TEA Solar Heating System - Construction Manual

 

The TEA solar air heating collectors described in this book are very well thought out designs.  The TEA system uses solar air heating collectors that are integrated with the building's roof or wall to make a highly efficient, cost effective, and long lived solar heating system.  The collectors are simple, relatively straight forward to build, and look great.  These collectors were developed by TEA in the late 70's and were the culmination of an extensive design and testing program.

 

The authors of the book are Peter Temple and Jennifer Adams.  I want to thank Peter for his permission to allow this material to be made available for download.  Peter is currently teaching classes in Building Science and Super Energy-Efficient Building Design at Keene State College Architecture Department.  Peter also works as an building energy consultant, including buildings with near net-zero energy use.

 

Some things to like about  TEA collector design and the Construction manual:

The book describes a full solar home heating system that includes a large collector, a heat storage system, and a ducting and control system to connect all this together -- this will be a big project for anyone.  But, as the book points out, a more modest sized collector can be used without a heat storage system, and with a much simpler control and duct system.  This smaller system could be a very manageable project for either new construction or retrofit, and could still put a sizable dent in your heating bill.  In a passive solar house design, adding such a small system could improve the solar fraction significantly. 

 

For people with existing homes that have available south facing wall space, retrofitting the wall collector could be very attractive.  The TEA collectors use vertical supply and return manifolds located on the left and right ends of the collector, which seem more suited to retrofit situations than the usual collector designs with vents or manifolds along the top and bottom.

 

In spite of the 30 years that have passed since these collectors were designed, there is little in the design that is out of date.  But, here is a list of changes that one might consider based on materials and design practices that have changed some over the years since these collectors were developed ...

 

 

Download the Book

Click on the headings below to download pdfs for each chapter.

Cover and Preface...   (0.8 MB pdf)

 

Table of Contents and Introduction ...  (1.2 MB pdf)

 

Chapter 1: Description of the MODEL-TEA...  (0.8 MB pdf)

 

Chapter 2: Design Rationale...  (2.5 MB pdf)

 

Chapter 3: Choosing and Planning... (1.1 MB pdf)

 

Chapter 4: Sizing and Engineering...  (1.5 MB pdf)

 

Chapter 5: Constructing the Roof Collector...  (3.2 MB pdf)
                    Roof Collector Drawings...   (2.2 MB pdf)

 

Chapter 6: Constructing the Wall Collector...   (3.7 MB pdf)
                    Wall Collector Drawings...   (1.9 MB pdf)

 

Chapter 7: Constructing the Rock Bin...  (2.1 MB pdf)

                    Rock Bin Drawings...   (2.0 MB pdf)

 

Chapter 8: MODEL-TEA System Control Wiring...  (2.2 MB pdf)

 

Chapter 9: Design Options...   (0.6 MB pdf)

 

Appendix A:  Materials

Appendix A1 Discussion of Materials...    (0.7 MB pdf)

Appendix A2 List of Materials and Manufacturers...   (0.5 MB pdf)

Appendix A3 How to Build A Back-Draft Damper...   (0.3 MB pdf)
Appendix B and C References and Resources ...  (0.5 MB pdf)

 

The scans are done such that each page is an exact image of the page in the book with the OCR read text under the image.  This preserves the exact content of the book, while also allowing text searches.

 

 

 

 

Gary May 25, 2009