Anyone using a solar heating system at home?

scott#2

Now for my past solar education. When I was younger I worked for a S.H. company, This fellow ran this business on a shoe string and never really made a go of it due the being too cheap. Trucke that broke down all the time, angry customers, leaking systems, you name it. One thing though, this guy had a concoction in his collectors that would heat water to scalding hot and hold the heat in the collectors long after the sun went down. The water got so hot that steam was always a problem and the pipes and joints would split and cause leaks and law suits. I always wanted to duplicate this "mash" in the collectors and run a steam turbine geterator off it to make voltage, not to mention hot water heat, just need to find some way to regulate it. This guy was very smart but over looked very obvious advantages and flaws and never harnessed or fixed them. I do believe this could be done and if done right could possibly slam the power companies a new one. I just lack system design and principal knowledge that I plan on gaining soon.

I have always detested any controlling entity that tells me what to do and how to do it and especially when they cant even give me a straight answer, LIKE THE POWER COMPANY.

Im not really interested in suplementing my heat or electricity, I would prefer to cut them out entirely. Challenge and opportunity is there for our taking, for the 1% that are willing to pay the price and explore the possibilities. I have always believed that: The impossible we accomplish immediatly, the insanely ridiculous may take a day or 2 longer.

I know that there isnt one person on this forum that likes giving their hard earned money away because "they" say we have to no matter who "they" are.

Inst it about time, or very long past the time for a change here? Arent things getting just a wee bit out of control? From taxes to the criminal justice system and everything in between, are we really getting what we pay for these days?

All of my friends say Im a unique individual and they will also be the first to tell you how much they respect and admire me. To me, Im just a regular old guy who thinks way outside the realm of conventionalism and status quo.

I truely appologize for this post.

scott#2

Now if you just want to build a Model steam turbine for fun that one thing, but for use they just take to much steam for a collector panel to use. To have a steam engine for a practial use I would build a Triple expansion engine with a full vacum condensing unit.
with a stroke equal to the bore. No less than 2 in S&B
I built a Stuart & Turner 5A casting kit with out condensor, that run a 110 volt DC Gen (permenent magnet motor). At about 125 psi this would run a 1.5 HP motor. I also run this engine with a parabolic collector with a clock works sun follower. For anything more than charging batteries it just wasnt practicial. A quite large boiler would have had to been used for any continious use.
The 5A is a good one to start with

For a easy build turbine try a Tesla, plans available in a early Pop Mech mag about 1964 check at library, these can be built any size.

• Specs on 5A steam engine

Were 4 standing panals mounted to an aluminum frame that a water line passed through. His hot water went through some holding tank in his pump room and those 4 panals on his roof, even though he said it didn't work. When he had a new roof put on, he had it all taken down. He and his wife were kind've poor financially, so I'd often offer to play with it for two reasons. One, he and his wife could've used the extra money, and I was intrigued by that thing. Besides, I'd be outside in the morning and hear this squeaking sound, and one day happened to look up and saw those 4 panals rotating toward the sun, so they were doing something and I wanted to PLAY!!!

Back in the '70's I used to build boats at one of the area factories. The house boats came with a 5 gallon hot water heater. That's kind've small for a shower. So, we created this "solar" preheater panal that we'd stick up on the roofs in an unused area. Used about 100' of coiled copper tubing encased in a box. The tubing was split into 2 sections. The upper 50' was painted black (attracts heat) and coiled lying on a piece of aluminum with plexiglass covering it (kept the wind from cooling). The bottom 50' was right below that piece of aluminum and insulated. It was all contained in a box about 3'x 4' x 4". The cold water fed into the top coil, through the 2nd coil, and into the water heater. I don't know whom thought that thing up, but on a reasonably sunny day, it sure did work. The theory should still apply on a larger scale, and am sure that technologies have gotten much better.

And, is a guy just up the road that's been doing wind mill generator electricity to his farm since the '70's. Back then when that kind of stuff first started taking off after the oil embargo and Jimmy Carter doing the State of the Nation address in a baby blue sweater and telling the nation to dial down thermostats to 68 degrees, Popular Mechanics began running the heck out of them things. That farmer was the first I've ever seen do that. He's been through a generator or two up there since then, but every now and then, I'll go by and see that prop swooping in the wind, and sometimes it's locked still. I need to pay that guy a visit. I'd think with the deregulation of grid power, and the competition offering rechargeable battery packs that they drop off (change out), with an invertor, a windmill generator, you'd have a continuously charged battery pack. Has to be maintenance and upkeep though.

Lastly, one of the simplest, most engenious heating sources I've ever seen was buried pipe. It came out of that era too. These guys dug trenches like 4' deep and coiled fairly good sized pipe (maybe 1' or 2' in diameter) maybe 100' or 200' in length and buried it. It drew fresh air in and plumbed it into the home ventilation system ahead of the furnace blower. It provided both cheap air conditioning because on the hotest days, the soil heated up to like 70 or 75 degrees at that depth. On a 100 degree day, 70 or 75 degrees in a house is pretty cool. In the winter, at that depth the ground cooled to like 60 or 65 degrees, which is pretty good preheat when its snowey and 0 degees above ground. And after the initial cost, its free and begins paying itself off. It takes that initial investment ($$$) though.

Great subject. I'm thinking the way folks are getting murdered in the wallet from every direction, subscriptions to Popular Mechanics are going to go up this year. Count me in too.

Mark

But your posted antifreeze and pipe seems like a better, or at least a safer up to date technology. I guess the real part was using a pretty constant 60 to 70 degrees temeperature of ground heat and cooling as a cheap source, after the initial investment, if a person can scrape up those $$$ up front for a much larger payoff afterwards.

Its for sure that I expect the cost of insulation materials to spike upwards this year, because after what's happened to peoples pocket books this year, I expect a run on home insulation products (supply and demand).

I just heard on the radio's Wall Street Journal Report that late mortgage payments have hit an all time high, one of the reasons given was paying "high heating and energy costs". Well yeah, that might do it.

Time to start reading Popular Mechanics again, or the sort.

Good luck, Mark

I know a couple of guys that have installed systems with buried water lines that snake all over their properties. The water, or antifreeze solution is circulated through the buried lines with a small pump to transfer heat either from the ground to heat the house, or to the ground to cool the house in the summer. They use heat exchangers that also preheat their domestic hot water year around. One of the guys says that he keeps his house at 74 degrees all the time and seldom has an electric bill over $100 per month. He said he put in his system himself using a backhoe and it added about $10k to the cost of his new house. He believes it will pay for itself in less than 10 years and so far has had no problems at all with it. Not bad.

I would like to put in a ground loop system, but I am worried that my area is too rocky and I might get leaks in the plastic pipe loop. When I built my new house about 10 years ago, natural gas was so cheap I didn't put in the equipment to burn some wood. But with continual price increases for gas and electricity, I may have to do something to lower my heating costs. Maybe the geothermal loop is the best answer.

That's the reason I didn't use them even though it was part of the total design I followed. I didn't want another active system to maintain.

Solar? Well, sort of. We have passive annual heat storage. It's accomplished through huge dirt mass (insulated). Dirt cheap. The mass cools our house all summer and stores the heat for reradiation during the winter. Result is we never have a cold, or hot, house. Minimum is 65�. If we bothered with window coverings it would be 68� at the coldest.

This is Virginia, not known for its icy winters, but the same design performed even better in Montana, with the earth tubes. I only took the heat storage idea, not the architecture, from the book Passive Annual Heat Storage. Excerpt here:

• Annual Heat Storage