

I think you snipped the wrong part. Saving energy for six months requires
something more like a 16' solar closet, with its storage time of 288 days.
 
>Putting that in perspective, you're talking about 594,000 BTU, about
>the amount of heat my furnace puts out in two hours.

Gee, your furnace is five times bigger than mine, and you live in a
warmer climate...

>What do you suggest for the other 2158 hours I need heat each season?

This is way out of context... Unless you live at the North Pole, I suggest
you build a low-thermal-mass sunspace sized to provide all the hot air
you need to keep your house warm on an average day in December. Then build
your solar closet into the north wall of that sunspace, (or the south wall,
if you are Orstralian), an 4' x 8' x 8' insulated closet with another 8' x 8'
layer of glazing inside the sunspace glazing, so the lost heat from the closet
ends up in the house, via the sunspace air, and the warm sunspace environment
when the sun is shining makes the closet run hotter inside... 

So this closet would have a separately-glazed passive solar air heater attached
to its insulated south wall, and it would be filled with some containers of
water, and on an average December day, the solar hot air would just keep
the closet warm, like a stagnant solar collector. The closet would be just
coasting, lurking, without providing ANY heat to the house on an average
December day, with some sun, except what leaks through the insulated walls
between the closet and the house. THEN when the sun goes in for a week or so,
you let some heat out of the closet to keep the house warm. Simple, no?

Nick

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Fri Sep 29 06:51:20 1995
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Date: 29 Sep 1995 05:06:37 -0400
From: nick@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu (Nick Pine)
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Subject: Solar airships
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Enough of this PV talk. Let's talk about a more practical form of solar
energy--solar heated balloons. A net.friend says:

>I'm also into airships, the kind that haven't been built since the   
>thirties. I'm fascinated by them. It's unfortunate that the lack of   
>readily available helium gas and the onset of a stupid war effectively  
>killed the age of the airship. My plan is this. Built an airship using   
>modern aluminium and fabrics. I'm thinking of a big ship, in the order of   
>four or five times the size of the Hinderburg.

Purdy big... Have you read John McPhee's book about modern airships?
It originally appeared in the New Yorker magazine, under the title
"The Deltoid Pumpkin Seed." He suggests building large thick delta-wing-
shaped airships. One might power an airship by somehow making it rise
and fall through the air, and turning the vertical motion into horizontal
motion by controlling the orientation: if it is falling and we tilt the
back end so it is above the forward end, it should move forward, no?
If it is rising, the forward end should be higher...

Bucky talked about large floating structures supported by solar hot air.

>The airship is black and the inside of the envelope is lined with highly
>reflective material. The idea is that any sunlight falling on the airship
>will heat up the envelope.

Sounds good so far. What's the reflective material for?

>Because of the foil or what ever you've got inside the envelope   
>gains heat slowly, providing the airship with increasingly more lifting   
>power. The longer you remain airborne the better the efficiency of the   
>system.

I would just make a transparent envelope outside a black one.

Or an envelope that is transparent on one half and black on the other,
if we can keep the transparent side aimed at the sun.

Or an envelope that has one transparent side and one aluminized mylar side,
with a small, high-thermal-mass (eg black water balloon) target in the center,
surrounded by a small insulating transparent envelope, with the outside
balloon oriented so that the sun passes through the transparent side and
gets reflected and concentrated by the shiny side onto the black target. 

>Excess helium can be tapped off and recompressed...

Helium? How about just solar heated air? This would work better with a
large airship. The volume, ie lifting force, increases with the cube of
the dimension, while the weight of the structure increases with the square,
as does the solar collecting area. If our airship material weighs, say,
1 pound/200 ft^2 (eg heat sealable Tedlar PVF film), and it has an R-value
of 1 ft^2-F/Btu, and it receives 1000 Btu/ft^2/day, and the outside temp
is, say, 62 F, what is the minimum size it has to be to hold itself up,
day and night? Air at 5000' and 62 F weighs 0.0625 lbs/ft^2...

In full sun, a r' radius sphere, say, for starters, containing some sort
of internal solar absorbing black cloud, surrounded by a transparent skin, 
would have a solar collecting area of pi r^2, and four times that area for
heat loss purposes, so if it absorbs 1000 pi r^2 Btu over 24 hours, and
it has an internal temperature Ts, in 62 F surrounding air, it will lose
24 hours x (Ts-62) x 4 pi r^2/R1 Btu in a day. So if the solar energy that
flows into the sphere during a day equals the heat energy that flows out
of the sphere during a day, the internal air temperature of the sphere
would be such that 

1000 x pi r^2 = 24 (Ts-62) 4 pi r^2, or equivalently

1000 = 24 (Ts-62) x 4, or Ts = 62 + 1000/96 = 62 + 10.4 = 72.4 F.

How much would this air weigh? As I recall,

Rho(83) = Rho(62) x (459+62)/(459+72) = 0.0625 x 521/531 = 0.0613 lbs/ft^3.

So the net lifting force is 0.0625 - 0.0613 = 0.0012 lb/ft^3.

The balloon would weigh 4 pi r^2/200 lbs, and it would have a volume
of 4/3 pi r^3, so it should be self-supporting when 

4 pi r^2/200 = 4/3 pi r^3 x 0.0012, or

r = 3/(200 x 0.0012) = 12'.

Hmmm. A 24' diameter balloon. Not very big... :-)

BTW, Charlie Overton's 1980 US Patent No. 4,237,868 "Solar Heating Balloon"
describes a tethered balloon being used as a solar thermal collector,
filled with a gas, lighter than air, with a pair of fluid conduits to
conduct a working fluid from the balloon to the ground and back...
As a working fluid, he suggests water containing a black dye or finely
divided carbon black, atomized into a very fine mist exposed to the sun.

>The airship is essentially a leisure vehicle, like a large yacht. It takes 3
>days to cross the Atlantic in a Hinderburg class ship with two 1938 vintage 
>diesels. Modern engines with modern propellors could easily do as well.

If we stored the heat in the thermal mass center, we could make the balloon
slowly rise and fall by opening and closing a vent in the transparent envelope
covering the center, perhaps with a fan, or we might vent some steam from the
thermal mass center to lighten the balloon and heat up the internal air, which
would make the balloon rise as the steam pushed it along. Then the vent to
the thermal mass would be closed and the balloon would fall as the inside air
lost heat through the skin. How long it would take to cross the Atlantic that
way? Not so fast as the Concorde, but consuming far less than the Concorde's
one TON of jet fuel per passenger crossing. 
 
>I can picture this in mind right now. An enormous graceful black airship   
>sailing across the New York or Paris landscapes. All it needs is some   
>modern technology.

Yup :-)

Nick

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Fri Sep 29 06:51:20 1995
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	for london@sunsite.unc.edu (london@sunsite.unc.edu)
To: london@sunsite.unc.edu
Date: 29 Sep 1995 05:06:37 -0400
From: nick@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu (Nick Pine)
Message-Id: <44gcut$2dq@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu>
Organization: Villanova University
Sender: london@sunsite.unc.edu
Subject: Solar airships
content-length: 5490
Status: O
X-Status: D

Enough of this PV talk. Let's talk about a more practical form of solar
energy--solar heated balloons. A net.friend says:

>I'm also into airships, the kind that haven't been built since the   
>thirties. I'm fascinated by them. It's unfortunate that the lack of   
>readily available helium gas and the onset of a stupid war effectively  
>killed the age of the airship. My plan is this. Built an airship using   
>modern aluminium and fabrics. I'm thinking of a big ship, in the order of   
>four or five times the size of the Hinderburg.

Purdy big... Have you read John McPhee's book about modern airships?
It originally appeared in the New Yorker magazine, under the title
"The Deltoid Pumpkin Seed." He suggests building large thick delta-wing-
shaped airships. One might power an airship by somehow making it rise
and fall through the air, and turning the vertical motion into horizontal
motion by controlling the orientation: if it is falling and we tilt the
back end so it is above the forward end, it should move forward, no?
If it is rising, the forward end should be higher...

Bucky talked about large floating structures supported by solar hot air.

>The airship is black and the inside of the envelope is lined with highly
>reflective material. The idea is that any sunlight falling on the airship
>will heat up the envelope.

Sounds good so far. What's the reflective material for?

>Because of the foil or what ever you've got inside the envelope   
>gains heat slowly, providing the airship with increasingly more lifting   
>power. The longer you remain airborne the better the efficiency of the   
>system.

I would just make a transparent envelope outside a black one.

Or an envelope that is transparent on one half and black on the other,
if we can keep the transparent side aimed at the sun.

Or an envelope that has one transparent side and one aluminized mylar side,
with a small, high-thermal-mass (eg black water balloon) target in the center,
surrounded by a small insulating transparent envelope, with the outside
balloon oriented so that the sun passes through the transparent side and
gets reflected and concentrated by the shiny side onto the black target. 

>Excess helium can be tapped off and recompressed...

Helium? How about just solar heated air? This would work better with a
large airship. The volume, ie lifting force, increases with the cube of
the dimension, while the weight of the structure increases with the square,
as does the solar collecting area. If our airship material weighs, say,
1 pound/200 ft^2 (eg heat sealable Tedlar PVF film), and it has an R-value
of 1 ft^2-F/Btu, and it receives 1000 Btu/ft^2/day, and the outside temp
is, say, 62 F, what is the minimum size it has to be to hold itself up,
day and night? Air at 5000' and 62 F weighs 0.0625 lbs/ft^2...

In full sun, a r' radius sphere, say, for starters, containing some sort
of internal solar absorbing black cloud, surrounded by a transparent skin, 
would have a solar collecting area of pi r^2, and four times that area for
heat loss purposes, so if it absorbs 1000 pi r^2 Btu over 24 hours, and
it has an internal temperature Ts, in 62 F surrounding air, it will lose
24 hours x (Ts-62) x 4 pi r^2/R1 Btu in a day. So if the solar energy that
flows into the sphere during a day equals the heat energy that flows out
of the sphere during a day, the internal air temperature of the sphere
would be such that 

1000 x pi r^2 = 24 (Ts-62) 4 pi r^2, or equivalently

1000 = 24 (Ts-62) x 4, or Ts = 62 + 1000/96 = 62 + 10.4 = 72.4 F.

How much would this air weigh? As I recall,

Rho(83) = Rho(62) x (459+62)/(459+72) = 0.0625 x 521/531 = 0.0613 lbs/ft^3.

So the net lifting force is 0.0625 - 0.0613 = 0.0012 lb/ft^3.

The balloon would weigh 4 pi r^2/200 lbs, and it would have a volume
of 4/3 pi r^3, so it should be self-supporting when 

4 pi r^2/200 = 4/3 pi r^3 x 0.0012, or

r = 3/(200 x 0.0012) = 12'.

Hmmm. A 24' diameter balloon. Not very big... :-)

BTW, Charlie Overton's 1980 US Patent No. 4,237,868 "Solar Heating Balloon"
describes a tethered balloon being used as a solar thermal collector,
filled with a gas, lighter than air, with a pair of fluid conduits to
conduct a working fluid from the balloon to the ground and back...
As a working fluid, he suggests water containing a black dye or finely
divided carbon black, atomized into a very fine mist exposed to the sun.

>The airship is essentially a leisure vehicle, like a large yacht. It takes 3
>days to cross the Atlantic in a Hinderburg class ship with two 1938 vintage 
>diesels. Modern engines with modern propellors could easily do as well.

If we stored the heat in the thermal mass center, we could make the balloon
slowly rise and fall by opening and closing a vent in the transparent envelope
covering the center, perhaps with a fan, or we might vent some steam from the
thermal mass center to lighten the balloon and heat up the internal air, which
would make the balloon rise as the steam pushed it along. Then the vent to
the thermal mass would be closed and the balloon would fall as the inside air
lost heat through the skin. How long it would take to cross the Atlantic that
way? Not so fast as the Concorde, but consuming far less than the Concorde's
one TON of jet fuel per passenger crossing. 
 
>I can picture this in mind right now. An enormous graceful black airship   
>sailing across the New York or Paris landscapes. All it needs is some   
>modern technology.

Yup :-)

Nick

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Fri Sep 29 06:51:20 1995
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To: london@sunsite.unc.edu
Date: 29 Sep 1995 05:06:37 -0400
From: nick@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu (Nick Pine)
Message-Id: <44gcut$2dq@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu>
Organization: Villanova University
Sender: london@sunsite.unc.edu
Subject: Solar airships
content-length: 5490
Status: O
X-Status: D

Enough of this PV talk. Let's talk about a more practical form of solar
energy--solar heated balloons. A net.friend says:

>I'm also into airships, the kind that haven't been built since the   
>thirties. I'm fascinated by them. It's unfortunate that the lack of   
>readily available helium gas and the onset of a stupid war effectively  
>killed the age of the airship. My plan is this. Built an airship using   
>modern aluminium and fabrics. I'm thinking of a big ship, in the order of   
>four or five times the size of the Hinderburg.

Purdy big... Have you read John McPhee's book about modern airships?
It originally appeared in the New Yorker magazine, under the title
"The Deltoid Pumpkin Seed." He suggests building large thick delta-wing-
shaped airships. One might power an airship by somehow making it rise
and fall through the air, and turning the vertical motion into horizontal
motion by controlling the orientation: if it is falling and we tilt the
back end so it is above the forward end, it should move forward, no?
If it is rising, the forward end should be higher...

Bucky talked about large floating structures supported by solar hot air.

>The airship is black and the inside of the envelope is lined with highly
>reflective material. The idea is that any sunlight falling on the airship
>will heat up the envelope.

Sounds good so far. What's the reflective material for?

>Because of the foil or what ever you've got inside the envelope   
>gains heat slowly, providing the airship with increasingly more lifting   
>power. The longer you remain airborne the better the efficiency of the   
>system.

I would just make a transparent envelope outside a black one.

Or an envelope that is transparent on one half and black on the other,
if we can keep the transparent side aimed at the sun.

Or an envelope that has one transparent side and one aluminized mylar side,
with a small, high-thermal-mass (eg black water balloon) target in the center,
surrounded by a small insulating transparent envelope, with the outside
balloon oriented so that the sun passes through the transparent side and
gets reflected and concentrated by the shiny side onto the black target. 

>Excess helium can be tapped off and recompressed...

Helium? How about just solar heated air? This would work better with a
large airship. The volume, ie lifting force, increases with the cube of
the dimension, while the weight of the structure increases with the square,
as does the solar collecting area. If our airship material weighs, say,
1 pound/200 ft^2 (eg heat sealable Tedlar PVF film), and it has an R-value
of 1 ft^2-F/Btu, and it receives 1000 Btu/ft^2/day, and the outside temp
is, say, 62 F, what is the minimum size it has to be to hold itself up,
day and night? Air at 5000' and 62 F weighs 0.0625 lbs/ft^2...

In full sun, a r' radius sphere, say, for starters, containing some sort
of internal solar absorbing black cloud, surrounded by a transparent skin, 
would have a solar collecting area of pi r^2, and four times that area for
heat loss purposes, so if it absorbs 1000 pi r^2 Btu over 24 hours, and
it has an internal temperature Ts, in 62 F surrounding air, it will lose
24 hours x (Ts-62) x 4 pi r^2/R1 Btu in a day. So if the solar energy that
flows into the sphere during a day equals the heat energy that flows out
of the sphere during a day, the internal air temperature of the sphere
would be such that 

1000 x pi r^2 = 24 (Ts-62) 4 pi r^2, or equivalently

1000 = 24 (Ts-62) x 4, or Ts = 62 + 1000/96 = 62 + 10.4 = 72.4 F.

How much would this air weigh? As I recall,

Rho(83) = Rho(62) x (459+62)/(459+72) = 0.0625 x 521/531 = 0.0613 lbs/ft^3.

So the net lifting force is 0.0625 - 0.0613 = 0.0012 lb/ft^3.

The balloon would weigh 4 pi r^2/200 lbs, and it would have a volume
of 4/3 pi r^3, so it should be self-supporting when 

4 pi r^2/200 = 4/3 pi r^3 x 0.0012, or

r = 3/(200 x 0.0012) = 12'.

Hmmm. A 24' diameter balloon. Not very big... :-)

BTW, Charlie Overton's 1980 US Patent No. 4,237,868 "Solar Heating Balloon"
describes a tethered balloon being used as a solar thermal collector,
filled with a gas, lighter than air, with a pair of fluid conduits to
conduct a working fluid from the balloon to the ground and back...
As a working fluid, he suggests water containing a black dye or finely
divided carbon black, atomized into a very fine mist exposed to the sun.

>The airship is essentially a leisure vehicle, like a large yacht. It takes 3
>days to cross the Atlantic in a Hinderburg class ship with two 1938 vintage 
>diesels. Modern engines with modern propellors could easily do as well.

If we stored the heat in the thermal mass center, we could make the balloon
slowly rise and fall by opening and closing a vent in the transparent envelope
covering the center, perhaps with a fan, or we might vent some steam from the
thermal mass center to lighten the balloon and heat up the internal air, which
would make the balloon rise as the steam pushed it along. Then the vent to
the thermal mass would be closed and the balloon would fall as the inside air
lost heat through the skin. How long it would take to cross the Atlantic that
way? Not so fast as the Concorde, but consuming far less than the Concorde's
one TON of jet fuel per passenger crossing. 
 
>I can picture this in mind right now. An enormous graceful black airship   
>sailing across the New York or Paris landscapes. All it needs is some   
>modern technology.

Yup :-)

Nick

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Sat Sep 30 07:51:47 1995
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To: london@sunsite.unc.edu
Date: 30 Sep 1995 07:16:58 -0400
From: nick@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu (Nick Pine)
Message-Id: <44j8va$fti@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu>
Organization: Villanova University
Sender: london@sunsite.unc.edu
References: <449jqt$gmg@ixnews5.ix.netcom.com>, <DFnAs6.Bvt@eskimo.com>, <44j18v$948@remus.reed.edu>
Subject: Re: Solar Energy
content-length: 2678
Status: O
X-Status: 

Barry Smith  <barry@bluesky.com> wrote:
 
>...Solar technology (like bicycle technology) can fit in well
>with a different lifestyle, but an emotional involvement with your
>heating system is not required for the technology to be effective. :-)

It probably helps :-) It seems to me that many people have built their
houses, if not lifestyles, around their heating systems, eg kiva fireplaces
in the US Southwest, massive Russian fireplaces, or traditional Chinese
"fireplaces" that serve for cooking, house heating and beds. 

>... like any new technology, solar technology is for the zealot, the
>adventurer, the avant-garde, the technology buff ... and the wealthy.

I realize that you are still rambling on about PVs here, but solar house
heating reminds me of sailing:

   1. Sailing is something you do because you want to do it, not
   because you have to do it. For some it is an expensive hobby. 

   2. Sailing is a relatively old technology. So is solar heating.

   3. Sailing well requires expertise of a particular and somewhat
   mysterious kind. Motorboating requires less expertise.

   4. Sailboats use natural forces to accomplish something that can be
   more conveniently done with fossil fuels, as does solar heating.

   5. Sailboats use less energy than motorboats. In fact, some
   high-performance sailboats have no motors at all, which is analogous
   to high-performance solar houses, with no backup heating systems. 

   6. Most importantly, performance matters in sailing. It would be nice
   if people began to think more about the performance of solar houses,
   and about their cost-effectiveness. I'd like to see passive solar house
   heating as a competitive sport, where performance matters. Sailboats
   are pretty, but looks are incidental to serious sailors. That is quite
   different from the perspective of most architects and house buyers
   in this country today. 

It seems to me that passive solar house heating is a natural thing for
low-income people, who might be in a better position than rich people
to appreciate the lower heating bills and the extra floorspace and the
chance to grow food in the winter that comes with a low-thermal-mass
poly film sunspace. Low-income people, eg those who live in mobile homes,
might also be less rigid in their ideas about what a house "ought to
look like," aesthetically, than people who live in million dollar houses. 

>(Bill Gates would improve his image if his house had a PV system.  ;-)

Not in my book, especially on that island in downtown Seattle.

OTOH, it would be nice if Dennis Weaver had added a solar closet or two
to his two million dollar collection of old tires. 

Nick

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Sat Sep 30 09:51:53 1995
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To: london@sunsite.unc.edu
Date: 30 Sep 1995 08:55:11 -0400
From: nick@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu (Nick Pine)
Message-Id: <44jenf$g3g@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu>
Organization: Villanova University
Sender: london@sunsite.unc.edu
Subject: Re: Solar airships
content-length: 10364
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X-Status: 

Anthony Kalenak <amklnk@nyc.pipeline.com> wrote:

>Have you tried to make a physical model of a solar powered airship. 

Not yet. Altho I've thought about trying to make a higher temperature version,
an indoor floating lamp with a very lightweight bulb inside, with some fine
wires for power transmission and tethering. This might be an interesting toy.

Physics professor Paul Bashus and physics student Erik Ferragut and I are
now putting together a fully-instrumented 4' x 4' x 8' tall solar closet
and "house", which we will reassemble and install this week next to the
astronomical observatory on top of the science building at the local college,
Ursinus. It will have a microprocessor-controlled multichannel I/O electronic
data logger/controller (a Lambert Engineering "Data Trap") and a modem, with
five temperature probes and a Licor pyroheliometer. (We could use some
low-speed airflow measurement equipment too.) 

The test box will contain three 36 watt fans, which we hope to seldom use.
The system is designed so that it will also operate without any fans. The
data logger will control the fans, and measure the power needed to drive
them, as well as the rest of the power used in the house, including its own,
via a current transformer and watt transducer. 

Our goal is to develop and test an inexpensive system that will maintain
the house at exactly 70 F all winter, 24 hours a day, even on -10 F nights
in January, up there on the roof in the wind and the snow, while using
absolutely no backup heat at all this winter. If you'd like to contribute
to the expenses for this project, send your tax-deductable contribution to:

Physics Equipment Gift Fund
Ursinus College
Collegeville, PA 19426

with an email note to me, with your postal address, and I'll send you our paper
"Solar Closets and Sunspaces," with some illustrations and simple mathematics.
Paul and I have spent about $3,000 of our own money on this so far.

Nick


Below is a test box, a 4' x 4' "house" attached to a solar closet.

                        8'
                               R14                      
         ---------------.---------------        30 F
        |               |               |
        |               |               |
        |      70 F    Vr      Tw       |
    4'  |               |               |
        |    "house"    |  solar closet |
        |               |               |
         ------Vs------- ------Vc-------
        |               |               | 9"
        |      Ts        ggggggggggggggg
        |           sunspace            | 7"
         ggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggg 

                     south


It could be built of 8 4' x 8' modular panels, each made from a 1 x 3
frame with a 4 x 8 sheet of Thermo-Ply attached to the inside face and
a 4 x 8 x 2" piece of Styrofoam cut to fit into the 1 x 3 frame.
Thermo-Ply is a 1/8" thick structural hardboard sheathing with one foil
and one white face, that costs about 20 cents a square foot. It is made
by Simplex Corp at PO Box 10, Adrien, Michigan 49221 (517) 263-8881.
Such panels would have an R-value of 14. This would be a poorly-insulated
house, by today's standards. Each panel weighs 31 pounds, and can be
easily lifted by one person.
 
The sun shines in through the glazing over the air heater, which is
attached to the front of the solar closet, and a plastic film backdraft
damper Vc allows solar heated air to enter the closet and heat some 55
gallon drums full of water, when the passive air heater is warmer than
the drums. In our test box, Vc will also have a fan to blow air into
the solar closet. We expect to omit this in the final design. 

The glazing could be Replex ((800) 726-5151) 20 mil flat, clear,
polycarbonate plastic, which comes in rolls 48" wide x 50' long,
and costs about $1.50/ft^2.

Vr is a $12 Leslie-Locke AFV-1B automatic foundation vent, available
from Home Depot, attached to a rectangular hole at the top of the closet,
with its bimetallic spring reversed and adjusted so the louvers are fully
closed when the house is above 60 F. This will allow warm air from the
solar closet to heat the house on a cloudy day. An open slot at the bottom
of the closet serves as the return air path. Vc will have a fan, which
will only be used on very cold nights. 

Vs is another foundation vent, adjusted so the louvers are fully closed
at 70 F (or lower.) When the house temperature is less than 70 F, Vs will
open to allow sunspace air to warm the house. Vs has another plastic
backdraft damper in front of it so that air can only flow through Vs
from the sunspace into the house, not in the other direction. Vs has a
fan in our test box. We expect to omit this in the final design.

Steady-state performance
------------------------

It is interesting to calculate two temperatures above: Ts is the average
sunspace temperature when the sun is shining on an average day, and Tw is
the steady-state solar closet temperature after a string of average days,
with some sun. The sunspace in this scheme overheats to act as a parasitic
or slave heater, helping the solar closet achieve a higher temperature,
while the losses from the hot glazing on the solar closet make the air
in the sunspace hotter. The sunspace air is used to heat the house on
an average day, with some sun. (This is similar to "Khanh's Radically
New Approach to Increasing the Useful Output of a Flat-Plate Collector
Panel..." as described on pages 118-125 of William Shurcliff's 1979 book
_New Inventions in Low-Cost Solar Heating_, Published by Brick House,
except that not all the "slave heat" is lost to the outside world.)

With these assumptions:

1. The average wintertime outdoor temperature is 30 F;
2. On an average winter day, the sunspace receives 1000 Btu/ft^2 of sun
   over 6 hours;
3. The average house temperature is 70 F, with no air infiltration or
   internal heat generation;
4. The water and air in the solar closet and the passive air heater all
   have the same temperature (approaching this requires careful design);
   and 
5. Each layer of glazing has an R-value and solar transmittance of 1,

on an average winter day, the 8' x 8' sunspace would receive

(1) Eins =  8' x 8' x 1000 Btu/ft^2 = 64K Btu,

and this would be lost to the outside world through the sides and roof of
the structure as

(2) Eouts =  6 hours (Ts - 30) 64 ft^2/R1     Sunspace, daytime
          + 18 hours (70 - 30) 32 ft^2/R14    West sunspace, nightime
          + 18 hours (Tw - 30) 32 ft^2/R14    East sunspace, nightime
          + 24 hours (Tw - 30) 80 ft^2/R14    Solar closet, daily 
          + 24 hours (70 - 30) 80 ft^2/R14    House, daily 
          --------------------------------
          = 384 Ts + 178 Tw - 9736.

On an average winter day, the solar closet would receive

(3) Einc = 4' x 8' x 1000 Btu/ft^2 = 32K Btu,

and this would be lost through the outside world and the rest of the
house as approximately

(4) Eoutc =  6 hours (Tw - Ts) 32 ft^2/R1     To the sunspace, daytime
          + 18 hours (Tw - 30) 32 ft^2/R14    To the sunspace, nightime
          + 24 hours (Tw - 30) 80 ft^2/R14    To the outside, daily
          + 24 hours (Tw - 70) 32 ft^2/R14    To the house, daily.
          --------------------------------
          = -192 Ts + 425 Tw - 9188.

Setting (1) = (2) and (3) = (4), and adding (2) to (1) twice,

128K = 1,028 Tw - 28,112, so Tw = (128K + 28,112)/1,028 = 151.8 degrees F.

Substituting Tw back into (1), 64K = 384 Ts + 17,295, so Ts = 121.6 F.

So after a string of average days with some sun, the closet will be about
30 degrees warmer than the peak daytime sunspace temperature, but it will
stay at that temperature 24 hours a day, "just coasting," vs. the low-
thermal mass sunspace, which will get icy cold every night. 

Cloudy-day performance
----------------------

On the first of several days with no sun, the structure will lose about 

(2) Ens = 24 hours (70  - 30) 32 ft^2/R14     West sunspace
        + 24 hours (152 - 30) 32 ft^2/R14     East sunspace
        + 24 hours (152 - 30) 80 ft^2/R14     Solar closet
        + 24 hours (70  - 30) 80 ft^2/R14     House
        ---------------------------------
        = 31,103 Btu.

