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A continuing blog about Zomework's Research & Development

The Dave House North Pulls Ahead

The Dave House North Pulls Ahead
2008-02-15  

The Dave House North is still charging over the course of this graph, as it starts almost even with the Dave House South and ends up almost 3 oF warmer. Even though the sol-air temperature decreased as the week went on, the ambient temperature still rose and so the temperatures in the buildings also rose slightly. This may be due to the fact that the ambient temperature stayed above 40 oF on the night of the 13th. So far, it looks as if the 4 selective surface absorbers are still charging the Dave House North and could easily boost it above the Andy Shack’s day time temperature. And the improved building envelope and extra thermal mass will keep the Dave House North significantly warmer during the night.

Dave House North Charging

Dave House North Charging
2008-02-12  

Since the Dave House North has been charging since late in the afternoon on the 7th, it is catching up to the Dave House South. It is hard to directly compare the time it took both buildings to charge up since the Dave House South had cloudy weather when it first started charging. However, the Dave House North caught up in 3 days and in the next set of graphs, it should over take the Dave House South. The Andy Shack has been doing misleadingly well with all of the sunny weather and warmer outside temperatures, but at the first return of cold, it will hemorrhage heat while the Dave Houses will hold onto their heat. The small spike in the Dave House graphs is from the morning sun, which is now higher in the sky as we move towards the spring equinox. I made white shades to block this effect from future graphs.

Dave House North Connected to Absorbers

Dave House North Connected to Absorbers
2008-02-12  

The night of February 5th was the first time the Dave House South fell into the upper 50s since it began heating. That night was the coldest of the season and was preceded by a cold and mostly cloudy day. In fact, the day before that was also cloudy with only intermittent sun, despite warmer ambient temperatures. The Andy Shack dropped into the mid-40s that same night, but both buildings were still significantly warmer than the outdoors. The 6th saw a return to sunnier, warmer weather and so both buildings began to recover right away from the low temperatures. Although the Dave House North was included on this graph, its heating system wasn’t completed until the afternoon before the probes were readout so not much happened to it on this graph. However, when it was filled, the hose water was roughly 55 oF and so the building got a slight boost in temperature from the added thermal mass and energy.

Another Dry vs. Wet Panel Comparison

Another Dry vs. Wet Panel Comparison
2008-02-12  

This graph shows the same things as the previous comparison between the middle Dave House South panel and the stagnating office panel.

More Header Graphs for the Absorbers

More Header Graphs for the Absorbers
2008-02-12  

The similarity of the temperatures of the two panel headers is good since the panels should be behaving similarly and contributing an equal amount of heat to the overhead storage mass. Again, I am not sure why the lower headers suddenly increase in temperature during the middle of the night. A similar, though less extreme, drop in the upper headers occurs at around the same time, so perhaps the heat collected during the previous day doesn’t finish conducting through the storage tanks until the late night. However, this did not happen on the night of the 2nd, so something else could be going on.