enthalpy

Saturday, June 05, 2010


I've been paid quite handsomely throughout my professional career to calculate heat transfer, but what I've never been able to understand is the notion of a "radiant barrier" in your attic. It's never made sense to me how aluminum foil on the lower deck of your attic could save you anything when it goes to the heat leaking into your house. Well, this guy says a mouth full:
NASA uses radiant barriers because radiation is the only way they can transfer heat from them to other spatial bodies. It’s the only mechanism that works. '

But as long as you’re building your buildings on Earth, in an air-filled environment, there are other mechanisms that are actually more important. But the NASA technology and the “ceramic balls” — it’s all just bullshit.
Put the foil on the outside of your roof, but the inside? I can't see it buying you much, no matter what these brainiacs say. It just doesn't work.



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