INT ASSIGNMENT
Part A
Experiment
Ice House
It is important to have a house that maximises coolness because in this
climate, it is an ideal asset. It keeps you cool and helps reduce the amount
you pay on you electricity bill because air-conditioning and fans are not being
used as much which means that you don’t use electricity that you have to pay
for.
Eight different design features that could be used to maximise coolness in the
house are:
 Light coloured roofing and exterior coloured walls.
 Cross ventilation.
 Making sure that the main room of the house is facing away from the sun.
 Tinted windows and doors where the sun hits the house.
 Eves.
 Light building materials.
 Lots of trees and flora around the house to provide shade, and to take in all
of the CO2 around the house.
 Open plan living to let the breeze through.
Some energy efficient homes in Cairns, Darwin, Northern Territory, Broome,
anywhere in Western Australia and some parts of Queensland may need a
cooling devise installed because of the tropical/hot/humid climate of those
areas.
The strengths of the design feature I have decided to test are that it is an easy
thing to do; it is also an effective way of determining which colour absorbs
the most heat, and will also help decide which colour roof we are going to
use for the real house design. The weakness of doing this is that it will take
time and patience to find which colour roof absorbs the heat.
Variables: All mini houses have different coloured rooves.
Aim: To find which coloured roof stays the coolest during the day.
Hypothesis: The cream roof will stay cooler than the other coloured houses.
Materials:
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Cardboard
Paddle pop sticks
Craft glue
Sticky tape
Red, black and cream paint
Paint brushes
Scissors
Method:
Step 1) Make the base and structure out of paddle pop sticks. (x3)
Step 2) Paint cardboard white, cut out a small window from 1 wall in each house
and glue onto the structure. (x3)
Step 3) Cut out rooves from left over cardboard and paint. (Red, black and grey.
x3)
Step 4) place ice cubes in houses and set out in the sun.
Ice House Results
70
60
Time taken to melt.
(in minutes)
50
40
30
20
10
0
10:30am Cream
Series1
62
Red
Black
60
60
2:30pm Cream
50
Red
Black
51
49
Average Cream
56
Table of Ice House Results.
CREAM
RED
BLACK
10:30 am
62 mins
60 mins
60 mins
2:30 pm
50 mins
51 mins
49 mins
Average
56 mins
55 mins
54 mins
Red
Black
55
54
The cool homes that we constructed were very effective in the fact that that we
could tell easily which house was more heat resistant. The cream house- as we
thought would be the best for keeping the ice cool. The black house as we
guessed would be the most absorbent and make the ice cube melt. Our results
revealed that the cream coloured roof would be the best coloured roof to keep
the ice cube cool, because it is very reflective. The red coloured roof wasn’t the
best to keep the ice cube but it was still better than the black roof which helped
the ice melt in less than 60 minutes.
Because the sun was not at its hottest at 10:30 am, it took longer for the heat to
radiate through the roof. But at 2:30 when the sun was full bore, its rays went
through the houses really quickly and melted the ice fast.
My hypothesis was correct. The cream roof was the most efficient in keeping the
ice cube cool. And I was right when I said that the black roof would probably
absorb the most heat. And you could tell from the feel of the roof that it was the
hottest inside and out.
The cream roof would be the most effective in keeping occupants cool.
I would use the information I discovered to keep my energy efficient home cool
by painting the roof a light/ reflective color which slows down absorption. This
then keeps the people in the home cool and uses less energy for cooling.
The strengths and weaknesses of the cool home test would have to be that it was
fun to do, it was a very hands on activity during the beginning and was an
interesting test to perform. But it was also time consuming and tedious because
we made three houses and three rooves. But that also made it faster to complete
instead of one house and three rooves.
Some problems that we experienced during the test are the actual construction of
the houses. It was hard to get the paddle pop sticks to stay upright, and for the
walls to stay together.
I think we could improve our model houses by changing the way we built them in
the way that we scrap the paddle pop stick structure idea, and just use cardboard
and sticky tape, and perhaps make the roofing more stable. ( make a base for
each of the roofs)