My favorite solar heating solution has always been Annualized Geo-Solar (AGS), but it has not been tried very much so it is still in the pioneering stage and some that have been tried need some supplemental heating (depending how warm you want it). A large skirt of near horizontal insulation surrounding the house is used to insulate the ground (and there by the foundation) from the air, (with some soil on top of the insulation to protect it.) Then during the summer, (or when it is hot enough), heated air is blown down to pipes buried deep under the house. Deep enough that it takes 6 months for the heat to make its way through the soil to the floor of the home. That way heat from the hottest part of the summer will radiate through the floor 6 months away in the winter. Variations have been done that bury the tubes shallower under the floor and with insulation over them so the heat is transferred horizontally for the time lag. An interesting thing about Annualized Geo-Solar is that the house can look like any ordinary conventional house, (or as weird as you like) and other than needing to be well insulated, can use conventional building methods, (or high thermal mass design, or any of the other alternate building methods). It may even be possible to retrofit an existing house. Combining Annualized Geo-Solar with an earth ship is of course an option. Different soils conduct heat at different rates so this will determine the depth of the heat tubes. Each successive year the house will become warmer in the winter for about 5 years. This is because the ground below the heat tubes will start to normalize instead of taking away the heat so much. The soil between the house and bedrock needs to be as deep as possible to insulate it from bedrock which will take heat away quickly. Also ground water will take the heat away. Unfortunately, clay it seems is also a very conductive material so is not suitable for Annualized Geo-Solar. I think even ordinary earth ships may be affected by the type of soil beneath them and for this reason properties with clay, may not fair as well by using the ground as heat storage as I was hoping. It may be an idea, depending on the soil, to instead have earth over a layer of insulation for a floor. There are houses in Europe that are using Annualized Geo-Solar by building a reservoir of water and then building the house over top or beside. Using the summer sun to heat the water for heat in the winter. I cant remember if they also use a heat pump.
Posted on: Wed, 19 Mar 2014 20:50:22 +0000
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