What is Passive Solar Heating

Passive solar heating might sound like a hugely technical heating system that would leave our minds boggled and our heads in a spin if it were explained to us. Actually, it is the most easily understood and most obvious form of solar heating known to us all. Whenever you sit by a window while the sun shines through, you can feel at first hand the effects of passive solar heating – quite simply, it gets hot there, doesn’t it!

Critically, passive solar heating is a form of converting sunlight to heat without any moving parts in the system. When it comes to converting sunlight to energy, the whole concept is that a solar collector or solar panel absorbs the sun’s rays and converts it to energy – that energy is often heat. With passive solar heating, the entire building is the collector, with strategically placed windows ensuring that the maximum amount of sunlight is absorbed by inbuilt items like walls and floors.

There are key factors to consider when looking at passive solar heating. Firstly, the position of the house is important, with windows facing towards the equator. That means in the northern hemisphere, houses face south; in the southern hemisphere, houses face north. Secondly, the window-to-floor area ratio is important with windows occupying an area the equivalent of 8% that of the floor ideal. Thirdly, insulation is hugely important with multi-glazing windows, wall insulation and air-tight construction aiding highly efficient heat retention.

There are three main passive solar heating designs in a building: direct gain; indirect gain; and isolated gain.

Direct gain designs are the simplest with sunlight converted to thermal energy and the walls and floors of a building the solar collectors. When night brings colder temperatures, the cores of the walls and floors will radiate heat back into the room, thereby heating the room.

Indirect gain designs use the same concepts of solar collection in partnership with the physical process of convection, or the natural circulation of air. Instead of a room being heated directly by the radiation of heat from walls and floor, a specially constructed wall containing masonry or water, intercepts the sunlight. During the day, naturally heated air circulates the room but at night the stored heat in the wall radiates to heat the room. Vents allow the air to circulate through the wall, while the space between the window and wall can reach temperatures of 100F. At night, the vents are closed to keep the warm air in the room.

Isolated gain design uses a flat-plate solar panel to collect the sunlight’s energy, then transports that energy by air or liquid (water) to a storage area in the building. The fluid is not pushed mechanically (that would make it an active system) but by the power of convection. The heated air or liquid displaces the cold air or liquid through the collector and so the system circulates naturally.

systems are widely regarded as the most cost-effective forms of heating a building, with direct gain designs the most popular. The fact that the solar collectors are part of the house, and the windows used to intensify sunlight are part of the structure, means there is little extra cost. Isolated and indirect gains require some extra construction but still the systems remain highly cost-effective.

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