| Home |
| Search |
| Today's Posts |
|
#1
|
|||
|
|||
Solar Heating
Hi,
I'm looking to heat several of the rooms in my house with solar heat during the day. I've found a product at: http://www.hotboxsolar.com/ Can anyone tell me A) Do you have any experience with these? Do they work well? B) Are there any other options I can look into (a search on google hasn't brought up much that has been useful) |
|
#2
|
|||
|
|||
|
Matt wrote:
Hi, I'm looking to heat several of the rooms in my house with solar heat during the day. I've found a product at: http://www.hotboxsolar.com/ Can anyone tell me A) Do you have any experience with these? Do they work well? B) Are there any other options I can look into (a search on google hasn't brought up much that has been useful) You can make your own solar heater for considerably less money. There are several websites that explain how to do this as well as several books on the topic. I have a prototype solar heater working for supplemental heat now. It works reasonably well but still needs some tweaking. The main problems with solar are location and whether you can do a retrofit. |
|
#3
|
|||
|
|||
|
Serendipity wrote:
Matt wrote: Hi, I'm looking to heat several of the rooms in my house with solar heat during the day. I've found a product at: http://www.hotboxsolar.com/ Can anyone tell me A) Do you have any experience with these? Do they work well? B) Are there any other options I can look into (a search on google hasn't brought up much that has been useful) You can make your own solar heater for considerably less money. There are several websites that explain how to do this as well as several books on the topic. I have a prototype solar heater working for supplemental heat now. It works reasonably well but still needs some tweaking. The main problems with solar are location and whether you can do a retrofit. I figured and that is why I was looking for insight. How well does your solar heater work? Can you give me any information on your heater and what you used? |
|
#4
|
|||
|
|||
|
Matt wrote in message ... I'm looking to heat several of the rooms in my house with solar heat during the day. I've found a product at: http://www.hotboxsolar.com/ Can anyone tell me A) Do you have any experience with these? Do they work well? My superficial reaction is that the surface area is nothing like enough to be able to heat much, even if it does work properly. B) Are there any other options I can look into Yeah, making your own, much bigger. How big it needs to be depends on a variety of factors that you dont even mention like the location, amount of sun and whether what you want to heat gets any passive solar currently or not etc. (a search on google hasn't brought up much that has been useful) |
|
#5
|
|||
|
|||
|
Rodtarded Speed wrote: Matt wrote in message ... I'm looking to heat several of the rooms in my house with solar heat during the day. I've found a product at: http://www.hotboxsolar.com/ Can anyone tell me A) Do you have any experience with these? Do they work well? My superficial reaction... Every reaction you have is superficial. BTW, solar heating has nothing to do with horse ****, pig ****, cow ****, human ****, Rod ****, Speed **** or even bat **** so stick with what you know, ****head. |
|
#6
|
|||
|
|||
|
Matt wrote:
Serendipity wrote: Matt wrote: Hi, I'm looking to heat several of the rooms in my house with solar heat during the day. I've found a product at: http://www.hotboxsolar.com/ Can anyone tell me A) Do you have any experience with these? Do they work well? B) Are there any other options I can look into (a search on google hasn't brought up much that has been useful) You can make your own solar heater for considerably less money. There are several websites that explain how to do this as well as several books on the topic. I have a prototype solar heater working for supplemental heat now. It works reasonably well but still needs some tweaking. The main problems with solar are location and whether you can do a retrofit. I figured and that is why I was looking for insight. How well does your solar heater work? Can you give me any information on your heater and what you used? Matt, our heater works quite nicely but as I said, it needs some tweaking. I used plywood for the frame, pop cans cut in half painted matte black for the inners (increases surface area and heat absorption), and used glass for the glazing. As mentioned, this is a prototype heater so duct work and venting is still very preliminary. I need to adjust both. |
|
#7
|
|||
|
|||
|
"Matt" wrote in message ... Hi, I'm looking to heat several of the rooms in my house with solar heat during the day. I've found a product at: http://www.hotboxsolar.com/ Can anyone tell me A) Do you have any experience with these? Do they work well? B) Are there any other options I can look into (a search on google hasn't brought up much that has been useful) I haven't used one of these heaters, so can't tell you anything from direct experience. But according to the spec sheet on the website, these things are four feet long by 2 feet wide. It seems to me one of these things would capture about as much heat as a standard sized window, maybe less - most of the windows in my house are larger than these units. They may perform better than just adding a window to your living space because windows aren't generally oriented to maximize solar gain, the wall opening is smaller so there's probably less heat loss when the sun isn't shining on the unit, and windows