Solstice etc..

The house about 10 minutes after noon on the summer solstice

It has been a year since I first noticed how the roof shadow at the summer solstice lines up ever so neatly just after noon to reveal only the sun part of the sunburst on the south face of the house. This little event is a delight for me and today I was out there again taking pictures to document the moment.

Insulator lamps hanging from track over the dining room table

I recently made a couple more of the hanging insulator lamps. You may remember the one I made that hangs over our tub. My idea for the lights over the kitchen table was to have a series of lamps that will all hang at different heights and are made from insulators of different shapes. I'm pretty happy with the effect. The lights are dimmable, so the light can be quite intimate and candle-like.

The new motion detector light switch for the mudroom/pantry closet

This image shows the detection range of the switch (in blue). At some point it might make sense to move it so it is pointing towards the door so it registers movement right away, rather then after you start to move into the room

In other news, I replaced the conventional light switch in our kitchen/mudroom closet with a motion detector switch so we don't have to manually turn on the light every time we go into the closet. My previous plan was to install a push-button switch that would have been activated by the door itself, but that would have required a bunch of wall and trim deconstruction. The motion-activated switch was an easy and quick solution and it works really well. If you open the door and don't step in, nothing happens, but as soon as you move into the room the light comes on.

Vernal Equinox

March 24, 2011, at about 12:20pm, just after the vernal equinox

December 20, 2010 approximately 10:00 am on the winter solstice

September 21, 2010 approximately 12:00 pm at the autumnal equinox

June 21, 2010 approximately 12:00 pm at the summer solstice

The photo at the top rounds out a series of photos I've taken at the summer and winter solstice and the fall and spring equinox. You might recall that I got quite excited around the summer solstice last year when I found that within a few minutes of twelve noon on June 21, the only element of the decorative sun pattern on the south face of the house was the sun its self.

This discovery motivated me to document the four points of the seasonal rotation with a photo capturing the shading on the house. As expected the fall and spring equinox shading is pretty similar while the summer and winter solstice shadow contrasts greatly.

This information could come into play in the future if we ever decided we wanted to add shading over the windows in the warmer months to help keep the house cooler. I'm not sure if we'd ever get there but I guess we'll figure that out through experience.

Winter Solstice

December 20, 2010 approximately 10:00 am

September 21, 2010 approximately 12:00 pm

June 21, 2010 approximately 12:00 pm

If you've been reading this blog for a while you know that I got quite excited around the summer solstice when I found that within a few minutes of twelve noon on June 21, the only element of the decorative sun pattern on the south face of the house was the sun its self.

I've been anticipating the arrival of the winter solstice and hoping that the weather would permit a noon photo to contrast with the summer event. Tomorrow is the solstice, but the weather report is calling for clouds and snow, so I took advantage of today's clear skies to snap a few pictures of the sun on the house.

What I've noticed and am curious about is difference between the sun's shadow at the mid-summer when it was virtually centered on the gable of the south face of the house, and how now, at the winter solstice the sun is centered on the house at roughly ten in the morning. I know we in the northern hemisphere are tilted away from the sun in the winter, but I think I expected that the sun would still be centered on the house at noon, only at a lower angle. I got the angle part right, but clearly not the centered part. The photo from September shows the sun heading south already.

We'll keep our eye out in March for the next installment.

The Summer Solstice

The shadow at roughly 12:10 on June 21

The shadow at 12 noon on June 21

It was with great excitement I awaited the noon hour on June 21 to observe the way the sun fell upon the house. In particular, I was anxious to see how the sun lay upon the sunburst pattern on the south gable of the house.

To my minor disappointment the sun at high noon was just slightly off from dead center on the triangle, but what made me quite happy was that at roughly 12:10 the shadow was centered on the roof, but also that the only aspect of the sunburst not in shadow was the sun shape itself. I couldn't have hoped for a better outcome. It thrills me that without aid of a calendar I could, in essence, look up at the house around this time of year and tell you when the longest day of the year has been reached.

I suspect that the reason the shadow is not centered at noon is because the house is not dead-on south. Does anybody have any perspective on that? I'd be curious to know.

Any guesses as to where the shadow will fall at the winter solstice?

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Update
I received this from my father-in-law Lou, who is a former physics and astronomy teacher:

Dave,

You should not expect the sun to match your triangle at exactly 12 noon because in the eastern time zone it is 12 noon everywhere from Boston until almost Chicago. The sun cannot be due south in Boston and Chicago at the same time. You are in the eastern part of this time zone, so I would expect the sun's peak on your house to match your triangle peak before 12 noon. My memory is that the match occurred at 12:10. This surprises me. Do you know with certainty that that side of the house faces due south? How accurate is your watch?

It is a mystery worth solving.

Lou

My reply:

I'm sure my watch was accurate, at least within a minute or so. I suspect the issue is that the house is probably not on in alignment with the north-south axis. It'd be interesting to find out how far off it it is. When I did the foundation layout I referenced south with a hand-held compass that gave me a general sense of the line. While doing the layout I was also trying to take into account the axis of our garden which is very close to south, so I probably tweaked the line a bit to make it a compromise between the two factors.

Watershed

Today felt like a bit of a turning point.

I completed some long running plumbing projects, pressure tested the hot water supply lines (they're good), and re-arranged some electrical stuff while Joe continues to make great project on all the pre-insulation blocking work.

I also had a little fun with the water supply configuration. I needed to make another block to keep the upper horizontal copper manifold held off the plywood. Why not make the blocks fish? Of course I got totally excited at the idea and had to do it, and I'm glad I did. I live for that sort of thing.

I also went outside at 12:00pm to see where the sun landed. Unfortunately just as it hit noon the clouds came over. It wasn't for about 10 minutes until it cleared again. In any case, it seems --to my sublime pleasure-- that the sun pretty much lines up with the point of the triangle at noon. What varies is the angle of the sun in an up or down manner depending on the proximity of the solstice or equinox. I couldn't be more pleased about this. Its like an homage to the sun, a recognition of that which is so much greater then everything else we know. It also will stand as a testament to that greatness long after you or I will cease to be, provided the house remains as it is.

On a more earthly note, we have hired a plumbing contractor to install the boiler which will provide the radiant hot water and domestic (drinking and washing) hot water supply. They will also install the pressure tank. This is starting tomorrow morning, so I expect that we will have the availability of running hot and cold water within a week. We've been waiting a long, long time for this.