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Old 08-20-2020, 03:41 PM   #12 (permalink)
freebeard
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EV West campaigned at Bonneville and they partnered with someone who brought a trailer with a solar tracking system. Flatten the curve.

North-South oriented vacuum tubes silvered on the bottom don't require any tracking, for heat anyway. The thickness of masonry can be adjusted for the climate.

From another decade: www.bizjournals.com: Cloud goo inventor on a mission to save the world

Quote:
It is a boast that some might consider preposterous. "I have invented a product that has saved as much energy as 10 million people use, or two-tenths of one percent of the world's energy consumption."

But Albuquerque inventor Day Chahroudi's claim isn't the raving of a scientist gone mad. For Chahroudi, 60, is the inventor of Low-e, an insulating glaze that coats anywhere from 60 to 95 percent of the windows manufactured in America, and of which more than $3 billion worth has been sold. Popular Science magazine, in fact, has named Low-e-like insulating glazings one of the top 100 inventions of the past 1,000 years.
[snip]
The weather panel
Chahroudi has been working to make Low-e and Cloud Gel come together in a product that he says will change the way buildings are built. His product is called the Weather Panel, a one-inch-thick combination of glass, Cloud Gel, Low-e and water in a self-contained portable solar water heater and heat storage unit.

The concept of the Weather Panel is that the Cloud Gel will let in the sun to heat the water sealed inside the glass panel. Once the water is heated to a pre-determined temperature, the Cloud Gel turns white, preventing the water from getting hotter. The Low-e in the panel would prevent the water from losing heat to the outside. The heat from the water would instead be transferred to the inside of the building during the night.

Chahroudi is hoping to see the day when the roofs of buildings in northern climates are made out of scores of Weather Panels linked together.

A Weather Panel has an insulating value of R-10, Chahroudi says. The R-value is a measure of how quickly heat is lost through a substance. A typical house wall has an R-value of 10, while fiberglass insulation sold for use in attics has an R-value of 19. An ordinary, single-pane glass window has an R-value of 1, while a Low-e treated window has an R-value of 2.5 to 3.
From another century: motherearthnews.com: Steve Baer and Holly Baer: Dome Home Enthusiasts

Quote:
The Baers — in alliance with a few of the Southwest's young communes — began by showing the world that very inexpensive dome housing could be fabricated from the tops of junked automobiles (Steve's out-of-print manual, Dome Cookbook, is still the classic reference on the subject).
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