Hi Gordy,
"For thermo mass, Have you thought of painting the floor black ? I don't know if that epoxy paint for garage floors comes in black, or you could use a dark oil based house stain. The stain thing I saw on "This Old House", to color a walkway made of concrete and one of those plastic forms to make it look like set rocks (each rock stained a differant color). They claimed it should last 5-7 years outside before needing restaining. This should heat the floor better, forcing the heat deeper into the concrete than the stock gary color."
Sounds like a good idea. My only hesitation in trying to put more heat into the floor is that I don't know if there is any insulation under it. It seems to cool off pretty fast once the sun is not on it. I guess another possibility would be to paint the floor white with the idea that it would reflect heat further back into the garage?
I might have a go at painting the West 8 ft near the door black, and take some temperature measurements for a few days. I have one of those hammer drills, and could drill a small hole in the slab, and place a temperature sensor (say) 4 inches down -- see what it does with both black paint and white paint. Hmmm.
"A neighbor built a large sun room 7 or 8 years ago with a hinged door panel at the bottom of the windows on the out side, with foil faced foam insulation. The door panel was raised and lowered with a boat winch, which also let him ajust the panel so the foil would reflect more light into the windows. He loved it exept the night time temp drops. SO the next year he covered the floor with 16" sq x 1.5" thick dark red patio blocks, and 3' high of recycled bricks along the walls (heavy duty wains coating )"
Sounds like a nice scheme -- you get insulation at night and reflector during the daytime. A bit like the Zomeworks scheme.
My wife says that we WILL have a sunspace for next spring -- so I guess we will :-)
Gary