South Africa is one of the many African countries, where housing situation needs urgent improvements. Although the government is willing to help, without foreign support problems are overwhelming. A number of studies were done to find solutions, partly by the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (SIDA) in cooperation with Karlstad, Kimberley and Borlänge. Aim is to start large scale housing projects that are not only simple and cost effective, but also utilize renewable energy sources effectively.
This paper is a continuation of former studies on low cost housing in South Africa. Built upon existing research and improvements effort was made to further increase indoor temperature and comfort, sometimes taking different paths as compared to past years’. The complete project was a joint work of us (Dániel and Balázs) started by identifying problems and finding ways of improvements through discussing single details and writing the paper itself. Although it is a collective the report can be split into parts written by us respectively; chapters 3, 4. and 5. were done by Daniel and chapter 6. and 7. by Balázs.
The results were positive, although further works are necessary to achieve completely pleasant indoor temperature both in winter and summer. Suggestions for possible future improvements are also given in the report. Most important achievements are:
? An attempt was made to eliminate all mechanic components from the system and thus reduce chance of malfunctions and maintenance problems. The solution was meant to eliminate electric components contributing a significant decrease of the overall price.
? Utilizing the solar chimney driven heating system indoor temperature could be increased with 0.7 centigrade in average, with 0.8 degrees at best winter conditions and with 0.5 centigrade at worst winter conditions. These values are based on daily average weather data and calculated with the mathematical model for the solar chimney driven heating system discussed in chapter 4.
? By improving wall insulation, decreasing infiltration heat loss through air leaks and designing a multi functional low cost shading device for the north facing windows, overall heat losses are reduced by ...
