Heating A Radiator Fin
Welcome to the change of seasons. Results will vary on your choice of northern and southern hemispheres. Folks on the Equator may feel left out, or are glad to not have to deal with the change. I'm in the northern hemisphere, so autumn is here. The temperature has dropped. The rains are back. And the heaters are turned on. A good time for soup, too. It can be a tough time for some indoor temperature control.
Most tiny houses that I see are long, skinny, and sometimes tall. Ideally, the shape for least heat transfer is cubic (for simple straight lines). Spherical works. Just ask folks who live in igloos. There's a compromise solution: geodesics, and they deserve their own blogs. Long, skinny, and tall provides a lot of surface area for heat to radiate from and be swept away by convective winds. Hello, heating and cooling bills.
Tiny houses have basic geometry working against them, in terms of dumping heat or sucking up photons. In winter, the winds blow, cooling the outside skin. In summer, that surface area is a large opportunity for photons to impinge on the house.
That sounds dismal.
Tiny houses have basic geometry working for them. Volume, volume, volume. Sure the heating and cooling can be challenging, but it is operating on a much smaller volume. There ain't much air in there. Heating or cooling the house doesn't have to take as long. My tiny has a mini-split heat pump, which means I can lose track of whether the thermostat has switched from heating to cooling, except when the temperature heads towards extremes.
This summer was hot, and I rarely noticed it indoors. I don't run the heat pump continually because I found that the house cooled off so quickly that a bit of patience brought it back down. I haven't been here for a winter, but this autumn, particularly today, has already proved that it heats up quick, too.
One proof of the efficiency of this small space is that my monthly utility bill is less than a couple may spend on a nice dinner, and my bill includes the cost of water.
One proof of the inefficiency of this small space is the obvious distribution of small, portable heaters left by the previous owner. Cooling's closest solution is lots of windows and cross-ventilation.
My tiny has the additional hurdle of its interior layout. It has a peaked roof, but conventional-sized doors. That's fine, but for the air to flow imagine flipping the house upside-down. That wall over the door is a dam against the air trapped near the ceiling. Yes, this house has a ceiling fan, but it simply churns the air; it doesn't direct it past such hurdles that block air into the bathroom and bedroom. That's why both of those rooms have small, portable heaters. The upside is that, heating only the bathroom or the bedroom takes little energy, especially if I close those doors.
Of course, one major effect that works in my favor is location, location, location. I live outside Port Townsend, a tourist town in a rain shadow in a temperate climate moderated by the ocean water surrounding a peninsula. Results in arctic or tropical environments will be different, though the physics will stay the same.
Creative people can play with creative solutions. Bury part of the house and get the benefit of Earth's moderating effects, but make sure ground contact is handled appropriately. Even here, some tinies live under shelters that add an extra layer of protection, though sometimes I think that's to protect against tree branches as much as weather.
The skies are grey. My fingers slightly chilled as I sedately type. Making lunch will warm me simply by making me move. Making soup would warm me and the house with a warm and aromatic set of steam. It's all good, and so much more appreciated in my tiny space.