The warm summer months never last forever. Soon it’s time to look for a way to bring a little extra warmth into the home and this simple solar heater is a great project to do just that. It’s made of metal cans, steel or aluminum, and can produce a surprisingly strong and consistent airflow upwards of 140F.
Even on a heavy snow day you’re looking at somewhere around 75-85F.
Best of all, this simple project requires just a few common parts and many of them can simply be re-purposed from your regular recycling. Watch the project come together in the fully-detailed video on the NEXT PAGE:
@[1100019339:2048:Gayle Cowart Collins] (P)
Just put a school bus on the top of your house if you want solar heat
This is redneck solar power at its finest he had water pipes to make hot water I said to him this things joke he said hold the pipe I’ll circulate the water no way could you hold your hand on it
@[1476255737:2048:Lisa Matthews Bushnell]
What powers the fan?
In South Pekin there is a home that has, I would guess at least 3 to 400 feet of 1 in. black plastic pipe that is in a roll on there roof, they actuall provide warm water for the shower and clothes washers with this simple idea. Of course they drain it when temps get close to freezing.
I’m making one.
Constructed one of these 8×10 FEET with my late, great former father-in-law in Cheyenne, WY in 1981… Hooked it up to his ba$#%&!@*t furnace system with a thermostat and for the next 25 years, saved him $500/year in heating costs.
Total construction and install (including ducting and thermostat) <$300.
This is a very nice concept. In order to be effective this would have to be mounted to a south (sun) facing wall on the outside of house. Inside air would be then ducted through heater. Sun energy captured is about 1kW/M^2. One Kilowatt per square meter of surface. To be as efficient as you can get with existing technology you would run copper pipes with a liquid coolent. Liquid is much better at holding and transferring heat. (Think water cooled engines run cooler). Then you would evacuate the box of air and run copper pipes in a vacuum. There is absolutely no thermal advantage if you are intending to mount this inside house in front of a window. Only so many watts of energy will p$#%&!@* through the window regardless of what you have placed in front of it. if you are building from scratch you would use lots of Low E 180 gl$#%&!@* on a south facing side and put lots of concrete on the floor under windows to store and release energy at night.
@[1674322399:2048:Randy Krohn]