Energy Efficient Housing
Our driving question for this project was: How can we design a home that is comfortable in all conditions without the use of electricity? What is the most efficient way to heat and cool a home? We started off by investigating how to light houses without the use of light bulbs, and only using sunlight, during the day. Then we learned how to heat and cool things via water. After that we worked on figuring out how to build a house and where the best places would be around campus to build it. Then, we worked on all the details of making a solar home and made a presentation that we showed to contractors and engineers alike, as well as students, teachers, and other people. Finally a few sites were selected to build one building with all the ideas, all made possible with $5000 that PG&E gave us.
Project Components:
Project Components:
- Solar Water Heater: In this we had to make an insulated heater, that would recycle the same water, and get heated by the sun in a copper tubing. We took a jug and cut a small hole that would allow a plastic tube to come in and secured the tube inside the bottle. Then we insulated the bottle and put all that in a cardboard box. The plastic tube was connected to some copper tubing that is inserted inside an open box and the end of the copper tubing sticking out of the opposite end that it started in. What happens is you add water into the big bottle, and it travels through the plastic tubing, into the copper tubing, which, with the help of an improved, more insulated box, heats the water due to coppers extreme conductivity. Then the water pours out of the copper tubing at the end, and into a cup to be put back into the big jug and go through the process again. This contraption did in fact heat a bottle of water that we put into it. This wasn't extremely effective, but it was useful in seeing different ways to heat up a house without electricity
- Day Lighting and Design: Our next step was to design a 2000 square foot house that would light itself up in the day. We first designed a floor plan for the house and inserted windows, light shelves, and solar tubes. All of which will either bounce or allow let to shine into the house and light up the place. Then once we had that done we had to build a model out of cardboard and other materials and test it. We took a light bulb, which represented the sun, and moved it around our house at the angles it would be for winter and summer. We observed how much of each room in our house actually got lit up. This was a very helpful part for our project. It showed us just how much each window or light shelf or whatever lit up rooms and which one was better or worse. We all learned that regular windows and sky lights are really the way to get the most light in.
- Solar Angles: Since the Earth is on a 23.5 degree tilt, the angles of the sun will be different for different seasons and months of the year. During the summer, we are more tilted toward the sun, and therefore get more direct sunlight. During the winter, we are tilted away and get less sunlight. Here is a chart of the angles of the sun compared to the months of the year. We used this to figure out how much overhang we needed to block out certain amounts of sunlight during the summer and get more in the winter.
- Materials Testing: Next we had to find out what our materials would be to build the house. We first made a list of all the materials that we might want to use for any part of making the house. Then we got a piece of each material and tested to see how reflective and absorptive each material was. We measured the temperature of each material at different times within two hours. We found that darker materials absorbed heat very well, while lighter colored materials reflected heat very well.
- House Design: This was probably the longest, and hardest parts of the whole project. In this part we actually designed everything for the house. This included all the blue prints, all the materials, how much and how many, a 3D model, our key features, where it will be located, and other things. We took all of these components, put it onto a poster board, and made it into a professional presentation.
This is an image of our poster presentation with all of the components of our house. We put all the blueprints, materials, and location parts on it with the model off to the side. We also had spare blueprints for people to really look at, inspect, and appreciate. This was all a lot of work and we decided to go with a poster instead of a power-point because we didn't want to deal with technology issues along the way, since we were already a little behind with our project.
- Presentation Night: On March 12th, everyone presented their presentations to various parents, students, and engineers. It was a lot of fun presenting to all these people and made it even more enjoyable, only having to do it three times instead of the expected ten times. I got to see some great presentations while I was there too. On that night all the judges selected the house(s) that are the best .
- Solar Homes: Next we looked at why anyone would actually want to live or have a solar home. Solar homes are totally off the grid, meaning they don't use any electricity practically. This is really helpful for bills that add up each and every year. So, as a class we all looked up different ways that the Earth uses to get energy for things like heat and light bulbs. In general, we found that the ways we get electricity are usually in some way harmful. Here is where we put all the information we found: tinyurl.com/nbdz7r9
- Wind Turbines: The last part for our project was designing wind turbines. We all had to design a horizontal and a vertical wind turbine. My group experimented with different designs and went with the ones that proved to be the best. Out turbines hit between 1 and 2 volts when hit with a fan. What we learned from this is that horizontal wind turbines are by far better in producing energy from wind.
- Physics Concepts: Throughout this long project we learned a lot along the way. Here are some of the big things that we touched on:
- Conduction - the transfer of heat through a material
- Convection - the transfer of heat through a fluid
- Heat - a form of energy
- Thermal Conductivity - When heat travels from a warmer object to a colder object to put each object in equilibrium and thus have the same heat.
- Specific Heat - this pertains to how much heat an object can actually take in and hold, kind of like a sponge
- Archimedes' Principle - he stated that however much water an object displaces while submerged, is equal to the weight of the object
- Bernoulli's Principle - he said that if a fluid increases it's overall speed, then a decrease in pressure occurs or a decrease in its potential energy
- Boyle's Law - the principle that if a gas has an increase in volume, it's pressure decreases and vice-versa
Reflection: Firstly, congratulations on getting this far! This project was a really long, yet fun one. I learned a lot of building skills in this project. Especially when we had to research how to actually build a house. It was a huge learning process to really understand electricity, real life, and structures. My main task for the solar home was to get the materials dealt with. When I was doing it, it was interesting to see the prices of certain items. There were things that were really cheap and then things that I thought wouldn't be pricy were, like a front door. I also noticed when we did the day-lighting design bit that it took a lot of windows to really brighten up a room, so I'm glad we live in a day and age where light bulbs are abundant. In my group, nearer to the end, certain people starting slacking and talking to people in other groups more and more than actually getting work done. This frustrated me a lot, and I felt there wasn't a lot I could do to stop them from talking other than to get snappy at them. I could have dealt with the inactivity better than I did. I also did not work as hard as I usually do, letting myself get distracted. However, I did do a good job leading our group and assigning jobs that hopefully would get done. I also think I did a good job at communicating my dislikes about how our group was functioning at different times, as well as likes. All in all this was a really fun project and a great learning opportunity.