WEED – The subject is passive solar power, but Weed High School shop teacher Damon Zeller and his construction class students aren’t passive about learning. They could have learned from a book, but instead Zeller and science teacher Mike Gilmore secured a grant from British Petroleum to build model houses, and study how differing amounts of windows and insulation, as well as orientation to the sun affect the temperature in the various house designs.

“The project was all about looking at how passive solar energy, the sun’s energy, could be warming your house. We have six model houses, and in each one of those models there’s something different,” said Zeller. “Some have double insulation. Some have no insulation, or one layer of insulation. Some have two windows, and some have five windows. Some are oriented towards the north, and some are oriented towards the south. We are looking at how all of that affects the temperature in the houses.”

What Zeller and his students discovered was that if you have more windows on a house and a southern exposure it’s going to heat up more. If oriented towards the north with no sunlight coming into the house, the house stays much cooler. (more…)