aren't tilted to maximize the light captured. At ground level, we get (very roughly) about 1000 joules per second per square meter of surface perpendicular to the sun. At 24 by 48 inches, one of these collectors totals 1,152 square inches, or about .74 square meters. That indicates at best you could expect to collect about 1 BTU per second, or about 3,600 BTU per hour. A typical home furnace might deliver heat at the rate of 90,000 BTU per hour, while a vented kerosene heater with a fan might deliver heat at the rate of around 40,000 BTU per hour (burning just over .3 of a gallon of kerosene an hour to do so). Of course, furnaces and these kinds of heaters don't generally run continuously, they cycle on and off. Is 3,600 BTU/hour enough to keep you comfortable? I don't know. Actually, it'll be less than that, the 3,600 figure is only attainable when the sun's rays are striking the collector perpendicularly - at other times of the day it'll be less. Just as a guess, from sunrise to sunset, the average will be half that amount. I don't know how much electricity the fan for these collectors uses, but it sounds possible that the fan will use as much or more in electricity as you'll save in fuel, depending on what you heat with. |
|
#8
|
|||
|
|||
|
Lou wrote in message ... Matt wrote I'm looking to heat several of the rooms in my house with solar heat during the day. I've found a product at: http://www.hotboxsolar.com/ Can anyone tell me A) Do you have any experience with these? Do they work well? B) Are there any other options I can look into (a search on google hasn't brought up much that has been useful) I haven't used one of these heaters, so can't tell you anything from direct experience. But according to the spec sheet on the website, these things are four feet long by 2 feet wide. It seems to me one of these things would capture about as much heat as a standard sized window, maybe less - most of the windows in my house are larger than these units. Mine are much larger, 24' wide patio doors deliberately installed for the passive solar in the main room. Likely about 8' high sun in winter. They may perform better than just adding a window to your living space because windows aren't generally oriented to maximize solar gain, the wall opening is smaller so there's probably less heat loss when the sun isn't shining on the unit, and windows aren't tilted to maximize the light captured. Yeah, more controllable, just too small tho. At ground level, we get (very roughly) about 1000 joules per second per square meter of surface perpendicular to the sun. At 24 by 48 inches, one of these collectors totals 1,152 square inches, or about .74 square meters. That indicates at best you could expect to collect about 1 BTU per second, or about 3,600 BTU per hour. A typical home furnace might deliver heat at the rate of 90,000 BTU per hour, while a vented kerosene heater with a fan might deliver heat at the rate of around 40,000 BTU per hour (burning just over .3 of a gallon of kerosene an hour to do so). And about a 1KW electric heater, thats pretty bloody small for a big room. Of course, furnaces and these kinds of heaters don't generally run continuously, they cycle on and off. Is 3,600 BTU/hour enough to keep you comfortable? I don't know. 1KW isnt going to be unless its a very small well insulated room. Actually, it'll be less than that, the 3,600 figure is only attainable when the sun's rays are striking the collector perpendicularly - at other times of the day it'll be less. Just as a guess, from sunrise to sunset, the average will be half that amount. I don't know how much electricity the fan for these collectors uses, Low enough to ignore basically. but it sounds possible that the fan will use as much or more in electricity as you'll save in fuel, depending on what you heat with. Cant see that. Its going to be a lot less than 500W. |
|
#9
|
|||
|
|||
|
Matt wrote:
Hi, I'm looking to heat several of the rooms in my house with solar heat during the day. I've found a product at: http://www.hotboxsolar.com/ Can anyone tell me A) Do you have any experience with these? Do they work well? Flat panel solar space heating is one of the few forms of solar power that works well and pays back well, if properly designed. But the heaters there are too small and excessively priced. B) Are there any other options I can look into (a search on google hasn't brought up much that has been useful) check out alt.solar.thermal and ask about this: people have designed and fitted real systems that perform well and give impressive payback. NT |
|
#11
|
|||
|
|||
|
ElaineJ wrote: wrote: Rodtarded Speed wrote: -snip- My superficial reaction... Every reaction you have is superficial. BTW, solar heating has nothing to do with horse ****, pig ****, cow ****, human ****, Rod ****, Speed **** or even bat **** so stick with what you know, ****head. Gosh, no need to be so modest. You know a lot more about the subject than he does. Sorry, I didn't realize you were a fan of the man who calls others "****wit" because they simply posted to the group. Maybe you condone that sort of behaviour. I don't. |
| Reply |
| Thread Tools | Search this Thread |
| Display Modes | |
|
|
Similar Threads
|
||||
| Thread | Forum | |||
| An air-soil solar sub-basement heat battery | Home Repair | |||
| Solar water heating - heater tank questions | Home Repair | |||
| DIY solar heating | UK diy | |||
| Heating design diagram (preliminary) | UK diy | |||
| Solar space heating idea | UK diy | |||
Linear Mode
