With the weather back to normal it is interesting to see how the temperatures in our adobe home are maintained throughout the outside temperature cycles. Here you can see how the winter sun covers much of the room via the south-facing windows. The trombe walls (seven in all) stay approximately 80° on the inside surface continuously radiating warmth into the rooms. During the day the sun directly warms the brick floors and inside adobe walls. These continue to warm the rooms overnight when we lower the insulating shades over the windows. The shades help keep the warmth from escaping during the night. The end result (see the temperature graph below) is very impressive. Although the outside temperature drops as low as 20° and never gets above 65° (these are normal for this time of year) the room temperatures stay comfortable. With our thermostats set at 63° the radiant heat boiler never came on during the entire week surveyed. You can see the room temperature rose as high as 76° and only dipped below 65° once (on a cloudy day).
Of course around the 1st of February when we experienced a low of -30°, our boiler had to work to keep the room temperatures at 63°. However, even when the outside temps hovered around 0° during the day, the sun warmed up the rooms to almost 70°. I would conclude that our passive solar system combined with the thick adobe walls really works to save energy costs and keep the home very comfortable.
In the summer we will be back to report on the solar adobe's performance in the summer heat.
