Presenter: Katharine Dwyer, Ian Austin, Aidan Tart, Architecture
Poster: A-7
Mentor: Allison Kwok, Architecture
In our consumer society the ultimate and most lasting product is, without a doubt, the landfill. We produce massive amounts of materials and products that have a functional lifespan of a month or a year and then discard them as waste to decompose for hundreds or thousands of years. Our goal is to discover which materials can be reused so that such destructive cycles can be slowed or even reversed. Responding also to the inefficiency of buildings, we have honed in on Styrofoam. We believe that this material, which is otherwise thrown away, can be used to add insulative value to double pane windows. During the night, hot days, or whenever views are not desired, Styrofoam peanuts would drop from within storage units in the walls to fill the gap between the panes of glass to add extra insulation. We tested our theory by building a custom hotbox that contained a 3” double paned window section in the center. With the help of HOBO data loggers, we then tested for the insulative value of our window with and without Styrofoam peanut filler. Our tests resulted in an insulative value of the Styrofoam peanuts to be about R-8, a significant improvement over the glass panes alone. Glazing makes up a significant percentage of a building envelope, and is a main source of heat loss for a building. By implementing simple insulative technologies such as this, great amounts of energy can be saved with virtually no effort or sacrifice.