Understanding Thermal or Solar Heat Gain Coefficients

Isabel Wilkerson is an African American Howard University journalism graduate writer and the first black woman in the history of American Journalism to win a Pulitzer Prize. Among her notable works is the novel “The Warmth of Other Suns”. The novel The Warmth of Other Suns was about the Great Migration which occurred between the years 1915-1970 and this was the movement of approximately seven million Black people out of the Southern United States to the North, Midwest and Western states from 1916 to 1970. Blacks migrated to escape widespread racism in the South, to seek employment opportunities in industrial cities of the North, to get better education for their children, and to pursue what was widely

There are several ways to build the walls and floor so that heat is stored in the day and released at night. Night and day temperatures, as well as seasonal angles of the sun are things to think about in terms of location if you plan to build a home that utilizes solar energy, such as an earthship. Dave Black states “ An east west axis (90 degrees to true south) allows the longer side of the structure to be exposed to the sun.That’s where the big windows should be. North and east facing windows can lose a lot of heat in the winter, and west facing glass can cause overheating in summer, so they should be few and small.(Use overhangs over the windows to protect the interior from too much summer sun…….) .”

Passive solar heating designs are some of the simplest forms of incorporating solar energy into your daily home life. Passive solar designs incorporate the sun

Another big contributor, though, is all that sunlight coming through your windows. Shades and blinds will do wonders to reduce your cooling bill in these hot months of the year.

The heavy-duty framing of these doors and windows, along with impact resistant material sandwiched between two layers of laminated glass, which makes them energy efficient. If you install standard windows in your home, hot air from outside can enter your home during summers. This can increase the run time of your air-conditioner which increases your energy bills. During winters, normal windows allow hot air to escape from the room, which increases the runtime of your heater. This can have major impact on your energy bills. Impact resistant doors and windows will prevent this from happening. During winters, the hot air stays inside your home and your heater does not work overtime to maintain the temperature inside the room. During summers, hot air does not enter your home, which reduces the load on the air-conditioner thereby reducing your electric bills.

The best benefit of this kind of heating will you gain more control over the temperature of each space.

But bear in mind the more home windows of huge areas that permit light to enter to your home the higher the have to awesome the house. Around Australia, the summer season are lengthy and also the sun is harsh. Therefore you should think about a great shading system, otherwise your contribution to climatic change is going to be

Houses use insulation to prevent heat loss in winter and prevent over heating in summer. People put insulation in between their roofs. This is often used when the roof in metal or tin which attracts heat and has makes houses hotter. This insulation stop heat from being able to transfer into the house making it hot in summer. This insulation also prevents heat from escaping the house in winter keeping the house warm. Houses also use glass which is more expensive but more efficient. This glass is made with two panels are vacuumed meaning that all of the air is sucked out between them and this all so prevents the heat transfer keeping the house cooler in summer and warmer in winter.

In truth, a concrete wall house is substantially warmer than stick-built construction. Advanced technology ICF (Insulated Concrete Form) homes are actually much warmer than traditional stud wall construction, as well as being far more energy efficient. Here are the facts. Thermographic tests done by the National Association of Home Builders Research Center showed that a solid ICF wall (a wall without windows or other penetrations) has fewer cold spots than a wood framed wall. This is because the thermal envelope - the shield between outside and inside temperatures - is much more difficult to seal in conventional stud wall construction, so that cold easily travels through thermal bridging to create uncomfortable cold spots inside the house. ICF walls, by contrast, are tightly sealed so that thermal bridging is reduced, which makes for even temperatures and fewer cold spots and drafts. Moreover, houses with ICF wall construction result in a 50% decrease in the capacity of HVAC equipment as compared to wood framed wall construction (which of course implies greatly reduced heating and cooling costs).

The higher the R-value a home has means that it is far more efficient it is thermally as compared to a low R-valued home. A house built with Insulated Concrete Forms has a range of R-values which is typically between R-22 to R-32 [3]. Thermal Conductivity is a major aspect of the whole R-value concept. Thermal conductivity is the heat transfer in which a material could conduct this energy [4]. In a wood framed house, thermal bridging happens. This is when the wood material of the house conducts heat more than the insulation. This causes a decrease in R-value for the overall wall. Therefore, there is a lack of heat that is entering the house which is the reason why on a hot summer day, your house has a temperature lower than the outside temperature. As compared to a house made from Insulated Concrete Forms, there is no such thing as thermal bridging. The ICF has a double layer of insulation with the concrete center, and with thermal bridging not in presence, this gives ICF a higher

The concept of using radiant and convection heat for comfort has been around since early man. People chose south facing caves because the sun would warm up the rocks during the day and radiate the heat into the cave at night. The flames from a fire also gave off radiant heat. Technology has developed to control radiant and convection heat. Radiant heating and cooling (RHC) systems utilize the surrounding surfaces as heating and/or cooling sources. Generally, RHC systems are systems that radiant heat transfers cover more than 50% of heat exchange within a specified space. Compared to all-air systems, which depend on convection only, the RHC system provides heating and cooling by the combination of radiation and convection in a building. There are three types of radiant floor heating systems. The first type is a radiant air floor, where the air is the heat-transferring medium. The second type is electric radiant floor. The last type is hydronic radiant floor, which uses hot water.

The average temperature inside a building is 19-21 degrees and outside is -1 degrees, but there are two different thermal factors that affect the temperature of the room and human comfort; they are physical and personal factors. The physical factors include; air temperature, mean radiation temperature, relative humidity and air velocity. The air temperature inside of a building will change depending on the temperature outside the building and the k-values of the materials used to build the walls and insulation. K-values are the values that all materials have which shows how good insulators the materials are, the lower the k-value the more affective the materials are at retaining heat. The u-value is what overall heat resistance of the materials are. Air temperature is also affected by the people inside the building and they activity they are doing. The mean radiant temperature also affects the human comfort; mean radiant temperature is the radiation that is coming into the

After years of battling with this gripe, my team of engineers has developed the perfect window for any building, big or small. My Solar Tech Windows are handcrafted windows, made of the most durable and sustainable materials. They are strong enough to keep Mother Nature out and life in, crystal clear to the naked eye, and controlled by you to let the light in when you feel like it or to lock the sun out when you are not in the mood. Driven by solar power energy, these windows adjust to light and temperature and are controlled by you. Say good-bye to outrageous energy bills during the summer and winter extremes, say good-bye to

Insulation is one of the most important house materials that regulates thermal temperatures. A well-insulated and well-designed home can provide comfort for the whole year. The original house plan contains no insulation is the walls or floors, however it contains a minimum of 0.1 in the roof and ceiling. This had to be altered and insulation was added in between the 2 brick layers in the brick cavity wall. The floor didn’t need any as its slabs and tiles. For the insulation in between the walls, I increased it to 150 mm so it could increase the thermal performance and retain the heat more. It is used as it slows convectional heat flow. The following diagram shows the thickness of the insulation in a brick cavity wal

It is well recognized that the advanced alteration by built surfaces of natural surfaces, within urbanization, shapes the main due to the formation of the urban heat isolation. Natural surfaces are frequently composed of moisture trapping soils and vegetation. Therefore, they use a large proportion of the radiation that absorbed in the process of the evapotranspiration and emission water vapor that shares in cooling the air in their neighborhood. So, built surfaces are possessed from water-resistant and a high percentage of non-reflective construction materials. As a result, they ensure the absorption of certain proportion of the happening radiation, which is emitted as heat.