New House, Many solar questions
 

Ladies & Gentelmen,
I'm currently looking for an Architect in Queretaro Mexico to help design & build my new house in Colon Mexico.
With the high cost of electricity most homes do not have heat & cooling.
The location where I will build the house has a small pond 100 ft x 300 ft with water that is approx 68 degrees year round, I plan to use this water with in floor PEX piping or water to air exchangers to cool the house and build solar collectors to heat the water for heating. As this house is located out in the country and will be constructed with local labor that I will manage. The use of high tech materials and equipment that are not available in this area of Mexico will prohibit many of the standard solar installations you see in the States.
Any ideas that you have would be greatly appreciated
Other ideas that I will incorporate are
> 3 ft eve overhangs
> White roofing material
> Compact Fluorescent lighting

Hello Jerrye. Welcome to ER.

The first thing to do with building the house is to do as you've been doing and design for passive solar with high amounts of insulation. Radiant insulation would be a fairly high priority as you get beat with the sun quite a bit.

As for a heating/cooling system, the pond will be great, but I think it would probably be a bit better if you used a heat pump to pull hot/cold out of the pond. There won't be much temperature differential for just straight use.

How much heating would you need to do that far south? also with that sun angle you might not need 3 foot roof over hangs to keep the windows shaded but that large of an over hang might be to much to let sun in in the winter.

So what is the weather like there, temp fluctuations and so on?

New House Many solar questions
 

Location is in a remote area very rual.
Elevation at 7000 ft
Lat 20.6 N
Lon 100.2 W
Temp fluc's are from 25 degrees at night in the winter to 95 degrees in the mid day in summer.
Spent 3 months ( Nov thru Jan ) in 2003 on extended vacation, temp was below freezing at night to around 70 in the day. I got used to sleeping under blankets but never got used to showering in a cold room.
Insulation materials ( Fiberglass/Rock wool ect ) are non existant or I've never seen them in the Queretaro Home Depot.
I have seen 4 x 8 sheets of styrofoam panels with wire or rebar around them, Not sure what the structural strength is.
Bt using the 65-68 degree pond water I would be able to at least keep the house at or near this temp which is a lot warmer than 25 degrees outside till I can get the heat panels built and installed

Solar Questions
 

The cost of electricity is just to high to use heat pumps

Location info
 

Wow, 6,300 feet above sea level!

http://www.wunderground.com/cgi-bin/...n&lastyear=off


The only pond I found (Google Earth) that looks near 100x300 ft is out in the hills SW of town. No roads around it.


Interesting area. Looks like it would be a nice place to live.
Should not be too hard to heat and cool.. :)

Cheers,
Rich

Rich,
Just wondering where the temperature plots come from? They look very useful.

Gary

Got them at Weather Forecast & Reports - Long Range & Local | Wunderground : Weather Underground
That information is for the local airport down there..

I get the same kinda stuff from the files of the local weatherwart, about 1/2 mile from me.
Climatological Data

I do have 8, 90 watt Solec PV panels that I set up in January of 2000....
and this setup is super reliable.... my panels always produced adequate
power, even on cloudy days... and my Trace TC60 charge controller has always
worked.... Since I first started on Solar power, I have bought a number of
Inverters...mostly for backup and because they were on sale.... the inverter
that I used most was the small Statpower Pro250... 250 watts at 12 volts
input... but occasionally use my larger statpower inverter, the 1500 watt
Statpower 1500 watts output at 12 volts input.... I also have a $69 Xantrex
inverter I bought at Costco, it produces 1000 watts at 12 volts input....
and I also have a $29 400 watt inverter Vector, that I bought at
Wal-Mart.... the 24 volt Trace Inverter DR1524 I have never used.... it
requires 24 volts input and will produce 1500 watts.... all my inverters are
Modified Sine Wave outputs.... but my next inverter will be an Exeltech
Inverter, which will be a pure sine wave output...