If a 4' x 4' x 8' solar closet contains 8 55 gallon drums full of water,
along with some cement blocks and plastic soda bottles, it might have a
thermal mass of 4647 Btu/F (see below) so on the first day with no sun,
the water temperature would decrease by about Ens/C = 6.5 degrees F. If
the closet lost heat at this rate every day until it reached a minimum 
usable temperature of say, 80 F, (as the closet cools down, it actually
loses heat more slowly), it could provide useful heat for the "house"
for at least (152-80)/6.5 = 11 days in a row with no sun. Taking account
of the fact that the closet cools more slowly as time goes on, it should
provide heat for about 14 days without sun. Adding an extra layer of
2" Styrofoam to make all sides of the closet to make it an R24 box,
should extend the time it takes to cool to 80 F, while keeping the
"house" warm, to about 26 days:

10 '4' x 8' solar closet carryover
20 '        find steady-state closet temp
30 EINS=64000!'sunspace solar gain (Btu/day)
40 EINC=32000'closet solar gain (Btu/day)
50 CWS=18*32/24+24*80/24'sunspace Tw factor
60 CWC=6*32/1+18*32/24+24*80/24+24*32/24'closet Tw factor
70 CS=6*30*64/1+18*30*32/24+24*30*80/24'sunspace constant
80 CS=CS-18*(70-30)*32/14-24*(70-30)*80/14'more sunspace constant
90 CC=18*30*32/24+24*30*80/24+24*70*32/24'closet constant
100 TW=(EINS+2*EINC+CS+2*CC)/(CWS+2*CWC)'initial solar closet temperature
140 C=4647'thermal mass of solar closet (Btu/F)
150 CLOSS=24*(70-30)*32/14'constant daily west sunspace heat loss (Btu)
160 CLOSS=CLOSS+24*(70-30)*80/14'constant daily house heat loss (Btu)
163 PRINT "         Temp at"
165 PRINT "Day      end of day"
170 FOR D=2 TO 30 STEP 2'calc closet temp for 30 days without sun
180 TLOSS=24*(TW-30)*(32+80)/24'solar closet daily heat loss
190 HEATLOSS = CLOSS+TLOSS
200 TW=TW-2*HEATLOSS/C'new solar closet temperature
210 PRINT D,INT(TW+.5)
220 NEXT D

RUN

        Temp (F) at
Day     end of day

 2      181
 4      171
 6      161
 8      151
 10     142
 12     133
 14     125
 16     117
 18     109
 20     102
 22     96
 24     89
 26     83
 28     77
 30     72

Trying this out should be interesting :-)

Nick

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Mon Oct  2 06:22:21 1995
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Date: 1 Oct 1995 09:01:38 -0400
From: nick@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu (Nick Pine)
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Subject: Controlling the solar scourge
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From Steve Baer's 1979 book, _Sunspots_:

  Solar Insecticide

  Money attracts university and industry experts. I am suspicious of such
  experts. After listening to a meeting for three days, I think I understand
  the mechanics of the government's grants for work on solar energy.

  When people want to get rid of a kind of insect, one method is to not
  directly kill the insect, but to raise and relese vast quantities of sterile
  male insects. The sterile insects make up the major portion of the male
  insect population and thus, after mating, most females are infertile.
  After a few generations the insect population is down to a handful.
  I see the projects and research teams chosen by the government as sterile.

  When someone is interested in solar energy he is likely to bump into
  publicity or people associated with such projects. Result: he is advised
  that solar heating, cooling, or power are "not feasible at this time."
  I can't find any one person who has planned this solar insecticide scheme;
  I do not think he exists. Rather, these techniques seem to naturally grow
  out of an unspoken understanding that oil, coal, gas and nuclear power
  are the proper energy sources. If the sun is so good, why doesn't it belong
  to GE, GM, ITT or the NRC?

  Solar Vaccination

  Another way to look at the money now spent on solar energy research
  is that it is being used as a vaccination against the full blown disease
  of solar energy utilization. A certain amount of solar energy activity
  is encouraged so that the country can reach an actively immune state.
  Those who own or control the competing energy sources--coal, oil, gas,
  nuclear--can then become familiar with the threat--solar energy. Projects
  can be undertaken that will result in failure or extraordinarily high
  prices. Reports--stacks of them--will indicate hopeless bottlenecks and
  contradictions in the design and manufacture of solar heating equipment. 

  I would expect many of the projects to be undertaken in the midst of
  huge government laboratories primarily devoted to other activities,
  such as nuclear energy. There the avid solar energy worker is likely
  to find himself transferred when he becomes too productive.

  It is certainly fortunate that a great deal of success is within reach
  of the backyard inventor and the small shop.

Nick

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Mon Oct  2 11:22:16 1995
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Subject: Re: Solar airships
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Robin van Spaandonk <rvanspaa@netspace.net.au> wrote:

>Just make the top half transparent, and the bottom half black on the
>inside, and silver on the outside.

Nice suggestion :-) A little water in the bottom, with a small pump or
some sort of passive tracker to move it around from one pouch to another?
Or maybe this should be a flying funnel, a sunscoop with a transparent
top and shiny Compound Parabolic Concentrating conical sides...

As for the dirigible floor lamp, would you say a dry cleaner bag with
150 F air from a bulb with a high power/weight ratio, or some very thin
tungsten or nichrome wire, attached to two fine copper wire tethers?

Nick

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Tue Oct  3 05:52:28 1995
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Date: 3 Oct 1995 05:20:30 -0400
From: nick@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu (Nick Pine)
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Subject: Re: Controlling the solar scourge
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Tom Gray  <tomgray@igc.apc.org> wrote:
>Nick Pine writes:
>>Steve Baer writes:
>>>   Another way to look at the money now spent on solar energy research
>>>   is that it is being used as a vaccination against the full blown disease
>>>   of solar energy utilization. A certain amount of solar energy activity
>>>   is encouraged so that the country can reach an actively immune state.
>>>   Those who own or control the competing energy sources--coal, oil, gas,
>>>   nuclear--can then become familiar with the threat--solar energy. Projects
>>>   can be undertaken that will result in failure or extraordinarily high
>>>   prices.
>
>Interesting theory, but it fails to explain why many of the most 
>ardent critics of solar R&D are conservative supporters of the fossil 
>and nuclear energy industries.

That seems natural to me. If you are against one thing, you tend to be
for an alternative. This is an old amorphous theory of Steve Baer's,
not mine. Perhaps you are talking about different, less subtle people (?)
Steve thought this was not an organized conspiracy, just what happens
when people chase money...  

On the other hand I can imagine some people at the Electric Power Research
Institute or Exxon might have sat down 20 years ago and said "Let's do a
study to debunk this solar thing," and gotten some people to come up with
the conclusions they had in mind at the beginning. To a certain extent,
they don't have to do that any more, because there are a lot of uneconomical 
or poorly-performing AE systems around now to look at. For instance, everyone
"knows" that passive solar houses are an expensive hobby, and they don't work
very well except in the Southwest US. And then there's my friend in New York
City who plans to cover his house with PV panels and fill it with batteries,
and Dennis Weaver's two million dollar collection of old tires. 

Even without this help, it seems to me that large existing infrastructures
and flows of money will do what they can to protect themselves, somehow,
against the widespread practical use of alternate energy.

>It also fails to explain why the government continues to fund fossil 
>and nuclear R&D.  Is this also a vaccination?  If so, why hasn't it worked?

I guess that's just pork barrel power: "Hey, we have jobs, we vote, we
want some of that money too." :-)

> >   I would expect many of the projects to be undertaken in the midst of
> >   huge government laboratories primarily devoted to other activities,
> >   such as nuclear energy. There the avid solar energy worker is likely
> >   to find himself transferred when he becomes too productive.
>
>But they aren't.  Federal renewable energy R&D is largely focused at 
>the National Renewable Energy Laboratory.  For further information, 
>visit their WWW site at <http://nrelinfo.nrel.gov>.

I visited NREL last month. It's changing. For instance, they are acquiring 
some combustion engineers. Their projects seem strangely impractical to me.
They seem more interested in high tech research than proliferation of high-
performance, cost-effective systems. Their solar data book and solar data
CDs are very nice, but their shiny new visitor's center has a Trombe wall,
invented in 1881...

A few years ago, I spent some time explaining to a local architect, a more
technical person than most, who had studied some engineering, that a "Trombe
wall" with some insulation on the outside and some passive plastic film
dampers to the inside of the house, that let air flow into the house during
the day, was probably a lot more efficient at collecting and keeping solar
heat in the house than a plain old "traditional" Trombe wall, with bare
masonry right behind the glass, with no insulation. Here's what I said:

  A "Trombe wall" with insulation on the outside, and 1 square foot of South-
  facing single-glazed area and an R-value of 20, will receive about 1000
  Btu/day of heat on an average 32F December day, where I live. If the room
  behind it has a constant temp of 70F, and the sun shines 6 hours a day,
  on the average, the energy that leaks out of the glass will be about 6 hours
  x (70F-32F) x 1 ft^2/R1 = 228 Btu during the day, and 18 hours x (70-32) x
  1 ft^2/R20 = 34 Btu at night, a net gain of 1000 -228 -34 = 738 Btu/day.
  Simple, no? (750 Btu, net, with double glazing, which passes less sun.)

  A standard unvented Trombe wall (Table IV-14b of Mazria's book says vented
  ones don't work much better) with a very large uninsulated thermal mass
  right behind the glass and an R-value of, say 2 (roughly 1' of masonry),
  would have an average temperature at the outside wall surface of about
  32F + R1 x (70F-32F)/(R2+R1) = 45F, if there were no sun. If you add a
  heatflow of 1000 Btu/day of sun to that model, falling on the outside
  of the wall, the outside wall surface will have an average temperature
  of about 45F + 1000/24 x (R=2/3) = 72.4F, which contributes 24 hours x
  (72.4F- 70F) x 1 ft^2/R2 = 29 Btu/day to the room behind the wall.

  So the "improved Trombe wall" above, (actually an air heater with the
  thermal storage inside the house) is more than 25 times as efficient
  (738/29) at collecting and keeping heat in the room behind it, than
  the usual Trombe wall. This is somewhat oversimplified, of course...

And do you know what the architect said? "I agree with you completely, but
if you do that, you will violate the integrity of the traditional Trombe wall,
which has a magical, wonderful way of *flywheeling*, and transporting the
heat through the wall, so it is available at the other side *precisely* when
it is needed, the next morning!" And he went on and on about this conceptual
delight, this conceit, completely ignoring numerical performance... :-)

Trombe walls are also thermal disasters during long strings of cloudy days.
When the sun goes in for a week or two, they lose their stored heat in less
than a day, and then leak house heat badly, dramatically raising backup
heat or other solar thermal storage requirements.

I'm still amazed that so many people, even in these newgroups, are still so
interested in Trombe walls, or their passive solar equivalents, like
high-thermal mass sunspaces. A lot of people are apparently still willing
to settle for high-cost, low-performance passive solar house heating
techniques, with 30% yearly savings in backup space heating costs over a
20 year payback period, compared to a conventional house, vs. houses with
warmstores, solar closets, sunspaces and transparent siding, which can
provide close to 100% of the space heating energy needed for the house AND
close to 100% of the hot water, with a 2 year payback period.

> >   It is certainly fortunate that a great deal of success is within reach
> >   of the backyard inventor and the small shop.
>
>Maybe for PVs (although I doubt it)

I do too. Seems like you need a million dollar semiconductor fabrication
facility to do interesting things with PVs. And even then, the PV products
will still be expensive. Of course the big price breakthroughs are just
around the corner :-) 

>not for wind. 

I'm not sure about that. If we had more wind in PA, I might be trying to do
some aerodynamic simulations on my PC, along the lines of the Polytech school
in Montreal, and doing VAWT experiments in my backyard, with an auto rear end
sitting under a double delta Darrieus configuration made with plastic coated
steel tubing, steel wires and dacron sailcloth. 

>For utility-scale wind,

I'm thinking more about 1-10 kW, or perhaps less power.
No tower. Matters of scale and centralization are important.

>the cost of bringing a new design to market is $millions, even in
>the private sector.

I believe that.

>For residential wind, systems are still too pricey for mass market success.

I like the Air 303. $550 for 375 watts, from Jade Mountain at (800) 442-1972.
Now all we need is a cheap, reliable synchronous inverter to feed this tiny
power back to the grid. I'm an electrical engineer. I keep telling people
that a synchronous inverter at this power level should not cost much more
than a lamp dimmer. A simple triac bridge, a backwards lamp dimmer, with a
small microprocessor to determine the optimum load for the windmill, $10
worth of parts. Someday, someone will design one of these. This is not a
very difficult job for the right kind of electrical engineer. Perhaps there
is a German product like this already. 

>Bringing their costs down through advanced
>manufacturing technologies is, again, a high-stakes game. 

I think the Air 303 people are investing lately in molds to bring down
the price even more. This is pretty straightforward, not a very risky game,
and the stakes are not all that high, compared to the sales figures. It
seems very unlikely that NREL would ever do something like this. 

Nick

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Robert Searfoss  <rlsrls@ix.netcom.com> wrote:

>This could be an interesting project, also an interesting hazard to
>aircraft.  Might be hard for a turbine to swallow.  could tangle or
>break a prop.  Go thru a windshield...etc.  Hang on to it.!!!!  bye.

I live near the end of the runway of a small airport. It's illegal to build
anything taller than 65' where I live, ie a 20:1 glide slope, but sometimes
at night when the twin turboprops land right over my house, full-throttle,
full-flaps, I think about barrage balloons, tethered at 64'. Aluminized mylar,
perhaps, like those gift balloons that say "Surprise!" :-)

Nick

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Tue Oct  3 08:22:26 1995
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Date: 2 Oct 1995 07:00:57 -0400
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If the balloon weighs 1 pound per 400 ft^2 (What do dry cleaner bags weigh?),
with an R-value of 0.6 ft^2-F/Btu, and the inside air temperature is 175 F
(will that melt the bag?), and the room air is 68 F, how big must it be to
support itself?

Sea level air at 175 F weighs 0.0625 lbs/ft^3, so 68 F air should weigh
about 0.0752 lb/ft^3, ignoring humidity. The lifting force should be
at least 0.0752 - 0.0625 = 0.0127 lbs/ft^3. 

An r' radius sphere would be self-supporting when 

4 pi r^2/400 = 4/3 pi r^3 x 0.0127 ==> r = 3/(400 x 0.0127) = 1'.

Keeping the air hot requires 

(175F-68F) x 4 pi 1^2 ft^2/R0.6 = 2241 Btu/hour or 657 watts.

Too much, except for a sometime toy...

Where can I buy some very fine tungsten wire?

Nick

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Subject: Re: Selling energy via the grid
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Harry H Conover <conover@max.tiac.net> wrote:

>...How about my engineering supervison of six 10-Mw substations...

You ARE a manager! I knew it :-)

Nick

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Subject: Re: Controlling the solar scourge
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Harry H Conover <conover@max.tiac.net> wrote:
>Clark Dorman <dorman@cochlea.bu.edu> wrote:
>
>>>I like the Air 303. $550 for 375 watts, from Jade Mountain at (800) 442-1972
>>>Now all we need is a cheap, reliable synchronous inverter to feed this tiny
>>>power back to the grid. I'm an electrical engineer. I keep telling people
>>>that a synchronous inverter at this power level should not cost much more
>>>than a lamp dimmer. A simple triac bridge, a backwards lamp dimmer, with a
>>>small microprocessor to determine the optimum load for the windmill, $10
>>>worth of parts. 
>
>I suspect you're missing a few vital pieces.

People have often suspected that :-)

>First, you're going to need an inverter transformer with some efficiency
>(magnetic components don't come cheap).  At 375W power level, this shouldn't
>cost more than $40 or so.

Hmmm. What would I do with that? I'd use a choke in series with the triac
bridge. I have one somewhere up in my attic, made for this purpose, about
10' of 16 ga magnet wire wound on a toroid made of galvanized iron pipe, with
an air gap. The wire is undersized for this 4 kW version and the toroid is
bigger than needed, to keep the wire cooler. A 375 watt version might use
a bent nail for a core. Next?

>Next, you'll need a quantity of Leg switching transistors (6-12 
>should do nicely) so you'll end up with a  waveform somewhat 
>approximating a sine wave.

Why does this remind me of my Kentucky cousin, Ophelia Legg? I'd just a 3 Amp
triac bridge, like a backwards lamp dimmer. Switching frequency 60 Hz. When
the DC output of the windmill is larger than the grid voltage, you turn on
a triac (this would work best with a high DC voltage.) When the grid voltage
becomes larger than the DC supply voltage, the triac turns itself off. I
posted a schematic of this circuit months ago here, with waveforms. 

>After that, a good harmonic filter, at this wattage, probably between $30-50.

That's what the choke's for, to make less than 5% rms voltage distortion
at the grid interface. It also provides current limiting. 

>Combine this with phase/frequency locking

Huh? I think this thing would be called "line commutated."

>and fail-safe "outage" detection (another $20)

I see :-)

>and you'll pretty much cover the OEM bill of materials.

Which is of course what  I  was talking about.

>Now, add in the cost of manufacturing, engineering, advertising, marketing, 
>distributor mark-up and profit, and you'll likely end up with a selling
>price that's about 3-4 times material cost.

The usual ratio is 4-6 times the cost of the parts, to pay for the
salespersons lunches and BMWs.  

>You can save a few bucks by deleting the lamp dimmer components, since
>its components provide no useful function here.

I'm not sure that you understand how this thing would work, Harry.

>What kind of engineer did you say you were?   :-)

I travel with custard pies.

Nick

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Subject: Solar air heaters
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Robert Sanders <rsanders@ALB.ASCTMD.COM> writes from the AE list:

>  I found the following set of plans at a used book store for US$5.00:
>
>  "Solar Air Heater Plans" by Ray Wolf, ISBN 0-87857-369-3.  Published
>by Rodale Press, 33 East Minor St., Emmaus, PA 18049 in 1981.

I think Wolf's book is very nice in its completeness of detail, but
technically out of date. You might also look for _The Complete Book of
Solar Air Heating Systems_ by Steve Kornher and Andy Zaugg. Rodale Press,
1984, which is more general and has lots of practical hints. For instance,
they suggest that any material used in a solar air heater should pass an
"overnight oven test," ie put the material inside a 350 F oven overnight
and see how it fares... But Kornher and Zaugg's book also seems out of date.

They describe the ways many people in southern Colorado have made home-built
solar air heaters (think how even a little mass-production would help...)
under the guidance of S. K. Ramstetter, "the father of low-cost solar heating
in the San Luis Valley." Building air heaters is a local hobby, or at least
it used to be. This is not too surprising, since that part of Colorado is
very cold and sunny, and the people are not wealthy. They care about their
propane heating bills. Kornher and Zaugg say "this high mountain valley
has more owner-built collectors per capita than anywhere else in the world,
and is often described as the most solarized place in the U. S." The home
of an orphan handcrafted technology...

Perhaps Wolf's design can be improved. For one thing, it should be larger--
a 4' x 8' collector is a toy, providing a very small fraction of the heat
for an average house. For another, building one of these sounds like fine
cabinetmaking--screwed and glued half-lap joints, etc. Wolf uses a 1/2" CDX
sheet of plywood for the back of the collector, with a 4 x 8 sheet of 5/8"
insulation board over that, which he says has an R-value of 5. Why does
the collector need a plywood back? Why not just add a perimeter frame to
the existing house wall? And why insulate the back of the collector, ie
the surface between the house and the collector? The heat losses from the
back of the collector will make the house warmer, and the house wall itself
is already insulated.

Wolf uses another 4 x 8' sheet of insulation board for the sides of the
collector. Why insulate the wooden sides of a large shallow collector?
This does not seem cost-effective. In a 6" deep, 16' x 24' collector,
over 90% of the heat loss is through the glazing. And Wolf's flat fiberglass
glazing may now be obsolete. Greenhouse suppliers are dropping Filon, etc,
because in five years or so, it yellows and gets fuzzy on the outside.
Thin clear polycarbonate plastic seems like a better choice. 

Wolf (or perhaps Robert Flower, Thermal Engineer) also uses two layers of
black aluminum window screen, "to increase the amount of absorbing surface
inside the collector box without greatly inhibiting airflow," but in his
design, the air does not flow _through_ the screen, it flows along the back
of the screen, on the north side. It is thermally more efficient to have the
cooler air from the house rise up on the south side of the screen, between
the screen and the cool glazing, and flow through the screen, from south to
north, where it cools the screen and heats itself, and then flows back into
the house. This is called a matrix or transpired absorber collector.

That's how the Conserval air heater works: a blower draws outside air
from south to north through a sheet of aluminum, painted black, with 1/32"
holes making up about 2% of the surface area. The absorber plate heats the
air as it flows through the plate. The Conserval heater has an efficiency
of 80% without any glazing. Adding glazing lowers the efficiency and raises
the price, but allows warming inside air from say 68 F to 130 F, instead of
just preheating lots of outside air from 32 F to 40 F to ventilate a building.

Steve Baer has been building passive solar air heaters like this for 20 years,
using 5 layers of black painted wire mesh for the absorber. Wolf says over
and over, "GET BLACK ALUMINUM WINDOW SCREEN. DO NOT GET FIBERGLASS SCREEN;
it will not collect heat." Steve says the same. They probably mean that it
won't collect as much heat in their designs. My guess is that a layer or two
of black fiberglass screen or black plastic shadecloth, with air flowing
through the shadecloth, not alongside it, will "collect heat," especially 
if the air is pushed by a fan. I'd use black aluminum screen for a solar
closet air heater, and less-expensive greenhouse shadecloth for a lower-
temperature sunspace air heater. (Boiling one shadecloth sample for a few
minutes shrank it by about 20%, altho it stayed strong.)

I do like this quote from page 8 of Wolf's book:

  When talking about the efficiency of a solar collector, you have to
  consider not only how much energy you collect, but also how much it
  costs to collect it.

  Let's look at two parked cars, each collecting solar energy in a
  parking lot on a sunny summer day. Car A is a used VW costing $2,500,
  while car B is a "previously owned" deluxe Rolls Royce costing $42,000.
  Let's say our VW collects the solar equivalent of 1 gallon of gasoline,
  while the Rolls collects the equivalent of 1 1/2 gallons of gasoline
  during the day. Which is the better deal? The cost per gallon of the
  VW gasoline is a fraction of that of the Rolls; thus, although the
  cheaper collector doesn't collect as much energy, the cost per gallon
  is far below the more efficient Rolls Royce collector.

  We feel like we've designed a collector that works like a Rolls Royce
  at a VW price. Our collector is the most cost-effective solar collector
  we know of. If you build your unit with entirely new materials it should
  cost you no more than $250, installed. The cheapest comparable-size
  commercial unit sells for slightly over $400, delivered but not installed.
  Both units qualify for a 40% federal tax credit [no longer true.] 

  When you talk to solar salesmen, they will talk one of two numbers,
  depending on which favors their collector: cost per square foot of
  collector surface or Btu's delivered per square foot of collector
  surface per year. The first is an indicator of the cost of the unit,
  the second, an indicator of the overall effectiveness of the unit. A
  combined figure gives you the cost-effectiveness of the unit--sort
  of a solar "MPG" rating. Very few salesmen want to talk these numbers. 

Robert Sanders continues:

>  They estimate that the installed cost is approx. US$250.  I priced the
>main materials using clear pine rather than #2 grade and came up with
>US$279, plus paint, etc.  I estimate that total cost will run about US$370.

Chart 1-1 on page 8 of Wolf's book gives an estimate for the annual fuel
savings for his unit, which varies from 25 to 50 gallons of oil per year.
His chart says that in my area, this 32 ft^2 system would save 30 gallons 
of oil, and the annual electricity consumption in active mode is listed as
731 kWh. I pay about 64 cents per gallon of oil and 11 cents/kWh, so the
net annual savings for one of these collectors is 30 x .64 - 731 x .11 =
$19.20 - $80.41 = - $61.21, ie I might invest $370 and 40 hours of labor,
and lose $60/year on my investment, at best, if I used this collector in
active mode. So I wouldn't do that.

Instead, I'd buy 9 20' curved galvanized steel pipes from Stuppy or X. S.
Smith in New Jersey for about $250, put them up on 4' centers, burying the
straight end of each pipe in the ground and attaching the other end to a
horizontal board under the eave of the house. Then I'd attach a large sheet
of 5 cent/ft^2 3-year greenhouse poly film over that grape-arbor-like curved
steel pipe frame, and hang a piece of 15 cent/ft^2 black shadecloth inside,
to make a 16' x 32' solar air heater and 10' wide lean-to sunspace along
the south side of my house. Warm air would flow out of the house through a
passive plastic film damper in a first floor window, between the shadecloth
and the glazing, and back through the shadecloth into the house through a
second floor window with another damper. I'd hang the shadecloth over the
outside of the glazing in summertime.

This would take a day or two to install, more like a tent than a building.
It would collect the heat equivalent of about 500 gallons of oil a year,
at a cost of about $350. It wouldn't overheat my house, since it has stone
walls, bare on the inside and polyurethane-foamed and stuccoed on the outside.
Other people might need to open a window on sunny winter days, or turn on an
exhaust fan with a thermostat, or add some thermal mass to the inside of the
house. Another layer of drywall, 2-liter soda bottles or drums full of water,
concrete furniture... :-)

Other people might use a clearer plastic with a longer life, perhaps Jade
Mountain's 5-year, 43 cent/ft^2, Tuff-Glass, which comes in 48" x 144' rolls.
This would be have to be joined at each curved steel pipe, vs. the large poly
film sheet, which need only be attached along the 16' and 32' edges. Another
glazing option is Dupont's heat-sealable, clear, UV-transparent, Tedlar PVF
film, which is very strong and light, and should last about 10 years. I think
this is available in 5' wide rolls for about 15 cents a square foot, with
minimum orders from Dupont of about $3000. Perhaps Real Goods could distribute
this product, heat-sealed into larger sheets. UV transparency would allow
tanning inside the sunspace. Young urban professionals might like that. 

>  The book is well laid out and can easily be followed by a novice.  The
>collector has internal baffles to increase efficency and a vent to allow air
>to pass during summer months.  They suggest the addition of 2 4" muffin
>fans (the kind used on computers) along with a thermostat which is a
>snap disc design to turn on at 110 degrees F and off at 90 degrees F.

Wolf says that adding the two 105 cfm, 24 watt (ie 4.4 cfm per watt in
free air) Grainger fans almost doubles the efficiency of the collector. 
When I look in a Grainger catalog these days, the most efficient 4" muffin
fan that I see is their stock number 4C827, which delivers 70 cfm at 8 watts
(8.75 cfm/watt in free air), and costs $20.50, and has a maximum temperature
rating of 120 F. I prefer Grainger's 4C688 10" diameter fan, which delivers
560 cfm and uses 36 watts (15.5 cfm/watt in free air) and costs $60.75, and
has a maximum temperature rating of 149 F. One can add a speed control
(Grainger SC343, $16.02) to move less air with less electrical power. For 
moving more air, I like the $12 K-Mart 3-speed slimline HABF-20 20" box fan
made by Holmes (1-800-5-HOLMES) in China. I'd put the fan in series with a
room heating thermostat (Grainger 4E036, $15.39) and a sunspace attic fan
thermostat (Grainger 2E340, $15.48.) For moving serious air, I like the
idea of Emerson HF industrial ceiling fans, or Grainger's 60" fan, the
redoubtable 4C721, at 315 rpm, 46,000 cfm, 160 watts, max, and $168.50. 

Nick

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Wed Oct  4 06:52:45 1995
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Subject: Re: Selling energy via the grid
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>Harry H Conover (conover@max.tiac.net) pontificates:
>
>: Unlike some of you, I am seldom politically correct -- but I'm
>: usually technically correct. [Humble, too.] This is not because I am more 
>: intelligent, or even equally as intelligent as some of you, but because
>: I majored in my subject, worked hard to fully understand the concepts
>: presented to me during my studies, and have practiced my profession for 
>: many years. Let me just say that at this point in my life, I have a grasp
>: of the fundamentals and am immune to the flames from neophytes.

>: Flame away.

OK Harry :-) If you've been doing engineering for years, perhaps you are
a manager by now (success in engineering being often defined as getting out
of engineering.) If so, one wonders what your underlings think of you.
Perhaps they take solace in Kipling's words:

"Nothing is more satisfying than taking orders from fools."

