Everything Solar Forum

The PBS series American Experience recently had an episode on Maria Telkes called The Sun Queen. It is worth watching. She designed one of the first modern solar homes (the 1948 Dover, MA house) that was actually lived in. They showed a bit of vintage film of the house being built, and interviewed the child (now an old man) who lived there with his parents. Although problems developed later, the house was 100% heated by solar for the first two winters. Wish my experiments worked so well! She was a true pioneer.

Thank you so much for sharing, Keith! What this the video you watched? https://www.pbs.org/video/the-sun-queen-fyx4ty/

Ella,
   That's the one. Thanks for posting the link.

     Maria was ahead of her time in so many ways. She designed the Dover house in 1948 to be 100% solar when few, if any, others thought that to be possible. 30 years later, Richard Levine said, "The turning point will be when we change our commitment from an add­-on, booster mentality to a 100% solar sensibility." Pretty sure he knew what Maria had accomplished. She was still a prominent solar researcher. He was just trying to get others to live up to her example.

Keith

The salts were just not stable, try as they may. One of the things around today, but only at the lab level, is Phase Change Drywall. It uses wax in PCM micro capsules to hold heat in phase, increasing the heat capacity of the interior building envelope. In theory seems like a good idea but of course for any thermal transfer to occur, a temp differential must be had at two points, acquire and release. But given the large exchange surface, the differential can be small with a large amount of heat transferred.

High R initial building still makes the most sense for dollar investment. If you don't loose it or gain it into the structure, all this really drops away. Much like the answer to global warming is simply not to put CO2 there in the first place.

All of these things being known and available today, are resisted because there is no recurring revenue stream. Prior to global warming, Capitalism could work unfettered because there were no consequences for the species from other vectors, other than Thermonuclear suicide. Global warming now is a non negotiable end, no bargaining, no appeasement possible. Change or die, albeit slowly.

Steve,
   Thanks for sharing the story of Maria at UD and congratulations on IED's 51st birthday coming up soon! What is the status of Solar One today? What solar systems are in operation and is it still being used for research?

     From the pictures, it looks like Solar One has 2x4 walls, so not super-insulated. Norm Saunders (following others, notably the U of Illinois Lo-Cal House and the Saskatchewan Conservation House) later developed three rules:

          1. Super-insulate
          2. Harvest as much solar as you can
          3. Install as much thermal mass as you can afford

     Rule #1 works in the absence of the other two, because it can save a lot of heating and cooling energy by itself. However, it can't practically save it all. Internal heat gains provide at most a small fraction (1/3 for January even in my super-insulated house) of the heating needs. Insulating enough for internal heat gains to provide all the heating needs would be over the top in most climates.

     If Rule #1 is followed to modern standards of super-insulation, then Rules #2 and 3 can be modified to read:

          Rule 2. Harvest just enough solar
          Rule 3. Install at least enough thermal mass

     A sufficient amount of solar can be gained from a solar aperture as little as 5% of the floor area. More is not necessarily better, because more windows contribute to higher losses. The thermal mass needed is also smaller than Maria and Norm used, though extra only improves the damping of temperature swings.

     It seems Maria used the original Rules #2 and 3, without Rule #1. When the Glauber's salt was working, the strategy was nonetheless effective. FWIW, I simulated the Dover house with water storage, and its performance was still respectable, but there were times with TMY3 data that indoor temperature was uncomfortable. With the more severe storms that can happen with real weather, performance was undoubtedly worse.

     It is easy for us to look back over 70 years later and see improvements that could have been made, but I remain inspired by Marias "damn the torpedoes, let's go for 100%" attitude!