Unfortunately if one tries to insulate between the rafters by squishing in lots of wool insulation then 9 times out of 10 it will just fall out. Gravity is a pain – it makes producing a warm loft that much harder. In addition you need to insulate any pipework and cold water tanks up in the loft as these may now be liable to freezing and the cost of repairing bursting pipes will far outweigh the energy savings produced!įor detailed instructions on how to insulate your loft to produce a cold loft please click the tab here. This means that anything you really value should be kept in the home itself, not in the loft. Now a couple of important things to mention while this is certainly the cheapest way to go, the loft space itself will be very cold in the winter. The reason why we are such advocates of loft insulation and consider it the no.1 method of saving energy in the home is basically because the insulation is incredibly cheap to buy and the process of producing a cold loft is so easy. This well-made video shows the students building and installing the monitoring boxes.Having a carpet of insulation in your roof will significantly reduce heat loss out of your home. “Being involved in the research created a new goal for me to use what I have learned to make the world greener,” My career goal is to become an architect, so I can use what I have learned and apply it to my future.” Marco Dwyer, an architectural drafting student, called it “life changing.” Though still new, the project has had a dramatic impact on at least some of the academy students. “This project-based learning approach allows for integration into our curricula and allows students to make connections between technology and real world problems,” says Wight, the academy teacher and Columbia researcher. This project could span several years, and if so, it may merge with about a half dozen of the school’s courses. “They had suggestions on how to stabilize the boxes, waterproof the boxes, they did a lot of trouble shooting with the wires to identify the signals coming in and set up spread sheets to organize the data,” Ho says. Involved in an Ivy League study, they are offering tips for how to improve it. To be clear, the high school students are not only the heavy lifters for the Columbia team, they are also the brains behind some aspects of the operation. She continues, “It’s important to point out what a great synergy there is, the synergies of the technologies and the synergies of the students.” ![]() The students are learning about renewable technology, how to go about scientific data collection, critical thinking skills and project management.” “What’s really cool about this is that it’s an interactive teaching tool. “Just about every trade represented at this school has played a role so far,” Ho says. Architectural drafting students drew 3D models, carpenters built the boxes, electricians wired the solar panels and instruments, plumbing students installed drainage and so on. To build the monitoring boxes, the high school students lined up according to their disciplines. ![]() The experimenters: A high school & grad student partnership ![]() One roof is gravel, one is green-planted with sedum, a succulent that stores water in its leaves, one has solar panels over a gravel roof and the fourth has solar panels over sedum. The boxes are all equipped to measure temperature, relative humidity, solar radiation and PV performance. by 4ft long (slightly larger than actual New York apartments), and each has a different roof. The Columbia team enlisted students at the academy, a vocational high school, to help them design and build simple models of one-story homes. The models are four boxes, 2ft by 2ft. Researchers in Columbia University’s environmental engineering program had at least some of those things in mind when they turned to high school students at the Bronx Design & Construction Academy to help answer a question: If solar panels are mounted above a green roof, how do the two work together to regulate temperatures and improve efficiency? The unasked question was, of course, “And can we use your school’s roof?” The experiment: Four roofs And four, roof space is rare in New York City. Three, succulents, such as sedum, thrive in partial shade. Photo credit: Brooklyn Botanic Garden /viaNate Wight’s blogįour helpful facts outline an experiment in green roof technology at a high school in the Bronx. One, for solar photovoltaic panels, heat is the bugbear of efficiency. Two, a field of succulents planted across a roof top absorbs solar energy, lowering the temperature around it. It is part of an experiment in integrating green roof technologies at the Bronx Design and Construction Academy. This model of a single-story has a green roof planted in sedum under the shade of solar panels.
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