Solar Sand Bed | Alternative Energy | Forums

Yes I am pretty familiar with this.  My neighbor at the farm worked on systems like this in the early 80's...at the campus in Upstate NY...his incoming class of engineers had 3 project houses at various stages of construction 1) just starting, 2) completely done, 3) about a 1/3 done...so they got into all aspects of it.  Theses homes were just 'everyday' ranches on the outside...not bermed...they did have some things with double framed walls and other types of 'new' ideas.  The whole thing was building a home with a passive heat sink.  Basically the houses looked like every other house around (and they were shooting for that)...but the basement was 75% stone/heat storage. I know they used crushed stone and not sand...can't remember why though.  He told me that they did a number of things like setting up a blower to circulate air from a wood stove through the gravel bed and there was some passive solar circulating through.  These college kids were way ahead of their time.  I believe they found that they were reducing the heating bill by 50=60% back then.  I will try to catch up with him and find out more.  I know that the program at the college died out by the 90's and was pretty much forgotten...oh yeah, oil got cheap again.

Cheap heat...people seem to start building even bigger houses...then a crunch comes and they cry about the heat bill. A lot of ding bats out there.

I know there are a number of reasons for cheap oil.  But, sooner or later the world market will go up...who knows how much?  $100 a barrel? 

Hmmm...I think it depends oh how much oil get's dumped on the market in the short term...but long term it can only go up...I think we will see $3 and higher gas within 2 yrs...hope I am wrong.