NEW IDEAS IN SOLAR HEATING FROM AMERICA

Otago Daily Times, Issue 27059, 19 April 1949, Page 2

NEW IDEAS IN SOLAR HEATING FROM AMERICA

NOTES FOR WOMEN

Two American women, Dr Maria Telkes, research associate in metallurgy at Massachusetts, and Miss Eleanor Raymond, an outstanding exponent of modern architecture, have designed a house which is entirely heated by the sun. The house was built last year in Dover, Massachusetts, and at Christmas time a family moved in. Engineers and architects are awaiting with interest the account of the practical living conditions experienced during the winter in this novel home, called the “ Dover house.” 1

During the last 10 years, houses have been built to derive the maximum warmth from the sun in winter whilst utilising eaves and shades to prevent excessive heat and sunlight in summer. Some architects have used glass to form a whole southern wall—in the northern hemisphere the south wall absorbs the most heat from the sun—with all the main living rooms on this exposure. But as glass not only collects heat in the daytime but lets it out at night it was not found possible to dispense entirely with fireplaces or furnace heating. The new experimental house has a device for trapping and storing heat extracted from the sun’s rays so that it will not become overheated when the sun is shining and suddenly cool off when the sun goes down. W. Clifford Harvey, writing in the Christian Science Monitor, reports: “The Dover house collects solar heat by luring sun rays through 10-foot high second-storey windows, trapping the solar energy behind the windows in air ducts, and then blowing it through these ducts into chemical storage bins located on the first floor. In a few hours of sunshine, the chemical bins arc said to be able to store up enough heat for warming the house

over nearly two weeks of sunless days. This solar energy is collected and released into the rooms by the alternate chemical process of melting and crystallising. Warm air from the sun, circulating around the cans of chemicals, melts the contents, which enables the chemicals to store heat at constant temperatures.’’ The chemicals cost less than coal and once stored in the bin do not have to be replaced. There should then, however, be no further fuel bills. The design of a house using solar heating is quite different from that of the conventional house. Large heat-collecting areas of glass are required, and these, in the Dover house, are placed on a second storey, with the living rooms below, resulting in an unconventional design. But there are other possibilities of design and there seems no reason why the heat storage area should not be built separately from the house, or why one large plant should not be able to' supply a whole community with stored solar heat. New Zealand architects and builders might well investigate these new methods of heating with a view to their application in a country so richly endowed with sunshine.