Solar Power Cells, Hot Water, Energy, Collectors

Paint it black to keep warm in winter

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When I look at a building, I immediately check out the south wall. Most buildings have their “best side” that you’re supposed to look at — maybe a front door with some gratuitous columns or other functionless architectural features or the one side that’s brick while the others are plastic. Not interested.

The south wall is where all the winter sun action happens, and there are some very attractive south walls around here. The south walls of the Missouri Theater Center for the Arts, the Tiger Hotel, those big downtown banks — each could heat its whole block. And how about that tall, slender church just northwest of Stadium and Rollins? Yes, it’s technically a roof, but it’s bent over just right and desperately begging for some of that hot solar action.

Inexplicably, most buildings tend to reflect and reject the sun’s generous heating offer, opting instead to be warmed by other means.

On a sunny winter day, our house is hit with enough solar energy to heat it 10 times over. Despite that fact, we don’t heat our home with the sun. Instead, we participate in a system wherein a 2-mile-deep hole is drilled in Pennsylvania, millions of gallons of secret fluids and sand are pumped in at intense pressure, the bedrock is shattered, some rather unfortunate things happen to the locals, the locals get paid off, and magic invisible gas is extracted, heavily processed, whisked hundreds of miles to Missouri, piped directly into our homes and burned in a big metal box in the basement.

Source: Columbia Daily Tribune