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Just over a hill in Madison County on the outskirts of Mars Hill, lives a man who has taken a rather different approach to conserving energy. Paul Smith, a business professor at Mars Hill College, has designed the house of his dreams with a little help from solar power.
Finished in 2000, the two-story house is just like any other home with an added feature, a passive-solar sunroom.
The sunroom, which is situated at the front of the house facing due south, isn’t typical. It has its own purpose -- to provide heat to the rest of the house without cost to the inhabitants.
Less than a 10-minute drive from campus, the house is near the top of a steep gravel road. The sunroom, which is one of the first things noticeable as the house is approached from the drive, has an interior wall made of decorative concrete that absorbs heat throughout the day.
The decorative concrete absorbs the rays from the sun and displaces the heat throughout the house, working off a principle known as thermal mass. The block sunroom, with room enough to seat six or more people in chairs, is insulated behind the concrete block. The concrete floor of the sunroom also has insulation. The floor is on top of sheets of Styrofoam to keep heat from being drawn into the ground, said Smith on a recent tour.
Basically, heat comes in through several large, uncovered windows and gets trapped inside the room. One might ask the question: How does the heat get to the rest of the house? Inside the room, several windows and one door can be opened and closed to allow the heat to come into the adjacent rooms.
The sunroom itself is two stories with a balcony. On the balcony, the Smith’s have chairs so when they want to read or lounge they sit there.
In the front yard, Smith has designed it so trees provide just the right amount of shade. Also, an overhang blocks the sun when it is at its highest point of the day.
Smith also uses a conventional wood stove to take the chill off at night and to avoid using propane heat, which is reserved for extremely cold temperatures. He said that he used the propane for the first the night before our visit.
The sunroom is primarily used to keep the house a nice, steady temperature. The heat storage system is self-regulating, he said. During the summer, the house stays a comfortable temperature of about 70-76 degrees. The Smiths rarely use their air conditioner. They estimate using the air conditioner three hours or less during the year. He told us that his power bills, along with others, are lower then $100 a month for each individual bill.
Smith said he also conserves energy by hanging up wet clothes up in the sunroom and recycling as much as possible. They also have a compose bin in the backyard for food waste.
Smith, who is on sabbatical this year studying issues involving energy conservation, said that he believes everyone can make changes to conserve energy, and circumstances will demand that people do more to curb U.S. energy consumption.
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