Sharptop Visionary Garden| Passive Solar Shade

The Passive Solar Shades/Shutters
are made from 100 year-old
barn wood so they are very, very
heavy. We screwed 2 metal brackets
to the top of the window frame.
The shades hang in these brackets.

What a team! That Solar Shade
is heavy! It's attached to the
bracket at the top and supported
by angle iron on the bottom.

The First Passive Solar Shade is installed!
Exciting!

So this photo is a bit confusing
I will explain.....
I am standing outside the window
looking in towards the ground.
The sun is setting behind me
throwing shadows of the
shutter blades and my raised
hand. It works!

Yay! The first Passive
Solar Shade/Shutter looks great!
Now to make the second shade...

This is actually from the first
solar shade, but it will show you what
we're going to do. This is a corner
of the frame which is made sturdy
with a diagonal support. The blades
are secured with a pin, allowing
it to pivot...the blades
are adjustable!

The control arm is attached
to each blade with eye-hooks.
This allows all the blades
to pivot.

The pins are each 1 5/8 inches long.
They are cut to size from a long bar.
We will drill a 1 inch hole in each
end of each blade and a 1/2 inch
in the frame for each blade.
The extra 1/8 inch will leave
a gap for the blade to spin.

We needed to cut 14 pins.
There will be 7 blades so we'll
need one pin for each end.
The workbench at the Green Building
Adventure is our cutting center.

We cut the boards to
length and then ripped them
in half. The wood is very heavy
so we did what we could to keep the
shutters light. They aren't intended
to block all the light so we left
gaps between the blades.

More to come tomorrow!