Nick

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Wed Oct  4 20:23:21 1995
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Subject: Re: Solar Energy
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In article <DFvJuB.5II@eskimo.com>, Stephen Lajoie <lajoie@eskimo.com> wrote:
 
>The point Gary was trying to make was that the 16 foot (cube?) water box 
>didn't hold as much energy after a certain time period as his furnace 
>could put out in 2 hours. 

So what? The box ONLY supplies heat to the house when the sun is not shining.
And a 16' cube is overkill. At 130 F, it would store over 5 million Btu
of useful heat, enough to keep a well-insulated house warm for 2 months,
in my 5500 degree day Philadelphia climate.

>His post does not say that his furnace was on for 2160 hours, just that 
>he needed heat for that long. The furnace may or may not be on. But the 
>heat in the water box was expended in the first two hours, and he had the 
>rest of the winter to go.

I don't recall that he lived at the North Pole :-)

Nick

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Date: 3 Oct 1995 14:53:56 -0400
From: nick@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu (Nick Pine)
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Subject: Re: Controlling the solar scourge
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Clark Dorman <dorman@cochlea.bu.edu> wrote:
 
>nick@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu (Nick Pine) writes:

>>I like the Air 303. $550 for 375 watts, from Jade Mountain at (800) 442-1972.
>>Now all we need is a cheap, reliable synchronous inverter to feed this tiny
>>power back to the grid. I'm an electrical engineer. I keep telling people
>>that a synchronous inverter at this power level should not cost much more
>>than a lamp dimmer. A simple triac bridge, a backwards lamp dimmer, with a
>>small microprocessor to determine the optimum load for the windmill, $10
>>worth of parts. Someday, someone will design one of these. This is not a
>>very difficult job for the right kind of electrical engineer. Perhaps there
>>is a German product like this already. 
 
>This does not seem to make economic sense.

Better than grid-connected PVs... Much better than filling your house
up with batteries and inverters, if you live near a grid.

>Even assuming that you get 375 watts _all_ the time, then the payback is
>several years.

Not bad...

>You would produce .375 kwh per hour and at $.05 per kwh, it would take you
>29333 hours (3.3 years) to make back the $550.  With down time and realistic
>assumptions, it will be well over 5 years.

Sounds pretty good to me. BTW, my electricity costs about 12 cents/kWh,
and that cost increases with time. I use an average of 600 watts. Steve
Baer uses closer to 60. He would become a net power producer, with one
of these 45" toys on the roof.
 
>Also, connecting power back to the grid is just not that simple.  If nothing
>else, the power company needs to be able to switch the power coming from you
>on and off so they can work on the lines.

Not if your machine can do that itself. It can be just that simple :-)

>And if you want to be paid for your investment, it needs to be meters
>differently.  

False. For instance, in Vermont (I think) state law requires that the
utility let you run a single meter in both directions. And this is
consistent with net billing, and technically, it works fine.

Nick

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Subject: Re: Selling energy via the grid
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Harry H Conover <conover@max.tiac.net> wrote:
>Nick Pine (nick@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu) wrote:
>: Harry H Conover <conover@max.tiac.net> wrote:
>:  
>: >I've been posting actual engineering information addressing technical
>: >aspects of selling power back to the grid.
>
>: Trouble is, a lot of it's wrong.
>
>Oh?  Which part bothers you...?

One of the things that bothers me about your postings is that you don't
understand the difference between a stand-alone inverter and a simple
synchronous inverter. You made this quite evident in your previous posting.
Ignorance is excusable. So is stupidity. So is mispelling. But when you
combine all this with arrogance I find it amusing, and a waste of time. 

Nick

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Subject: Re: newbie
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<tagdi@RUULCH.LET.RUU.NL> wrote:

>>Monolithic Constructors, Inc.                  Verified: May 1995
>>P.O. Box 479                    ?
>>Italy, TX 76651                 Tel: 800-608-0001       Fax:
>>$19.95 Video; Free brochure; Concrete Domes
 
>       i think the address is missing the name of the City.

Italy, Texas, is about an hour south of Dallas.

Just reading the July/August issue of MC's "Roundup" newsletter, in which
they describe watching a tornado pass directly over their dome office.
It snapped off a telephone pole at the base, which landed smack on the
roof, but nobody inside even heard it hit, and later they found it just
scratched the surface. Meanwhile, the tornado uprooted several large trees
nearby, snapped others in half, threw a few doghouses up in the air, dogs
included, flung a trash dumpster 50 yards, which landed on top of a trailer,
tossed a canoe 150 yards from its pond, twisted up two steel barns "like
licorice," and went on to severely damage several conventional buildings.

Last year I heard someone describe an earthquake that happened during
a church service inside a Monolithic dome in Alaska--6.8 on the Richter
scale, as I recall. Several people fell down as the floor heaved all over,
but there was no structural damage to the dome.

These domes are incredibly strong. Overbuilt, I'd say. Monolithic has been
building them all over the world for 20 years now, and they are just starting
to do houses. Their domes are typically quite a bit larger, eg 200' in
diameter and 10 stories tall, with a 50 ton grain elevator on the roof, with
no additional support, except for the reinforced concrete shell of the dome
underneath. 

Their domes are also quite cheap and quick to construct and very fireproof.
Insurance rates for these all-masonry buildings, walls and roof, are about
one third that of a conventional building, according to the newsletter. And
their domes are extremely energy-efficient. And they make high performance
passive solar houses, since the concrete mass is inside the foam insulation. 

Nick

(I have no financial interest in this company.)

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Fri Oct  6 02:54:06 1995
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From: nick@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu (Nick Pine)
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Subject: Re: Selling energy via the grid
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X-Status: 

Rod Adams  <atomicrod@aol.com> oozed:
>nick@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu (Nick Pine) wrote:
>>>Harry H Conover (conover@max.tiac.net) pontificates:

>>>: Unlike some of you, I am seldom politically correct -- but I'm
>>>: usually technically correct. [Humble, too.] This is not because I am more 
>>>: intelligent, or even equally as intelligent as some of you, but because
>>>: I majored in my subject, worked hard to fully understand the concepts
>>>: presented to me during my studies, and have practiced my profession for 
>>>: many years. Let me just say that at this point in my life, I have a grasp
>>>: of the fundamentals and am immune to the flames from neophytes.
>>
>>>: Flame away.
>>
>>OK Harry :-) If you've been doing engineering for years, perhaps you are
>>a manager by now (success in engineering being often defined as getting out
>>of engineering.) If so, one wonders what your underlings think of you.
>>Perhaps they take solace in Kipling's words:
>>
>>"Nothing is more satisfying than taking orders from fools."
 
>Nick, what a bunch of hogwash!  A man with technical knowledge and experience disputes what you, as a student, assume you know about=
> the world.  You then criticize him, and all other engineering managers, by stating that they succeed by abandoning the profession.

Well, Rod, at least I know how to format postings to 80 columns :-)

I'm not a student. Perhaps you will feel foolish for making that assumption,
and the poisonous prose that follows it, and you will want to apologize.
But I doubt it. You will probably just go blithely on. 

I'm 49 years old now, with BS and MSEEs, and a registered US patent agent,
having passed the same federal bar exam that patent attorneys take. I've
worked as an engineer for 30 years, mainly designing computer and
telecommunications and aerospace hardware, eg some early synthetic aperture
radar systems, a floating point processor for the space shuttle, and a
900 MHz IC for the European digital cellular phone system. For the last
three years, I've worked as a manager :-) I'll probably get a PE in a year
or so.

I assume that I've learned something about the world in all this, among those
things that most managers are fools, or worse. One interesting manager's
trick that I've learned is to just listen to people, even tho you know nothing
about what they are talking about, and nod your head, until you find an
inconsistency in what they have said, and then you ask a question, and so on.
Thus you can learn, and appear to have a critical grasp of a subject, even,
while never revealing your ignorance :-) Wearing a nice suit helps, too.

Engineering really is a rotten, sleazy, slimy profession, especially if you
work as an employee, with lots of unpaid overtime, salary compression, and
aerospace companies who hire 10,000 engineers when they get a contract
and lay them all off a year or two later. And one works with such peculiar
introverted non-verbal colleagues. Then there's the rest of the world who
understand little of what engineers do, but are so quick to act as if
they do, and criticize it. Academics make money by training engineers,
so they were still telling the world all about the shortage of engineers
while degreed engineers were working for job shops in Florida for $7 an hour
a few years ago. Irwin Feerst might have changed that... With PCs, engineers
are doing more and more clerical work these days. At the moment, I would not
advise anyone to make engineering a career, and I don't think the profession
will improve any time soon. The only profession that seems worse is lawyering,
but at least lawyers get paid well, and sometimes even respected.

My new career/hobby, alternative energy engineering, specifically solar
house heating, is worse in some ways, because everyone thinks he/she knows
how to design an efficient solar house, but it seems to me that very few
people do. I can only think of three: Norman Saunders, PE, Howard Reichmuth,
PE, and Steve Baer, (? :-) All three are fairly peculiar people... Most
engineers have nothing to do with this. They are off designing more
lucrative and conventional HVAC systems for skyscrapers. (Architects
are basically artists, not engineers.)

>Where do you get your information, the Dilbert comic strip?

No. Real Life. I've been watching people for years and years. 

>Having spent some time in engineering supervisory roles, it was pretty clear to me that I, and the people I dealt, needed a detailed=
> and comprehensive understanding of whole systems that was not necessarily required at the technician level.  Managers and superviso=
>rs often upset narrow minded people because they understand more than just one component.

Or fail too. So you are a manager too :-)

>On the other hand, good engineering managers gain the respect of their best workers by explaining their decisions and training junio=
>r people.

I agree. But there are so precious few of them. More typically, the scum rises
to the top. Do you know the Kliban (?) cartoon with the caption "Business on
Parade"? A bunch of guys on their hands and knees in a circle, all wearing
three-piece suits, each with his nose up the behind of the one in front of him. 
Perhaps they are all managers. Or lawyers.

>BTW, Kipling, like most writers, was a loner who never had to get involved in the completion of complex projects with lots of interc=
>onnecting pieces.  Again, his management guidance is on the level of Dilbert, the disgruntled employee.

Never read Dilbert myself...

Nicholson L. Pine                      System design and consulting
Pine Associates, Ltd.                                (610) 489-0545 
821 Collegeville Road                           Fax: (610) 489-7057
Collegeville, PA 19426                     Email: nick@ece.vill.edu

Microprocessor hardware, memory, ASIC, and computer design. Telecommunication
system design. Computer simulation and modeling. High performance, low cost,
residential solar heating and cogeneration system design. BSEE, MSEE. Senior
Member, IEEE. Registered US Patent Agent. Fluent in French.

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Fri Oct  6 02:54:06 1995
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Subject: Re: Selling energy via the grid
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Rod Adams  <atomicrod@aol.com> oozed:
>nick@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu (Nick Pine) wrote:
>>>Harry H Conover (conover@max.tiac.net) pontificates:

>>>: Unlike some of you, I am seldom politically correct -- but I'm
>>>: usually technically correct. [Humble, too.] This is not because I am more 
>>>: intelligent, or even equally as intelligent as some of you, but because
>>>: I majored in my subject, worked hard to fully understand the concepts
>>>: presented to me during my studies, and have practiced my profession for 
>>>: many years. Let me just say that at this point in my life, I have a grasp
>>>: of the fundamentals and am immune to the flames from neophytes.
>>
>>>: Flame away.
>>
>>OK Harry :-) If you've been doing engineering for years, perhaps you are
>>a manager by now (success in engineering being often defined as getting out
>>of engineering.) If so, one wonders what your underlings think of you.
>>Perhaps they take solace in Kipling's words:
>>
>>"Nothing is more satisfying than taking orders from fools."
 
>Nick, what a bunch of hogwash!  A man with technical knowledge and experience disputes what you, as a student, assume you know about=
> the world.  You then criticize him, and all other engineering managers, by stating that they succeed by abandoning the profession.

Well, Rod, at least I know how to format postings to 80 columns :-)

I'm not a student. Perhaps you will feel foolish for making that assumption,
and the poisonous prose that follows it, and you will want to apologize.
But I doubt it. You will probably just go blithely on. 

I'm 49 years old now, with BS and MSEEs, and a registered US patent agent,
having passed the same federal bar exam that patent attorneys take. I've
worked as an engineer for 30 years, mainly designing computer and
telecommunications and aerospace hardware, eg some early synthetic aperture
radar systems, a floating point processor for the space shuttle, and a
900 MHz IC for the European digital cellular phone system. For the last
three years, I've worked as a manager :-) I'll probably get a PE in a year
or so.

I assume that I've learned something about the world in all this, among those
things that most managers are fools, or worse. One interesting manager's
trick that I've learned is to just listen to people, even tho you know nothing
about what they are talking about, and nod your head, until you find an
inconsistency in what they have said, and then you ask a question, and so on.
Thus you can learn, and appear to have a critical grasp of a subject, even,
while never revealing your ignorance :-) Wearing a nice suit helps, too.

Engineering really is a rotten, sleazy, slimy profession, especially if you
work as an employee, with lots of unpaid overtime, salary compression, and
aerospace companies who hire 10,000 engineers when they get a contract
and lay them all off a year or two later. And one works with such peculiar
introverted non-verbal colleagues. Then there's the rest of the world who
understand little of what engineers do, but are so quick to act as if
they do, and criticize it. Academics make money by training engineers,
so they were still telling the world all about the shortage of engineers
while degreed engineers were working for job shops in Florida for $7 an hour
a few years ago. Irwin Feerst might have changed that... With PCs, engineers
are doing more and more clerical work these days. At the moment, I would not
advise anyone to make engineering a career, and I don't think the profession
will improve any time soon. The only profession that seems worse is lawyering,
but at least lawyers get paid well, and sometimes even respected.

My new career/hobby, alternative energy engineering, specifically solar
house heating, is worse in some ways, because everyone thinks he/she knows
how to design an efficient solar house, but it seems to me that very few
people do. I can only think of three: Norman Saunders, PE, Howard Reichmuth,
PE, and Steve Baer, (? :-) All three are fairly peculiar people... Most
engineers have nothing to do with this. They are off designing more
lucrative and conventional HVAC systems for skyscrapers. (Architects
are basically artists, not engineers.)

>Where do you get your information, the Dilbert comic strip?

No. Real Life. I've been watching people for years and years. 

>Having spent some time in engineering supervisory roles, it was pretty clear to me that I, and the people I dealt, needed a detailed=
> and comprehensive understanding of whole systems that was not necessarily required at the technician level.  Managers and superviso=
>rs often upset narrow minded people because they understand more than just one component.

Or fail too. So you are a manager too :-)

>On the other hand, good engineering managers gain the respect of their best workers by explaining their decisions and training junio=
>r people.

I agree. But there are so precious few of them. More typically, the scum rises
to the top. Do you know the Kliban (?) cartoon with the caption "Business on
Parade"? A bunch of guys on their hands and knees in a circle, all wearing
three-piece suits, each with his nose up the behind of the one in front of him. 
Perhaps they are all managers. Or lawyers.

>BTW, Kipling, like most writers, was a loner who never had to get involved in the completion of complex projects with lots of interc=
>onnecting pieces.  Again, his management guidance is on the level of Dilbert, the disgruntled employee.

Never read Dilbert myself...

Nicholson L. Pine                      System design and consulting
Pine Associates, Ltd.                                (610) 489-0545 
821 Collegeville Road                           Fax: (610) 489-7057
Collegeville, PA 19426                     Email: nick@ece.vill.edu

Microprocessor hardware, memory, ASIC, and computer design. Telecommunication
system design. Computer simulation and modeling. High performance, low cost,
residential solar heating and cogeneration system design. BSEE, MSEE. Senior
Member, IEEE. Registered US Patent Agent. Fluent in French.

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Fri Oct  6 06:54:04 1995
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Subject: Re: Selling energy via the grid
content-length: 203
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X-Status: 

Harry H Conover <conover@max.tiac.net> wrote:
 
>I've been posting actual engineering information addressing technical
>aspects of selling power back to the grid.

Trouble is, a lot of it's wrong.

Nick

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Sat Oct  7 02:24:31 1995
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Date: 6 Oct 1995 07:24:49 -0400
From: nick@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu (Nick Pine)
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Subject: Re: Controlling the solar scourge
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Nick Pine <nick@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu> wrote:

.I like the Air 303. $550 for 375 watts, from Jade Mountain at (800) 442-1972.
.Now all we need is a cheap, reliable synchronous inverter to feed this tiny
.power back to the grid. I'm an electrical engineer. I keep telling people
.that a synchronous inverter at this power level should not cost much more
.than a lamp dimmer. A simple triac bridge, a backwards lamp dimmer, with a
.small microprocessor to determine the optimum load for the windmill, $10
.worth of parts. Someday, someone will design one of these. This is not a
.very difficult job for the right kind of electrical engineer. Perhaps there
.is a German product like this already. 

An email friend from the Netherlands replies:

.I know that Siemens designed a PV-module with an integrated inverter that 
.you can just plug in the socket. Also at the Renewable Energy business unit
.of the Dutch National Energy Research Center ECN a 100 W inverter has been
.developed for small scale grid connected applications. So, these things do
.exist! If you are really interested, just try to get in contact with these
.guys.

Voila. Now will someone please design a nice 110V version?

Nick

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Sat Oct  7 03:54:29 1995
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Date: 6 Oct 1995 11:41:38 -0400
From: nick@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu (Nick Pine)
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Subject: Re: Selling energy via the grid
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Stephen Lajoie <lajoie@eskimo.com> wrote:
>Nick Pine <nick@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu> wrote:
>>Harry H Conover <conover@max.tiac.net> wrote:
>>
>>>...How about my engineering supervison of six 10-Mw substations...
>>
>>You ARE a manager! I knew it :-)
 
>So, his working in the industry disqualifies his opinions as bias.

No, his management experience correlates well with his foolishness.

>Then you would also disqualify everyone working in the solar industry as 
>bias too. 

Of course not.

>Is anyone allowed an informed opinon?

Only those who can spell one.

Goodbye to you too, Steve. You are not worth arguing with either. 

Another one for the ol' killfile.

Nick

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Sat Oct  7 03:54:41 1995
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Date: 6 Oct 1995 11:36:49 -0400
From: nick@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu (Nick Pine)
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Subject: Re: Selling energy via the grid
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X-Status: 

Harry H Conover <conover@max.tiac.net> wrote:
>Nick Pine (nick@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu) wrote:
>: Harry H Conover <conover@max.tiac.net> wrote:
>: >Nick Pine (nick@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu) wrote:
>: >: Harry H Conover <conover@max.tiac.net> wrote:
>: >:  
>: >: >I've been posting actual engineering information addressing technical
>: >: >aspects of selling power back to the grid.
>: >
>: >: Trouble is, a lot of it's wrong.
>: >
>: >Oh?  Which part bothers you...?
>
>: One of the things that bothers me about your postings is that you don't
>: understand the difference between a stand-alone inverter and a simple
>: synchronous inverter.
>
>Strangely enough, I don't recally ever even addressing a stand-alone inverter.

They say the legs are not the first thing to go, as you get older... Or
perhaps you just didn't realize what you were talking about. No problem :-)

>Perhaps your confusion here stems from your previous post in which you
>attempted to equate the electronics of a lamp dimmer with that of a power
>inverter.

Perhaps your confusion here stems from your previous post in which you
attempted to equate the electronics of a grid-tie inverter to a standalone
power inverter.

>If you have a technical correction to make, please do so.  

I've given up arguing with you Harry. You post a load of erroneous bullshit
and I point out in simple technical words exactly HOW you are full of shit,
and you don't get the point. You just ask irrelevant questions or move
blithely on to throw rocks at some other idea. You've done this to me once
before by email, and now again in posted form. Twice is enough. Goodbye.

I talked with an extremely good lamp dimming engineer this morning. His part
of the conversation went like this: "Yes...yes...yes...yes..." It's very
simple and gratifying to talk to someone who knows what I'm talking about.

Nick

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Mon Oct  9 03:25:06 1995
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Date: 8 Oct 1995 18:33:37 -0400
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Subject: Re: Cogeneration
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X-Status: 

Kristjan Valur Jonsson <kvj@rhi.hi.is> wrote:
>gary@ke4zv.atl.ga.us (Gary Coffman) writes:
>>nick@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu (Nick Pine) writes:

>>>The unit won't work in a stand-alone power mode. It won't start without grid
>>>power, and it won't stay running on a dead line. This is a "safety feature."
>
>>And an essential one, otherwise frying a lineman is a distinct possibility.
>
>Come on.  The utilities can easily adopt safer working methods.
>It's no harder than simply breaking the line on each side of the
>work side.  Simple really.

If I were a lineman, I would do that. Or treat a dead line as if it were
active, or could become so. Linemen do sometimes work on active lines,
sometimes on very high voltage lines, suspended by insulators in foil
suits to prevent corona damage, while they are charged up to hundreds
of thousands of volts...

>The argument about dead linemen is nonsense.

I do think that fear is overemphasized. I agree that there should be a fail
safe system that disconnects the cogen unit from the line, if the line
is dead, or makes it inoperable. Utilities generally accept that induction
generators excited by the grid are inherently safe. In fact, there is
a paragraph in the NEC to that effect. I'm sure these backwards lamp
dimmers could be made very safe too. 

Remember when you had to have all kinds of permits to connect something odd
to your telephone line, like an unapproved answering machine? Now,
post-Carterphone, it's pretty much your business what you do with your
phone line inside your house. It seems to me that that may happen soon
with electric lines. You don't have to tell the utility when you hook
up a 5 kW electric dryer or water heater. I see a time when you won't
have to tell them if you hook up a 100 watt synchronous inverter either...

Nick

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Mon Oct  9 14:55:06 1995
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Subject: Re: Controlling the solar scourge
content-length: 1786
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Joni Jarvenkyla <jjj@walrus.megabaud.fi> wrote:
>Nick Pine <nick@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu> wrote:

>>.I know that Siemens designed a PV-module with an integrated inverter that 
>>.you can just plug in the socket.

>>Voila. Now will someone please design a nice 110V version?
 
BTW, something like this was apparently used in Australia, a
Siemens/Butler joint venture. Does anyone know anything about that?

>If I produce solar power enough to cover my own comsumption and even
>leave extra, will my electric meter run backwards when the extra
>electricity is oozing out of my house wiring? 

Yes, unless the utility has done somethihng to prevent that, eg
installed a mechanical one-way ratchet, so the wheel inside can only
spin in one direction (even electronic meters will run backwards, if
not disabled--these usually have wheels inside too, to make it easy to
check the calibration.)  
 
You would want to electricity to ooze out in the grid direction BTW,
not all over the house. This usually happens quite naturally. 

>If yes, wouldn't I soon be facing monstrous bills from the electric
>company, as if my meter reading is lower than 2 months ago, they will
>surely assume that the meter shows my monstrous consumption!?

One hopes they would make the right choice, if your electric meter
reading should change from say, 50,000 kWh to 49,500 kWh, between
believing that in the last month you opened a major aluminum plant,
consuming 99,500 kWh, ie a continuous monthly electrical consumption
of 138 kW, eg 630 Amps at 220 Volts, or believing your story that you
sold them back a bit of electrical power. Then again, you might want
to install your own ratchet, to avoid confusing them, and just donate
the extra power to them, in exchange for their cooperation and benevolence.

Nick

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Wed Oct 11 05:25:20 1995
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Date: 10 Oct 1995 03:37:26 -0400
From: nick@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu (Nick Pine)
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Subject: Larger solar closets
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La Defense (is that the name of the empty cube in Paris?) looks to be about
500' tall, from a picture. If we filled the space inside with containers of
water, and insulated the front and back faces, and added a passive solar air
heater on the south face, we would have a solar closet that would take about
500^2 = 250,000 days, ie 685 years to cool to 70 F, with no sun, in 32 F air.

If the earth were a solar closet, it would take about 5 trillion years
to cool to 70 F. Of course the inside is molten rock, not hot water.

Nick

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Wed Oct 11 09:25:37 1995
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Date: Wed, 11 Oct 1995  08:35 est
From: niemirab@pilot.msu.edu  (Brendan A. Niemira)
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Organization: Michigan State University
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Subject: Re: Larger solar closets
content-length: 1426
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In Article <45d7rm$944@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu> "nick@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu (Nick Pine)" says:
> La Defense (is that the name of the empty cube in Paris?) looks to be about
> 500' tall, from a picture. If we filled the space inside with containers of
> water, and insulated the front and back faces, and added a passive solar air
> heater on the south face, we would have a solar closet that would take about
> 500^2 = 250,000 days, ie 685 years to cool to 70 F, with no sun, in 32 F air.
> 
> If the earth were a solar closet, it would take about 5 trillion years
> to cool to 70 F. Of course the inside is molten rock, not hot water.
> 
> Nick
         
Ah, but in addition to the heat input from solar light impacting, there is 
also the heat input from radioctive decay within the earth.  As if you were
to put a soldering iron inside one of your smaller solar closets, eh?
                  
Keep up the good work, Nick.  You've already convinced me to add a solar closet
to my house... when I get a house. :-(
                  

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Brendan A. Niemira            v3.1: GS d- s+:+ a- c++@ U-- P? L E?           
Dept. Botany and Plant Path.  W-(--) N++(+++) o+ K--- w O? M-- V?
Michigan State University     PS+ PE(++) Y+ PGP t+++ 5 X++>++++ R
niemirab@pilot.msu.edu        tv b+++ DI D+ G e++++ h--- r+++ y+++
        All opinions expressed are entirely my own.

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Wed Oct 11 18:25:34 1995
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To: london@sunsite.unc.edu
Date: 8 Oct 1995 21:35:47 GMT
From: Samuel Inniss <inniss_s@caribsurf.com>
Message-Id: <459g7j$5vf@col1.caribsurf.com>
Organization: Ministry of Agriculture, Barbados
Sender: london@sunsite.unc.edu
Subject: Solar powered Refridgeration
content-length: 646
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I am starting a project on solar powered refridgeration.  I believe that 
the only way to get solar technology developed to make a difference is if 
it developed for small scale household use,  hence the above mentioned 
project.

I would particularly like something on the refrigerants and their 
properties --  eg. how much heat they can absorb per unit wt, what is 
their expansion like for each degree rise in temperature,  that kind of 
basic stuff.

I would also be so greatful if anyone could give me information on 
liquids which store more heat than water.


SAI-- 
Man of many interest
from farming to desktop publishing
and many more


From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Wed Oct 11 21:55:36 1995
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Date: 11 Oct 1995 20:23:03 -0400
From: nick@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu (Nick Pine)
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Subject: Re: Selling energy via the grid
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Harry H Conover <conover@max.tiac.net> wrote:

>I suspect I'm a bull-headed, strong opinioned S.O.B....

I agree. And I am a fool. At your request, I sent you some email ("One last
time, Harry...") with details explaining this backwards lamp dimmer thing,
which you professed to misunderstand (progress :-) and got ZERO response.
You have now moved on to water meters. Once again you have fooled me into
wasting my time. You have some peculiar agenda. Goodbye again, Harry.

Nick

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Wed Oct 11 21:55:43 1995
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Date: 11 Oct 1995 20:30:50 -0400
From: nick@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu (Nick Pine)
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Subject: Re: Solar Energy
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Michael O'Brien <obrien@hevanet.com> wrote:

>Maybe having a discussion between a solar guy and a guy whose furnace puts
>out 275,000 Btus per hour is trying to bridge too wide a gap!

Mebbie so. That must be a big house with no insulation, in Georgia...
Reminds me a bit of the guys in Wiconsin who used to carry big chainsaws.
Macho thing. "My chainsaw is bigger than your chainsaw."

>...when you find yourself caculating out 40 foot walls of glass, there
>is no way!

I had in mind 40 foot walls of polyethylene film, at 5 cents per square foot.

>The building is just too inefficient, and if someone tried to
>heat it with solar they would go nuts and blame all the failures and
>hassles on that crazy solar nonsense.

Well, yes. If you are determined that something will not succeed, it won't.
As they say, "Once you have made up your mind, the reasons don't matter." 
 
>You can't nuke big stupid buildings with solar just to show it could be done.
>It's overreaching!!

