writeknight

In my solar researching, I found that the book “New Inventions In Low-Cost Solar Heating: 100 Daring Schemes Tried and Untried”, by William Shurcliff, was highly recommended. It was published in 1979. This is a fairly obscure book, long out of print, and I felt lucky to have ordered the last remaining copy listed on the used section of Amazon. When I received the book, the cover picture was a large orange and yellow mosaic of the sun. This particular mosaic seemed oddly familiar to me, but I couldn’t place where I had seen it before.

A few weeks later, my dad came to visit me, and he saw the book sitting on my table. He commented, “Oh, you’ve got Shurcliff.” It seemed like he recognized my obscure book. I said, “Yeah, I’ve been getting some ideas from it for my solar project. Have you seen it before?” He said, “Yeah, this is a good book, I have it at home.”

After I picked my jaw up off the floor, I realized where I had seen that mosaic before. Growing up I used to love looking at all the technical books he had on all different subjects. I probably looked at his copy of “Shurcliff” when I was around 10 years old. Decades later, the thought of solar heating captured my imagination again. Coincidence?

Something I learned in my solar research is the value of good insulation for saving energy. No matter what technology you are using to heat or cool your home, having it well-insulated minimizes the energy required. And in most homes, correcting air leaks provides the biggest improvement in insulating value and costs less than adding insulation. So it’s the best-value place to start. I have started sealing up my house, and will put up another goal related to that.

I spent baboon-bamboozling amounts of time on this. I read hundreds of internet postings, got price estimates on pre-fab and site-built sunspaces, ordered and read a book published in 1979 on the subject, even spent some hours on the phone with Nick Pine, a solar heating guru and all-around creative guy. After all this, it seemed I would need a lot of vertical glazing area (400 square feet or so) on the South side of my house. Making that look decent as a retrofit at a reasonable cost was the challenge.

I attempted to get some local architects to consider the problem, but that effort squarely failed. The tiny bit I did learn from them is that they did not believe in the idea at all and were quite unwilling to understand what I had in mind. I didn’t feel it was my job to convince an architect to consider something different so that I could reward him with my money. It was a long shot that my constraints could be met anyway, and I decided that I had spent enough time and trouble on solar heating for this go-round.

Perhaps in the future, at a different place, this will be workable. I now have a lot of knowledge and ideas if I ever do that. For now, I will replace my heat pump.