This $30 Solar Setup Heats a 30 X 40 Workshop for Five Hours or More Every Sunny Winter Day
(Page 2 of 9)
November/December 1977
By the Mother Earth News editors
We made the seal between the 2 X 4 frame and the tongue-and-groove siding on the workshop wall as airtight as possible by stuffing small amounts of fiberglass insulation and old cardboard into every crack we could find. A good bead of caulking compound run completely around the outside of the collector-to-wall joint finished off that part of the job.
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As soon as we had our collector framed in, we cut three holes into the part of the shop's wall that was enclosed by the framing: one in the top center and one each in the lower corners. These openings, of course, were made so that cool air from the workshop could enter the collector (through the two lower holes) where it would be heated before exhausting back into the shop (through the top, center vent) to warm the building.
The size of the upper hole was determined by the dimensions of the case around the intake on the blower we later mounted inside the shop and over the opening. (See BLOWER section of this article for more details about that part of our installation.) The two cool air inlets, however, were pretty much calculated on a by-guess-and-by-gosh basis.
Which would you rather do? Move a little bit of air through your collector and heat it a lot ... or allow a great deal of air to flow through and warm up only moderately? The size of your inlet vents can decide that question one way or the other. In general, though, you're better off making those openings too large rather than too small ... since severely restricted intakes will "starve" the blower in the top hole, make it labor excessively, and thereby cause it to wear out faster. You'll also find that a greater volume of air freely circulated through the collector and then back into the area that is being warmed pays off (especially in larger buildings) in more uniform temperatures throughout the space being heated.
The 42 truncated triangles (triangles with one tip cut off) which we used as spacers inside our collector were cut from leftover two-footlong lengths of 2 X 12 that we picked up free at a local lumberyard.
If we had not added the 3/4"-thick lip to our collector's frame, these truncated triangles would have been cut 2-3/4" high. Since we did add the lip to the frame, though, we made the triangles 3-1/2" tall. (The whole idea, of course, is to cut these spacers so that when they're topped by the 3/4"-thick strips which make up the framing for the collector's front ... the outside [front] surfaces of the strips will come out just flush with the outside [front] surfaces of the 2 X 4's that form the collector's perimeter.)
I should point out, too (no matter which height spacer you use when building one of these collectors), that you don't really have to make the blocks in the shape of truncated triangles. The "ears" on such triangles are awfully handy when it comes to nailing or screwing them to a wall ... but squared-off, rectangular blocks about 31' long and either 2-314" or 3-1/2" high will work just as well if you don't mind toenailing them in place.
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