Passive Solar Heating & Cooling Conference &'Workshop, May 18-20, 1976, Albuquerque, NM. b L 1 . h y ee o nson EVERYONE WAS THERE: From all reports, this was an excellent conference. With few exceptions, any9ne who was known to have done significant work in passiv~ solar design was among the 40 main speakers and a diverse audience of over 700 enthusiasts, from straight "nuts •and bolts only, please" engineers to bearded, backpacked longhairs searching for the next eco-spiritual adventure, asked questions, and 75 strong-willed vegetarians ate no meat.·One wonders whether ERDA will get the message and give more attention and financial support to passive solar. This field seems an excellent candidate for the funding, likely soon_to be removed from the breeder reactor program. For it should be embarrassingly obvious to politicians, if not to NERDA (the Nuclear, or NonEnergy', ERDA), that the multiplier effect of energy conservation, and passive and active solar design in energy and resource savings and the generation of employment for millions of Americans, rather than just a high-priced handful of nuclear engineers, is what this country needs. More Americans daily _are realizing that trying to heat one's home to 68° F. with electricity generated by burning uranium at 10,000° F. in a nuclear fission reactor is the thermodynamic equivalent of trying to cut butter with a chainsaw. MOTHER HAS LEFT US PLENTY OF SLACK: There were many presentations illustrating that we can live very comfortably by setting up situations in which Nature can take care of us. According to Prof. Ralph Knowles, New Mexico's cliff-and pueblo-dwelling Indians heated themselves so well at Pueblo Bonita, Mesa Verde and Mesa Acama that their ruins teach us much about building orientation, thermal lag, and three-dimensional solar zoning: Doµg Balcomb's work in simulating passiv,e solar-designed buildings concluded that "perfect" con~rol of night window shutters via electronic/mechanical systems sensing the absence of sunlight gave only a 1 % improvement in _ efficiency over the religious application of human energy pulling the shutters open at sunrise 'and closing them at sunset a la Steve Baer's children. , Similarly, active solar heating systems do not lose much solar radiation if the tilt of panels is off normal by + 10° or if the orientation is + 10° from ,the optimum southwest~rly direction. Nature seems to have given us frail humans plenty of slack to work with and plenty of hints on what to do with July _1976 RAIN Page 1 7 Wijser Always Sunshine? i.. ,u rl 0 If, C -. ., - ,3&~··; i ..._~1·:'f-~ii\ THERM KASS . / . , : ,::fuJJli n. •~~n~½rrrlltl[~J:1iirI~~i{f1 • ·g it all. She whispered to the early South- Conference proceedings will be available west Indians and to philos9pher-tinker- by July 1976 from: ers like Baer, Peter Van Dresser, Harold National Technical Information Service Hay and Norman Saunders about passive U.S. Dept. of Commerce sol~r heating and cooling. Could Nature, 5285 Port Royal Rd. . via the Sun, also be telling us that the Springfield, VA 22151 proper "slack" distance between nuclear reactors and human habitats should be 93,800,000 miles? IMPOVERISHED TINKERERS AND SINECURED THEORETICIANS: New Mexico has a unique blend of early • pioneers, who learned by experience •enough to now figure passive solar design out by intuition and back-of-theenvelope calculations, and self-retreaded nuclear scientists who are into supplying precise numbers, most of which lends the well-deserved aura of incredible wisdom to the tinkerers. Fortunately, the theoreticians are enthusiastic about the sun and about having a new, as yet un-equationed and un-numbered territory in which the mind can. pla·y. And these two, the tinkerers ·an:d the theoreticians, realizing the mutual aid they receive from the other, get along well enough to form one of the most vital solar societies in the nation. In New Mexico, even the most academic and engineering-oriented passive ~olar enthusiasts are still experimenters at heart, the white shirt-tie-suit Rube Goldberg/ Gyro Gearloose types iri national research labs. The role of the 1-ab boys is to .get the numbers so together that the neophyte can do passive solar buildings via cookbook reci,pes; that of the tinkerers is to keep the theoreticians honest and on _the track of the relevant problems. The pioneers, with their Naturetouched visions, are 6ur guides on the path to the solar society. (LJ) Papers available separately include: "Climate and Site: Influence on Passive 'Solar Building Design," by Michael Holtz from: AIA Research Corp., 1735 New York Ave., N.W. Washington, DC 20006 \ "Simulation Analysis of Passive SolarHeated Buildings," LA-UR-76-89, by •Doug Balcomb, Jim Hedstrom Los Alamos Scientific Lab . Solar Energy Lab Mail Stop 571 Los Alamos, NM 87544 "Research Evaluation of a System of Natural Architecture," NTIS PB 243-498, by Ken Haggard, on' Harold Hay's • 1 Atascadero, California SKYTHERM house ' "Thermal Controls to Regulate Solar Heat into Buildings/' NTIS PB 246-364, by Shawn Buckley, MIT. An excellent, 4-page annotated bibliography, the "Climatic Data Reference List," was compiled for the conference by and is available for business-sized SASE from: Technology Applications Center (TCA . (TAC) University of New Mexico Albuquerque, NM 87131 Ask for their publications list, which includes many solar items. (LJ)
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