Hea$ng

We'll start our discussion of residen1al energy conserva1on by discussing hea1ng. Let's
consider heat transfer here, so when we looked at the laws of thermodynamics, we saw that
energy transfer occurs spontaneously from higher to lower temperature bodies. So, if you
imagine you take a hot piece of metal and a cold piece of metal and s1ck them together, the
hot piece of metal is going to cool down and warm up the cold piece of metal un1l they're
the same temperature, and so you have a thermal energy transfer from the hot to the cold.
Hopefully, that makes sense and it's something you knew already. So, we think about this,
now think about in the winter, where you have your house warm and outside is cold, your
house kind of wants to cool off to the outside temperature, right, it's the hot going to the
cold. So, thermal energy is moving from your house to the outside. In the summer, where
your house is cooler, hopefully than the outside, then the house essen1ally wants to warm
up to the outside temperature and so the energy transfer that happens spontaneously is
from the warm outside into the cool inside of your house. So, there are three ways in which
thermal energy can be transferred and let's take a look at them. The first form of heat
transfer we're going to look at is conduc1on. The idea of conduc1on is I have two objects,
which are in physical contact with each other, they're touching each other. Okay, I have on
this side hot on this side cold. So, this means I have high energy molecules on this side and
lower energy ones on this side, and then along the interface where these two touch, I can
get collisions between these two and so I have a fast-moving molecule and a slow-moving
one. In general, when these interact with each other, this one's going to transfer some of its
energy to the other one. So, this one's going to tend to slow down and this one's going to
tend to speed up, and remember, it's the kine1c energy of the par1cles in these two that tell
us the temperature. What I get is through these collisions, these on average are slowing
down and these on average are speeding up. So, this is cooling down and this is hea1ng up.
So this is the idea of conduc1on and it's when two things are in physical contact with each
other. If you put your hand on a hot pan, this is conduc1on where the hot pan transfers
energy into your colder hand. The next form of energy transfer we're going to consider is
convec1on. So, convec1on is the heat transfer by macroscopic movement of fluids. So fluids
are liquids or gases, as this fluid, the liquid or gas, moves around it brings it transfers its heat
energy with it. So here, if I look at this room, for example, the air, this gas inside, is a fluid
and as the gas moves around, it brings thermal energy with it. We know hot air rises
because it's less dense and cool air sinks, this is called a convec1on current. What we have
here is I have hot air rising up, so bringing its thermal energy with it, then, as it cools in the
room, it sinks back down, cools and is reheated. So, this is a convec1on current and here I'm
having hot air here

being moved, it's being heated by this furnace, and then as it rises, it brings its thermal
energy with it. So, I have thermal energy transfers as the different temperature gases move
around the room. The last heat transfer mechanism we're going to look at is the heat
transfer through radia1on. So, this can be microwaves, infrared radia1on, visible light, any
form of electromagne1c radia1on is emiJed or absorbed, then we can get a transfer of
thermal energy. So, a good example of this is the sun, it's radia1on leaves the sun and warms
the earth. In fact, every object is always emiKng light and the amount of light and the color,
or the frequency of the light, depends on its temperature. Things like a person and a cup of
coffee are emiKng light, but it's in the infrared so we can't see it and this is like an infrared
map, and what we see is there's more light coming from the hoJer, this is s1ll infrared, so
you don't see this like you don't see your coffee mug glowing, but there's more light being
radiated here. This is cooling faster than this person is where you can see his hands and face
are warmer than the outside of his sweater and so what we see is he's radia1ng energy all
the 1me. It's in the form of infrared radia1on and the amount of infrared radia1on depends
on the temperatures. Once things get hoJer, then they start radia1ng in the visible. For
example, if you turn on your electric element on your stove, once it gets hot enough, it's
radia1ng in the red part of the spectrum, so it's radia1ng visible light, also a lot of infrared
radia1on. Let's look at a simple example; here I have a house with a fireplace burning and
let's look at the heat transfer through conduc1on, convec1on, and radia1on. So, start by
looking at my fire here. In terms of conduc1on, I have the fire and the fireplace is in contact
with the ground since they're in physical contact, they transfer energy through conduc1on.
