When the Pottstown PA UU church was built, one part of the plan
was a sunspace on the south wall, which hasn't been built yet...

The main room is 44'x48'x16' tall. The 48' east and west walls slope in 4'
as they rise to 8'. The ceiling has a 4'x48' north-south horizontal strip.
The south wall includes 4 sliding glass doors D, each about 6'x8', with
no eyebrows for summer shading.

Here's a flattened view from above, viewed in a fixed font like Courier:

. ---------------------- . --
| \ | 430 ft^2 | / | 4'
......| \ |----------------------| / | --
. | |\ |d | /| |
. | D | \ | 860 ft^2 | / | |
D | | \ |d | / | |
. f | | \| |/ | | |
. u | D | |----------------------| | |
--S . t | | |4' 192 ft^2 |160 |320 | 36'
. u | D | |----------------------|ft^2|ft^2|
. r | | /| |\ | | |
D e | | / |d 860 ft^2 | \ | |
. | D | / | | \ | |
. | |/ |d | \| |
......| / |----------------------| \ | --
| / | 430 ft^2 | \ | 4'
. ---------------------- . --

| 12' | 8' | 8' | - 48' - | 8' | 8' |

We could collect heat with a new 36'x8'x8'-tall sunspace on the south wall
(left above) with 2 American Craftsman 6068-2 6'x80" U0.48 glass patio doors
($269 each at Home Depot) with 63% transmission and 12 4'x8' clear flat U0.5
polycarbonate panels (about $100 each) with 80% solar transmission and a $300
clear corrugated Dynaglas R1 polycarbonate roof with 90% transmission, with
80% shadecloth under 50% of the roof to shade existing doors in summertime.
Vents in the upper part of the sunspace and thermal mass in the crawlspace
could naturally cool the church in summertime, as previously envisioned.

R20 walls and ceiling with 3540ft^2/R20 = 177 Btu/h-F plus R2 doors with
192ft^2/R2 = 96 make the room conductance to outdoors 273 Btu/h-F, including
10 for the ceiling strip, made shiny to keep the room cooler. On an average
January day at 50 F, the room needs (50F-30F)273 = 5460 Btu/h, or 131K Btu,
eg 131K/6h = 21.8K Btu/h of 90 F sunspace air collected over 6 hours at
1000 cfm, with a 70 F thermal mass C with lots of surface.

Storing heat for 5 cloudy days, (70-50)C = 5x131K makes C = 32750 Btu/F,
eg 525 ft^3 (5") of water in 8 4'x40' $20 greenhouse poly film ducts laid
flat in the crawlspace... 131K Btu of room heat and a sunspace gain of
0.8x448ft^2x1000 = 358K Btu and a 6h(90-30)448ft^2xU0.5 = 80.6K Btu loss to
the outdoors leaves 147K Btu of surplus heat for the rest of the building.

A car radiator near the top of the sunspace might store heat in a 140 F
4'x8'x3'-tall plywood tank lined with a single folded piece of EPDM rubber,
with a $60 300'x1" PE black pressurized plastic pipe coil to make hot water
for sinks and a quick warmup when the room is occupied, with subsequent
venting, since 50 people make about 15K Btu/h, if they are not asleep :-)

On an average day, sunspace air could flow north under the ceiling and down
to the crawlspace and back south through the crawlspace into the sunspace.
At night, the existing furnace blower could pull room air down through
a vertical duct in the sunspace and north through the crawlspace and push
it back into the room from existing registers near the top of the north wall.
We could quickly warm the room to 70 F on Sunday mornings by pumping tank
water up through the radiator and moving room air up through the vertical
duct without heating the crawlspace mass.

