Hi Daox, I saw your question just now. Better late than never and it's a good excuse for an update. No, I'm not using it this season because there's no insulation in the house yet and all that heat would just disappear into space at night. It's a pity too because I'll probably not see such a good solar thermal heating system as we had this year (drought in California, you know) in decades. Two months from the winter solstice and it has been regularly getting to 110F (43C) just beneath the roof. BTW, an interesting factoid, it seems there is a correlation between west coast drought and midwest and east coast frigid temperatures. The exact same thing happened in 1978 I believe.
Right now I'm just preparing for doing a dense pack of cellulose in the second bedroom, living room, and kitchen. I've put up ceiling drywall in the 2nd bedroom and living room and have yet to do the kitchen ceiling. I've put in 2x2s against the perimeter walls in all three rooms to provide thermal breaks. I've also put up the netting in the bedroom and living room. I just need to put netting up in the kitchen and do the ceiling drywall and then I'll do the perimeter dense pack and put drywall over the walls in all three rooms. I'm not going to do the taping and texturing myself though. Way too tedious for me and others can do it better and faster. I'll gladly pay to have it done. Once I have that done and a few things besides, I'll move into the second bedroom and do the final ripping and tearing on the bathroom and main bedroom.
I've routed a channel in the ceiling with ductboard between the garage and the nearest house hip rafter, but left the firewall in place for now. Once everything is done and the PV panels in place on the south facing roof I'll check if I'm still getting enough heat from the roof. There's a good chance I will because 2/3s of the west facing roof, the bathroom and main bedroom, have yet to have the black paint and radiant barrier put up. If it isn't quite enough then I'll just remove the part of the firewall separating the garage and ductboard channel I just put up. I can cut that out from the garage side so I don't need to trample the insulation.
