I'm about to start building the second half of our
cob and timber frame house (I owe many a debt to you good folks on this forum for ideas on that front!).
To make a long story short, my plan to have a large thermal mass bookshelf/bench exposed to winter sunlight through the day may not pan out as I had intended because of dimension/orientation issues, but I'd still like to make use of a thermal mass in the home to help in the winter. I'm considering a
rocket mass heater too, but that's not what this post is about. What it IS about:
Has anyone tried encorporating a
solar water heater design into a thermal mass? I'm thinking of a closed system of black tubing filled with water/antifreeze that gets heated outside and runs indoors and is encorporated inside some sort of a thermal mass bench/bookshelf structure. I've attached a basic sketch (forgive the mediocrity- done on the phone).
We're heating the house with a
wood stove, so it's not like I'm expecting such a structure would do the whole job, but I figure every little bit helps in the winter. If you've tinkered with plans like this or seen something like it done, how does it perform?