Heating Your Home With The Sun

The idea of heating your home with the sun is hardly new; humankind has used the sun as a source of essential light and warmth since the dawn of time. However, the methods used even a few generations ago have been completely transformed with the use of modern technology.

Nowadays, modern methods of using solar energy to heat the home go well beyond simple windows.

In the 1920s some municipalities used large storage tanks that were heated by the sun to supply homes with hot water. However, the cost of these applications was too expensive to compete with the much lower unit cost of electricity and gas. Old ideas are often revived however with an added twist and the use of solar power to provide hot water has again been in use for the last thirty years or more.

Nowadays, modern methods of using solar energy to heat the home go well beyond simple windows. Simply allowing sunlight to stream into a window is insufficient as it often leads to areas of the home being too bright. Furthermore this method of using solar power results in hot spots in some areas while others receive too little heat.

Modern solar heating systems however, are designed to redirect solar energy to provide an even, comfortable temperature throughout the house. Some of these systems use water or a salt water mixture. The tubes and channels that contain the liquid sometimes lie in small parabolic mirror-type troughs that concentrate the sun’s rays to raise the water temperature. Many solar water heating systems work this way; the same technology can be adapted to supply heat to a home.

Most water systems are designed to prevent heat from escaping as this means that the water doesn’t have to be continually reheated – thus hot water is available on demand. In home heating systems this idea is reversed and some of the heat is allowed to escape.

In one application, a series of tubes runs under wooden, clay or other flooring materials. The system is designed in such a way as to allow the heat to gradually flow through the flooring and rise up into the air to provide a comfortable interior environment.

Clever designers have taken the idea one step further. They know that water is not the only common fluid in our environment – air is also a fluid (as distinct from a liquid) in scientific terms. What this means is that it has some of the properties of a liquid in that it flows easily. Filling these tubes with air or some other gas makes it possible to absorb and deposit heat where it is needed. More importantly if a leak occurs there is no major damage to the home as the gas is not a liquid.

These systems aren’t as dense as liquid systems which means they are less efficient when it comes to storing heat on the other hand you would not have to endure the cost of major repairs in case something goes wrong. If the system springs a leak, all that is needed is to patch it or replace a small section – a far less expensive operation than replacing flooring or walls after a water leak.

Such problems are not that rare; in climates where the weather becomes quite cold in the winter, the water inside pipes will sometimes freeze and the result is a broken pipe. At the same time there are many cold days where there is a good deal of sunshine that can be used in a solar heating system. These are just a few of the options available for use in the home.