Home made solar heater

[downfader]

I was reading the Guardian blog article on renewable home energy and the prices just irritated me. Completely out of the reach of the normal mortal. Then some fella posted:

I suggest you put away the math, and start building your own solar panel for home heating. I`ve been doing the calculations myself and constantly looking for perfect solution. Then, one day I decided to experiment rather than calculate. And that was the turnover for me.

Wow. The link provided looks dead simple. Air just filters in, warms up in old fizzy cans and then back into the house: http://solar.freeonp...ector_works.htm

The full procedure was listed. Not sure on the values, but I reckon I could knock up an miniture version quite easily and test it out. I know I can get cans, I work in a restaurant, but I'm thinking smaller chambers means quicker heating...

 

[beanzontoast]

That's impressive!

I guess the main limitation is the energy storage aspect, but at the kind of construction cost the article is talking about, it seems it might pay for itself fairly quickly, you think?

 

[Davidc]

There was a design for solar water heating at Centre for Alternative Technology (CAT) in Wales which used a single radiator painted black, placed below the hot water cylinder the heat was collected in (no pump needed, no control system).

 

[downfader]

That's impressive!

I guess the main limitation is the energy storage aspect, but at the kind of construction cost the article is talking about, it seems it might pay for itself fairly quickly, you think?

Its not really for generatice energy for TVs etc.. its a heater. I could imagine you could link in heat cells and generate electricyt for batteries, but why bother tbh. If you were doing that just do the normal solar electric cells approach anyway.

Simplicity always seems to win out and this looks dead simple.

Edit found some videos:

View: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R9bBnRQWRro


View: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jzxw1j-dzY4


Theres LOADs of vids on this!

 

[Night Train]

Thing you want to be careful of is the system reversing the heat flow when it is cool and not sunny outside.
A one way flap valve at the bottom would stop that happening I think.

 

[downfader]

Thing you want to be careful of is the system reversing the heat flow when it is cool and not sunny outside.
A one way flap valve at the bottom would stop that happening I think.

The article already addressed that. Just trying to find an appropriate product on the wickes website.

I made one of these a few years ago, radiator painted black non pumped system to a storage tank, it was quite surprising how much hot water it produced on a sunny day. Never got round to developing the project and connecting it up to the domestic hot water tank. With the price of energy now, may be I should take another look. Although I doubt the wife would tolerate an old radiator bolted onto the house roof :-(

Now if you stuck the radiator under plexi glass in an insulated box like the cans that could work more efficiently

 

[Davidc]

I made one of these a few years ago, radiator painted black non pumped system to a storage tank, it was quite surprising how much hot water it produced on a sunny day. Never got round to developing the project and connecting it up to the domestic hot water tank. With the price of energy now, may be I should take another look. Although I doubt the wife would tolerate an old radiator bolted onto the house roof :-(

I didn't make one, but made a monitoring system for one that others did. They used a long radiator and some sealed double glazed window units scrounged from a demolition site to go above it. Heated a standard HW cylinder which then fed the conventional gas heated system.

Their problem was too much heating, and water which boiled in July, got to 80 deg C in January on a sunny day. Needed strong car antifreeze in the outdoor circuit though and that cost money.

I used a BBC model B as the data collecting and recording machine. Remember those?

 

[Arch]

I used a BBC model B as the data collecting and recording machine. Remember those?

I do. Friend of mine said they were great for games. You could play cricket using the keyboard as a bat....

 

[vernon]

I do. Friend of mine said they were great for games. You could play cricket using the keyboard as a bat....

The BBC was a much underrated computer.

I still hanker after having another one if only to cope with the challenge of shoehorning a programme into the limited on board memory.

I lost many a night's sleep playing Elite.

 

[slowmotion]

I just loved the BBC B. It had a wonderful digital I/O port for driving things like stepper motors ( via some Veroboard-cobbled works of genius) and a half-way decent A to D convertor, ten bits was it? I still have one, complete with monitor and disk drive up in the loft. At the beginning of the era of PC computing, it was an awesome learning tool for students. I had a whole heap of fun with it. Very happy days.

 

[downfader]

I had a commodore 64. Great games, loads of public domain software. Then I went on to an Amiga 1200. More memory and better graphics but lost the interest in gaming by that point.

Back on subject. Does anyone know what would be a good flap valve (had trouble finding something suitable)? And can you get alu ducting less than 100mm? All I could find was this:

http://www.wickes.co.uk/aluminium-ducting/invt/713024/


I thought instead of cans (might still use them anyway as its cheap) I create some air chambers that are around 50mm diameter. I could then loop it so that air doesnt shift through all at once but has to pass through each chamber linked to the next.

I thought also - small inlet, larger outlet.

Mostly just going to play with it and see what happens as I change bits around. I thought I could house the small unit in an old box picture frame (since it comes with glass and is premade)

 

[Melonfish]

i really LOVE this idea, i like the vids too, all solar powered to the fans won't run unless the sun is out, simplicity in itself and doesn't use any mains power!

you know the more i think the more i ponder whether its possible to build a house with a solar panel roof, rainwater collection system and one wall made with those tin can heaters to help heat the house...
doable, if only i had the money

 

[subaqua]

I had a commodore 64. Great games, loads of public domain software. Then I went on to an Amiga 1200. More memory and better graphics but lost the interest in gaming by that point.

Back on subject. Does anyone know what would be a good flap valve (had trouble finding something suitable)? And can you get alu ducting less than 100mm? All I could find was this:

http://www.wickes.co.uk/aluminium-ducting/invt/713024/


I thought instead of cans (might still use them anyway as its cheap) I create some air chambers that are around 50mm diameter. I could then loop it so that air doesnt shift through all at once but has to pass through each chamber linked to the next.

I thought also - small inlet, larger outlet.

Mostly just going to play with it and see what happens as I change bits around. I thought I could house the small unit in an old box picture frame (since it comes with glass and is premade)

aluminium guttering downpipes will be 75mm ish.diameter .

a fan with integral backdraught shutter would work a fair few Vent Axia models have these built in.

 

[Night Train]

Rockwill is a spammer bumping up an old thread.