PASSIVE THERMAL PERFORMANCE OF CHEZ SOLEIL, SELF SUFFICIENT IN CENTRAL TEXAS

摘要

A unique opportunity for studying the passive solar and passive cooling performance of a house in the hot/humid Sunbelt is presented in this paper. "Chez Soleil" is an entirely self-sufficient house built in 1996 in central Texas near Austin. Results of over 5 years worth of thermal data show that the ground-coupled high thermal mass design works quite well even in a challenging Texas climate. The thermal performance of this house is presented during 4 extreme cases as well as during the entire heating and cooling seasons. Temperature fluctuations are studied from completely sunny and from completely overcast days within six weeks of the winter and summer solstices. These extreme conditions are picked from 4 years worth of temperature monitoring data from 1998-2001.