I disagree. It seems to me that if we can make unsuitable buildings 100%
solar heated, at a low price, that bodes well for newly designed ones with
solar heating in mind. My 1820 stone farmhouse with the polycarbonate roof
comes to mind. I hope to use only the sun to heat it this winter.

Nick

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Wed Oct 11 21:55:37 1995
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Date: 11 Oct 1995 20:14:52 -0400
From: nick@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu (Nick Pine)
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Subject: Re: Solar air heaters
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Michael O'Brien <obrien@hevanet.com> wrote:

>Don't put the collector on an outside wall and leave out the insulation!
>Problems may result--
 
>1--the integrity of the exterior weatherproofing may be compromised by the
>collector fasteners, and rain or snow that gets in behind the collector
>will leak into the wall cavities.

Caulk.

>2--the exterior wall will be warm when there is sun on the collectors, but
>at night or on overcast days will be cold. That will be a comfort problem
>inside the house, and in a cold climate, may lead to condensation of water
>vapor inside the wall cavities.

Hanging a frame on the outside of the existing wall will make it no
worse in this respect. In fact, it should improve these matters. 

Nick

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Thu Oct 12 06:56:24 1995
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Date: 12 Oct 1995 04:58:25 -0400
From: nick@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu (Nick Pine)
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Subject: Re: Plastic flap dampers
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Marge Wood writes from the AE list:

Nick Pine writes:

.>How much can a plastic flap damper weigh, and still be extended to 45
.>degrees from the vertical by convection airflow into a solar closet?

.>Say the damper is 1' tall x 1' wide, hinged at the top, and rising hot air
.>with velocity V is pushing it sideways, thereby lifting it. Assuming it
.>doesn't bend, at 45 degrees, the force of the moving hot air will have to be
.>the same as the weight of the square foot of plastic. According to the
.>calculation below, the plastic can weigh up to 9.2 grams, if the closet
.>is 8' high and the passive air heater has an average air temperature of
.>120 F and the closet has an average air temperature of 100 F, and the
.>plastic and two U-turns for the airflow don't slow down the air very much. 

.>10 H=8'closet height (feet)
.>20 TI=100'interior closet temperature (F)
.>30 DT=20'temperature rise of closet air (F)
.>40 V=468*SQR(H*DT/(TI+460))'natural convection airspeed (feet/min)
.>50 VPW=(V/4005)^2'velocity pressure (inches of water)
.>60 VPG=454*VPW*62.4/12'velocity pressure (grams/ft^2)
.>70 PRINT VPG

.>   9.210386

.>Cheap saran wrap weighs about 1 gram per square foot. Solar Components
.>in New Hampshire (the Kalwall people) used to sell 1 mil Teflon, weighing 
.>about 5 grams per square foot. I think 1/2 mil Tedlar is lighter, non-clingy
.>and strong at high temperatures. It weighs about 400 ft^2/pound or less,
.>ie just over one gram per square foot, but Dupont has a minimum order of
.>something like $3,000... Perhaps Real Goods will distribute this product,
.>along with thicker, UV-transparent, 10-year Tedlar film for sunspaces,
.>heat-sealed into large sheets, like greenhouse poly film.

>I never realized the hole had to be so big.

The 1' x 1' hole was just an example, Marge. The size of the vent holes
should be proportional to the area of the sunspace glazing.

One rule of thumb for Trombe walls (yuck), from page 159 of Mazria's
_Passive Solar Energy Book_ is to make the total area of the vents
approximately 1 square foot for every 100 square feet of glazing.
But then Mazria goes on to say in Table IV-14b on page 167 that vents
in Trombe walls don't increase their average efficiency much anyhow,
just a percent or two (more in cloudy climates), perhaps because the
thermal mass of the wall absorbs most of the solar heat, so not much
gets into the house via the flow of warm air.

Low-thermal-mass sunspaces (dark colored sunspaces with, say, insulated
frame walls vs. masonry walls, with NO masonry floors or containers of water,
etc.) and air heaters (eg poly film lean-to greenhouses with shadecloth
absorbers) are more efficient house heaters, since they can get cold inside
at night, and don't lose much heat to the outside world at night. They
should have larger vents, perhaps 2% or 4% of the glazed area (bigger vents
allos more air to flow, which lowers the operating temperature inside the
sunspace when the sun is shining, which lowers the heat loss from the sunspace
or airheater glazing to the outside world.) We could also use a fan, with a
sunspace attic fan thermostat in series with a house heating thermostat,
and a motorized damper. 

>And what would happen if you just sort of cut a square of something like
>the side of a gallon milk jug and hinged it over the hole somehow?

That plastic would be way too heavy. We need things that can be lifted by
warm air currents, like dust, or smoke, or milkweed, or dry cleaner bags.

>Seems to me like anything like Saran wrap would get wrinkled or something.

Yeah. And Saran Wrap likes to stick to itself. Altho it might not if we
rubbed it with a little talcum powder or soap, or sprayed it with an
anti-static spray. And Saran Wrap is somewhat heat sensitive: the directions
on the package say to avoid contact with hot food in a microwave. Perhaps
this means that the film would stick to the metal mesh ("hardware cloth")
backing part of the damper, at high temperatures. Sunspaces don't get this
hot, but solar closets might. We need to try this...

>Do you put anything around the edge to stabilize it?

I wouldn't, because that would make it heavier...

>and can you use a window opened a little bit for the bottom air source,

Sure. Theoretically, you only need one damper for the hole at the top OR
the hole at the bottom of the sunspace, not both, because a damper in either
place will prevent air from circulating through the sunspace. But people
often use two of these dampers, in case one sticks open. It also seems to me
that we can lose some house heat to the sunspace through even one open hole,
especially the bottom one, if warm house air flows into the sunspace through
the top part of the bottom hole and rises up into the cold sunspace, and
cold sunspace air flows back into the house through the bottom part of the
bottom vent hole, eg at night. 

>assuming of course that the heater has a duct of some sort between
>the window and the heat source?

You lost me there. It seems to me that these sunspaces don't need ducts,
just some kind of glazing spaced away from a dark wall, and a vent at
the top and a vent at the bottom, for instance, partially-opened first
and second floor windows, with plastic film dampers. 

Nick

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Fri Oct 13 01:26:14 1995
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Date: 12 Oct 1995 05:01:34 -0400
From: nick@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu (Nick Pine)
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Subject: Re: Solar air heaters
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Dennis Shinn <JEEPER@HALCYON.COM> wrote:
>nick@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu (Nick Pine) wrote:
 
>>Caulk.
 
>Sealant. Caulking is used in interior applications.

As in interior boat hulls? :-)

Nick

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Fri Oct 13 04:26:13 1995
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Date: 13 Oct 1995 02:18:06 -0400
From: nick@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu (Nick Pine)
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Subject: Re: Humidity questions
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Sean Gallagher of the HVAC (heating, ventilating, and air conditioning)
newsgroup calculates that when you warm up 30 F air with 70% relative
humidity to 70 F, the relative humidity goes down to 18%. Very dry...

Article: 2985 of sci.engr.heat-vent-ac
From: nick@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu (Nick Pine)
Subject: Re: Humidity questions
Date: 13 Oct 1995 02:05:18 -0400
Organization: Villanova University

Sean J. Gallagher <seanjg@marlowe.umd.edu> wrote:
>Nick Pine (nick@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu) wrote:
...
>: If we move 50 cfm x 60 min/hr x 24 hours (72K ft^3) of 30 F, RH 70% air into
>: a 16,000 ft^3 house, and the house air temperature is 70 F, with 70% initial
>: RH, what will the final RH be? And if we use an air-air heat exchanger with
>: an efficiency of 70%, how much heat will this require?
>
>: Is there an easy way to do this without a table, using a small formula?
 
>There is an easy way to do this problem... it requires a psychrometric chart.

Thank you for explaining this, Sean. I had forgotten how to do this.
BTW, when I said "table," above, I meant "chart". I wonder how you would
do this problem if the house air were not replaced so thoroughly in a day,
eg 1 air change per day instead of 4 or 5. Some sort of mixing formula...

I have the 1993 ASHRAE HOF, which seems to only contain ASHRAE psychrometric
chart No. 1, which only goes down to 32 F. Perhaps I can use that, for
small values of 32 :-)

>Final RH will approach RH of warmed up outside air.  (Initial RH will be 
>completely overwhelmed by outside air humidity ratio given enough time 
>unless you are running a humidifier, not stated in problem.)

This is a simplified problem that arose in a discussion about airtight
houses being too damp in winter, because of cooking, plants, showers, etc.
Those are the "humidifiers." I don't know how much humidity they generate.
I wonder if there is a way to estimate this, without knowing the natural
air infiltration rate. Or if there is a way to predict how much deliberate
ventilation is necessary to limit the RH of the house air to, say, 70%, max,
in the wintertime, at some rate less than 50 cfm, in the presence of these
natural humidifiers.

>On my psyc. chart, I find the point for 30 F, 70 RH, and find a humidity 
>ratio of ~ 0.0025 (lb moisture to lb dry air).  Then I go across the 
>constant W (humidity ratio line) until I get to 70 F and find that the 
>RH has dropped to ~ 18%.

On my chart, it looks like 32 F, 70% RH air has a humidity ratio of about
0.0026. When I go across to 70 F, I get 18% humidity. Hey, we agree!

>For the heat required to warm the outside air, I just pick off the 
>enthalpy values for the above points and get something like:
>
>19.6 - 10 = 9.6 BTU/lb of air

I get 19.8 - 10.5 = 9.3. This chart is not easy to read.
 
>Then apply your flow rate of 50 cfm:

OK... 
 
>First convert to pounds of air per hour.
 
Pounds of cold air? 

>50 cfm x 60min x 1/13 = 230 lb of air/hr  [the 1/13 comes from 13 ft^3/lb]
> 					   This is also on the psych chart.

On my chart, it looks like the 70 F air weighs 13.4 lbs/ft^3, and the
32 F air weighs about 12.4 lbs/ft^3. Should we be using the 12.4 number?

>230 lb/hr x 9.6 BTU/lb = 2,215 BTU/hr to heat the air 

OK...

>If the heat exchanger makes up 70% of the heat, then that leaves you with 
>30% to supply through another energy source.

Good. That's about 16K Btu/day. Not too horrible, energy-wise.
Probably less energy than a mechanical dehumidifier. Although
the dehumidifier supplies heat to the house.

And in the real problem, the natural humidifiers are making water that
needs to be evaporated and heated, and this water is leaving the house
with exhaust air, so it seems to me that the energy required for this
dehumidification-by-ventilation process is more than just the energy
needed to warm up the incoming cold dry air.

>Psychrometric charts are the way to go for these type of calc's.  You can 
>get them from ASHRAE or some of the major equipment manufacturers, like 
>Trane, may publish them.

These charts are hard to read, and harder to put into a simple computer
program. I wonder about this statement at the upper left corner of page
6.16 of the 1993 HOF: "Sufficiently exact values for most purposes can
be derived by methods described in the section on perfect gas relations."

That section is on pages 6.12 and 6.13. I cannot quite see how to apply
those equations 14-30, which begin

Dry air PaV = NaRT        (14) and
Water vapor PwV = NwRT    (15),

and end with "moist air enthalpy then becomes

h = 0.240t + W(1061 + 0.444t) Btu/lb  (30),"

where t is the dry bulb temperature in degrees F.

Does anyone know how to use these equations to answer these two
questions and get the same approximate results as using the charts? 

Nick

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Fri Oct 13 23:56:52 1995
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To: london@sunsite.unc.edu
Date: 13 Oct 1995 21:55:37 -0400
From: nick@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu (Nick Pine)
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Subject: Backwards lamp dimmers...
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An excerpt from some email from my lamp dimmer engineer friend:

To: nick@ee.vill.edu
Subject: Simple Inverter

Nick,

...

Regarding your interest in a simple inverter, I'm sure your suggestion for a
triac bridge with microprocessor control would work, assuming you have a DC
input voltage which is greater than the line voltage. This shouldn't present
too much of a problem for a wind generator, but might require quite a few
solar cells in series to achieve. You will only be able to transfer energy to
the grid during portions of the AC cycle when the grid voltage is below your
DC bus with this scheme. This could present problems when the wind speed
falls off or the sun input is reduced, and the DC voltage drops well below
the AC line level. Also, with the simple inductor filter approach, the
current waveform would end up being pretty ugly.

A somewhat more sophisticated, but still relatively simple approach would
include a high frequency boost converter to step up the DC bus voltage - the
voltage multiplier that you mentioned. At the 500 watt power level we're
talking here, this would add a power switching device and one fast recovery
diode with associated control circuitry to the parts list. This would pretty
well shoot your $10 parts list, with a more realistic guess being something
in the $30 to $50 range, parts and labor, depending on volume, but the
increased flexibility and improved energy transfer characteristics would
probably make it desirable. I understand that at these low power levels,
current waveform and harmonic distortion issues are not tremendously
important (although in Europe they are very persnickety about this, even at
these power levels, and many US utilities are picking up on this as well),
but I suspect that the bus voltage sensitivity of the simple bridge by itself
would be severely limiting in terms of how often you could actually feed
power back to the grid. You certainly do not need to get into the type of
gear that the learned Mr. Conover refers to, which sounds like a multi-phase
inverter that would normally only be used at much higher power levels, or
when some form of sophisticated energy transfer control is required, such as
power factor or harmonic distortion compensation.

...

Nick

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Sat Oct 14 07:56:28 1995
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To: london@sunsite.unc.edu
Date: 14 Oct 1995 06:42:46 -0400
From: nick@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu (Nick Pine)
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References: <45icn0$hjl@news.halcyon.com>, <45ilhe$k8r@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu>, <45nms4$guh@news.halcyon.com>
Subject: Re: Solar air heaters
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Dennis Shinn <JEEPER@HALCYON.COM> wrote:
>
>>>Caulking is used in interior applications.
>
>>As in interior boat hulls? :-)
>
>I think the discussion was dealing with building techonolgy. 

Strewth.

>The difference was drummed into my head almost thirty years ago. One
>of the few things I can still remember from that far back. (grin)

My architect also makes this distinction, and he is also old, like us,
but he does not know or care that the U-value of an air film near a
rough surface increases with airflow as U = 2 + v/2, where v is in mph.

Isn't it odd how languages shift, especially in the hands of priests?
I was having a nice conversation about stochastic quadratic assignment
problems with a Princeton transportation prof years ago, but as soon as
I failed to recognize the verb "deadhead," as applied to bus scheduling,
he knew that I belonged to another priesthood, so he suddenly tuned out 
and suggested that I go see what I could find in the library.

My dictionary doesn't have caulk or sealant as nouns, but as verbs:

   caulk: 1. to stop up and make watertight the seams of by filling
   with a waterproofing compound or material. 2. to stop up and make
   tight against leakage.

   seal: 1a. to confirm or make secure by or as if by a seal b: to
   solemnize for eternity (as a marriage or an adoption of a child) by
   a Mormon rite. 2a: to set or affix an authenticating seal to; also:
   authenticate, ratify b: to mark with a stamp usu. as an evidence of
   standard exactness, legal size, weight, or capacity, or merchantable
   quality 3a: to fasten with or as if with a seal to prevent tampering
   b: to secure with a closure against access or leakage c: to make fast
   with cement or plaster 4. to determine irrevocably or indisputably
   <this answer ---ed our fate>

Nick

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Sat Oct 14 07:56:30 1995
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To: london@sunsite.unc.edu
Date: 14 Oct 1995 07:21:11 -0400
From: nick@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu (Nick Pine)
Message-Id: <45o6f7$gqi@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu>
Organization: Villanova University
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Subject: Re: newbie
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Anthony Kalenak <amklnk@nyc.pipeline.com> wrote:

>Fuller said that if you put a series of small vents at the top of a dome
>and large openings around the base, heating of the air on the exterior
>surface of the dome causes a vertical column of hot air to rise from the dome.

I can imagine that happening. 

>The cooler air inside the dome drops thru the large vents at the
>base. This displacement causes air to come in thru the small top openings.

OK. Like this, on a hot, calm day?
                  up

             up        up

               cw  i   ccw
           up    . n .   up
              .         .
        up .       d      . up
         .   cw    o  ccw   .
        .  vortex  w vortex  .
=>    <== out   /  n  \   out  ==>    <=
........................................

>Expanding to fill dome this air is cooled.

Hmmm... Let's see: PV = NRT. Perhaps you could live in a slight vacuum and
reduce the air temperature by 10 degrees F this way, from say, 90 to 80, 
by reducing the pressure inside by about 2%, ie

(1-(460+80F)/(460+90F)) x l4.6 psia = .265 psi or 38 pounds per square foot.

Hmmm... A concrete dome might not collapse, but it seems unlikely you could
achieve that kind of vacuum by solar thermal wind alone... What kind of air
velocity would result inside the dome? Where are the orifice formulas when
you need them? Would you need seatbelts and safety harnasses and velcro shoes
and really good hairspray?

>The resultant is a cool stream of air for the inside top of the dome
>downward toward the floor.

Well, a little cooler, maybe. The air inside would feel cooler, because
it would be moving. U = 2 + v/2 Btu/ft^2/hr, for an air film near a rough
surface with an airspeed of v mph.

>RBF is said to have achieved this in his metal prefab homes.  

Did he mention what the temperature differences were?

>I have yet to replicate this condition.  

Perhaps you are lucky :-)

>What do you think ? 

I think it might be nice to put some ventilation holes in those places, and
the airflow would make things feel cooler inside on some days, but perhaps
it would be better to leave the vents closed during the day, and open them
at night to allow air to flow out the top, inside a foam/concrete dome.
Pity to waste all that solar heat, tho. Mebbie it can be stored somehow
to help that nightime airflow and dehumidification happen...

Nick

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Tue Oct 17 21:27:57 1995
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To: london@sunsite.unc.edu
Date: 17 Oct 1995 13:44:15 -0400
From: nick@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu (Nick Pine)
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Subject: Contacts for small European grid-tie inverters
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Siemens web page for solar energy: http://www.solarpv.com/solarpv/

Contact e-mail address in  North America: sunpower@pacrain.com

Nothing on this web page yet about this small integrated inverter. But
there was some information on the Siemens system in an article and
advertisement in the Dutch periodical "Duurzame energie" (Renewable Energy)
of april 95. A Dutch company is offering this Siemens solar system with
integrated inverter. Some of its general characteristics:

- Maximum power: 110 W
- Cost:          2950 Dutch guilders (= ca. 1800 US$)
- Just plug it in the wall socket...
- 'optimal' MPP-regulation (Maximum Power Point) 
- Turns off when the grid fails: no possibility of 'islanding'.

The Dutch company is called Solar Center Amsterdam B.V. and is located in
Nagele, the Netherlands (about 100 km from Amsterdam). Phone and fax
numbers: ++-31-527-652177 (telephone) or ++-31-527-652338 (fax).

E-mail adresses of people in ECN Dutch research centre (about 900 people,
total) in small synchronous inverter ("backwards lamp dimmer") research:

S.W.H. de Haan:    dehaan@ecn.nl  
C.F.A. Frumeau     frumeau@ecn.nl

Technology manager for solar energy research at ECN:

W. Sinke           sinke@ecn.nl

The inverter will be produced by a company called:

OK-services
Nieuwstraat 38
5611 DB Eindhoven

Phone: ++-31-40-2445262
Fax:   ++-31-40-2464133

Nick

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Wed Oct 18 10:28:06 1995
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Date: 18 Oct 1995 07:30:05 -0400
From: nick@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu (Nick Pine)
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Subject: Metric solar closet arithmetic
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Consider a solar closet standing alone outside in the winter--an insulated
box filled with sealed containers of water, with a solar air heater attached
to one insulated side, with some air dampers between the air heater and the
closet itself, so the low-thermal mass air heater can get icy cold at night.
(One might more usefully build this into a house, with the glazing behind a
low-thermal mass sunspace, and some air dampers to let some warm sunspace air
into the house on an average winter day.)

After a string of average winter days, with some sun, the steady state
temperature inside this standalone closet depends on the glazed area, the
intensity of the sun, the size and shape of the closet, the temperature of
the air around it, and the amount of insulation around the closet. It does
not depend much on how much mass is inside the closet...

For example, suppose we have a solar closet that is a 1 meter cube, with a
metric R-value of 5 m^2-K/watt on all 6 sides, and an additional layer of
glazing on one side, with a glazing R-value of 0.2, with an airspace behind
the glazing. Suppose the sun shines for 6 hours a day (in the winter) and on
the average, the amount of sun that shines on the glazed front of the closet
is 3 kWh/m^2, and the average air temperature around the closet is 0 C.

Suppose that when the sun shines, the air inside the glass and the air and
the water inside the closet all have the same temperature, Tw (C) (this
assumes that the water containers have a much larger surface area than the
glazed area, or that a fan moves the air quickly over the container surface),
then we have an energy balance:

Energy in = 1 m^2 x 3 kWh/m^2/day = 3 kWh/day, 

       (assuming the glass transmits 100% of the sun), and 

Energy out = 6 hours x (Tw - 0) 1 m^2/R0.2    (front, daytime)
          + 18 hours x (Tw - 0) 1 m^2/R5      (front, night time)
	  + 24 hours x (Tw - 0) 5 m^2/R5      (other sides.)

So, if Energy in = Energy out,

 3,000 = (6 x 5/1 + 18 x 1/5 + 24 x 5/5) Tw = (30 + 3.6 + 24) Tw

==> Tw = 3,000/57.6 = 52.1 C or 125.8 F.

If the solar closet is mostly inside the house, with only the glazed side  
exposed to the cold air at night and the warm sunspace air during the day, it
will mostly (5/6 of it) be exposed to 20 C air, not 0 C air, so the temperature
of the water and air inside will be about Tw = 20 + 3,000/57.6 = 72.1 C. If
we add a white reflector on the ground, eg snow, that increases the solar
input by 50%, so we have Tw = 20 + 3,000 x 1.5/57.6 = 98.1 C. Almost boiling.

Of course we are just using R-value arithmetic. Radiation losses may limit the
maximum closet temperature to something closer to 55 C (130 F.) And if we take
some heat out of the closet to heat the house every night, or to heat water,
using a fin-tube convective loop, that lowers the closet temperature, too.

Nick

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Fri Oct 20 13:58:45 1995
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To: london@sunsite.unc.edu
Date: 19 Oct 1995 16:48:27 -0400
From: nick@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu (Nick Pine)
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Organization: Villanova University
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Subject: More on backwards lamp dimmers
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Today an engineer told me that he was at a DOE review meeting yesterday in
Washington, DC. One of the speakers got up and showed the audience a PV panel
with a line cord coming out of the back and a 110 VAC plug. He then plugged
the cord into a wall socket and put the panel near a window and measured the
power being fed back into the building's AC supply.

The developer was apparently Solar Design Associates, a small company near
Boston, and the eventual seller of this integrated small grid-tie inverter
product will be Solarex, owned by Arco. 

Nick

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Tue Oct 24 02:29:15 1995
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Date: 23 Oct 1995 17:47:04 -0400
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Subject: Today's high, in the solar attic
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127.4 F, under the new polycarbonate roof, with no attic airflow. 

I hope this will improve a bit when I start sealing up the air leaks,
making surfaces darker and adding some shadecloth and insulation up there.

Nick

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Tue Oct 24 12:00:14 1995
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Date: 24 Oct 1995 07:28:09 -0400
From: nick@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu (Nick Pine)
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Subject: Re: Today's high, in the solar attic
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Andrew McKegney  <sunone@pathcom.com> wrote:
 
>If your attic has any wood , paper or non-fireproofed wood fibers in it 
>you could create a problem for yourself.

It has all that stuff. Wide pine floorboards, cedar shingles on the north
side, dacron ropes around the rafters, holding up the second floor, etc.

>If these materials are exposed to high temperatures for long periods of time,
>they develop phyric (?) compounds that can eaisly catch fire.

I wonder how high these high temperatures have to be? It seems unlikely to me
that the attic will catch fire, since it has little insulation. That would be
interesting, tho. A pyric victory, in solar air heater design. I'd worry more
if this were a concentrating system. Howard Reichmuth, P.E., says he almost
melted a pair of good rubber boots, by accidentally standing in the line
focus of his parabolic concentrating greenhouse, 20 years ago. His advice:
"Don't stand in the focus!" 

The attic will have some cooling, eventually, in the form of blowing some
of the warm air down to the rest of the stone house, to store heat in the
stone walls, surrounded by foam insulation on the outside.

>This is why the idea of building solar panels of wood went up in flames.
>Literally.

Sounds like suburban folklore to me. Altho I could imagine that happening in
a well-insulated, stagnated, liquid solar collector, if the pump failed. That
kind of collector is expensive and goes on the roof, in the wind and the snow,
with antifreeze and heat exchangers and complicated control panels. I'm not
very interested in those things. If I insulated it _really_ well, perhaps
my attic could use some 180 F passive vent openers to open the doors under the
turbine vents, if the temperature gets too high up there. Solar Components
121 Valley Street/Manchester, NH 03103-6211 $56 #13040 Solarvents are said to
start opening at 188 F and be fully open at 212 F, altho the last one I tried
20 years ago didn't work very well. Perhaps you are not supposed to boil them
long in a pot full of water on the stove. Jade Mountain (800) 442-1972 sells
$54 #FC115 Thermofor vents, and Steve Troy says they work well, lifting 15
pounds 15", but the catalog says "select a temperature between 55-85 degrees." 

BTW, I've decided to hang a $70, 32' x 16' layer of 80% greenhouse shadecloth
on top of the transparent part of the attic next summer, using a couple of
pulleys and ropes. This should make the attic a lot cooler, and make the
clear, corrugated, polycarbonate glazing last a lot longer. It won't interfere
with the view that much. I had it hanging over the whole south front wall
of the house this summer, and the worst part was the moire pattern it made
as I looked through the screened part of the windows from the inside. From
the outside, it just looked black. A new look in houses. Trendy, perhaps.

>Better consult your local fire department before you go much further.

I don't think they know much about this sort of thing. I gave them a copy
of my solar closet paper a while ago, and suggested that they modify their
firehouse accordingly. The firehouse has a very nice white stucco south-facing
wall, with no windows, but I don't see any changes yet. I suspect they don't
even know about Ohm's law for heatflow. The south wall of the Ursinus College
building next to the firehouse is completely shaded by big evergreens close 
to the wall, and it has a lovely porch upstairs that is crying out to be
glazed in, after the evergreens are cut down, but that hasn't happened either.
I guess Ursinus College doesn't know much about Ohm's law for heatflow either. 

>A point to consider. Unless you have something to store the heat in, 
>you'd be better off installing a skylight directly into the living space. 

Sounds like a good idea for daylighting, perhaps with a reflective sunscoop,
aimed south, but I'd think one would want a large amount of vertical glazing
to collect low-angle winter sun, and one needs some way to avoid having all
the house heat disappear out the glazing at night, or during periods of
cloudy weather.

>The mass in the living space will absorb some of the heat...

Indeed it will. We should build more stone houses, surrounded by polyurethane
foam. There was one described in a recent Mother Earth News, built by two
brothers with wheelbarrows--13 million pounds of rocks, including the stone
roof, but they forgot the foam on the outside. Concrete furniture also helps,
in ordinary houses. 

>Remember maximize the insulation before trying to use the insolation!

Perhaps someone should tell David Boyer about that. His 2,000 ft^2 commercial
greenhouse in Sassamansville, PA is doing fine at the moment, with a single
layer of R0.7 polyethylene greenhouse film surrounding a lot of poinsettias,
which are sitting on top of 200 55 gallon drums full of water. He doesn't seem
worried about fire, either. I think he understands Ohm's law for heatflow.

Thank you for your concern, Andy.

Nick

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Wed Oct 25 01:29:43 1995
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Date: Mon, 23 Oct 1995 00:17:10 +0100 (BST)
From: UNIDFC@leeds.ac.uk (D.F. Codrington)
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Subject: Global Citizen
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Global Citizen, The Lodge, Seminary Street,  Leeds, LS2 9NH,  
England.

Global Citizen

Global Citizen,  for the people of the world without
political  incompetence and the miss-use of power.

G.C. represents all the people of  the world on a humanitarian, 
economic and environmental grass-roots level.

