It's getting cold out here in North Brookfield Ma and the solar windows are really starting to show their stuff. This mornings low temperature was 28F and the daytime high was only 39F. BUT the sun was shining and that's all it takes to warm this house. Late this afternoon the building inspector stopped by to inspect the solar chimney and wood stove pipe. He couldn't believe that the temperature inside this house was about 70F, on this cold blustery day. When I first met him, when applying for the building permit he was, to say the least skeptical of what were doing. This isn't your normal run of the mill house. Most of the system we are using including the SIP's envelope, HRV system, solar chimney, Heat pump, and special solar windows were things he had never seen. After seeing it work for himself I think I've converted him. His exact words were, and I quote
" This house blows my mind" John Couture, North Brookfield Building Inspector.
He couldn't believe that a house under construction could be so warm. We haven't even finished sealing up the house. We still have one door missing, that is scheduled to come in on Monday, we have a sheet of plastic covering the opening. We still need to finish foaming around our windows.
Speaking of windows, the windows guys from Hunter Douglas are coming in tomorrow morning to commission the window shading system. If you saw the video I shot of the windows, you saw one of the shades operating. All of the solar windows along the south side of the house have an integrated shade, that retracts up into the head of the head of the window when opened. The controls for these are fairly complicated but as always Wendell, Dan and Dave, from Lamtec came through with some great work. They have designed and built a control system for the shades that gives the homeowners total control over the system. Here is a quick overview of how the shading system functions. We have 21 of the special solar windows, each of them have their own individual shade and they can be controlled in several ways. First the windows have been grouped by location, each of these zones have a thermostat that can be used to control the shades by the room temperature. The shades are primarily for use during the summer and times during the spring and fall but for the winter months the shades should be fully opened to capture as much of the solar energy as is available. The thermostats allow the house to control excess energy from entering the home, even when no one is around. This will reduce the cooling needs of the house. The have also added a push button that can be used to control a bank of windows and have the shades open or shut to their preference. The final control is a remote, that allows the homeowners to control each shade individually. Pretty cool stuff, lots of wires (1500') and a control board that looks like something out of a sci-fi movie. Hopefully by the end of the day tomorrow all of the shades will be operating. That's a good thing because when we installed the shades we left them partially down and right now we aren't even capturing all of the energy we could be. With the shades in their current position were a losing about 20% of the energy and on these cold late fall days we can use all of the suns energy we can.
If the building Inspector is blown away now, wait till were done tightening up the house and it really starts work!
Stay tuned Tom
