University News Vol 6, No. 5, 17 April 1980.  Photo caption:   "Dr. Johnston"

Text:  Storing solar energy 

"The low, brick building being erected near the Auchmuty Sports Centre has aroused the University's curiosity.  Dr Kerr Johnston, retired Associate Professor in Mechanical Engineering, has designed the building, by means of which he hopes to find a simple answer to one of man's pressing problems - obtaining cheap energy to create comfortable temperatures inside homes.  To establish whether it could be good economics to install indoor swimming-pools to achieve savings on electricity and oil costs is the task facing Dr Johnston.  His research project is based on the fact that water is an excellent absorber of solar energy.  It is also a very good store for energy - volume for volume more than twice as good as concrete, brick or rock.  "Added to this," he says, "water is a convenient energy- transfer medium, because it can be circulated about - unlike brick walls, or concrete floors.  The outdoor swimming pool. absorbs solar energy quite well, but loses it rapidly and uselessly to the air, especially when the wind blows and the air is cool, as at night."  Dr Johnston received a grant of $50,000 from the National Energy Research, Development and Demonstration Council for the research project, which has made the erection of the experimental house possible.  Dr Johnston outlined hypothesis as follows:  "Let us build a house that is properly insulated. Inside the house, along the northern side, we place a swimming pool with glassed and shuttered areas to control the incoming solar energy as desired.  In winter we admit and store the solar energy in the pool.  The pool is protected and does not lose heat to the cold outside air, but gives it to the house at the times when the house begins to cool.   In summer we shut out the unwanted solar energy and remove any surplus energy by circulating the pool water through an outside cooler at night. And we swim all the year round without having to clean loads of debris from the pool.  So the pool instead of being a luxury for the affluent becomes good economics for all with luxury thrown in as a bonus," he said.  Dr Johnston quoted his namesake (almost): "Dr Samuel Johnson said nothing sharpened a man's wits like notice that he was to be hanged in a week's time. In much the same kind of way our energy-awareness is being sharpened and this throws up some interesting facts. "Firstly, even in mid- winter almost all houses in our area have heating on their outside more than twice as much solar energy as they need to keep comfortably warm inside all the time.  All that is needed is a means of admitting and storing this free energy.  "Secondly, in mid-summer there are very few days when the average temperature for the day is more than a comfortable 25°C.  What is needed for comfort is a way of averaging out the external fluctuations in temperature."  Dr Johnston believes that his house near the Sports Centre will have a stable temperature of between 20 and 25 degrees throughout the year without heating or air conditioning.  For the experiment humans will be simulated by heaters set at body temperature.  The anticipated life of the research project is approximately two years."

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