The goal of Global Citizen is to focus world opinion onto the 
people 
of the world and the plight of the environment they live in. To 
disseminate knowledge about environmentally friendly methods of 
living and how people world-wide can improve their standard of 
living
and well-being without harming  the environment or the Earth's 
ecology

· The Earth being One, but we are not.
· The recognition that the biosphere recognises no divisions or 
systems.

These are just two of many issues that Global Citizen will 
address.

What we really need is your input and opinions of what other 
things 
we can do, be it use of  the Web or the general media, or new 
projects. 
Global Citizen is open to change but our primary goal is to 
protect
the Earth and its People.

If you want more information about Global Citizen could you 
please
send $7 U.S. or £5 Sterling made out to Global Citizen,
to the address above. 
This is so that we can cover printing and postage.

If you agree with our aims join us now by making a donation.

Please send an international Money order or
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From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Wed Oct 25 05:59:47 1995
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Date: 25 Oct 1995 01:29:04 -0400
From: nick@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu (Nick Pine)
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Subject: Re: Today's high, in the solar attic
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Dan Settles <dan_settles@cellbio.duke.edu> wrote:

>Hi Nick,

Hi Dan :-)

>Glad to see you are still sharing information on your solar experiment.

I'm happy that there is more than one of them underway: David Boyer's
greenhouse, the small solar house on top of the science building at the
local college (donations still welcome :-), and the roof of my house. Now
that the small solar house is up on the roof and working, the next thing
I want to do is to bring down some hot air from my attic with a fan, and
add a lean-to sunspace on the front of my house, using some curved steel
pipes and plastic film glazing, standard commercial greenhouse materials.
 
>I was wondering if you are approaching the upper temperature limit for the
>polycarbonate.  I can't remember what that upper limit is, but I was
>wondering if you may start degrading your roof if it gets much warmer?

I don't know what the upper limit is either, but nothing's sagged or melted
yet, and the fires are under control :-) The manufacturer says that a
continuous temperature of 130 F is no problem.

Nick

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Wed Oct 25 05:59:48 1995
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Date: 23 Oct 1995 14:47:31 -0400
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Subject: Re: Cogeneration
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Jesus sticks sound like a very good idea. If I were a lineman, I'd use
'em on every job. Or maybe a couple of 12 V battery cables...

Nick

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Wed Oct 25 12:11:41 1995
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Subject: Re: Solar Energy
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Axel Berger <Axel_Berger@ac3.maus.de> wrote:

>...A solar panel can be bought at about 10 DM/W, a Varta
>"Solar" lead acid battery is above 3 DM/Ah. This breaks down to 0.63
>DM/kWh for the panel (20 years at 800 nominal hours) and 1.22 DM/kWh
>for the battery (maximum charge throughput is 20 kAh at 600 cycles with
>40% depth for a 85 Ah unit) making the battery twice as expensive as
>the panel.

Yes, but if we feed the power back to the grid, we can use just a few
batteries. One local builder is designing very nice houses with 2 kW PV
arrays and only 8 batteries (the minimum number needed to make enough
current for the Trace inverter to work--he could probably use nicad D
cells :-) This gives a 3 day supply of electricity for the house, and makes
the utility more cooperative, since they get the message "we CAN do this
without you." In fact, one of the nice things about these houses is that
they do not need a temporary hookup for electrical service, while they 
are under construction. As soon as the shell is finished (in a day or two,
since these are modular houses), the carpenters and plumbers come in and
plug their power tools and radios into the wall sockets and go to work.

Nick

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Wed Oct 25 12:11:47 1995
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Date: 25 Oct 1995 05:09:01 -0400
From: nick@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu (Nick Pine)
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Subject: Re: Today's high, in the solar attic
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>Dan Settles <dan_settles@cellbio.duke.edu> wrote:
  
>I was wondering if you are approaching the upper temperature limit for the
>polycarbonate...

Three more thoughts: 

My polycarbonate plastic roof is very thin, a single layer 0.020" thick, and
the plastic itself has a fairly high thermal conductivity, so it will
probably have a uniform temperature that is halfway between the attic air
temperature and the outdoor temperature, like a paper cup used to boil water
over a candle.

Even if the attic were perfectly insulated, the attic air temperature has
a natural limit, based on radiation losses. If the peak solar power into
a square foot of glazing were 300 Btu/hour, and there were no thermal storage
in the attic, and the outdoor temperature were 30 F, and all of the solar
power left through the glazing by radiation (it doesn't, in this case--
Table 4.2 of _Greenhouse Engineering_ (3rd revision, August, 1994, published
by the Northeast Regional Agricultural Engineering Service at Cornell,
152 Riley-Robb Hall/Cooperative Extension/Ithaca, NY 14853-5701) lists the
solar and infrared transmissivities of polycarbonate as 0.85 and 0.01,
_better_ than a single layer of window glass, listed at 0.85 and 0.02--
meltdowns are less likely with polyethylene film :-), which has solar and
infrared transmissivities of 0.92 and 0.81) we have a maximum attic air
temperature of roughly 122 F, from the following formula:

300 = 0.174 x 10^-8 ((Ta+460)^4 - (30+460)^4).

If the R-value of the inside air film under the plastic were 2/3, and the
plastic itself and outside air film were perfectly conductive, and the plastic
passed no infrared radiation at all, the maximum attic air temperature would
be closer to 478 F, using Ohm's law for heatflow:

300 = (Ta-30)/R0.67.

Double glazing would be more dangerous.

Nick

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Wed Oct 25 21:11:48 1995
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Subject: Re: Solar Energy
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<meron@cars3.uchicago.edu> wrote:

>nick@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu (Nick Pine) writes:

>>To me, this "competitive market" would be like my local supermarket, if I were
>>to pick up a bag of oranges, and pull out a gun, and say to the checkout
>>clerk, "I don't want to pay more than 10 cents each for these oranges."

>I gather that your point is that oil is so cheap since the oil 
>producing countries are paid so little for it.

   Not exactly... I'm saying that this is not a pure "competitive market."

   It seems to me that that oil is linked to "international problems."
   This fact is too often forgotten. Amory Lovins said (Atlantic Monthly,
   December, 1994) "We would not have invaded Iraq if they had only grown
   broccoli there" (referring to George Bush's dislike for broccoli.)
   Even before George Bush, five US presidents had publicly threatened 
   to go to war in the Middle East, if they "cut off our vital supply of oil,"
   which included raising the price. The Gulf War was about cheap oil. 

   By some accounts, we killed 100,000 human beings in Iraq in the Gulf war,
   directly. And another 500,000 people, mostly women and children, died
   after US troops left the area, as a result of starvation, homelessness,
   poor sanitary conditions and lack of medical care. The loss of 600,000
   human lives is not a trivial matter. These dead people would make a line
   568 miles (947 km) long, if you stretched them out end to end, counting
   an average person as 5' tall in this case, since Middle-Easterners are
   shorter than Americans, and most of the dead people were apparently
   women and children. 

   So I would conclude, "sometimes people want to sell us oil at a higher 
   price than we are willing to pay, so we kill them."

   I think it's important to point out that a lot of oil is being wasted
   heating houses in this country, and that such waste is avoidable,
   and that avoiding such waste contributes to world peace. 

>Never in history were people paid so much with such small investment
>of their own effort.

It's their oil, and they have a basic right to set their price.

Nick

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Thu Oct 26 02:41:48 1995
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Subject: Re: Solar Energy
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Gary Coffman <gary@ke4zv.atl.ga.us> wrote:
 
>... There's little reason
>to expect breakthroughs except that trend lines for some disciplines,
>such as microelectronics, plotted from the beginning of the discipline 
>to the present might lead one to extrapolate it will continue forever 
>in the same fashion. That's a very risky extrapolation, however, as such 
>curves have always taken on an 'S' shape as a discipline matures and
>approaches physical limits. You finally reach the point of diminishing
>returns where no matter how much money and effort you expend you can't
>expect breakthroughs that push you much further down that road. 1 kW/m^2
>is one of those limits for solar power, and research already has us
>within the same order of magnitude. Breakthrough advances are unlikely.

I agree, as far as microelectronics, which has some physical limits.
We can't keep doubling the number of transistors on an IC forever, by
making finer lines, etc. But one of the differences to think about is
that there are many ICs in this country, but very few solar heated houses.

One of the reasons is cheap oil.

Why is oil so inexpensive?

Nick

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Thu Oct 26 11:41:52 1995
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Linden Lindy Sisk <lindy@shell.portal.com> wrote:

>Nick Pine (nick@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu) wrote:

>: Why is oil so inexpensive?
 
>In a competitive market, which currently exists for oil...

To me, this "competitive market" would be like my local supermarket, if I were
to pick up a bag of oranges, and pull out a gun, and say to the checkout clerk,
"I don't want to pay more than 10 cents each for these oranges."

Nick

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Thu Oct 26 23:42:22 1995
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<meron@cars3.uchicago.edu> wrote:
 
>This is truly heart breaking.

Your sympathy for these 600,000 dead humans is noted :-)

>It also completely ignores the fact that the Gulf War started not with
>the US attacking Iraq but with Iraq invading Kuweit, a country which didn't
>attack Iraq, threaten it or do it harm in any way.

A country set up for a few shieks by Standard Oil in the 50's...

Yeah yeah yeah, sure. All those people deserved to die. We had to invade Iraq.
And Israel only defends itself from agressors, and we only invaded Grenada
to protect those poor medical students, etc., etc. We seem to say, "Step over 
this line: I dare you," like children. And then we defend ourselves to protect
our country from the hideous menace of a nation like Nicaragua. If your 
neighbor started acting uppity, and browbeating his family, would you kill him,
and install a new person as head of his family, to help ensure neighborhood
tranquility? Could you accomplish that legally? Could you make him so angry
at you that he attacks you, and then "simply defend yourself," waiting in
ambush with ten times the weaponry? Would you perform training exercises
on the sidewalk in front of his house, with guns, and shine spotlights into
his windows at night? Would that be a neighborly thing to do?

>... I perfectly agree that there probably would have been no international
>involvement in the Gulf would Iraq and Kuweit grow only broccoli...

OK then. 

>The international community learned, the hard way, in this century,
>that when somebody starts throwing his weight around too much you'll
>better act or else.

Or else what? Shark repellent works pretty well in Nebraska... I have
no wish to pay for making the world safe for democracy. But this
matter of oil complicates things, doesn't it? Another complication is
people like the US Navy Ensign who told me a few years ago, "In order
to get promoted again, I will have to see combat." We should find
easier ways for him to earn his promotion :-)

I think you are talking about the domino theory, in political vs
economic terms. But it seems to me that this is an impure theory,
which has always had to do with economics and unclearly stated agendas.
Hey, it worked in Vietnam :-) We contained the red menace...

>And no, it wasn't just a war about cheap oil, since would that have been
>the case you would have US Marines landing in Saudi Arabia and Kuweit 
>in 1973, when OPEC raised the prices sky high.

Good point. I'm not sure why that didn't happen. Perhaps we were too
busy with the red menace, or there were some sort of smarmy political
deals going on with the big oil companies making bigger profits, as our
nation secretly supported both sides of the war between Iraq and Iran,
to ensure a political balance in our favor, and controllable oil prices.

>>   I think it's important to point out that a lot of oil is being wasted
>>   heating houses in this country, and that such waste is avoidable,
>>   and that avoiding such waste contributes to world peace. 
>
>Yeah, that's why there was always peace in the world, till people 
>strted using oil.

I'm not sure how that follows. All that I said was that if we didn't use
so much oil to heat houses, i.e. if we were not such oil junkies, there
would be less pressure for war in the middle east. And kicking the oil habit
for house heating isn't that difficult, from a technical point of view. 
We'd see a lot more of that if oil were not so artificially cheap. (Amory
Lovins went on to say in that article that the real cost of oil, including
the Gulf war, was over $2 a gallon, with the difference being paid indirectly
to armies by every US taxpayer.)

>>>Never in history were people paid so much with such small investment
>>>of their own effort.
>>
>>It's their oil, and they have a basic right to set their price.
>
>That's right, and they do.  Nevertheless the fact remains that "Never
>in history were people paid so much with such small investment of 
>their own effort."  There is no contradiction between the two.

I agree. And I'd say they are lucky, or played their cards right. But we seem
to try to sway them a bit, unfairly I think, by murdering them by the 
thousands, as a part of this "competitive market" price-setting process. 

Nick

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Fri Oct 27 06:12:32 1995
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Mati Meron <meron@cars3.uchicago.edu> wrote:
>nick@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu (Nick Pine) writes:
>><meron@cars3.uchicago.edu> wrote:

>>>It also completely ignores the fact that the Gulf War started not with
>>>the US attacking Iraq but with Iraq invading Kuweit, a country which didn't
>>>attack Iraq, threaten it or do it harm in any way.
>>
>>A country set up for a few shieks by Standard Oil in the 50's...
>>
>Your point?  If we go a bit further back (say, to 1917) almost none of 
>the countries that we know now in the Middle East did exist.  So, all 
>of them are free game?

I wouldn't say that. Now that all this desert is nominal sovereign countries,
I think we should mind our own business and let them do what they will to
each other, and take care of our own energy needs in some less violent way. 
 
>>Yeah yeah yeah, sure. All those people deserved to die. We had to invade Iraq.
>
>Yes, we did.

No, we didn't. (In rhetoric, an assertion demands no more than a
counterassertion :-)

>Else we would have to deal with a way bigger menace couple years later. 

I dunno about that. Seems like if we don't bother them, they won't bother us.
And if they do bother us (not someone else), we can easily smite 'em, from
high moral ground, but not before that. Consider the Swiss, whose last major
battle was some 800 years ago, when 1,100 Swiss killed 20,000 French soldiers
one night. Everyone died, but people don't mess with the Swiss anymore. We
have proved our military reputation over and over. We don't need to do it
again, or worry about countries like Iraq or Panama or Grenada conquering the
U S of A. We should also grow up and kick this ugly oil habit, at least for
heating houses. And stop being world police. That is arrogant and expensive.

>I trust you do read newspapers sometimes.

I avoid that. Very depressing and time-consuming. I used to read the NY Times
every day, which took about an hour. Then I only read the good news in the
Times, and that only took 5 minutes. Newspapers always seem to be reporting
on wars. I don't know if wars are always going on, and the newpapers have
to fill up space devoted to wars and just report the biggest wars du jour, 
or what, but it always seems that when one war disappears from the papers,
another appears right away to take its place. Armies need employment too.
Perhaps they can pick up litter in parks, when they aren't out fighting.

>>And Israel only defends itself from agressors,
>
>Well, doesn't it?

Not really. As I recall, the six day war started with one of those puny
attacks, with a massive over-response and permanent land-taking on Israel's
part. The phrase "excessive use of force" comes to mind, at least, altho
there is a part of me that says that any country that invades another
deserves whatever response they receive. But that war seemed like 3 or 4
eyes for an eye.

>>and we only invaded Grenada
>>to protect those poor medical students, etc., etc. 
 
>No. we didn't. There wasn't any serious justification for either 
>Grenada or Panama.

Gee, it's nice we agree on something. Perhaps this was military training.
Steve Baer suggests I should have given that ensign some on the spot combat,
eg a punch in the nose. But I was visiting his aircraft carrier at the time,
and that would not have been polite. And he might have punched back.

>>If your neighbor started acting uppity, and browbeating his family,
>>would you kill him, and install a new person as head of his family,
>>to help ensure neighborhood tranquility? 
>
>If I'm living in a place which has no law and no police (which is 
>exactly the situation of the world as a whole, taking your nations as 
>persons analogy)

I'd like to think the UN and World Court could fill that role...

>and my neighbor seems to be menacing me, I'll take 
>any steps within my ability to remove the menace. 

Oh I could see never inviting him to lunch, or refusing to let my kids
visit his house, or perhaps embargoing the mailman, but not killing
him and setting up a new husband in his place... That seems like too
big a step, if all he is doing to you is giving moral offense, or
refusing to sell you the oil in his basement.

>>Could you make him so angry
>>at you that he attacks you, and then "simply defend yourself," waiting in
>>ambush with ten times the weaponry? Would you perform training exercises
>>on the sidewalk in front of his house, with guns, and shine spotlights into
>>his windows at night? Would that be a neighborly thing to do?
>
>Certainly it wouldn't.  However, if you refere to Iraq than you still 
>ignore the fact that Iraq inveded Kuweit, unprovoked.

I don't know why they did that crazy thing, but it seems to me that was
none of our business. Too far away. Isn't Kuwait spelled with an a?

>Did you ever read anything about the history of this century or is 
>everything before Vietnam just a big blank for you.

In truth, I don't know much about history.

>How does the phrase "why should we send our young people to fight and die,
>for people whom we don't know in a country whose name we can hardly
>pronounce" strike you. 

Makes perfect sense. Bertrand Russell used to say something like, "All that
is necessary to bring about peace in the world is for enough good men to do
nothing." Everyone has to make his/her own choice in this. I like Chuang
Tzu's approach to government: if you must govern, do nothing.

>Sounds familiar?

Sounds like the chorus of ladies and policemen in the Pirates of Penzance.

>>>>   I think it's important to point out that a lot of oil is being wasted
>>>>   heating houses in this country, and that such waste is avoidable,
>>>>   and that avoiding such waste contributes to world peace. 
>>>
>>>Yeah, that's why there was always peace in the world, till people 
>>>strted using oil.
>>
>>I'm not sure how that follows. 
>
>But of course it follows.  You think that avoiding the "oil waste" 
>will contribute to the world peace. 

Absolutely.

>I disagree.  The world wasn't peaceful before oil appeared on the scene

I didn't say this would make it peaceful, just perhaps more peaceful.
The local analogy to this is that whenever you have rich and poor people
in the same place, there is crime. We are oil poor...

>>...I'd say they are lucky, or played their cards right. But we seem
>>to try to sway them a bit, unfairly I think, by murdering them by the 
>>thousands, as a part of this "competitive market" price-setting process. 
 
>No. we don't.  But, since you've already made up your mind, I doubt 
>whether you want to be confused by facts.

I do know people who seem to behave as if once you've made up your mind,
the reasons don't matter. This does make life simpler, in terms of cognitive
dissonance, but I'm trying to keep an open mind on this.
 
Nick

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Fri Oct 27 22:12:50 1995
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Date: 27 Oct 1995 06:45:00 -0400
From: nick@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu (Nick Pine)
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Subject: Re: Solar Energy
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Mati Meron <meron@cars3.uchicago.edu> wrote:
 
>The reason nobody messes with the Swiss is that it is a difficult 
>terrain which leads nowhere.

Not to mention that a lot of Switzerland, eg most of the bridges, is mined
with explosives, by the Swiss, as a little surprise for invaders. Nor that
they have sufficient nuclear shelters for every Swiss person, and everyone
is in the Army. It would not surprise me to learn that they have a few
on-site nuclear booby traps as well. Kinda like a burglar alarm attached
to 100 pounds of dynamite. Impressive, those Swiss :-) They also have a lot
of other peoples' money...

>>As I recall, the six day war started with one of those puny attacks...
 
>Oh, now I understand.  You're posting from a parallel universe.  There 
>is no way you could've picked up this version of the events in this 
>universe.

I don't get out much.

I still don't see how you could disagree with me, Mati, on this little point:
if we used a lot less oil in this country, the world would tend to be a
somewhat more peaceful place. Then there would be less pressure for certain
kinds of wars in the world, eg the ones we start :-), or finish... I find it
difficult to see how you could disagree with that. Perhaps you are saying
that this factor is very minor, among all the factors that lead to wars,
and that without it, there would still be lots of wars in the world, eg
to keep the armies employed. But it still seems to me that if you take away
this single US oil waste/use factor, and everything else in the universe
stays the same, this world would be a tiny bit more peaceful. 

>... this debate is a waste of time.  Let me just tell you this...
>... when you embark on a mission of building a better future, an
>ignorance of the past doesn't make for a solid foundation.

I try to avoid embarking on things with solid foundations.

It's too hard to move them :-)

Nick

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Fri Oct 27 22:12:58 1995
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Date: 27 Oct 1995 06:50:24 -0400
From: nick@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu (Nick Pine)
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Subject: Re: Solar Energy
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John Carter <bugsie@ix.netcom.com> wrote:
 
>>Yes, but if we feed the power back to the grid, we can use just a few
>>batteries. One local builder is designing very nice houses with 2 kW PV
>>arrays and only 8 batteries...

>	Can you provide additional information regarding the "local" builder
>and his modular houses? I am involved in three projects where we want
>to build three houses, two very remote and mostly solar powered, the
>other less remote, but cost effective with modular and solar advantages.

Sure, see the attached reposting. I suggested building this
house without the PV panels, since they are still so expensive...

Article: 41174 of sci.energy
From: nick@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu (Nick Pine)
Subject: An inexpensive, 100% solar house?
Date: 20 Oct 1995 09:18:44 -0400
Organization: Villanova University

Here's a house that looks like it could be 100% solar-heated, while 
providing close to 100% solar hot water as well, inexpensively...

One might start with Jim Cahill's house, designed by engineer Lyle Rawlings
at (609) 466-4495. This was manufactured by AvisAmerica at (800) 284-7263,
and built by Jim Cahill at (508) 677-3533. It is described in the
September/October 1995 issue of Solar Today, pp 24-27.
 
This very nice house in Falmouth, MA (5800 F DD), has 2530 ft^2 of floorspace.
The selling price is listed as $185K, including dealer/builder markup and
a 2 kW PV system, so the basic price of the house would be about $170K,
without the PV system, and about $160K without the backup heating system
or other solar features. Building it without a basement should also lower
the price.

The estimated annual non-solar fuel requirement is the heat equivalent of 
140 gallons of oil (although the house has a natural gas-fired forced hot
water backup heating system.) Minimal hot water usage would add another
60 gallons of oil a year to that requirement, making 200 gallons of oil
per year. How can we lower that backup heating requirement to zero? (One
might also ask, why bother to do anything at all to this superinsulated
house, with a basic yearly heating bill of $660, but that's another story.)

As designed, the house has 419 ft^2 of south-facing glass, with minimal
glazing on the other walls. The ceiling has R38 insulation, and the walls
are R27. The house has a remarkably low air infiltration rate of 0.0125 ACH,
based on a 50 Pascal air infiltration rate of 0.25 ACH. The house is 44'
long and 28' wide and two stories tall.

The south windows seem to be the biggest heat losers here:

Sum (Ai/Ri) = 420 ft^2/R2 + 28'x44'/R38 + (16'(28'+44')x2-420)/R27
              windows       ceiling       walls
            = 210         + 32          + 70      =   312.

It looks like these south windows account for about 70% of the heat loss of
the house, ignoring the air infiltration, which is 1/8 of the ceiling loss.
The south windows also contribute solar gain, when the sun is shining.

Suppose we somehow change this house so most of the south wall is an
insulated frame wall, like the rest of the house walls... ("Oh, it will be
less dramatic!" :-) And add some curved galvanized steel pipes and plastic
glazing to make a low-thermal mass sunspace, with a solar closet behind it.
How big will the sunspace and solar closet have to be, in order to provide
100% of the space heating and close to 100% of the hot water for the house?

With an insulated south wall, the new sum above becomes about 120 Btu/hr-F.
If the average temperature in December is 32 F, the house would need about
100K Btu of heat on an average December day. If the the sunspace provides
a net solar gain of say, 750 Btu/ft^2/day, it will have to have

      24hr x 120 (68-32) = 138 ft^2 of glazing.

Let's make it 200 ft^2, so the solar closet can provide hot water as well.
If the sunspace were 16' tall, it would be about 12' wide. The house
would look something like this:


                      28'
        . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 
        .                             .
        .                             .
        .                             .
        .                             .
        .                             .
        .                             .
        .                             .
        .                             .
        .                             .
        .                             .
        .                             . 44'
        .                             .
        .                             .
        .                             .
        . 4'                          .
. . . . . . .                         .
.       .   .                         .
.       .   .                         .
.       .   . 12'  sauna?             .
.       .   . . ./ clothes drying?    .
.       .   .   .                     . 
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
    8'
                      . 
                    . f .
                  .   \   .
polycarb roof?  .     s \   .         I added a solar attic here too, for fun,
              .       s   \   .       using corrugated clear polycarbonate
            .         s     \   .     plastic, and a fan with a backdraft 
          .           s       \   .   damper at the top, to blow down warm
        . md. . . . . . . . . . . g . air from the peak of the attic into
       ..             .             . the house, where it wends its way back
      . .             .             . up to the attic through a motorized
     .  .dhw          .             . return damper, md. g are airflow grates.
    .   . . . g . . . . . . . . . g . The fan is controlled by an attic fan
   .    . f .         .             . thermostat in series with a house 
  .     .   .         .             . thermostat. This is another way to make
 .      .   .     <== g             . a low-thermal-mass sunspace.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 

s is some greenhouse shadecloth (optional), f is 10' of fin-tube radiator
pipe, and dhw is a conventional or indirect-fired water heater ("geyser"
in the UK), which is heated by natural water convection using the fin-tube
as an air-water heat exchanger.

The low-thermal mass sunspace ($1000?) would work best with a fan controlled
by an attic thermostat and a house thermostat in series, as well as plastic
film backdraft dampers, to prevent reverse airflow at night. The solar closet
($500?) would store enough heat for 5 days without any sun, using

        5 days x 100K Btu/day /((130F-80F)x 55 gal x 8lb/gal) = 24

55-gallon sealed drums full of water, assuming an initial water temperature
of 130 F, and a minimal usable space heating closet water temperature of 80 F.

Who will be the first to order one of these houses?

Nick

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Fri Oct 27 22:42:50 1995
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To: london@sunsite.unc.edu
Date: 27 Oct 1995 08:18:27 -0400
From: nick@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu (Nick Pine)
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Subject: Re: Today's high, in the solar attic
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Nick Pine <nick@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu> wrote:
 
>... closer to 478 F, using Ohm's law for heatflow:
 
>300 = (Ta-30)/R0.67.

Jeez, doesn't ANYONE look at the numbers in these postings?! It's been
almost a week now, and nobody's noticed the simple and glaring math error
above. Nobody gets any points for finding this mistake. The maximum attic
air temperature above should be T = 0.67 x 300 + 30 = 230 F, not 478 F,
which is 300/0.67 + 30. One of the nice things about USENET is how people
so kindly offer corrections, when one makes a mistake, but that useful
process does not seem to work well when we use numbers. How depressing.

Our solar closet house model is now overheating, because of some lack of
forsight on my part. Yesterday when it was 70 F outside, the house was 104 F,
the 1,200 pounds of water in the solar closet was 81 F (still warming up
very slowly :-) and the sunspace was 154 F. So today I'm adding a small
cooling fan with a thermostat, inter alia, to bring in some cold winter air
during the day. This could be done with less energy, using the stack effect
and winter winds. We will be measuring and recording windspeeds shortly. 

Yesterday, the average power used in this 2' x 4' x 8' "house" was about
20 watts, counting power for the three fans and the modem and the data logger
itself, which has been taking readings every 2 minutes for the last 24 hours.
The data logger also measures its own power. The maximum solar intensity was
about 900 watts/m^2. The pyroheliometer sensitivity was insufficient to
record starlight, and we observed no significant solar radiation at night :-)

If we have some thermal mass up near the ceiling of the house, we can also do
night ventilation for summer cooling--low-energy air conditioning: keep the
house buttoned up during the day, then ventilate it at night, when the outside
air is cool, to cool the thermal mass of the house, which will very gradually
warm up over the next day. The 1994 Van Nostrand (?) book by Architect/Engineer
Professor Baruch Givoni, _Passive and Low-Energy Cooling of Buildings_,
indicates that this technique works well in many parts of the world.

Steve Baer estimates that there are very few days in Philadelphia, even in
August, in which the night temperature fails to get down to 74 F. We can test
that weather hypothesis, and find a cumulative distribution of summer night
minimum temperatures, and experiment with this simple form of cooling, now
that we have this cooling fan. Steve thinks this will require about 1 cfm/ft^2
of house, which is a lot of ventilation. We want to connect the fans to the
Data Trap soon, so we can control them in more interesting programmable ways.

