Making my shop smaller...

Gary,
I've got R 19 in the walls, with 4" basic pink insulation augmented with the silver thermofoil sheets over that. I'm still working my way up to the roof, this winter, I'm probably going to let the loft chill out on its own this winter. (nothing up there that can't handle the cold anyway). I'll have to wait for a couple of weeks before the 'ceiling' goes in.

I'll have to read up on how to add some thermal mass on the cheap as well, that sounds like it would be helpful.

Oh and if you're feeling adventurous, my shop build thread is Here it isn't fancy, but it's mine!
 
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This thread has been interesting. Being curious as to how much heat can be expected, I did a bit of research. Previously I had heard that one could expect 100W/square foot of surface area from sunlight.
Not trusting my memory I checked on the internet and found a figure for solar energy density of 1.4 kW/square metre. This converts to 130 W/sq. ft. So the figure of 100W/sq ft is probably to compensate for loss due to low angle and loss in the collector cover.

Since heating capacity is usually expressed in BTUs, I looked up the conversion factor and found that 1 kW hour = 3414 BTU.

Using the solar energy density of 100w/sq ft or 0.1kW/sq ft, we can expect 341.4 BTU per square foot of solar collector. So for a collector 8' x 10', the expected heat gain is 27,300 BTU. This is a significant amount of
energy and certainly worthwhile capturing.

The actual amount of energy captured will depend on the angle of the sun's rays to the collector and how much of the energy is absorbed and reflected.

Can anyone confirm my calculations?
 
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