Heating Capacity of Single-Story Passive Solar Houses

Abstract

A one-dimensional non-stationary model of heat losses of a one-story, one-room passive solar house with three-layer walls (including thermal insulation) has been developed, taking into account the fluxes of incident and self-radiation. The one-dimensionality of the model is determined by the uniformity of all enclosing structures and thermal boundary conditions. It was found that heat losses or heating power in passive houses in the Central Asian region on sunny days are almost 50% less than on cloudy days. The influence of thermal insulation on heating output is significant. With thermal insulation of just 5 cm, heating power is reduced by 2.3 times, and with 10 cm, by 3.7 times. The thermal inertia of the walls affects the variation in heating power, as heating power begins to decrease after sunset and continues until nearly sunrise. With an increase in the thermal protection of the house, the amplitude of daily fluctuations in heating power decreases, and the time for heating power and the temperature state of the house enclosures to reach a quasi-stationary (regular) state increases.