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.

“We talked about how we could use that to our benefit, when we are building our own houses,” said Zeller. “We learned how we can take advantage of the sun’s energy.”

In addition to money for building the houses, the grant provided for the purchase of Palm Pilots for data collection. Each group of students learned how to collect and graph data to show how the variables of insulation, orientation, the number of windows, and outside temperature affected the interior temperature of each house. Even in February, one of the houses topped 100 degrees for an interior temperature.

“The Palm Pilots also helped to expose the students to some different technology,” said Zeller.

In addition to learning about passive solar and data collection, the students learned about traditional construction techniques. Zack Schnack and Trevor Lemos were first to complete their model house. The rumor around the class was that they were first because they only had two windows, but Schnack and Lemos claim that isn’t true.

“No, because we beat them to the window part, too,” said Schnack, when asked if the rumor was true.

Schnack said that he learned about house framing and that if you face the windows away from the sun, the house stays a lot cooler. “Ours is like ten degrees cooler than everybody’s,” said Schnack.

”We just used a single layer of insulation, and two windows. Mostly the windows are facing away,” said Lemos when asked what was different about their house from the others.

David Wilm, Kevin Etchison, and Will Hammond formed another building team. Wilm said he learned, “some pretty nifty little tricks” from building their model house.

“I’m a semi-pro painter…for hiring. And, I learned about angles,” said Wilm.

Zeller says that the plan is to sell the houses after the project is completed in April. The money will be put back into the program at Weed High School. Zeller figures that most people who purchase the model homes will use them for dog houses—Palm Pilots not included.