Solar Gain

by Matthew Reeves

Submitted : Spring 2012

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate to a set envelope and it’s allotted design criteria, to in turn determine at which provided point during the day the solar gain on the envelope is at its peak. Criteria such as sun position, window size, U-value of materials used and building position are taken into consideration. While attempting to properly zone and size a building for an air conditioning system knowing when and where the solar gain is highest on the building at a certain time is crucial. A trigonometric calculation provides the position of the sun at any point during the day. From there provided U-values are collected and evaluated in the solar gain equations. There are many variables that could come into play when calculating the solar gain but for all intensive purposes we will assume that the building is 20ft x 20ft and designed with one large room. The east wall consists of two 3ft x 5ft double pane windows with non-insulated drapes and the west wall only consists of one window with no drapes. Wall construction consists of an initial face of 4” brick a 1” gap allowance and an 8” concrete block wall. The roof materials list is much longer as a result we will provide the U-value of 10.85 as the total value for the flat roof materials.

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