Perhaps some gentle reader can do a small theoretical investigation of this,
and post the results. How much thermal mass do we need in the house, eg some
containers of water near the top of the house, and how much surface area does
the thermal mass have to have, and how long does our 6.8 watt, 55 cfm fan have
to run each night, if the daily night min is 74 F, and the daily max is 94 F,
in order to keep the house at 80 F max, given that it has 72 ft^2 of R20 walls?
What will the daily temperature swing be?

By the way, contributions to this project are still welcome. If someone sends
us a some money, we might give them the phone number and password for the
house, so they can call up the Data Trap and observe how things have been
going, using a modem with simple help menus. Perhaps it can be accessed via a
web page. If someone sent us more money, they could do their own experiments
remotely, eg write some new real-time fan control algorithms and measure
the results. We could even put in a Trombe wall, if somebody wanted to measure
its performance, or fill up the solar closet with cement blocks instead of
sealed containers of water, or put some fin tube pipe near the ceiling and
an insulated container of water on the roof for a solar closet water heating 
experiment, using a warm water convective loop.

This would be a little bit like renting a part of the space shuttle, but much
less expensive, and administratively simpler :-) It is more like what Howard
Reichmuth, PE, is now doing by modem from Hood River, Oregon. Howard also has
a Data Trap and a modem and a solar heating experiment underway somewhere in
Hawaii. He probably has a project schedule that requires a site visit in early
February. I'll likely be going to Lewiston, Maine, instead :-)

So please feel free to send money, even tiny amounts, to: 

Nicholson L. Pine                      System design and consulting
Pine Associates, Ltd.                                (610) 489-0545 
821 Collegeville Road                           Fax: (610) 489-7057
Collegeville, PA 19426                     Email: nick@ece.vill.edu

We will put it to good use.

Nick

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Sun Oct 29 01:43:19 1995
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Subject: Re: Solar heat for swimming pool
content-length: 4917
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Henry Baker <hbaker@netcom.com> wrote:

>I would like to swim as much of the year as possible, but do not want to heat
>the pool with a gas heater. I currently have a solar pool cover, which helps a
>lot, but before investing in anything more substantial, like solar panels, I
>wanted to understand more about the physics of the situation.

Solar heating of swimming pools should be easy, compared to say, heating
water for showers, because you just have to keep the water warm, not heat up
more cold water all the time, and the water constitutes a large built-in
thermal mass, and you don't necessarily have to pump it around or use heat
exchangers or antifreeze, or go climbing around on roofs, and swimming pool
temperatures are lower than domestic hot water temperatures.

Covering the pool with a better insulator would help. A "solar pool cover"
might have an R-value of 1. Two inches of Styrofoam (R10) would be better.

Also, more winter sun falls on a vertical surface than a horizontal surface, 
since winter sun is low in the sky.

"Ohm's law for heatflow" says that an area of A square feet with a (USA)
thermal resistance of R, with Farenheit temperatures Tc and Th on each side,
will have a heatflow of Q Btu/hour, where Q = (Th-Tc) A/R. It takes 1 Btu
to heat or cool 1 pound of water 1 degree F. It takes about 1,000 Btu to
evaporate 1 pound of water, and 144 to freeze it. Water weighs about 64 pounds
per cubic foot. The average amount of sun falling on 1 square foot of a
vertical south-facing surface might be 1,000 Btu/day. The average temperature
in December might be 32 F.

Suppose the only heat lost from a pool were through the pool cover, and you
could somehow collect all the solar heat that fell on a wall the same size 
as the top of the pool. What would the R-value of the pool cover have to be
if you wanted to keep the pool at 72 F in December? Suppose the pool were a
1' cube. Each day, the pool water would lose

24 hours x (72F-32F) x 1/R = 960/R Btu,

by Ohm's law for heatflow, and it might collect 1,000 Btu of solar energy,
so it looks like an R1 pool cover would work here, giving an average pool
water temperature of 1000/24 + 32, ie 73.7 F. After one day with no sun,
the temperature of the 1' cube of water would drop about 960/64 = 15 F. Not
too bad. But how do you collect the sun on a vertical surface?

I knew a man who had a house without much flat ground around it, and he
liked both tennis and swimming, so he build a swimming pool with a tennis
court on top. When you pushed a button, the tennis court would separate
and slide back horizontally to uncover the pool. There were some motors
and tracks to make this happen.

I keep thinking that a movable rigid cover would be a nice way to heat a
swimming pool, IF the long edge of the pool ran east and west. One might 
make a hinge along the north edge out of 2" galvanized pipe, and attach
20' curved galvanized greenhouse pipes ($35 each) on 4' centers perpendicular
to that 2" pipe, with the curved end near the 2" pipe, and use foil-faced
foam with some sort of protective coating for the foil, or attach some 
sort of reflective material to the pool side of plain foam, eg very thin 
stainless steel or 3M SA-85 outdoor solar reflective film or the coated
foil product used on mobile home roofs, made by companies like Innovative
Insulation near Dallas, TX. The next step would be to make a small winch
(or a passive solar tracker that unbalances its counterweight) raise this
parabolic reflective cover automatically during the day, to about a 50
degree angle, if the sun were shining and the pool needed to be warmer.
The solar pool cover would stay on the water, preventing evaporation.
On a day with no sun, this pool would cool down by less than 2 degrees F.
Doing this seems simpler than putting a tennis court on top of a pool...

A less elaborate and lower performance system would have the solar pool
cover (why don't they make them clear instead of blue, so they will pass
more solar energy into the water?) in place all the time, with a fixed
parabolic, non-insulating reflector along the north edge. Perhaps a standard
commercial greenhouse (52 cents/square foot from Stuppy at (800) 877-5025))
over the whole pool, with some white polyethylene film over the north side
of the greenhouse, and clear poly film on the south side. One might have
an articulated movable foam cover/reflector inside the greenhouse as well. 
It would be flat when it covered the pool, becoming a segmented parabola
in the raised position. 

A more elaborate system for an existing pool might use a heliostat, eg a
large parabolic reflector combined with a passive tracker that moves it
in such a way as to keep the sun shining into the pool all day. Sounds
complicated and expensive, doesn't it? But it's basically just a large
collection of pipes and refrigerant gas, to produce what Steve Baer calls
"sameshine." 

Nick

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Tue Oct 31 17:46:06 1995
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Date: 30 Oct 1995 06:11:29 -0500
From: nick@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu (Nick Pine)
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Subject: Re: Solar heat for swimming pool
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James VanBokkelen <jbvb@satisfied.apocalypse.org> wrote:

>Most pools, particularly those that date back more than a few years,
>have absolutely no insulation between the water and the ground.  If
>you can't find out about insulation from whoever built your pool, one
>thing you can try (if you have an existing pool heater) is to bring
>the pool up to 80F or so, cover it, and shut off the heater.  Then see
>how long it takes for the temperature to drop 10F...

It would be interesting to know the results, if anyone tries this. 

The ground itself may be a pretty good insulator, if we can keep it dry.
Chapter 22 of ASHRAE Handbook of Fundamentals has a graph of R-value vs.
moisture content of soils that suggests that artificially dry soil may
have a very high R-value. They say that plants, eg grass, normally keep
soil fairly dry, until the soil gets so dry that they begin to wilt, at
which point (10% moisture content?) they stop wicking water out of the soil
underneath, so it never gets much dryer than that, in meadows. Damp soil
is a good conductor of _upward_ heatflow when heat below evaporates water,
which condenses above.

One old solar greenhouse book I have suggests making perimeter insulation by
digging 2 2' deep trenches to make a ring of undisturbed earth 2' wide, then
covering that ring with a U-shaped piece of poly film, open at the bottom,
which the authors say will make an R-24 insulator. Seems to me it would be
better to just dig one trench around a swimming pool, line it with a U-shaped 
vapor barrier, open at the top, put the soil back in the trench (a day's work
with a backhoe?) , and cover the pool and trench with a commercial plastic
glazed greenhouse to keep it warm and dry.

Nick

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Wed Nov  1 08:44:02 1995
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Date: 31 Oct 1995 01:09:53 -0500
From: nick@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu (Nick Pine)
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References: <1995Oct21.193919.25805@ke4zv.atl.ga.us>, <47319k$pr1@dub-news-svc-1.compuserve.com>, <473fau$nc2@sundog.tiac.net>
Subject: Re: Cogeneration
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Harry H Conover <conover@max.tiac.net> wrote:

>... home-based equipment in unlikely to meet the FAIL-SAFE
>requirement due to cost considerations (this is partularly true 
>of home type synchronous inverters which, analysis reveals, can
>readily self-excite).

Bullshit.

Nick

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Wed Nov  1 11:14:07 1995
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Date: 31 Oct 1995 06:00:41 -0500
From: nick@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu (Nick Pine)
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Subject: Re: Solar Energy
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Some historians might enjoy looking at a book, actually more of a pamphlet,
called _Oil and War_, by Robert W. Czeschin, a "special investment report on
petroleum and the history of armed conflict among nations, published in 1987,
2 years before the Gulf war, by Agora, Inc./824 E. Baltimore St./Baltimore,
MD 21202. Here's the table of contents:

   Scarcity, abundance and conflict                          3

   Oil-fired engines of war                                  6
       the history of oil in world war I

   Blitzkrieg and surprise attack                           21
       the history of oil in world war II

   Forging the oil weapon                                   33
       the suez crisis of 1956

   Persian gulf, 1980                                       52
       the untold story of america on the nuclear brink

   Oil and the war against civilians                        65
       the terrorist threat

   Oil and war in the 1980's                                77
       the geopolitical rollercoaster
 
   Lessons of the past and future                          108
       the days ahead

Nick

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Fri Nov  3 09:14:46 1995
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Subject: Re: Solar Energy
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Carl J Lydick <carl@SOL1.GPS.CALTECH.EDU> wrote:
>zcrah2@cnfd.pgh.wec.com (Andy Holland) writes:
>> jonathan@elstead.win-uk.net (Jonathan R Barnes) writes:

... By some accounts, we killed 100,000 human beings in Iraq in the Gulf war,
... directly. And another 500,000 people, mostly women and children, died
... after US troops left the area, as a result of starvation, homelessness,
... poor sanitary conditions and lack of medical care.

==>Has this thread wandered a little ?

==Nope, as your government had a hand in this situation, it's part of
==the cost of using so much foreign oil.
 
>And the fact that Iraq had both a nuclear weapons program and a missile
>program in progress had absolutely nothing to do with it, right moron?

So does France. Perhaps we should invade France, because they are harming
our friends the seagulls in the South Pacific, and they do not bathe
so often as we do...

I think that should be "right _,_ moron" above, unless you are referring to
the learned Mr. Gingrich or his ferengi friends. 

Nick

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Fri Nov  3 09:14:49 1995
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Date: Thu, 02 Nov 1995 00:37:50 -0700
From: mshaw@netzone.com (Mark Shaw)
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Subject: Re: Electric Vehicles: Efforts to Complete Advanced Battery *
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In article, u9413@hydra.sdsc.edu (wiggs jim) wrote:
> In article ag414@FreeNet.Carleton.CA (Colin R. Leech) writes:
> >wiggs jim writes:
> >Anyway, we were discussing the merits of electric vehicles, not whether
> >you have a fundamental grudge against taxation.
> 
>    No fundamental grudge at all; we pay for what we get.  However, Shaw
> was being deliberately obtuse and I felt it was necessary to correct him.

Indeed...  

I'm with Mr. Leech, we were talking about transportation and electric
vehicles.  I didn't like the repeated anti-tax comments that Mr. Coffman used
to discourage improve transit based on the "jacket booted government thugs"
theory held by some members of society.   So I chided him for it.   And for
that I am "corrected" by Mr. Wiggs?   Get real...

In case it is not apparent to Wiggs, Coffman or others, most of us just pay
our taxes and get on with more important issues in life, rather than spend
all our energies trying to see how far we can challenge the ultimate authority
of our government.  

Solutions to our transportation problems need rational thought processes.
Challenging the government to test their power base is not one of those a
rational thought processes.  So why are these people trying to discuss EVs?

Mark

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Fri Nov  3 13:45:16 1995
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Subject: Re: Solar Energy
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Oz <Oz@upthorpe.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>nick@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu (Nick Pine) wrote:
>>Carl J Lydick <carl@SOL1.GPS.CALTECH.EDU> wrote:
>>>zcrah2@cnfd.pgh.wec.com (Andy Holland) writes:
>>>>jonathan@elstead.win-uk.net (Jonathan R Barnes) writes:

>>==Nope, as your government had a hand in this situation, it's part of
>>==the cost of using so much foreign oil.
 
>>>And the fact that Iraq had both a nuclear weapons program and a missile
>>>program in progress had absolutely nothing to do with it, right moron?

>>So does France. Perhaps we should invade France, because they are harming
>>our friends the seagulls in the South Pacific, and they do not bathe
>>so often as we do...
 
>I suppose it's too much to expect rationality from all sides
>in this discussion.

I think it is... 

>Comparing France to Iraq really does
>show some remarkable ignorance of world affairs.

It seems to me that world affairs are sometimes fairly sordid, and we
could do worse than attempt to respect the borders of sovereign nations,
no matter how they choose to behave inside those borders, or what they
are like as people. Sort of like "equal opportunity" for nations, no?
Who can be the ultimate, absolute judge of national behavior? Nobody. 
 
>I suppose by the same token that the US shouldn't import oil,

It seems to me that importing oil is fine, among consenting nations.
Killing people is not. Is that such a peculiar idea?

>the US shouldn't export wheat, say.

This logic baffles me.

>Now I wonder what effect that would have?

We would up with a lot of moldy wheat, and end up being invaded by a lot
of starving people, a la Chinese revolution? US farmers would complain?
French and Canadian farmers would be happier?
 
>It is indeed fortunate that some of those in this discussion
>do not actually have to produce anyone's foreign policy. At
>least I hope not.

It's a dirty job, but nobody has to do it.
I suppose the golden rule would be a start... 
Except for masochists, who also have a right to live.

Nick

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Sun Nov  5 14:16:00 1995
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Subject: This morning in the solar closet house
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                ambient   house    sunspace  drum      sun power  elec power
                temp (F)  temp (F) temp (F)  temp (F)  (w/m^2)    (w)
                 
 11/04  00:05    50.5      65.0     60.1      73.3      1          12
 11/04  00:10    50.0      64.8     60.1      73.3      1          12   
 11/04  00:15    49.8      64.6     60.0      73.3      1          12  
 11/04  00:20    50.2      64.9     59.9      73.3      1          12 
 11/04  00:25    49.8      65.0     59.9      73.3      1          12   
 11/04  00:30    49.3      64.6     59.8      73.2      1          13  
 11/04  00:35    49.4      64.6     59.8      73.2      1          12   
 11/04  00:40    48.9      64.4     59.5      73.2      1          12   
 11/04  00:45    48.6      64.3     59.6      73.2      1          13  
 11/04  00:50    48.8      64.3     59.5      73.1      1          13   
 11/04  00:55    48.3      63.7     59.3      73.1      1          13  
 11/04  01:00    47.8      63.6     59.1      73.1      1          13   
 11/04  01:05    48.1      63.6     59.0      73.0      1          13   
 11/04  01:10    47.9      63.6     58.9      73.0      1          13   
 11/04  01:15    47.6      63.9     58.9      73.0      1          27  
 11/04  01:20    47.5      63.3     58.9      73.0      1          13   
 11/04  01:25    47.6      63.4     59.0      73.0      1          13   
 11/04  01:30    47.2      63.3     58.8      72.9      1          13   
 11/04  01:35    47.6      63.3     58.7      72.9      1          13   
 11/04  01:40    47.1      63.8     58.6      72.9      1          27   
 11/04  01:45    47.5      63.7     58.6      72.9      1          12   
 11/04  01:50    47.1      63.3     58.6      72.9      1          13   
 11/04  01:55    47.2      62.9     58.6      72.8      1          13   
 11/04  02:00    46.8      63.3     58.6      72.8      1          28   
 11/04  02:05    46.8      63.1     58.6      72.8      1          13   
 11/04  02:10    46.6      62.9     58.6      72.7      1          13   
 11/04  02:15    46.8      63.2     58.6      72.7      1          27   
 11/04  02:20    46.5      63.3     58.5      72.7      1          13   
 11/04  02:25    46.0      62.7     58.3      72.7      1          13   
 11/04  02:30    46.6      63.4     58.4      72.7      1          28   
 11/04  02:35    45.7      62.9     58.4      72.6      1          13   
 11/04  02:40    46.4      63.2     58.3      72.6      1          31   
 11/04  02:45    45.6      62.7     58.2      72.6      1          13   
 11/04  02:50    45.5      62.8     57.9      72.6      1          13 
 11/04  02:55    45.0      62.6     57.8      72.5      1          25
 11/04  03:00    44.6      62.8     57.7      72.5      1          13
 11/04  03:05    44.2      62.3     57.5      72.5      1          13
 11/04  03:10    44.2      62.2     57.2      72.4      1          28
 11/04  03:15    43.7      61.7     57.1      72.4      1          13 
 11/04  03:20    43.5      61.6     56.9      72.4      1          28 
 11/04  03:25    43.6      62.2     56.9      72.4      1          13 
 11/04  03:30    44.1      62.1     57.0      72.4      1          13
 11/04  03:35    43.2      62.6     57.0      72.3      1          32
 11/04  03:40    43.3      62.3     57.1      72.3      1          13
 11/04  03:45    43.2      62.5     57.0      72.3      1          13
 11/04  03:50    42.5      62.2     56.8      72.3      1          13
 11/04  03:55    42.1      62.0     56.8      72.2      1          30
 11/04  04:00    42.1      61.6     56.7      72.2      1          12
 11/04  04:05    42.1      61.8     56.5      72.2      1          13
 11/04  04:10    42.0      61.8     56.4      72.1      1          26
 11/04  04:15    42.0      62.1     56.4      72.1      1          13
 11/04  04:20    42.6      62.4     56.4      72.1      1          26
 11/04  04:25    42.1      62.4     56.4      72.1      1          13
 11/04  04:30    42.4      62.4     56.3      72.1      1          12
 11/04  04:35    42.6      62.2     56.3      72.1      1          13
 11/04  04:40    41.7      62.1     56.3      72.0      1          21
 11/04  04:45    41.1      61.6     56.3      72.0      1          13
 11/04  04:50    41.1      62.0     56.2      72.0      1          31
 11/04  04:55    40.7      62.1     56.1      72.0      1          13
 11/04  05:00    40.3      61.6     55.9      71.9      1          13
 11/04  05:05    40.4      61.1     55.7      71.9      1          13
 11/04  05:10    40.0      61.1     55.5      71.8      1          24
 11/04  05:15    40.1      60.7     55.3      71.8      1          13
 11/04  05:20    40.1      61.2     55.3      71.8      1          24
 11/04  05:25    42.0      61.5     55.3      71.8      1          13
 11/04  05:30    40.3      61.1     55.3      71.8      1          25
 11/04  05:35    39.9      61.1     55.2      71.7      1          13
 11/04  05:40    39.5      60.6     55.0      71.7      1          13
 11/04  05:45    39.3      60.9     54.8      71.6      1          28
 11/04  05:50    40.3      60.8     54.7      71.6      1          13
 11/04  05:55    41.0      61.2     54.7      71.6      1          13
 11/04  06:00    39.5      61.1     54.8      71.6      1          28
 11/04  06:05    39.0      60.7     54.8      71.6      1          12
 11/04  06:10    39.4      60.5     54.7      71.5      1          12
 11/04  06:15    40.3      61.3     54.7      71.5      1          30
 11/04  06:20    39.8      60.7     54.7      71.5      0          13
 11/04  06:25    40.0      60.7     54.7      71.5      1          13
 11/04  06:30    39.5      60.9     54.6      71.4      1          29
 11/04  06:35    39.6      60.8     54.5      71.4      3  (dawn)  12
 11/04  06:40    38.4      60.4     54.4      71.4      6          29
 11/04  06:45    38.5      60.1     54.2      71.3      9          13
 11/04  06:50    38.6      60.1     54.2      71.3     12          12
 11/04  06:55    38.5      60.1     54.2      71.3     14          30
 11/04  07:00    38.1      59.2     54.2      71.2     17          13
 11/04  07:05    38.8      59.8     54.3      71.2     20          28
 11/04  07:10    39.0      59.9     54.4      71.2     24          12
 11/04  07:15    38.6      59.8     54.3      71.2     26          26
 11/04  07:20    39.8      60.2     54.5      71.1     29          12
 11/04  07:25    38.7      59.7     54.6      71.1     31          25
 11/04  07:30    39.8      59.9     54.6      71.1     37          12
 11/04  07:35    41.2      60.6     54.6      71.1     88          29
 11/04  07:40    40.0      60.5     54.9      71.1    248          12
 11/04  07:45    41.7      60.5     57.7      71.0    407          12
 11/04  07:50    41.8      61.3     63.5      71.0    449          28
 11/04  07:55    40.9      60.8     68.3      71.0    480          12
 11/04  08:00    40.2      60.6     72.0      71.0    511          16
 11/04  08:05    39.5      60.8     75.5      71.1    534          33
 11/04  08:10    41.1      62.4     79.6      71.2    553          23
 11/04  08:15    40.8      62.4     82.4      71.3    572          24
 11/04  08:20    40.4      62.5     85.2      71.4    598          35
 11/04  08:25    40.5      63.0     87.9      71.5    617          35
 11/04  08:30    40.4      63.6     90.8      71.6    635          35
 11/04  08:35    41.0      64.9     93.9      71.7    655          35
 11/04  08:40    40.9      65.7     96.9      71.8    675          35
 11/04  08:45    40.6      65.5     99.7      71.8    693          34
 11/04  08:50    41.4      66.2    101.6      71.9    709          34
 11/04  08:55    41.1      66.6    104.0      72.0    726          34
 11/04  09:00    41.2      66.8    106.6      72.1    744          34
 11/04  09:05    42.1      67.6    109.0      72.2    757          34
 11/04  09:10    41.9      68.3    111.5      72.4    772          34
 11/04  09:15    41.9      68.3    113.3      72.5    789          34
 11/04  09:20    41.8      69.1    114.7      72.6    805          34
 11/04  09:25    42.2      69.6    116.3      72.7    819          34
 11/04  09:30    43.0      70.5    118.2      72.8    833          34
 11/04  09:35    43.4      72.1    120.4      73.0    847          34
 11/04  09:40    43.0      71.9    121.2      73.1    855          34
 11/04  09:45    44.2      72.6    121.2      73.2    866          34
 11/04  09:50    43.7      72.1    122.0      73.4    876          34
 11/04  09:55    43.2      72.8    122.5      73.5    888          34
 11/04  10:00    43.4      74.1    123.9      73.6    895          34
 11/04  10:05    44.3      75.3    124.6      73.8    882          34
 11/04  10:10    43.7      74.7    124.5      73.9    921          34
 11/04  10:15    46.0      76.7    126.3      74.0    925          33
 11/04  10:20    44.9      77.2    126.6      74.2    813          33
 11/04  10:25    47.1      77.8    122.2      74.2    849          33
 11/04  10:30    47.4      78.4    125.2      74.4    969          33
 11/04  10:35    46.4      78.5    126.8      74.6    977          33
 11/04  10:40    46.3      78.0    126.9      74.7    901          33
 11/04  10:45    45.6      78.9    126.9      74.9    878          33
 11/04  10:50    45.2      78.7    126.1      75.0    927          33
 11/04  10:55    45.4      77.9    123.6      75.0    809          33
 11/04  11:00    46.0      78.5    129.0      75.2   1029          33
 11/04  11:05    47.3      80.9    130.9      75.5    868          32
 11/04  11:10    46.7      80.6    123.2      75.4    854          33
 11/04  11:15    46.7      80.9    126.4      75.6    898          33
 11/04  11:20    47.7      81.6    124.5      75.7    796          33
 11/04  11:25    48.4      82.9    127.4      75.8    959          33
 11/04  11:30    47.7      83.0    129.5      76.1    992          33
 11/04  11:35    48.9      83.1    127.4      76.3    676          33
 11/04  11:40    49.2      82.4    116.9      76.0    507          33
 11/04  11:45    45.9      80.8    122.9      76.0    990          33
 11/04  11:50    45.7      80.1    122.9      76.3    686          33
 11/04  11:55    46.5      81.1    125.6      76.4   1041          34
 11/04  12:00    47.0      82.1    125.4      76.8    788          34
 
                 min       average     max

Ambient temp    38.1      43.1        50.5

House temp      59.2      63.1        72.8

It looks like there is still a heat leak into the sunspace at night. For
instance, at 7 AM, the ambient temp was 38.1, the average house and closet
temp were about 65, and the sunspace was 54.2. If the R20 walls between the
closet and house, and the sunspace, really had an effective R-value of 20,
we would have 

          R20/32 ft^2      R1/32 ft^2
	    = Rw             = Rg
65 F -------wwww-------------wwww----------- 38.1 F
                      |
		      | Tsunspace = 38.1 + (65-38.1)/(Rw+Rg) x Rg
				  = 39.2 F, not 54.2.

So maybe the closet is leaking warm air into the sunspace at night. Perhaps
the Tedlar film damper is stuck open, and should be replaced with something
heavier, eg Teflon. 

Nick

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Fri Nov 10 14:17:49 1995
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From: nick@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu (Nick Pine)
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Subject: Re: Life on the grid
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David W Graham  <AE@SJSUVM1.BITNET> wrote:
 
>If your porch is enclosed in glass, using water drums is in theory a
>fine way to store the solar energy. There have been some passive structures
>which have used passive water storage in a solarium type environment.

One problem with this approach is that although glass lets the sun in,
it is a poor insulator at night and on cloudy days. (Another is that you
have to live inside this heat battery, so you can't charge it up to a high
temperature.) If you don't get sun every day (and perhaps even if you do)
it's better to have some movable insulation over the glass at night, or make
the porch into a low thermal mass sunspace, by insulating the wall between
the porch and the house, and moving warm air into the house (or a high thermal
mass space) when the sun is shining, and blocking airflow at night. 
 
>I filled [some pots] with water and set them on the window sill...
>The pots did get somewhat warm during the afternoon. But because... 
>of there lack of solar gain from only about 1/3 of a day of exposure,
>they cooled to room temperature by late that evening.

They might have become warmer with some insulation between the pots and
the house to store up that solar heat at a higher-than-room-temperature,
instead of letting it leak back out into the room right away.

>My wife would close the curtain with the pots on the window sill
>(behind the curtain) and they would get quite cold over night.

The problem here is that the window is a poor insulator, and a lot of the
solar heat that was stored during the day goes back out the window at night,
as in a Trombe wall. Trombe walls are very poor solar performers at night
and on cloudy days. This system could use some insulation between the pots 
and the window at night, eg an insulated wall with some dampers, separating
the pots and a low thermal mass air heater or sunspace, ie the space between
the insulated wall and the window.

>So there was little advantage in having them in the window.

In that case, yes. The house would have been warmer without the pots.
You created a way to absorb some of the heat from the window (vs. letting
it all come into the house) and radiate it back to the outside world at night
through the window. A solar cooler :-)

>I would like to try the experiment again in a south facing window.

A lot more solar energy comes in south windows in the winter.
About 4 times more, where I live.

>But I suspect that there will never be enough storage in the little pots
>to make it through the night. (A calculation I have not bothered to do.)

Well, first you might define what it means to "make it through the night,"
using numbers :-), and then bother to do a calculation along the lines of

T(t) = Tr + (T(0)-Tr) exp(-t/RC), 

where T(t) is the temperature of the pot at time t,
      T(0) is the initial temperature of the pot at time 0, warmer than 
      Tr, the constant room temperature,
      exp is the "e to the x" key on a calculator,
      R is the thermal resistance surrounding the pots at night, and 
      C is the number of pounds of water in the pots.
      
Then you might look up how much sun comes in a south window on an average
winter day where you live. Where I live, that's about 1000 Btu/ft^2/day, and
the average outdoor temp is about 32 F, so if the pots were sitting behind a
1 ft^2 low-thermal mass sunspace on an average day, and the R-value of the
glazing were 1, and the pots contained a lot of water and surface area, and
there were perfectly insulating walls surrounding the pots at night, and the
winter sun shined for 6 hours a day, the constant water temperature T(0) would
come from the formula

      1000 Btu = 6 hours x (T(0)-32F) / R1,

or        T(0) = 32 + 1000/6 = 198.7 F, almost boiling.

