Passive Floor Heating

Passive solar heating how to warm your home with the sun.

Passive floor heating.

Even if you put a floor covering on a concrete slab floor you will still get the temperature balancing effects of thermal mass as long as it is insulated below and therefore kept inside your building envelope. My question is about flooring. Darker colors are ideal for absorbing heat but within the confines of a. In passive solar building design windows walls and floors are made to collect store reflect and distribute solar energy in the form of heat in the winter and reject solar heat in the summer.

For thermal mass it has a concrete slab floor with insulation underneath. In addition the heat produced by the sun causes air movement that can be predictable in designed spaces. When sunlight strikes a building the building materials can reflect transmit or absorb the solar radiation. He suggests a stained concrete floor or tile.

I was planning on an engineered wood floor but my builder pointed out that this would prevent the sun from heating the slab. Conduction occurs when heat moves between two objects that are in direct contact with each other such as when a sun heated floor warms your bare feet. Passive solar heating is used in conjunction with passive shading which allows maximum winter solar gain and prevents summer overheating. Passive solar design refers to the use of the sun s energy for the heating and cooling of living spaces by exposure to the sun.

An aperture to let in the sun s warming rays a control device to keep them out in the summer an absorber surface to receive the rays without too much reflection thermal mass to store the heat until it s needed and a distribution system to move the heat to where it s. This is most simply achieved with northerly orientation of appropriate areas of glass and well designed eaves overhangs see orientation. This is called passive solar design because unlike active solar heating systems it does not involve the use of mechanical and electrical devices. What these experts do not realize is that in this kind of ice chest like home the insulated and thermally isolated 5 thick concrete slab.

Convection is heat transfer through a fluid such as air or water and passive solar homes often use convection to move air from warmer areas a sunspace for example into the rest of the house. When you re budgeting for passive heating the highest priorities should be including exposed thermal mass eg an insulated concrete slab floor in sunny areas well placed and sized windows and better insulation including improved window frames. Using the earth for passive heat because soil is far less willing to conduct heat than is air the temperature of the earth below the frost line remains comparatively constant throughout the year. I am building a home that will use a combination of a mini split and passive solar in the pacific northwest.

The key to designing a passive solar building is.