Green Engineering E-Design 100 Section 020 Group 5: The Lemons Submitted to Professor Smita Bharti (missing picture) By: Bo Hui, 19980119bo@gmail.com Adel Rizk, adelrizk1998@gmail.com Dylan Dirkmaat ddirkmaat@yahoo.com and Shannon U ushannon97@gmail.com 1-Descriptive Image of the house:
Wood flooring on top of thermal mass South facing wall with big windows and solar panels along the roof 2-Abstract: This Experiment which is to measure the temperature change of our model home using a heat lamp as the sun was conducted on Monday October 10, 2016. Humans are destroying the environment at a rate unprecedented in over 10,000 years according to Vice News. Therefore the main objective of this was to analyze our home under Winter like conditions simulated in our very own State College. We wanted to retain as much heat as possible from morning to night while using energy efficient designs. Our data revealed our house to be successful in retaining heat over releasing.
3-Introduction: After taking the carbon footprint calculator, as a class we realized the amount of damage we are doing to the Earth. The way most of us live is tremendously destructive towards nature, the way we find our good, to the way we create and use our devices. For these reasons, we decide to come up with ideas on how to best create a house that could fit an average consumer s needs and desires yet still be energy efficient. This report will display our design process along with our experiment results and analysis. 4-Customer Needs/ Target Specifications: We were given a family of four to work with, so we decided to choose a clientele of young 4 person families that preferably had two siblings with the same gender, however our house was fit for any family less than 4 people. Before development our goal was to create an affordable traditional looking home that had a net-zero energy concept. Our prioritized customer need was the cost of the home. Because the family was young we wanted to create and affordable house, that was worth the investment in the long run. Although cost was a priority, we did not want to miss out on the traditional aspects all homeowners have such as washing machines, appliances,and heating/cooling. 5-External Research: In order to build our house, we didn t limit ourselves with in class discussions and work. In fact, as a team, we met several times a week at the lab to discuss many different ways to approach our final project. We also search the web to find different house modules that might be helpful to build build our actual house. In addition to that, every team member searched for good and cheap material to use (example: solar panels) for our house to be as effective as possible while being affordable. We went online to see what material is best for our home to stay sustainable, for better heat retention, as well as better efficiency. We then made sure that our home is what a young family of four is looking for by assembling all the customer needs to build The perfect house. In order to do so, we went and asked the students at Penn State what they would want in a house, since they represent a young generation. Another factor that helped us build our house was our visit to the Morningstar home, here in State College. This zero energy house set that bar high for us, which motivated us to build a better house. We looked at the different ways the house managed to retain heat and manage overheating( Waffle like curtains/ water filled jars/ radiant floor heating system/ outdoor racks used as shutters and shelves). Moreover, we saw how the air flows easily in the house, since the house has open space with moving walls for more privacy. The use of solar panels showed us that they can be used for different purposes (Heating/ electric charging for the car). We can definitely say that the Morningstar home helped us build our very own house.
6-Concept Generation: The first house we considered was one close to my hometown. The climate in Philadelphia is almost identical to the one in State College which is why we started here. This was a single story home that was intended for 2-4 occupants. It consisted of 3 bedroom and 2.5 bathrooms. Most of the heating system was by solar power or high grade insulation, therefore the main heating fuel was through direct gain. The aspects we liked about this house was the one story feature of it, and the modern look, however we were not interested in the way the house retrieved heat. We were looking for mostly passive solar houses due to the nature of the assignment, so we moved on to the next house. The second house we chose was also locating in Philadelphia, but it contained a more traditional home look. This home was two stories with an optimum amount of four people. It was comprised of 3 bedrooms and 1.5 bathrooms. The main type of heating was threw controlled layers meaning that there were many layers within the walls to serve different purposes. Through intense insulation and direct gain, the house was able to maintain a comfortable temperature. The aspects we like from this house was the traditional look of the home along with the heavy insulation to keep out the cold.