To make that situation a bit less ideal, suppose the pots contain 24 pounds
of water, and they are surrounded at night by an R10 wall, say a 1' cube made
with Stryofoam 2" thick, and the surrounding room is 68 F all the time. Then 

      1000 Btu =  6 hours x (T(0)-32F) x 1 ft^2/R1
	       + 18 hours x (T(0)-32F) x 1 ft^2/R10
	       + 24 hours x (T(0)-68F) x 5 ft^2/R10, 

	       =   6 x T(0) - 6   x 32 
               + 1.8 x T(0) - 1.8 x 32
               + 2.4 x T(0) - 2.4 x 68 = 10.2 x T(0) - 412.8,

so        T(0) = 1412.8/10.2 = 138.5 F,

and R = R10/6 ft^2 = 1.67, so RC = 24 x R = 40 hours. If the pots had a
temperature of 138.5 at say, 3 PM, then at 9 AM their temperature would be 

         T(15) = 68 + (138.5-68) exp(-18/40) = 113.0 F.

>\)/ David W. Graham             (970) 491-8945 | 1500 W. Plum St.
>~O~ Graduate Student in Mechanical Engineering | Apt 6-O

Really? :-)

Nick

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Fri Nov 10 17:17:52 1995
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From: nick@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu (Nick Pine)
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Subject: Re: Fuel Value / Composition of Hog Manure
content-length: 3584
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>Robert Tomenchok Jr (retjr@ix.netcom.com) wrote:
 
> I heard a story on National Public Radio the other day about the plight
> of North Carolina Hog Farmer's disposal of manure. It seems that they
> are raising Hogs in very high density and as such, generate a lot of
> hog poopies. I was thinking that perhaps the sludge might have a fairly
> good fuel value, and could be dried out to a high enough solids content
> for incineration in either a power or recovery boiler.
 
They might well add water, not remove it, as in expired US Patent No. 3,933,628
(US Patents are available for $3 each from The Superintendent of Patents and
Trademarks, Washington, DC 20231) "Method and Apparatus for the Anaerobic
Digestion of Decomposable Organic Materials," issued to inventor Frederick
T. Varani of Golden, CO on Jan 20, 1976, and assigned to Bio-Gas of Colorado.

This patent describes a way to make methane in conjunction with a 100,000-cow
feedlot, using 2 EPDM-rubber-lined trenches, each 700 feet long x 80 feet wide
x 40 feet deep. The trenches have self-inflated translucent "solar covers" and
cost $0.02 per gallon, including excavation. The feedlot generates 3.3 million
pounds of manure each day, along with 6 million pounds of water and 200,000
pounds of carbon, which the digesters turn into about 7 million cubic feet
of methane per day with a heating value of about 277 million Btu per hour,
along with 2 1/2 million cubic feet of CO2 per day.

The digesters contain heat exchangers for temperature control. The patent says:

  The fermentation reaction will proceed satisfactorily at any temperature
  between approximately 90 F and 115 F, however, between these limits many
  different species of bacteria become active, each in its own particular
  temperature zone carved out of this broader range. In other words, the
  digestion process is basically an equilibrium between many species of
  bacteria that live upon various substrates (food) and on one another.
  Changes in temperature cause this equilibrium to shift and some of the
  more temperature-sensitive species die off or become less active while
  others assume a more active role... Ideally, methanogenic bacteria should be
  kept at about 95 F and the temperature range should not be allowed to vary
  more than +/- 2 F per day from this base temperature if temperature shock
  is to be avoided.

This could be an interesting municipal sewage treatment system, without the
cows, or an efficient way to combine sewage treatment and long term passive
solar thermal storage, for a single house, on a smaller scale.

Pages 825-826 of Metcalf and Eddy's 1991 _Wastewater Engineering_ say

  Typical values [of gas production] vary from 12-18 ft^3/lb of volatile solids
  destroyed... Gas production can also be crudely estimated on a per capita
  basis. The normal yield is 0.6 to 0.8 ft^3/person/day (15 to 22 m^3/1000
  persons/day) in primary plants treating normal domestic wastewater. In
  secondary plants, the gas production is increased to 1.0 ft^3/person/day...
  Because digester gas is typically about 65% methane, the low heating value
  of digester gas is approximately 600 Btu/ft^3 (22,400 kJ/m^3.)... In large
  plants digester gas may be used as fuel for boiler and internal combustion
  engines, which are in turn used for pumping wastewater, operating blowers,
  and generating electricity... Because digester gas contains hydrogen sulfide,
  particulates and water vapor, the gas frequently has to be cleaned in dry
  or wet scrubbers before it is used in internal combustion engines.

Nick

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Date: 18 Nov 1995 21:20:56 -0500
From: nick@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu (Nick Pine)
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Subject: Re: Gas costs 1/4? Fuel Cells???My Error!
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Roderick J. McDowell <mcdowellr@mail.cyconx.com> wrote:

>Sorry, I made an error in my posting concerning cogeneration economics.
>The point where turbines become economic is 5 MegaWatts NOT 5 KW!

I missed the beginning of this. Is this 5 kW system economical?

Article: 1086 of sci.engr.heat-vent-ac
From: nick@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu (Nick Pine)
Subject: Intelligen's 5 kW cogenerator
Date: 11 Jul 1995 06:56:04 -0400
Organization: Villanova University

Do the people in this group mostly already know about Intelligen's 5 kW
residential cogeneration system? Someone in the alternate energy newsgroup
requested that their address be posted, so I'll post some info here too...

Intelligen Energy Systems       Tom Sciacca, President
58 South Street                 Neil Slavin, Exec. VP
Hopkinton, MA 01748             (508) 435-9007

This is a clever "oil burner," that costs about $10K, but it can pay for itself
in 3-5 years, vs. the infinite payback period for an ordinary oil burner, by
making 5 kW of electricity while it is heating a house. The interface is an
ordinary circuit breaker in the service panel, the kind you would use for an
electric range.

Burning home heating oil, it's pretty efficient. About 93%, with a 1 1/2" PVC
fluepipe and a 150F exhaust gas temperature. Inside the 800 lb box is an 11 HP
diesel made by Lister-Petter, and an induction generator. When the house
thermostat calls for heat, the induction generator acts as a motor to start
the diesel from the 220 volt line. Then it becomes a generator, making the
meter run backwards, if legally permitted. (In some states, you need two
meters.) When the house is warm enough, the diesel engine stops running.

Of course you have to put sandbags all over the kitchen floor, to keep the
dishes from rattling off the shelves... :-) It's actually fairly quiet, 60 dBA
2 meters away, with good shock mounts as well as acoustic skins.

The unit has a built-in circulator pump, which runs the engine block cooling
water thru baseboard radiators, a duct heat exchanger, a fan coil unit, an
indirect-fired water heater, a hot tub or swimming pool heat exchanger, etc.
55,000 Btu/hr. 85,000, max, in "turbo-mode" :-) if the microprocessor senses
more heat is needed and diverts the electrical output to turn on some heaters
in the water stream, instead of feeding it back to the electric company.
(Don't ask me how 5 kW makes 30K Btu/hour, perhaps a bug in the spec.)

The company has about three dozen systems installed in New England now,
interfaced with about ten utilities. They are looking to expand their
territory. I'm helping them get the first one installed in Pennsylvania.

The unit won't work in a stand-alone power mode. It won't start without grid
power, and it won't stay running on a dead line. This is a "safety feature."

Most cogen systems are at least a thousand times bigger, 5 megawatts and up.
One of the big problems with these small systems is lifetime. Some standby
power systems spec oil changing every 25 hours. Others wear out in 2000 hours.
Intelligen's diesel engine is very reliable. It's also used in the M1 tank
(for auxiliary power), the DEW line, military jet engine starting systems,
commercial fishing fleets, and offshore Coast Guard installations that only
get visited once a year or so. Intelligen has a 10 year guarantee. Maintenance
consists of changing the oil once a year. And perhaps gently enquiring how
the unit has been doing over the last year, via its RS-232 interface :-)

Nick

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Tue Nov 21 14:52:51 1995
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Subject: A 55 gallon drumshop?
content-length: 9935
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Does anyone else collect used 55 gallon drums? 

This Spring, I put an ad in a local paper asking for some drums for a solar
project, and got a call from a food processing plant who offered 40 a month.
I've collected about 300 so far, about half steel and half plastic. They are
about 2' in diameter and 3' tall, and they weigh about 15 pounds empty and
450 pounds when full of water. The plastic ones should last a long time; the
steel ones might only last 20 years.

At the moment, I have 61 of them sitting in my backyard, which
amuses the neighbors. I'm wondering what to do with them...

Marge Wood of Abilene, TX, suggests building a "solar hot cube"...

>Nick, did you ever try the idea of building a "solar hot cube" in the
>form of a concrete porch with water modules (55 gal drums, old milk jugs,
>whatever) set into it and built on the sunny side of the house so it could
>look pretty and do something at the same time?

I guess pretty-looking is in the eye of the beholder... Why concrete,
I wonder? Why not just lay a piece of plastic on the ground to keep down
the dust, and put the drums on top. When they are filled with water,
they won't go anywhere. The cube needs insulation on all five sides,
but perhaps not much in the floor, since the cold water will probably stay at
the bottom, if the water temperature is above 39 F.

For the perimeter drumwall, you could lay 2 8' pressure treated 2 x 4s on the
ground, 2' apart, put 4 drums on top of them, standing up, fill them with
water, put two more plain 2 x 4s on top of those drums, so the outside edges
of the tops and bottoms of the drums are tangent to the outside edges of the
2 x 4s, fill those drums, lay 2 more 2 x 4s on top of those drums, and 2
more horizontal drums on top, to make a 8' tall x 8' long wall.

Then attach vertical 1 x 3s to the horizontal 2 x 4s every 4' along the wall
(3 of them for an 8' long wall) and attach some 4'x 8', 2" thick pieces of
Styrofoam to the 1 x 3s with some long decking screws. Paint the foamboard
with latex or acrylic paint. (Here you can be an artist :-) to make it last
a long time. Paint the south side a dark color, and attach a thin layer of
polycarbonate glazing to it, 3 or 4" away from the foamboard. Put a couple
of plastic film dampers at the top and the bottom of the south side. Build
3 more perimeter walls and fill the rest of the cube inside with 10 more
drums. Lay two pieces of foamboard on top and put a 10' x 10' piece of EPDM
rubber over that for a roof, with some rocks on top to hold it down (or old
tires, if you like the AE look :-) 

Voila. An 8' cube containing about 42 55 gallon drums full of water. The most
expensive thing is the 10 sheets of Styrofoam, $160 at 50 cents a square foot.
This would store the heat equivalent of about 10 gallons of oil at 130 F.
Enough for several days with no sun. I think it would make a dandy backup
house heater and water heater, if combined with a low-thermal-mass sunspace...

Where can you get some free 55 gallon drums near Abilene?

---

A solar heated workshop might be more interesting. Seems to me it could be
mostly built using the drums themselves, for structure and heat storage,
with some polyethylene film and Styrofoam walls. This might cost $500 or so,
for 12' x 16' of interior heated and lighted space...

Some ASCII sketches, not to scale...

	20'

 --------------------                  I might make this with a 9' ceiling,
|D      D h   |D|    |                 with 16' 2 x 4's running across
| . . .12'. . |D| .  |                 the ceiling on 4' centers, and 
|D        h   |D|    |                 a layer of 4' burlap attached to 
| . . . . . . |D| .  |                 the bottom of the 2 x 4's, and 
|         h16'|D|    | 20'             covered with a cement slurry.
|D. . . . . . |D| .  |                 Insulation might be leaves piled
|         h   |D|    |                 on top of the ceiling. The north
|D. . . . . . |D| .  |                 roof might be 1/4" exterior flakeboard
|         h   |D|    |                 over 16' 2 x 6s on 2' centers.
|D   D     D  |D|    |                 The south wall would be 20' long,
 ------door----------                  with 16' 2 x 6s every 4', with a
                                       single layer of 16' wide greenhouse
          h is a hinge                 poly film attached at the edges. 

           .   -  -  -  -  -  -  -
      /  . r.     r is a right angle
  14.7'.     .                         Polyethylene film for commercial
  /  .      6'.                        greenhouses costs about 5 cents
   .        *  . \                     per square foot, and comes in rolls
 ..........h..... 16'          14.7'   16' wide and 100' long. It lasts 
|D    .   .   |D|. \                   for 3 years, and it's recyclable.
|     . | .   | | .                    If it's covered on the outside in
|D    . 9'.   |D|  .                   the summer with a piece of 15 cent
|     . | .   | |   .                  per square foot greenhouse shadecloth
|D    .   .   |D|   a.                 it should last longer. In the winter 
 ---------------------------------     the shadecloth would hang vertically
                | 3.8'|                inside the sunspace. 

Some hinged panels could be raised up to admit some daylight and solar heat
into the room. The open position is shown above with a *.

A fan, might be used to draw down heat from the peak of the roof to heat up 
the room or the south wall drums. 

Greenhouse suppliers also sell inexpensive aluminum extrusions for attaching
layers of poly film to commercial greenhouses. If these are used to hold
the poly film, changing it every three years should only take an hour or so.

The north roof might be covered on top with EPDM rubber.

This might make a good doghouse, too. I'm a bit worried about burglars.
It might also have an insulated garage door.

10 'a BASIC solar shed design program,
20 'starting with an equation of form x^4 + Ax^3 + Bx^2 + Cx + D = 0
30 DS=16'shed depth (feet)
40 LSH=20'shed length (feet)
50 HS=9'shed height (feet)
60 LS=16'south wall height (feet)
70 A=-2*LS'constants related to geometry
80 B=LS^2-DS^2
90 C=2*LS*DS^2
100 D=DS^2*(HS^2-LS^2)
110 X=LS-HS'initial guess at clerestory slant height
120 XL=X
130 RES=X^4+A*X^3+B*X^2+C*X+D
140 X=X-.00001*RES
150 IF ABS(X-XL)>.00001 GOTO 120'iterate to 0.001% accuracy
160 DGF=180/(4*ATN(1))'to convert from radians to degrees
170 OPEN "shedout" FOR OUTPUT AS #1
180 PRINT#1,
190 PRINT#1, "Shed depth  (feet--NS):";DS
200 PRINT#1, "Shed length (feet--EW):";LSH
210 PRINT#1, "Shed height (feet):";HS
220 PRINT#1, "South wall slant height (feet):";LS
230 PRINT#1,
240 SSD=SQR((LS-X)^2-HS^2)
250 PRINT#1, "South wall slope (degrees):";DGF*ATN(HS/SSD)
260 RPH=LS*HS/(LS-X)
270 PRINT#1, "Roof peak height (feet):";RPH
280 PRINT#1,
290 LN=SQR(DS^2-X^2)
300 PRINT#1, "North wall slant height (feet):";LN
310 NWS = DGF*ATN(X/LN)
320 PRINT#1, "North wall slope (degrees):";NWS
330 PRINT#1,
340 PRINT#1, "Sunspace depth (feet):";SSD
350 PRINT#1, "South wall clerestory slant height (feet):";X
360 PRINT#1,
370 TP=.92'single layer poly film solar transmission
380 EIN=TP*1000*LSH*RPH
390 TA=32
400 PRINT#1, "Daily solar input (Btu):";EIN
410 PRINT#1, "Average ambient temp (F):";TA
420 RP=.8'R-value of single poly
430 RSW=10'(F-ft^2-hr/Btu)
440 PRINT#1, "R-value of shed walls:";RSW
450 RSC=20'((F-ft^2-hr/Btu)
460 PRINT#1, "R-value of shed ceiling:";RSC
470 POLYLOSSF=6*LS*LSH/RP'term for loss through poly film during day
480 SDRUMLOSSF=18*LSH*HS/RSW'term for loss through south drum wall at night
490 NDRUMLOSSF=24*LSH*HS/RSW'term for continuous loss through north drum wall
500 LOSSF=POLYLOSSF+SDRUMLOSSF+NDRUMLOSSF
510 TD=TA+EIN/LOSSF'steady-state drum water temp
520 RDN=RSW/(LSH*HS)'thermal resistance of north drumwall
530 RCEIL=RSC/(LSH*DS)'thermal resistance of shed ceiling
540 ROTHW=RSW/((LSH*2+DS)*HS)'thermal resistance of ENW walls
550 RP=1/(1/RCEIL+1/ROTHW)'parallel resistance of shed walls and ceiling
560 TR=TA+(TD-TA)*RP/(RDN+RP)'resistor divider calc
570 PRINT#1, "Steady-state room temp (F):";TR
580 PRINT#1, "Steady-state drum water temp (F):";TD
590 PRINT#1,
600 NSD=LSH/2*HS/3'number of 55 gallon drums in south wall
610 NOD=2*(LSH+DS)/4*HS/3'number of 55 gallon drums in other walls
620 ND=NSD+NOD
630 PRINT#1, "Total number of 55 gallon drums:";NOD
640 PRINT#1, "Number of drums in south wall:";NSD
650 CW=55*8*NSD
660 PRINT#1, "Weight of water in drumwall (pounds):";CW
670 SARD=2*(LSH*HS+LSH*2+HS*2)/RSW
680 RC=CW/SARD/24
690 PRINT#1, "RC time constant of drumwall (days):";RC
700 MGA=(25*NOD)/(RPH*LSH)
710 PRINT#1, "Thermal mass/glazing area ratio:";MGA
720 PRINT#1,
730 PRINT#1, "Days w/o sun  Drumwater temp"
740 PRINT#1,
750 FOR DAY=0 TO 7'days without sun
760 TDT=TA+(TD-TA)*EXP(-DAY/RC)
770 PRINT#1, DAY, TDT
780 NEXT DAY
790 CLOSE #1
 
Shed depth  (feet--NS): 16 
Shed length (feet--EW): 20 
Shed height (feet): 9 (3 drums high)
South wall slant height (feet): 16 
 
South wall slope (degrees): 67.09016 ["a" in the diagram above]
Roof peak height (feet): 14.7379 
 
North wall slant height (feet): 14.73758 
North wall slope (degrees): 22.91279 
 
Sunspace depth (feet): 3.803568 
South wall clerestory slant height (feet): 6.229272 
 
Daily solar input (Btu): 271177.4 
Average ambient temp (F): 32 
R-value of shed walls: 10 
R-value of shed ceiling: 20 
Steady-state room temp (F): 50.32511 
Steady-state drum water temp (F): 117.9244 
 
Total number of 55 gallon drums: 54 
Number of drums in south wall: 30 
Weight of water in drumwall (pounds): 13200 
RC time constant of drumwall (days): 11.55462 
Thermal mass/glazing area ratio: 4.580029 
 
Days w/o sun  Drumwater temp (F)
 
 0             117.9244 
 1             110.8007 
 2             104.2677 
 3             98.27622 
 4             92.78152 
 5             87.74236 
 6             83.12097 
 7             78.88274 

Nick

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Date: 28 Nov 1995 12:45:23 -0500
From: nick@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu (Nick Pine)
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Subject: Re: A 55 gallon drumshop?
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Mark Kinsler  <kinsler@bobcat.ent.ohiou.edu> wrote:

re a discussion of the storage of heat with lots of water-filled drums:

>  Clean out the drums very well, and try to make sure that your efforts
>are very well documented.  Why?  Because a lot of old drums buried on a
>piece of residential property is going to set environmental alarms all the
>way up to the Superfund.

Thanks for reminding me about this aspect. I wouldn't bury them, BTW...

>The government and your neighbors will find you or your heirs and give
>intense trouble because they'll think you were burying toxic wastes
>in the neighborhood. 

I do worry about this sometimes. I know that unscrupulous people sometimes
bury drums full of horrible things, eg Jimmy Hoffa, and that the EPA doesn't
like to see even empty drums without bungs around industrial sites, and that a
lot of companies worry that an empty drum with their name on it will somehow
get filled up with horrible stuff and buried, and then unearthed by ghoulish
lawyers. But I coast along naively believing that if I am actually doing no
harm, truth will eventually triumph over bureaucracy :-) Of course, there may
be trouble in between...

This brings to mind an unrelated matter that happened years ago. I was being
frivolously sued by the State of Pennsylvania, the DER, in fact. After months
and months and hoards of bureaucrats traveling from Harrisburg to Philadelphia
for meetings, I said to the Deputy Attorney General, "Look, how about this:
you win, and I pay you $1." He said "We can't settle for that. We've spent too
much effort on this case. That would look very bad." Vietnam comes to mind. Or
perhaps Bosnia. So we settled for 30 cents on the dollar, $900, total, a number
that made him happy, altho it didn't pay for all the bureaucrat-hours. Also a
number that my lawyer said would be the minimum amount necessary for me to go
to trial and win. This was an interesting exercise, but not one I'd care to
repeat. Having been through this sort of thing once, the prospect of doing
something like this again is not too scary for me. One just has to derail the
bureaucrats up front, somehow, I guess, so they don't lose face. Paperwork
sounds like a good idea :-) Everything has risks.

My drums come from a food processing plant, and their contents have
mostly been things like USP grade proplylene glycol ("edible antifreeze"?),
vegetable oil for frying, soap, bleach, sodium hydroxide, sauterne wine,
and lately potassium lactate. A few days ago, I emptied about 2 gallons of
60% potassium lactate (is this some kind of milklike product?) on the ground
in the parking lot of the food plant, and one of the employees rushed out and
took a sample of my chemical spill as it ran toward the grate and said "Don't
DO that! We get FINED for that. That grate goes into a stream, and there are
FISH in the stream." He went on to tell me that the lactate product was more
damaging to the stream than the glycol, which seemed odd. But I said OK I
won't do that... I guess anything is harmful, in sufficient concentration.

When I found out that my local trash hauler would not accept 55 gallon drums,
I thought about how to get I might rid of the drums I have, if I wanted to do
that, and checked around. When is a drum a drum? If I were to rent a torch and
cut up all the drums into half drums, would the trash hauler take those?
Quarter drums? Etc...

There is a local market for 55 gallon drums. Used metal drums sell for about
$1 each, a bit more for plastic, transportation not included, at a local farm
auction, via ads in the paper, garage sales, etc. US Plastics used to sell new
55 gallon drums for about $20 each, plus UPS. Local drum recyclers sell cleaned
drums for about $15 each. One local "recycler" will accept deheaded drums if
you pay them $75/ton, one ton minimum. Another will pay about a penny a pound 
for them as scrap metal, cut up, or more if they are intact, and they have
been to an EPA-certified drum cleaner, and each drum has its very own EPA-
traceable certificate of cleanliness. Another will take a simple statement
from me that I cleaned them.

The white plastic drums that I have have a phone number on the side, a national
clearinghouse/referral center for information about drum recycling, Russell-
Stanley in Nitro, WV, at (800) DRUM-CYCLE. Calling that number yielded a number
for Recycle, Inc. in South Plainfield, NJ, at (908) 756-2200. They have been in
business since 1987. This October, they recycled 59,781 drums and gave their
owners EPA certificates of cleaning and destruction. They carefully clean each
drum upside down on a conveyor belt, as it is dragged along by nozzles sticking
into the bungholes. Then they shred the steel drums and sell the steel to
people who make reinforcing rods for concrete. They pulverize plastic drums
and sell the plastic to people who make sewer pipe. This costs the drum owners
about $2 each, if the drums are labeled and last contained food processing 
products, and they have been rinsed out. It costs about $3 each if they have
not been rinsed out first. A hundred miles of transportation adds another $200
per truckload, ie about $1/drum, in a truck that holds about 260 drums, or 
more if they are plastic drums that have been cut in half horizontally, and
perhaps slit up the side so they can be nested. Steel drums are just stacked
3-high in the truck.

So there is a potential for local solar enthusiasts to save local companies
some money, if they "recycle" their empty drums. A nice little synergy...

National mail-order solar heating kits might work better with stackable
containers, in UPS-sized packages, to reduce UPS transportation costs. 
Perhaps 5 gallon plastic paint buckets with lids, or rectangular racks of
molded plastic containers. Two-liter soda bottles are not too hard to collect
locally. New, they cost on the order of 10 cents each. Less than a dollar
sometimes, when filled with soda. Stackable hard plastic racks to hold 8
of them cost about $3 each. Some have a 1 1/8" square hole in the middle
of each rack, for a pipe or a wire to keep the stack from falling over.

>  It happened in Ohio a few years ago.  Guy bought a house and found lots
>of drums under his sun porch.  Called the state EPA, which brought in
>equipment and personnel from here to hell.  Even after they figured out
>that the drums were there to add thermal mass to the sun porch, they were
>able to make a case for their efforts because there was some residue in
>the drums. 

Which they probably felt obliged to do, so as not to have wasted all their
efforts. I'm sure it was very reassuring to the neighbors, to have an opinion
based on all that equipment and personnel... 

>  Weird, no?  I learned of this from a presentation on hazardous waste 
>presented by an official of the Columbus, OH fire department last year.  
>So watch it.

OK. Thanks for the warning...

Nick

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Fri Dec  1 21:58:13 1995
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To: london@sunsite.unc.edu
Date: 1 Dec 1995 09:53:37 -0500
From: nick@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu (Nick Pine)
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Subject: Re: Broccoli Wars (was Re: Solar Energy)
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Meanwhile, over in the frugal group, mostly non-commuting...

Article: 1301 of misc.consumers.frugal-living
From: nick@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu (Nick Pine)
Subject: Re: LightS
Date: 1 Dec 1995 09:32:30 -0500
Organization: Villanova University

Vicki Battin  <Vicki.Battin@DaytonOH.NCR.COM> wrote:

>I was told by a local energy company auditor (our power & light company does
>free home energy efficiency audits) that it was the earlier ballasts that made
>the cost of fluoro lights worth it to keep them lit...it used to take more
>energy to heat & prime the ballast to get the bulb lit than it did to just
>leave the light on for hours...

Never heard that one, and it doesn't make sense to me, as an electrical
engineer, but I have read in sci.engr.lighting that turning a fluorescent on
and off quickly uses up about as much bulb life as burning it for 6 minutes.
If a (compact) flourescent bulb costs $5, and lasts 10,000 hours, turning it
on costs 0.1 cent, each time.

>What I have done, though, is installed those light sensitive night-lights
>so that I can virtually walk around my house without turning lights on unless
>I really need to. 

I've started doing that too, but I don't use light-sensitive night-lights. I
like the Limelight electroluminescent night-light (but not the price: $6.99.)
It has a little green screen about 1" x 2" that glows all the time, and uses
30 milliwatts of electricity. That's 0.030/1000x24x365=.26 kilowatt hours per
year. About 3 cents worth, where I live. This type of night light is not new,
but I only see one brand on the market now. I wonder where to buy them less
expensively...

One of the last incandescent bulbs in my house is a 25 watt bulb in a $12
outdoor motion detector lighting fixture in the kitchen. When I open the
kitchen door, it turns on. The timer is set for a minute, and if I'm moving 
around, the light stays on. I'm leaving the heat turned off in the kitchen
again this year, with the door closed, mostly. It's been a warm winter,
so the kitchen temperature is only down to 48 so far, but the refrigerator
seldom runs, and I cook a bit more quickly. My kitchen has stone walls, with
polyurethane foam on the outside, so the interior temperature changes slowly. 

Nick

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Sun Dec  3 17:58:50 1995
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To: london@sunsite.unc.edu
Date: 3 Dec 1995 06:22:24 -0500
From: nick@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu (Nick Pine)
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Subject: AC PV panels
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Tom Gray  <tomgray@igc.apc.org> wrote:
>Nick Pine writes:
>>Solar panels with built-in inverters that plug into wall sockets
>>to lower electric bills should be coming quite soon.

MrSolar@netins.net (Charlie Collins) kindly forwarded the following from
http://www.ultranet.com/~sda, paraphrased below with a few comments...

Solar Design Associates is now developing an AC solar module with Solarex.
The AC module is a DC module with a small integrated inverter.

Solarex calls the product "PowerWall." The first modules are designed for 
curtain walls, the shear wall systems used on modern office buildings. These
modules replace the glass or other sheet material used in curtain walls, eg
in framing manufactured by Kawneer of Norcross, Georgia. A residential roof
product is also in the works.

