Back to the studio. The architect and I have been mulling various designs for the new place, all based generally around getting more sunlight – and thus more heat – into the studio space in wintertime. So we’ve been talking about how much thermal mass is available, how many windows are enough, and a gang of other solar topics I’m hoping to get to in the next few posts. But for now, let me tell you this: The sun is an incredible god, and y’all better start worshipping it. I know this because I’ve witnessed it, yea, brothers and sisters, with mine own eyes.

One of the designs we’ve come up with for the studio incorporates a small piece of square footage on the roof for some solar thermal panels. (Thermal panels, you’ll recall, are used for heating water.) (I know you know – I’m just making sure.) Now, we’re dealing with a small space: only about 350 square feet. And whatever walls and roof we go with, whether that’s straw bale or insulated concrete forms or something else entirely, the building will most definitely be highly insulated. So maybe, with all that passive solar heating discussed above, we won’t need a backup source of heat. But just in case – or maybe just because – I’m thinking of incorporating some thermal panels into a radiant heating system for the studio. The sun would heat the panels, the panels would heat water, that water would run through pipes in the floor that would radiate heat into studio space. (I mean, it’s a little more complicated than that, but them’s the basics.)

It just so happens that my friend Chad has some panels for sale – which is nice, since one of my goals in building the studio is to keep it cheap. I wheeled my bike over to his house this weekend to check them out, make sure the fittings were tight, nothing was leaking, that sort of thing. We laid them out flat in Chad’s yard and cleaned the dust off…

Hooked up a garden hose with a little used-bike-tube ingenuity…

And ran a few gallons of water through the system. Now, keep in mind that this was only a partially sunny day, and the panels weren’t angled to catch the best sun. Even given those constraints, the panels were able to crank the water up plenty hot in a matter of maybe five minutes. Check out the thermometer reading…

Really amazing; the water was steaming. (And yeah, that's a composter's thermometer alright.) Given that water for in-floor radiant heat only needs to be 120 degrees, I think the studio’s going to be right toasty this winter. I’m having a resident solar genius do the math for me, but the rough estimate is that I’ll only need two or three panels. As for the remaining one or two – hot tub!