The last house we chose was located in Perkiomen Valley, Pennsylvania, which was also close to where I lived. This house contained two stories with two main bedrooms. The main type of heating in this house was geothermal along with propane and passive solar. It was meant for a 3-4 person family. This is one of our favorite houses because of the passive solar aspect. We wanted to gain as much heat naturally from the sun while saving the energy gain from the solar panels for different purposes. 7-Other Considerations: We decided to make skylights in the real house after testing our model for extra passive solar heat, and for natural light during the day. We also decided from picture three that we would have a loft area in the house that would have a ceiling fan at the top of the house that could expel heat in the summer through the top windows. Although washers and dryers are staple in any family, we decided to have both, however to also have many drying lines outside of the house to save energy in the summer by using passive solar to dry the clothes. We figured that the consumer would most likely invest in an electric car rather than a gas car due to the nature of the house, so we added a solar paneled driveway where the car would have its own source of fuel from the sun that would recharge daily. One source of insulation that we thought of was to seal every window as loose windows are one of the main heat releasers. Another aesthetic addition to the house along with heat control would be the placement of trees. We decided to have big trees near each window to shade the windows from the heat in the summer while allowing sunlight to enter the house in the winter when the tree no longer has any leaves.
8-Model: The outside walls of our model were made of all foam board. We used this material because it was inexpensive, easy to work with, and a good insulator. This last reason was most important to our team, we wanted to create a model that would retain the most amount of heat, and the foam board was the first step in doing that. Along those same lines, our inside walls were all covered in rubber to act as an even better layer of insulation. We found out through research that rubber is a very good insulator, and it was also made available to us when we started building. A passive solar feature we had was a dark flooring. This black felt flooring attracted and held heat from the heat lamp through the three massive windows, and then when the home was removed from heat, it slowly release the heat back into the house to keep it warm. Another passive solar feature we had was a roof overhang. This allows the home to block some vertical sunlight in the summer, which helps in keeping it cool. We also had a movable mass wall that was fixed upon a pivot point. This allowed us to open or close off the main room of the house. This is beneficial because we can make the room with the big windows much bigger or smaller if we needed to. In the summer, we would open that room up, which would help air flow better because it would be a bigger space to distribute heat. In the winter, we could close the room so that the heat we get from the sun would only have to heat a small area, as opposed to the huge room. A material that we didn't use was velcro to attach the room to the house. This was one of our original ideas, but we just didn't end up going through with it. This was a mistake because our roof didn t have a great seal, and the velcro would have helped give it that tight seal we were looking for. We saw another team use this velcro strategy effectively, and we really liked how it worked for them. List of material we used: 32 x 20 - inch ⅛ in foam core board Saran wrap 2sq ft thin rubber 2sq ft black fabric (felt) Hot glue and tacky glue Scotch tape Adhesive sealant Masking tape
9-3D Computer Model:
8-Conclusions: After testing our model we concluded that it was an effective design. Our initial temperature was 22 degrees Celsius and after 8 minutes under a heat lamp it rose to 28 degrees. We were pleased with this because it did gain a lot of heat through our passive solar features. Immediately after the first experiment, we put it in front of a fan for 7 minutes and found that it only dropped 4 degrees back down to 24 degrees Celsius. This means that overall in the experiment, our model home retained 2 degrees C of temperature. This showed us that our design was an effective model of a zero energy home. Even with the success of our model, we still acknowledge that improvements can be made. One improvement, which has to do with the nature of making a model, is that the roof and door were not completely sealed. Obviously, if we made a real house this would not be an issue, but with it being a model it was very difficult to seal it well. One way we could have improved this is by putting velcro between the roof and the house. We saw another group use this method, and we thought it was a really good idea. The main improvement we could have made was with the windows. We needed to have more windows on our model, and after reflecting our our results we decided that, if we were to do it over again, we should have put windows on the roof to allow sunlight in. This would have helped heat the house more. Along with more windows, we could have used better materials for the windows. Instead of using plastic wrap, a more effective insulator would have been actual glass. Even with the improvements we made, our group still feels that our model was a success. Location (city, state) House size (floor area in square feet) Number of floors Number of occupants Number of bedrooms State College, Pennsylvania 70 square inches One floor Family of four Two bedrooms Type of heating system (resistance, heat, pump, etc.) Size of photovoltaic system (KW) Solar water heater (yes or no) Type of windows Ventilation air heat recovery Yes Double-Hung windows (saran wrap) Yes
Total Cost ($)