PowerWall modules are available in AC and DC models, in sizes up to 53" X 87",
[32 ft^2--why not 4' x 8'?] with outputs up to 250 watts.

An ideal solar system should harvest both heat and electricity from the same
aperture [although PV power falls off as temperature rises...] Virtually every
building has thermal as well as electrical energy needs, and roof area is
limited... In 1979, SDA developed a combined, flat-plate, PV/thermal collector.
The device worked well. Unfortunately, no company was willing to produce it.
Now they are revisiting this device... 

[I wonder if it still has a thermal output?]

In 1980, existing PV modules (~ 4 ft^2) were not large enough to integrate
well with building systems. Too many connections were needed to make a
significant electrical output. SDA presented the case to all major PV makers
for building a large-area module of 25 to 30 square feet, which could be
integrated into a building skin to form the structure and weathering surface.
Every manufacturer thought they were crazy - except one.
 
SDA began working with Mobil to develop a 24 ft^2, glass-superstrate PV module
which could be sold with or without a frame. Now the rest of the industry is
following suit. Custom module manufacturers in Europe now offer PV modules of
3 square meters and larger, designing them to architect's specifications for 
direct building integration.
 
DC outputs of PV arrays impose serious limits on the electrical use. Most
electrical loads require AC power, and 30-40% of the cost of a PV system has
been used in the transition from the DC PV module to the load. Such systems
were complex and required special DC-rated components not readily available.
The obvious answer was to create an AC PV module. SDA is now doing that now. 
  
Nick

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Mon Dec  4 00:58:55 1995
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To: london@sunsite.unc.edu
Date: 3 Dec 1995 15:44:19 -0500
From: nick@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu (Nick Pine)
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Subject: sunspace plans
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Now that winter is upon us northern hemispherites, I've finally gotten
around to answering some people who asked me by email about possible
sunspace additions to their houses, and sent little ascii sketches.
I'm posting my replies. Perhaps some other people can find a useful
idea or two here...

Hello T: 

Just getting around to some older email, finally.

>I've been following your posts and trying to see how I could fit something 
>onto my own house.  Let me throw some ideas at you and see if they stick :)

OK...

>I have a room that was added onto the south side of my house that looks like:

+---------------------------------------------------------+
|                                                         |
|                                                         |
|                                                         |
|15'                                                      W     ^
|                                                         W     |
|                                                         W     N
|                                                         W
|                          23'                            |
+----------WWWWWWW----------------------------------------+

           6'

           T

T = Tree

Is the wall of this room 8' high? Perhaps you can also paint the roof with
white or aluminum paint to make it into a reflector and add a solar air heater
to the second floor south wall of the house... Or even add a sunspace on top
of the roof of the new room, if it's fairly flat...

>My thoughts are to add something where the window is now, using the window as 
>the top opening and punching a hole at the bottom for the lower vent.  This 
>would make it a much easier project for me to fly past the family.

I guess so :-) Altho that's a pretty small solar collection area. You can
recover something like the heat equivalent of a gallon of oil per square foot
of glazing per year...

Perhaps you could start with that, and if it works, make a lean-to sunspace/
greenhouse along the whole south side. Or maybe just from the east edge of
the window to the NE corner of the house. You have an easier retrofit than M.
I'll insert what I sent him below...

Greetings M:

>Some ways to improve my house are pretty obvious: it has a sheltered
>concave corner facing South where I'd love to put an attached greenhouse
>which would capture a lot of solar heat in Spring and Fall which could be
>distributed to the house via a fan.

Sounds good to me.

>Above that greenhouse I could mount a thermal collector panel.

That sounds expensive, altho the homemade version wouldn't cost much, made
by screwing some boards on the roof on 4' centers to make a 3" airspace and
attaching a thin layer of polycarbonate plastic over that.

>All this seems obvious, but I don't know the costs, except that they're high.

Not necessarily. Polyethylene film costs about 5 cents per square foot, and
lasts 3 years. If you make a framework out of 2 x 4s and only attach the film
at the ground and the peak and the sides of the structure, using aluminum 
extrusion clamps, the whole thing can be inexpensive, and it's easy to change
the film every 3 years. Standard commercial poly film greenhouses sell for as
little as 50 cents a square foot, and 3 people can put up a 30' wide x 100'
long commercial greenhouse in 1 day, from scratch. Like a tent. Find a local
supplier to commercial greenhouse growers and check out pipe-frame poly film
greenhouses.

You don't give dimensions below, but I'll take a guess...

              windowless North steep-sloping roofing

                ---------------------------------
               |               32'?              |
   some        |                                 |   some
   windows     |                                 |   windows
   on this     |        TOP VIEW                 |   here
   side        |                                 |   too
               |24'?                             |
               |                                 |   side view
               |                                 |   of this side
               |                                 |   below
               |                                 |
               |                                 |
                -----------------------|---------
               |              |  steep-sloping   |
               |              |  roofing-type material
               |              |                  |
               |16'?          |   no windows at all
               |              |   in this corner area
               |              |                  |
               |              |                   
               |              |       16'?       |
                -------------- - - - - - - - - -    <-------------      
                 large windows                                     |
                 here already   How about extending the sunspace out to  
                                make the house a big rectangle, so you
				don't get afternoon shading from the
				existing southwestern protuberance? 

>CRUDE side view looking from East side:

                   ---------------------
                  /  -----       -----  \
   --------------/  |     |     |     |  \
  |             /    -----       -----    \
  |            /                           \
  |           /    ----  ----  ----  ----   \
  |     ---- /    |    ||    ||    ||    |   \
  |      h    |    ----  ----  ----  ----   |
  -------------------------------------------

Looks like h is very small. Does the roof really come to within 2 or 3'
of the ground?

>What I think should be done:

                ---------------------------------
               |                                 |
               |                                 |
               |                                 |
               |        TOP VIEW                 |
               |                                 |
               |.................................|
               |                                 |
               | This is all potential solar area|
               | too. Some poly film over the    |
               | roof, to make a big air heater? |
               | Or take off the shingles first. | A solar attic?
	       ---------------------------------
               |              |         |
               |              |         |
               |              |         |-- greenhouse
               |              |         |
               |    ditto     |---------    The poly film could go over the 
               |              |    existing roof, extending the life of the 
               |              |    roof, perhaps. Or perhaps melting or   
               |              |    curling up the shingles :-( The polyethylene
	        --------------     film or polycarbonate plastic might be
	                           removed someday to expose the original 
				   roof, more or less intact, if you decided 
				   to do that for some reason.

 solar panel__     ---------------------
              \  //  -----       -----  \
   ------------\//  |     |     |     |  \
  |            //    -----       -----    \
  |     -----*-/                           \
  |    /    * /    ----  ----  ----  ----   \
  |   |    * /    |    ||    ||    ||    |   \
  |   |   *   |    ----  ----  ----  ----   |
  -------------------------------------------
      |
       \__ greenhouse

Another possibility is to just extend the roofline down to the ground (*),
with glazing a few inches above the roof, and parallel to it, or a little
more horizontal, so there's more sunspace floorspace on the ground. Or use
some curved steel pipes from commercial greenhouses, 20' long, $35 each,
on 4' centers, with their straight ends touching the ground and their curved
ends attached to a horizontal board near the peak of the roof. The greenhouse 
would be a bit less complicated to build without that kink in the roofline
that you drew at the top of the south wall... 

>There are some details to work out, e.g., what kind of foundation...

Perhaps some railroad ties on the ground with a couple of holes in
each one and 4' of 1/2" rebar driven into the ground through each hole...
Or a pressure treated 2 x 6 pipe sandwich along the ground.

>how to store the heat there,

It's best to store the heat in the house. If the greenhouse/sunspace is not
too big, most of the heat will be usable in the house. A 16' wide x 16' tall
sunspace can provide about 200K Btu/day to an attached house, about the same
as 2 gallons of oil on an average day. How much heat does your house need on
an average winter day? I think of greenhouses as being warm at night, and
humid, BTW, and sunspaces as being cold at night and dry, with much less 
thermal mass. Much more energy-efficient. If you really want to store the heat
in the sunspace, it can be done, but ideally you need some insulation between
the thermal mass and the glazing, so warm air can flow through to the thermal
mass during the day, but not at night, so the thermal mass stays stay warm 
at night, while the airspace just inside the glazing gets icy cold quickly,
losing little heat to the night. 

>and how to cover it in summer to avoid overheating,

A big piece of 80% greenhouse shadecloth with grommets to hang it up,
made to order in a week for 20 cents a square foot or so... This would
make the glazing last longer too. It's good to hang this inside the
sunspace in the winter.

>and how to avoid losing heat from the house to the greenhouse at night

Blow warm air into the house from the sunspace during the day, through
some passive plastic film dampers that close at night. Let the currently
insulated SE and SW walls of the house keep the heat inside the house
itself at night.

Hope this helps...

---

Back to T:

>This tree is in the way of the afternoon sun and is about 6 ft out from the 
>house.  This tree is also one that does not drop its leaves in the winter.  
>It's not a very big tree, 6" at the base and maybe 12 ft high.

Yuck. I'd cut it down and use it for a Christmas tree, or move it to
the north or west side of the house, and plant some vines or clematis
or beans or grapes or something along the south wall for summer shading.

>If I added on something like what you've described here or your earlier 
>posting of the "Fall Project", I wonder much of an impact that tree is going 
>to have. 

If you have something along the whole wall to the east, the tree won't
matter much. If your solar collector only covers the window, the tree
might cut the solar gain by a third or a quarter. Midwinter sun arrives
from south +/- 45 degrees, at a low angle, with a maximum elevation of
17 degrees from the horizon on 12/21, where I live.

>Instead, I'd buy 9 20' curved galvanized steel pipes from Stuppy or X. S.
>Smith in New Jersey for about $250, put them up on 4' centers, burying the
>straight end of each pipe in the ground and attaching the other end to a
>horizontal board under the eave of the house.

>Why steel?  Why not PVC?  I can't get a true curve with PVC but I can have a 
>pair of 45 degree corners.  Seems like this would be much cheaper.  

PVC rots polyethylene in contact. If you wanted something cheaper, how
about long 2 x 4s or 2 x 6's, painted white so they don't heat up in the
sun and deteriorate the poly film?

Also:

>Then I'd attach a large sheet of 5 cent/ft^2 3-year greenhouse poly film

>perhaps Jade Mountain's 5-year, 43 cent/ft^2, Tuff-Glass, which comes in 48" 
>x 144' rolls

>Another glazing option is Dupont's heat-sealable, clear, UV-transparent, 
>Tedlar PVF film, which is very strong and light, and should last about 10 
>years.

Are these listed in increasing order of durability? 

I think so. And cost. 1 mil tedlar costs about $35/pound (?), and a pound
is about 200 ft^2, but the catch is that Dupont has something like a $5K
minimum order. An AE distributor could help with this problem. The poly
film is also much easier to attach, since it comes in huge pieces.

>How durable is the poly film?

Greenhouse UV poly film is guaranteed for 3 years, it comes in pieces up to
30' wide and 100' long, and it's about as easy to change as a bedsheet if you
attach it with aluminum extrusion clamps ($1/linear foot.) It IS recyclable.

And:

>>For moving more air, I like the $12 K-Mart 3-speed slimline HABF-20 20" box 
>>fanmade by Holmes (1-800-5-HOLMES) in China. I'd put the fan in series with a
>>room heating thermostat and a sunspace attic fan thermostat.

>Why two thermostats?

They go in series with the fan, to turn on the fan when the sunspace
is warmer than 80 F and the house is cooler than, say 70 F. My favorite
thermostat is now Grainger's 2E158, $14.03, which can be used for heating
or cooling. It has a powerful switch too: 115-277 VAC at 22 amps. 

>This room is about 23x15 and is where we spend most of our time as a family.  

Aha, dimensions :-) So the south glazed area is potentially 23 x 8',
if it's one story tall. This might save you 200 gallons of oil a year.
If the sunspace were two stories tall, touching the eave of the roof
of the new room, and running up to the peak of the (2 story) house
behind it, it might save twice that. If it goes all the way up to the
peak of the steep south roof of the main house, it might save 600
gallons of oil a year. If it has a shallow reflecting pond along the
south edge, extending out 16 feet or so, it might save 50% more.

>We only have 2 windows so I would like to keep as much sunshine as possible.  
>This room was added on by a previous owner and does not receive heating or 
>cooling as well as the rest of the house (long runs of ductwork).

Sounds like a perfect place to add on a sunspace. Maybe another window
while you are at it...

>Thanks for the ideas, and keep posting these small projects/ideas that
>the average Joe can try.  

Thanks for the encouragement :-)

Nick

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Wed Dec  6 00:11:23 1995
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Subject: Re: AC PV panels
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John A. Stanley <jstanley@gate.net> wrote:

>The electric utilities don't take too kindly to folks simply
>pumping juice back into the grid.

Gee I wonder why :-) I think in a few years, what you do with your
electric line inside your house will be mostly your business, the way
it is now with the telephone line. Utilities are exaggerating the
safety problem.

>Most grid intertie systems use two meters, 

In some states, eg Vermont and California, the law says you have to be
able to do this with one meter, if you want to. I imagine this will
become more widespread.

>and there are stringent safety requirements to make
>sure the PV's are disconnected in the event of a power failure.

Not a bad idea. Also not hard to do.

>Grid intertie inverters tend to be costly (several thousand dollars.) 

Sheesh. I've been saying that this is not true for 3 months now, for
technical reasons. I think we will see at least one 500 watt grid-tie-only
inverter on the US market within 6 months, from one of several companies
who are now nearly finished developing this product. At that point,
rational suburbanites and city dwellers would give up their expensive
PV habit and put a $500 400 watt wind turbine on the roof, with one of
these $100 inverters to reduce their electric bills.

Nick

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Sat Jan  6 17:33:08 1996
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Date: 5 Jan 1996 18:07:58 -0500
From: nick@bart.ee.vill.edu (Nick Pine)
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Subject: Re: Recovery of Solar Heat from Attic
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George Weinert <gweinert@llnl.gov> wrote:
 
>A few years ago, I read about a company that was going to build heat 
>exchangers to go into your attic space to recover heat during daylight 
>hours, and bring some portion of that heat into the living space of 
>your home...

Perhaps this was Ed Palmer of Solar Attic, Inc. at 15548 95th Circle, Elk
River, MN 55330-7728, (612) 441-3440/7174 fax/email SolarAttic@aol.com. Their
system may be covered by US Patent No. 5,014,770, issued May 14, 1991,
which may expire in 2008, or perhaps sooner.

>I also seem to recall having read about a study done on a home in 
>Minnesota(?) which blew hot (warm?) attic air into the house any time 
>the attic rose above 68F(?).  I seem to recall that the home had 
>significantly reduced utility bills, and that the payback time on the 
>equipment was rather short.

I seem to recall a documented 25% savings, with a conventional roof. 

>I am interested in perhaps building and installing such a system in my home,
>if it's actually cheap enough, reliable enough, and effective.

It seems to me that a system like this can be cheap, reliable and effective,
especially if your next steep-sloping south roof is made of clear thin single-
layer Dynaglas or Replex corrugated polycarbonate plastic (not fiberglas),
like mine. This material costs about $1/ft^2 and it is commonly used in
commercial greenhouse roofs, and it has a 10 year guarantee against yellowing,
and an expected mechanical lifetime of at least 25 years. Its lifetime can be
extended and the attic made cooler in summer by covering it on the outside
with a large sheet of 15 cent/ft^2, 80% greenhouse shadecloth.

>Any construction details or pointers would also be greatly appreciated.

Well, the plastic comes in standard lengths of 12' and a width slightly more
than 4', so it can be overlapped 1 corrugation for support on 4' centers. And
you want to keep warm house air out of the attic at night, to avoid heat loss
and condensation. Which to me means a passive plastic film backdraft damper
near the bottom of the supply duct, near the attic floor. The duct itself might
be a polyethylene film tube, say 24" in diameter, bought from a commercial
greenhouse supplier for about 30 cents per linear foot, with a large slow fan
at the top pushing warm air down from near the roof peak into the house. The
return duct might be a 2' x 2' piece of 1-2" foil-faced foam in the floor at
the other end of the attic, with a hinge on one edge and a $50 Grainger 4Z451
reversible 115VAC gearmotor and some sort of spool attached to the shaft to
wind up a 1/16" nylon string attached to a screw eye in a rafter, with a couple
of limit switches. You might control this with one or two cooling thermostats
in the attic and a heating thermostat in the house, in series with the fan,
eg 2 or 3 Grainger 2E158 thermostats ($14.05 each.) 

>BTW, I live in the mild climate of the SF Bay Area, so I beleive my attic
>actually does warm up significantly even on 'cold' days (mid 40's, brrr ;-)

Seems like this should work pretty well there, especially in the spring and 
fall, even with a conventional roof. Some of my Phila area neighbors tell me
their attic fans with thermostats turn on in the middle of the winter...
 
A transparent roof should be able to collect at least the heat equivalent
of about 1 gallon fo oil per year per square foot of vertical south-facing
projection of the roof glazing. 

Or maybe you'd like a small nuclear engine in your attic :-)

Good luck. 

Nick

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Thu Jan 11 19:34:38 1996
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Date: 11 Jan 1996 12:42:08 -0500
From: nick@old-vlsi.ee.vill.edu (Nick Pine)
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Subject: Re: Recovery of Solar Heat from Attic
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Peter Swartman <pswartma@icis.on.ca> wrote:

>I used to install solar water heaters and have been in hundreds of attics.

OK.

>In the winter they are colder than the house and in the summer they are
>hotter.

How about in the spring and the fall?

>Unless you have some sort of heat pump, you will NOT get any heat
>out of an attic.

None? Perhaps not as much as if it were transparent, as you say later on...
You should talk with my neighbor, who tells me that he often hears his attic
fan with a cooling thermostat turn on in the winter.

>If you remove the south half of the roof and glaze it,
>that is a different story.

How about just glazing over an existing dark roof, say with some thin
polycarbonate or polyethylene plastic, with an airspace?

>As far as heat produced, the best conditions are when the temperature
>difference (outside and inside the house) is lowest.

Ah, the spring and the fall...

Nick

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Thu Jan 11 19:34:44 1996
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From: nick@old-vlsi.ee.vill.edu (Nick Pine)
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Subject: Re: Recovery of Solar Heat from Attic
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George Weinert <gweinert@llnl.gov> wrote:

>Thanks for the response.

You are welcome.

>>>A few years ago, I read about a company that was going to build heat 
>>>exchangers to go into your attic space to recover heat during daylight 
>>>hours...

>>Perhaps this was Ed Palmer of Solar Attic, Inc. at 15548 95th Circle, Elk
>>River, MN 55330-7728, (612) 441-3440/7174 fax/email SolarAttic@aol.com. Their
>>system may be covered by US Patent No. 5,014,770, issued May 14, 1991,
>>which may expire in 2008, or perhaps sooner.
>
>After reading the patent abstract, yes--this was the company I had vaguely 
>remembered.  Unfortunately, the invention described is an air-to-liquid heat 
>exchanger, I was hoping to use an air-to-air heat exchanger.

Solar Attic sells air systems too, albeit direct, vs. with heat exhangers. 
They bought this product and its (different) patent from another company,
and it now sells for $519 as I recall, vs $1700 in tax credit times :-)
If you are concerned about dust, how about combining it with one of these:

Article: 38 of sci.engr.heat-vent-ac
From: nick@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu (Nick Pine)
Subject: Re: Advice Needed!!!  Replacement Central Air/Ventilation
Date: 1 Jun 1995 04:54:10 -0400
Organization: Villanova University

John W. Grooms Jr. <jgrooms@mindspring.com> wrote:

>3. We have allergies in our family. Any opinions concerning whole house
>air cleaners or humidifiers?

One nice new electronic air filter is made by Aqua-Air Technologies,
at (410) 489-5288. The ESSA electronic filter comes in 14 standard sizes,
and slips in place of a normal air filter in a hot air heating system.
It has a retail price of about $200. It's an inch thick, and it uses
three metal screens with two filter pads between the screens. The center
screen has a potential of 7,000 VDC, and the outer two are grounded. 
The filter pads cost about a dollar, and need replacing about every two
months. The device comes with a small 110-24V transformer which plugs into
a wall socket, and the power consumption is listed as 24VAC at 1.6 VA,
i. e. less than 2 watts. 

Here is the basic filter performance:

Typical Ambient Particle                
Size distribution (in microns) per m^3       Particle Removal Rates 
                                         
                       % by    % by          Electrostatic   ESSA
Size (um.)   Count     count   weight        ($800-1200)     ($200)

10+          1,000     .005%   28%  xxx x    99%             99+%
5-10        35,000     .175%   52%    x x    95%             99+%
1-5        264,000    1.32%    17%    x x    85%             99+%
.5-1     1,352,000    6.78%     2%    xxx    60%             90+%
.01-.5  18,280,000   91.72%     1%    xxx    40%             65%

                                    |||||_ bacteria/viruses/spores
                                    ||||_ cooking/tobacco smoke
                                    |||_ household dust
                                    ||_ pollen/mold/spores
                                    |_ dander/hair

Average synthetic dust weight arrestance: 79%

Single pass efficiency: 33% @0.3 um, 75% @0.5 um, 95% @1 um, 99% @3 um

Pressure drop: 0.05" @150 lfm, 0.1" @225 lfm, 0.15" @300 lfm, 0.22" @375 lfm

ASHRAE dust holding capacity: 20 gm/ft^2

Does not produce ozone

More than one person with severe asthma has told me that these really work,
that they have had their first night of good sleep in years, after spending
one night in a bedroom with one of these devices.

The air filter product is available now, and Aqua Air will soon have a
stand-alone console model with built-in fan, prefilter and charcoal filter.
One low-cost way of using the air filter now is to buy a $15 20" box fan and
mount a 20" ESSA filter on the suction side, with duct tape...

---

>I realize that this would probably have lower efficiency

The direct air product probably has higher efficiency that either heat
exchanger version. BTW, it seems to me that it would be very easy to make
an efficient air-air heat exchanger in the attic, with two long concentric
polyethylene film tube ducts running along the ridge of the attic... See
ASHRAE's 1993 Handbook of Fundamentals, page 3-4 for how to calculate the
efficiency of something like this.

>>I seem to recall a documented 25% savings, with a conventional roof. 
>
>Any more information on this (or a pointer?).  I'm interested in how they 
>implemented this.

Talk to Ed Palmer...

>...re-roofing my southern exposure with ->transparent<- (translucent?) 
>glazing does not seem inexpensive to me (even though it would increase thermal 
>collection).  It would seem that this would cost several thousands of dollars 

It's cheaper than conventional roofing in labor and materials, so if you need
a new roof...  

How about just putting a layer of greenhouse polyethylene film (5 cents.ft^2,
guaranteed for 3 years, easy to change with cheap Al extrusion clamps,
recyclable) over your existing roof, over something like 2 x 4s glued on edge
to the roof on 4' centers, to make an airspace, perhaps with some greenhouse
shadecloth underneath, to try this out? You need some sort of summer venting,
or another layer of shadecloth on top in the summer, or both... Done right,
this would prolong the life of the existing roof underneath, like seat covers
in a car, or plastic slipcovers on couches :-)

>I am also concerned about putting what might be seen as a 'funky' roof on
>my house as this might have serious consequences on the re-sale value of
>my home (I'm in California--can you tell? :-) ).

Gee, I thought Californians were immune to this easterly aesthetic scourge,
in which everyone wants their house to look like it was built 100 years ago.
But perhaps you can do something to your house that will only take a day or
two to undo, if necessary, when the time comes to sell it? 

Nick

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Sat Jan 13 15:05:08 1996
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Subject: Re: Selling H20 via the grid
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shannon wagoner <shannon@som-uky.campus.mci.net> wrote:
 
>>Come on, guys!  You can sell water back to the grid today!
 
>actually you really could, but the equipment required to overcome the
>pressure coming into your home would burst the pipe. <G>

No... Think differential pressure.

This might be a useful two-way system, with a tank and a water-based heat pump.

Nick

From news@bigblue.oit.unc.edu  Tue Jan 23 19:08:54 1996
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Date: 23 Jan 1996 11:26:04 -0500
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Subject: Birdhouses and solar shelters
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Over the last couple of months, I've been watching a homeless person who has
built himself a small homeless shelter under the 4' concrete overhang of a
parking garage on Atlantic Avenue near Court Street in Brooklyn, next door
to Saint Vincent's Family and Children's care center. 

A lot of homeless people in cities are mentally ill, and very suspicious, and
not inclined to stay in city shelters, because city shelters are dangerous...

Yesterday it was 32 F in Brooklyn and snowing. I  wanted to take this man some
hot food, but he didn't seem to be home when I stopped by. It's hard to tell
when he's home... He lives in a sort of very small cave, like an animal.
Will he get frostbite this week? Will he lose some fingers or toes?

He and the center have something in common: they are both wasting solar energy.
The center has a 60' tall x 40' wide south-facing plain brick wall, upon which
the solar heat equivalent of approximately 24 gallons of oil fall every day in
December. The south wall of this man's small shelter is a piece of plywood,
6' wide x 4' tall, with various blankets and quilts and sleeping bags stuffed
around it to make a dark, concrete-walled cave under the parking garage.

Now, there are lots of lean-to shelters on the Appalachian trail, some of them
stocked with firewood, put there for the convenience of passing hikers, and we
build birdhouses, don't we? Why not extend such charity to humans, and make
some sort of urban shelters for people like this homeless man? Outdoor art, if
you like, in urban parks...

It seems to me that it wouldn't be difficult to put one $500 septic tank on top
of another, with some foamboard on the outside, eg Dri-Vit, to make something
like this human birdhouse:

               |    5'   |          |         12'          |
               pffffffffff ---      pppppppppppppppppppppppp
               p.........f          p                      p
               p        .f          p                      p
               p        .f  6'      p                      p
               p        .f          p     living space     p
               p        .f          p                      p
     south     p.........f ---      p                      p
               p f.......f          p..................... p
               p f.     .f          p        .             p 
               p f.     .f          p  rain  .    waste    p
               p f.water.f  5'      p  water .    water?   p
               p f.     .f          p        .             p
               p f.......f          p        .             p
               p fffffffff ---      pppppppppppppppppppppppp

Being in a city, this would have to be fairly bulletproof. Suppose p above is
an 11' x 12' piece of easily-replaced polyethylene greenhouse film, with a few
thin pieces of metal sewed into the edges to hold it tight against some magnets
embedded in the south edges of the shelter. If the concrete tanks had walls
that were 4" thick, the two tanks together would weigh about 

    4"/12" x (12'x16' + 5'x6'x2) x 150 lb/ft^3 x 2 = 25,200 pounds,

with a thermal mass of approximately 0.16 x 25,200 = 4032 Btu/degree F.

Filling the bottom tank with water would make the total thermal mass

C = 4032 + 1500 gal x 8 lb/gal = 16,032 Btu/F. 

On an average December day where I live, about 1100 Btu/ft^2 falls on
a south wall, so if the poly film has a solar transmission of 0.8, the
amount of solar energy that gets into the structure would be about

Ein = 11' x 12' x 0.8 = 116,000 Btu/day, 

And if the average outdoor temperature is 36 F and the average indoor
temperature is T, and the poly film has an R-value of 0.8, then the amount
of heat that leaves the structure in one day would be about

Eout = 24 hours x (T-36) x 12' x 6'/R0.8 = 2,160 x (T-36).

If the energy that enters the structure during an average day is equal
to the energy that leaves the structure, ie Ein = Eout, then 

2,160 x (T-36) = 116,200, so T = 36 + 116,200/2,160 = 86 F.

That's a simplified calculation, but at least it seems there would be
no danger of frostbite.

How would the temperature change over a week without sun?

Each day, the structure would lose Ed = 2,160 x (T-36) Btu, which would
cool the thermal mass by Ed/C Btu, which would leave the thermal mass
with a temperature of T - Ed/C:

     indoor   heat        temp   
Day  temp (F) loss (Btu)  loss (F)
 
1    86       108K        6.7  
2    79.3     93K         5.8
3.   73.5     81K         5.0
4    68.4     70K         4.4
5    64.0     60K         3.8
6    60.2     52K         3.3
7    56.9     45K         2.8

Nick