So, I'm having anywhere that the this hot and this cooler ground are in contact with each
other than it has conduc1on. So, I have a heat transfer with this fire is warming the floor. In
terms of convec1on, I heat air and that hot air moves up the chimney, so that's convec1on,
I'm having heat transfer out of the chimney, there's hot air coming out the chimney. Also for
convec1on, if air is geKng in through cracks around the window, then I have cooler air
coming in and I have convec1on here as well. This is actually one of the reasons why a
fireplace actually can make your house cooler on average, because I have lots of hot air
moving up through the chimney and then I have cool air coming in to fill it in. So, I wind up
losing all my heat energy, not all, but a lot of my heat energy through convec1on and cold air
coming in. So, have to be careful about fireplace design. Then if you sit in front of the fire,
and you feel that warmth on your face, that might be convec1on, but it's also radia1on, it is
the light coming from the fire that's hot that you feel warm in your face and this is hea1ng
your room. These are actually kind of compe1ng things where I have this warming the room,
but this air leaving through the chimney and then, of course, I have conduc1on, where the
fireplace is in contact with the floor. So, I already men1oned the idea of heat transferred
through cracks and windows, for example, if we look at typical home heat loss; here, it's
broken down, you see that cracks through walls, windows and doors is the main thing,
almost 40%, and everything else is laid out there, through basement walls, it's 20%. So, we
see this is actually heat loss through conduc1on through convec1on, and radia1on, and the
breakdown is wriJen there. In order to minimize these heat transfers between inside your
house and outside your house to make it for example, easier to keep your house warm in
the winter, we use insula1on, as I'm sure you know. So, different materials conduct heat at
different rates and so when you're looking at materials, the important thing to look at is
what's called R value, which is the thermal resistance it's called. It tells you how bad a
material is at conduc1ng heat. So, lower value means the material is good at transferring
heat, this is not what you want in insula1on, but you don't want a good heat transfer
between inside and outside. A higher value means materials not good at transferring heat,
so this is what is good for insula1on, right? It means that you can't lose all that nice thermal
energy you have in your house to the outside in the winter. Building materials with high R
values tend to have lots of trapped air. So, if you look at fiber, that pink fluffy insula1on,
that's fiberglass insula1on, there's lots of trapped air in it. What that means is that it's not as
good for conduc1ng, for heat loss through conduc1on. When you go to Home Depot or Rona
and buy insula1on, it tells you the Rvalue for some thickness of insula1on. Space hea1ng is a
huge use of residen1al energy, in Canada in par1cular, so about 63% of Canadian residen1al
energy use. So, home energy use is through space hea1ng, over half of that comes directly
from fossil fuel burning, so either natural gas or hea1ng oil, but 20% is electric, and then we
have the breakdown of what percent of each one. So hea1ng oil, natural gas, electric, heat
pumps, etc., shown there or dual systems were using more than one system. This is the
breakdown of how we use all this energy to heat our homes in Canada, and of course, beJer
your insula1on, the less you need to spend on it, with less energy, and money, of course, you
need to spend hea1ng your home. We'll look at a few different ways in which we heat our
homes. First of all, look at the hot-air furnace, which uses natural gas or fuel oil. So, this is
burning fossil fuels and the idea here is quite simple. I have a burner, this is where I'm
burning it my natural gas or fuel oil, the air I use for combus1on comes from outside, it
doesn't come from inside your house and this, of course, releases heat, then I take cool air
from my house, circulate it through a heat exchanger, which we've already talked about, it
takes some of this thermal energy I have from the reac1on where I'm burning my fossil fuels,
and then that warm air is circulated through the house, and then I have the products of my
burning going up through the chimney. Newer models can have efficiencies of up to 60 to
90%, so that means of the energy contained in this fossil fuel, 60 to 90% of that energy goes
into useful energy to heat my home, older models don't do as well. Next one to look at is
electric resistance hea1ng, this is o^en the form of baseboard heaters, or the heaters like
you see in the photo here. When electricity flows through a conductor, heat is released, this
is always true no maJer what. Now, this is essen1ally 100% efficient, from meter to heater.
What that means is from when the electricity is at your house to when it flows through your
baseboard heater, your electric heater, you get 100% of the energy you put in, the electrical
energy you put in, comes out as thermal energy, which is great, although you need to take
into account how that electricity is generated. So, for sure, at your house, you're using that
very efficiently. But then if you think about it, if you have fossil fuel produced electricity, for
example, that's only 35% efficient. So, if you compare that to your high efficiency, natural
gas, or oil furnace, which could be up to almost 90% efficient, you see the efficiency is
actually lower, even though it looks like when you look at the amount, the efficiency, once
the electricity is at your house, it might look higher, but in fact, you need to take in all the
efficiencies into account. The last form of hea1ng we're going to discuss is the heat pump.
So, heat pump is a heat engine, like we discussed in lesson three, that takes energy from the
outside air. We're not going to go into all the details of the physics of how this works. But
we'll just kind of look at it in general. So, here's the wall of your house, so there's two parts:
the part inside your house and the part outside of your house. This is a compressor and
what I have is some high-pressure liquid, this the blue stuff, I can press that liquid, when you
compress the liquid, it heats up, then I have hot liquid a^er it's been compressed and I put
that through a heat exchanger and I get warm air, blow that into my house, then this liquid
goes to the outside, where we let it expand, when it expands, it cools down, it cools down to
colder than the outside air. So, then, I get a heat transfer from warm to cold. It's not actually
warm outside, but it's warmer than my expanded fluid here and so I get some energy
transfer into this fluid. What I get is the energy of the fluid here is higher than it was here.
Essen1ally what I'm doing is I'm cooling down the outside and taking some of its energy, and
then I'm bringing that back in. So, what I have is more energy coming in than going out, then
I can press it again. The energy I need to put in is just the energy of this compressor, and
then I'm geKng thermal energy from outside. So, the efficiency of a heat pump doesn't
really maJer because the energy I'm geKng is coming from outside and I have as much
outside as I want. It takes a small amount of electricity because all I need to do is run the
compressor, I'm not genera1ng heat with my electricity, I'm just wri1ng a compressor. It
doesn't work, though, if the temperatures below about -10 or -15, because this doesn't get
cold enough to be colder than the outside air. So, I have one of these but in the coldest part
of the winter when it gets down below -10 or -15 it doesn't work anymore. So, I have to use
electric baseboard hea1ng. This can be in principle reversed to run the other way and then
what's happening is that you're taking heat out of your home, and so in the summer it works
as an air condi1oning unit. So, just a brief summary of what we've talked about with regard
to residen1al space hea1ng. So, hea1ng homes in Canada is about 63% of the energy use,
residen1al energy use. When you design your home, you need to think of heat transfer in all
three forms. So, that's the conduc1on, convec1on, and radia1on, and then we looked at
some of the details of how we can heat our homes. When you're choosing a hea1ng system,
we need to take into account the energy source, where your energy is coming from, your
loca1on, for example, if you live in Montreal, you can't just have a heat pump because it gets
too cold. So, you need some sort of secondary hea1ng as well and, of course, what your
specific needs are important.