Convective heat transfer inside passive solar buildings

Natural convection between spaces in a building can play a major role in energy transfer. Two situations are investigated: convection through a single doorway into a remote room, and a convective loop in a two-story house with a south sunspace where a north stairway serves as the return path. A doorway-sizing equation is given for the single-door case. Detailed data are given from the monitoring of airflow in one two-story house and summary data are given for five others. Observations on the nature of the airflow and design guidelines are presented