We could have 100% solar heat in December with 100' of 30" crawlspace duct,
according to this simple simulation using NREL's Phila hourly weather data
for a Typical Meteorological Year (TMY2):

10 SCREEN 9:KEY OFF:CLS
20 DAYSTART=10'display start time (days)
30 DS=DAYSTART*24'display start time (hours)
40 DAYEND=30'display end time (days)
50 DE=DAYEND*24'display end time (hours)
60 RANGE=DE-DS'display range (hours)
70 TMIN=10:TMAX=100'temp display range (F)
80 LINE (0,0)-(639,349),,B:XDF=640/RANGE:YDF=349/(TMAX-TMIN)
90 FOR TR=TMIN TO TMAX STEP 10'temp ref lines
100 LINE (0,349-YDF*(TR-10))-(639,349-YDF*(TR-10)):NEXT
110 GC=273'church conductance (Btu/h-F)
120 SSA=448'sunspace glazing area (ft^2)
130 SSU=.5'glazing U-value (Btu/h-F-ft^2)
140 SSG=SSA*SSU'sunspace conductance (Btu/h-F)
150 SST=.8'glazing solar transmission (fraction)
160 CFM=1000'sunspace fan cfm
170 LD=100'crawlspace duct length (ft)
180 WD=4'crawlspace duct width (ft)
190 AD=LD*WD'duct heat transfer area (ft^2)
200 GD=1.5*AD'duct conductance (Btu/h-F)
210 DW=6'water depth (inches)
220 VD=LD*WD*DW/12'crawlspace water volume (ft^3)
230 CC=VD*62.33'crawlspace capacitance (Btu/F)
240 SER=1/SSG+1/CFM+1/GD'sunspace equivalent resistance (F-h/Btu)
250 TR=50'constant church temp (F)
260 TC=95'initialize crawlspace temp (F)
270 TCMIN=200'initialize min crawlspace temp (F)
280 OPEN "ecayear" FOR INPUT AS #1:LINE INPUT#1,H$
290 FOR H=1 TO 8760'hours of typical (TMY2) year
300 INPUT#1,MONTH,DAY,HOUR,TDB,WIND,TDP,IGLOH,SS,WS,NS ,ES
310 Q=-(TR-TDB)*GC'church heat loss (Btu)
320 SSGAIN=SST*SSA*SS'sunspace solar gain (Btu)
330 TSE=TDB+SSGAIN/SSG'Thevenin equivalent SS temp (F)
340 IF TSETC THEN Q=Q+(TSE-TC)/SER'add sunspace gain (Btu)
350 TC=TC+Q/CC'new crawlspace temp (F)
360 IF TC100 THEN TC=100'limit upper crawlspace temp (F)
370 IF TCTCMIN THEN TCMIN=TC:HMIN=H
380 PSET(XDF*(H-DS),349-YDF*(TDB-10))'plot outdoor temp (F)
390 PSET(XDF*(H-DS),349-YDF*(TC-10))'plot crawlspace temp (F)
400 IF DAY=1 AND HOUR=.5 THEN LINE (XDF*(H-DS),349)-(XDF*(H-DS),345)'months
410 NEXT H
420 TCL=TC'end of year crawlspace temp (F)
430 CLOSE #1
440 PRINT CC;HMIN;TCMIN,TCL
450 LINE (XDF*(HMIN-DS),100)-(XDF*(HMIN-DS),0)'mark hmin

crawlspace yearly min year end
capacitance time temp temp

12466 Btu/F 848 h 61.9 F 93.60823 F

The crawlspace water temp drops to about 62 F at 8 AM on 2/4.

Nick

On Jan 10, 4:56 am, wrote:

A car radiator near the top of the sunspace might store heat in a 140
F
4'x8'x3'-tall plywood tank lined with a single folded piece of EPDM
rubber,
with a $60 300'x1" PE black pressurized plastic pipe coil to make hot
water

Would a copper coil not be much more effective, high pressure PE must
have a thick wall, that does not help heat exchange.

Probably 30' of copper would work better, yes it would cost more, but
would improve collection efficiency and produce greater output!

southsidedelite wrote:

A car radiator near the top of the sunspace might store heat in a 140 F
4'x8'x3'-tall plywood tank lined with a single folded piece of EPDM rubber,
with a $60 300'x1" PE black pressurized plastic pipe coil to make hot
water

Would a copper coil not be much more effective


I don't think so.

high pressure PE must have a thick wall, that does not help heat exchange.

I suspect that the thin wall thickness and material conductances are much
higher than the still water film conductances, with a layer of crud on
the outside, and the pipe holds 13 gallons of water which can heat well
between hot water usage bursts of 13 gallons or less.

Nick