Solar energy in Savannah

Solar hot water and greywater in Savannah, Georgia. The use of natural resources and renewable energy is essential today.

The use of solar energy for hot water production and / or heating and the recycling of the used water from the house, are just some of the resources we have today at our disposal to save energy costs and cope with the climate change.

Some other options, not only promoted from the Spanish state, but, from virtually, all developed countries, are the use of wind power and other very efficient energy resources.

Geothermal energy, for example, consists in the use of a heat pump, a device that is very efficient in itself. Heat pumps don´t use electricity to produce heat, but, to move it from one side to another, that´s why there are so effective. A refrigerator, for example, is a heat pump that takes out the heat from the inside, creating the internal cooling that allows us to store food. In the same way, a heat pump can be used to expell the heat of our house (cooling) or extract it (heating). Though it may seem miraculous, heat pumps are able to extract heat from the outside into the house, even in winter, when outside temperatures are very low, thanks to a procedure explained in our section on heat pumps. A geothermal heat pump do es not exchange heat with the outside air, a procedure routinely used by other heat pumps, but, with the subsoil, which maintains a constant temperature throughout the year (about 15 degrees) that is more advantageous for exchanging, than the air temperature.

To produce heat or cold, we recommend the use of a radiant floor heating system, which consists of a hydraulic circuit located below the floor of the house. It has many advantages over radiators, with benefits that we also enumerate in detail, in its corresponding section.

For households in the south of the Peninsula, where winter' s are not severe enough as to have central heating, we recommend the use of pellet stoves. Pellets are chips made out of wood waste. These stoves are very powerful and comfortable devices. The only thing to keep in mind is that they need a vent, as its calorific value is based on combustion and not on the use of electricity, like heat pumps or electric stoves, are.



Para viviendas del sur de la Península, donde en invierno no hace tanto frío como para una calefacción centralizada, recomendamos el uso de las estufas de pellets. Los pellets son bolitas fabricadas a base de residuos de la madera. Son máquinas muy potentes y de gran confort. Lo único a tener en cuenta es que necesitan una salida de humos, dado que su potencia calorífica se basa en la combustión, y no en el uso de electricidad, como las bombas de calor o las estufas eléctricas.