David Taylor

EDGI 541
4/20/2015
Use The Sun To Lower Your Heating Bills
In looking for a topic related to sustainability to utilize in the creation of a digital artifact for
EDGI 541 - Special Issues in Sustainability, I chose to look at simple and inexpensive ways
that solar energy can be harnessed to supplement traditional home heating energy sources.
It has long been my understanding that one of the most cumbersome barriers to
sustainability is inconvenience. As a student in high school I watched as a recycling
program was built. At first, there were only a few bins here and there, and they were not
necessarily placed in the most convenient areas, so very few students were recycling. As
time went on, bins were placed in every classroom, next to the trash cans, and so it was
convenient for students to recycle. This caused a huge increase in recycling, all because
the sustainable option was made to be as convenient as the unsustainable option.
Solar energy is currently an alternative energy that is underutilized, largely due to
inconvenience. Some of the inconveniences encountered are: the cost is too high,
installation is expensive to pay for and difficult or impossible to do by yourself, and the
payback period is longer than most people care to withstand. For this reason, I hope to
utilize this digital artifact to spread awareness about some of the ways that solar energy can
be utilized without the large investment or difficult installation, and with little to no payback
period.
In doing some background research, I was interested to learn that a 2009 Residential
Energy Consumption Survey from the U.S. Energy Information Administration found that
41.5% of energy consumption in homes is due to space heating. Additionally, 17.7% is due
to water heating. Combined, space heating and water heating demands account for 59.2%
of total energy consumption in homes. For that reason, I focused on inexpensive methods
of using free solar energy to help negate some of this large heating demand on energy
sources.
In the artifact, I saw that I was essentially trying to present two main categories of
information, both with the same goal of reducing traditional energy consumption via solar
methods. For that reason, I separated the digital artifact into two basic collections of
resources - those regarding passive solar principles in home heating (which essentially
require little to no effort and cost), and those regarding more active forms of solar
principles (which are essentially tutorials and instructional materials on how to build solar
heat collectors at little to no cost, but require some effort). These two collections of
resources can be identified in the digital artifact as those clustered around Use The Sun To
Heat Your Home and Build Your Own Solar Heat Collector From Recycled Materials,
respectively.

Use The Sun To Heat Your Home

In this collection of resources, the viewer will find an article from Off The Grid News on
Passive Solar Heating. In the article, the author has a lot of great information on how to
convert a non-solar house into a Passive Solar house which will require investment, but in
general the article will give the reader a good base for thinking about how to make their
home more Passive Solar friendly without any investment (i.e. open curtains in Southern
facing windows in the Winter, etc). Additionally, the viewer will find other information in the
digital archive which include a Passive Solar diagram and example, as well as an
educational video for those who want to learn more about Passive Solar and Active Solar
systems.
Build Your Own Solar Heat Collector From Recycled Materials
In this collection of resources, the viewer will find different instructions in different media
formats that will aid in the creation of a solar hot air collector made out of pop cans and a
solar hot water heater made from recycled materials. Additionally, the viewer will find a
video about an interesting application in Brazil that uses recycled plastic bottles to heat
water. This video is extremely interesting because the apparatus uses a principle called
thermosyphoning which utilizes the natural convection of water that is unevenly heated in
order to cycle water through the system. Although it isnt a tutorial of how to build the
system, the video is still illuminating and shows just how many applications there are for
capturing solar energy in low-tech ways.
Overall, it is my hope that this digital artifact will not only help to show the viewers how to
use the sun to lower their heating bills, but will help to educate the viewers on the many
ways in which sustainability can be made convenient (and fun, if you enjoy do-it-yourself
projects). Even beyond those concepts, it is additionally my hope that the impact of using
recyclable materials in projects that reduce energy consumption can be realized. Keeping
recyclable materials out of the landfills (or at the very least increasing the lifespan of the
material before it is recycled, which requires energy), while also creating something that
allows an individual to use less energy from fossil fuel sources, means convenient lowcost/no-cost raw material and additional energy savings; all of which add up to convenient
and effective sustainability.