The off-grid solar community story was great — I would love to know more about their insulating window shutters
Skywoods
| Posted in Green Building Techniques on
Hi,
The off-grid solar community story was great. I would love to know more about their insulating window shutters. Please have the author elaborate on this, as offered in the article.
Please, details on window insulating shutters. For a DIY, it’s a great way to beef up privacy and efficiency. Thanks.
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A fairly complete description is now available on the comment section under the article for details on the shutters.
The sunrise home in alaska uses shutters or rather giant sliding panels on the exterior of the home for insulation. I do remember that an airtight seal on an EXTERIOR shutter is required for good performance. Interior shutters allow-enhance-promote (I'm not sure of the correct word) condensation on the windows on the inside and when the shutters open there is a blast of cold air from the window cavity.
Here is an interesting take on exterior shutters:
http://www.farrellhomebuilding.com/Fine%20Homebuilding%20Final%20Article.pdf
Regarding the "sunrise home in alaska" Thorsten Chlupp, the builder has done a good job. However i don't think he spent enough time and thought on the interior closing shutters since they frosted up the interior of the window. Sliding external shutters are ok but again are trickier to seal than hinged. The "farell" example, also in Alaska is very impressive in appearance and it is push button ... excellent, except it is only r10 !! If you are going to go to that trouble go r-30 at least. I would recommend hinged bifold shutter design now for a more elegant appearance. Several experiments were done with shutters in the heydays of the 70's solar house boom. The designs worked but appear now as rather clunky. Surely there is a designer out there who can satisfy both beauty and practical demands of 'the good enough house". It is amazing to me the scarcity of invention in this area of "low hanging fruit"
Ven: designers/builders/architects have hard time pushing for correct passive solar shading already, which is much simplier than insulated window shutters.
Then as Martin pointed out in a recent article, water management aka window flashing seems tedious enough to be a rare sight nowadays.
I've been thinking about window shutters for quite awhile myself, and have yet to find a cheap motorized design. With innie or mid wall windows, insulation with cheaper flexible seals can be used on a hinged shutter to fill the window space and extend on the surrounding wall providing simple and effective sealing and insulation. In europe, some window shutters are motorized or manually operated through the window frame with a crank/handle, a similar but thermally broken system could be used i guess, but i would prefer an automatic roller-shade motor type operated from the exterior with auto programmation.