Maine Permaculture

We had a great presentation at the Permaculture Meetup last night about solar space heating (and adding solar components to your home in general).  Rob Taisey from Assured Solar Energy in North Yarmouth was our speaker and he has been doing this for quite a while.

I have to admit that I haven’t given as much thought to solar space heating in this way (essentially adding an “appliance”) compared to solar hot water or PV.  We are planning to add an attached passive solar greenhouse to our home at some point, which will “flow” warm air into the living space.  We have also thought about putting a small solar vestibule on our southwest wall to harvest the incredible afternoon winter sun’s warmth into our living room. 

Solar hot air collectors do essentially the same thing, but in a pre-built package that you can simply install.  They use passive solar technology to heat the air and optional fans & ducting direct that warmed air into the living space. It is, in many ways, the same concept as that you would find in a trombe  wall/window setup.  Not alot of moving parts and not as “sexy” as other solar technologies, so it doesn’t get quite as much attention.  But we should all be looking at ways to harvest as much sun as possible.