Solar messengers

I just finished teaching a weekend workshop on solar design at the Yestermorrow Design/Build School. I co-taught the course with John Ringel of Jersey Devil, a 30-year veteran and pioneer in passive solar design. We had a friendly and bright group of students, ranging from a Yestermorrow intern to a couple in their 40’s who were looking to build or retrofit a house. Some had projects ready to go, some only distant plans, and a few were looking at getting into the renewable energy business. All were full of questions.

The course covered passive solar design, that is, designing buildings so that sunlight and heat and air go where you want them when you want them, without the use of pumps or fans or other mechanical devices. The functionality is built into the structure. This is John’s specialty. I taught about active solar design, that is, devices that collect solar energy and deliver it as electricity or heat. Essentially this is photovoltaics and solar hot water. My (lame) joke is that we teach passive-aggressive solar.

I’m not going to attempt to outline the course here, but I’d like to touch on a few subjects that relate to the discussions that we had.

An underlying theme for me is an analogy based on the multiple meaning of the word insult. Aside from the usual social meaning, it is a term of art in medicine. A physical impact, very high or low temperature, a poison, or a dose of radiation can be termed an “insult” to the affected part of the human body. When we disturb the natural landscape or dump a poisonous chemical we are perpetrating an insult on a natural system. By analogy, we are behaving like some arrogant person with enough wealth and resulting power to go around carelessly insulting people without consequence. Our wealth is all that nature provides us, plus the stored treasure of fossil fuels and minerals. What most people don’t seem to notice is that our wealth is running out. I discussed this concept with John and quoted a jazz standard: “Nobody knows you when you’re down and out.” It reminded him of the old saying, “Don’t insult people on your way up; you’ll meet them again on the way down.” We are on our way down, and the cumulative effect of our insults is coming back to get us.

Another concept that John articulated quite deliberately is that all the energy we have is from the sun. We rely on present day solar energy for our food. Hydroelectricity relies on the sun driven water cycle. Coal, oil, and natural gas are naturally processed plant matter that absorbed solar energy millions of years ago. Even the uranium for a nuclear power plant was born in the supernova of some other sun billions of years ago. We couldn’t buy, at any price, enough energy to replace the service that our sun provides us on a daily basis. Consider that the sunlight streaming through a one-foot square window is equal to 2,000 watts of incandescent light. We are bathed in it, as direct sunlight, wind, and rain. We ignore it to our own deep disadvantage.

When a client approaches John to design a house, an addition, or a renovation, he doesn’t even ask anymore whether they want him to incorporate passive solar design. It would be like asking if they wanted indoor plumbing. The sun is there, waiting to be invited in, or kept out, as needed.

One of the problems we face as our fossil fuel supply dwindles is that 99% of the buildings in the U.S. were designed and built on one of three principles.

Before the 1860’s, the design assumptions were that the occupants would cut ten cords of firewood a year, that they would spend the winter huddled near the stove or fireplace, and that they would accept the fact that in midwinter water would freeze overnight in the upstairs rooms. These were then retrofitted for assumption number two.

This was that high quality anthracite coal would be mined in the Appalachians and burned in furnaces in the basements of buildings. This assumption held into the 20th century, and slowly transitioned into assumption number three.

The latest assumption, still held today, is that we will have either a tank of cheap oil in the basement, a tank of cheap propane out back, or a pipeline full of cheap natural gas leading to our furnace.

The result is that there are houses in America to this day that have no insulation in their walls, and I mean literally none. Many have little insulation, and very few are near the ultimate level of energy efficiency that we can obtain by practical means. Most modern houses have no design relationship to the local climate, the path of the sun, or prevailing winds. This is a huge environmental, economic, and political problem that tends to get lip service and meager public attention. So far, our wealth of fossil fuels and the ability of the earth to absorb insults have obviated the need to pay close attention to our energy use. Now we are about to experience what happens when our wealth runs out. We will need to flip that 99:1 ratio of old design principles to new. This will require the education of America about the realities of energy.

Our fifteen students were all eager to learn the techniques of harnessing the sun. They were all aware of the need for it. Our students shared stories of encountering skepticism and hostility to the concept that the era of cheap, convenient, and consequence-free energy is ending. To their credit, they spoke of trying to convince friends, relatives, or coworkers of the inevitability of this change. This is the task of those who understand that the opposite of renewable energy is non-renewable energy (meaning that it will run out). Knowledge imposes on us the burden of responsibility to act.

And yet, on a sunny weekend in Warren Vermont it didn’t feel like a burden. Sharing knowledge about solar energy was a joy for John and me, and it appeared to be rewarding for our students. Solar design can be a puzzle, a game, a science, an art, a hobby, and a vocation. It can be practiced on the level of basic principles, simple arithmetic, or rigorous mathematical analysis. Solar design is a one time investment in thought and materials that delivers free heating, cooling, light, and ventilation for the life of the building. If we must be messengers, it is good news to be carrying.