This is the third article in the series. For some reason it was much easier to explain, either that or I left something out. Your feedback will answer that question.
I think this particular application shows the power of X10 very clearly. The thermostat/PF284, the two fans and the CM15A are distributed all over the house. If we had hired an electrician to retrofit this installation into our existing house the cost would have been exhorbitant and any savings on our heating bill would have taken years to amortize the cost of the work. X10's virtual wiring made the whole job cost effective.
As always all feedback, good or bad, is welcome, including messages.
HOW SOLAR HEAT IS CAPTURED AND WHY
March 5, 2006
Oldtimer
A Supplement To The Household FAQ Book
- Section "VIII"-Oil Burner & Thermostats
- Section "IX"-Electrical System & X-10 Controls
- Section "XIII"-Seasonal Maintenance
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After salvaging the waste heat from our furnace room with the help of X10 (see:
HOW THE BOILER ROOM INSTALLATION WORKS AND WHY), the next thing we tackled was how to better utilize the solar heat that builds up in the front rooms of our house. The South facing wall of the front room downstairs is mostly glass and on a sunny day in the winter the temperature can reach the mid 80s there. The same holds true for the South facing bedrooms upstairs although the temperature doesn't get quite that high. In both cases we started experimenting two years ago with available fans to see how well we could circulate this extra heat to the rooms on the North side of the house.
First, since all the rooms upstairs open into a small common hallway we tried a small fan at the top of the doorway into our large, north facing, master bedroom/office that occupies the whole floor at that end of the house. It worked great. We turned the fan on manually and used X10 to turn it off at noon and dusk in case we left it on.
Then last winter we tried a fan downstairs. This also worked very well since the downstairs layout is very open. Based on that we purchased a small commercial doorway fan from Home Depot and a thermostat on Ebay, both of which were installed downstairs in the front room. The thermostat is set to about 73 deg. When it goes on it triggers a PF284 PowerFlash module that in turn triggers a macro in the CM15A that turns on both the downstairs and upstairs heat circulation fans. When the thermostat goes off it triggers a second macro via the PF284 that turns the fans off. For more information on this see
http://www.x10community.com/forums/index.php?topic=10765.msg61288#msg61288The appliance modules for both fans have been modified so that local control is defeated.
Per the above link the system has other smarts in it. First it to only works during the heating season which is nominally October 15 to April 15 and second it turns off at dusk plus about 15 minutes in case something gets in the way of the PF284 off macro. There is also a macro in the CM15A, to turn this system off, that is triggered by the actual solar dusk signal from one of our outdoor motion detectors in case there is a sudden storm related black out (extremely rare) or an unscheduled solar eclipse
. So far it has never been actuated.
We haven't any quantitative data on the effectiveness of this installation but there is no question that on sunny days the back of the house is warmer and the furnace isn't running as much since we completed the installation.
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Topic: X10 And Home Environmental Control - No. 3 of 4 (Read 13045 times)