This $30 Solar Setup Heats a 30 X 40 Workshop for Five Hours or More Every Sunny Winter Day
(Page 4 of 9)
November/December 1977
By the Mother Earth News editors
And if bargaining doesn't turn up a real" blower or two, you can always use an old window fan instead. Sure, such a fan will probably take up more space than one of the compact squirrel cage blowers, and you'll most likely have to cut a bigger hole in the wall where it mounts in order to get a proper transfer of air. But that's neither here nor there. The important point to remember is that you have a great deal of latitude when it comes to scrounging up a blower for this solar heating system. Almost anything that will pull hot air out of the collector and push it into the area where you want it is probably going to be just fine.
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And here's yet another possibility: If you're thinking about adding one of these sun-powered heating setups to a cabin or other building that happens to be located out beyond the powerlines somewhere ... well, it can be done. Just scrounge up a 12-volt automobile heater blower and a few batteries from some junked cars, and you're in business. Especially if you have a waterwheel or a windplant out there "back of beyond" to keep the batteries charged!
We built a housing for our squirrel cage blower out of scrounged pieces of plywood and sheet metal ... and we didn't put a whole lot of scientific study into the design. We just made sure that the hole in the wall through which the fan would draw warm air from the collector was at least as big as the blower's outlet. Then we mounted the fan over that hole and boxed in around it. A rectangular opening that just fit around the blower's exhaust was left in the side of the casing that faced into the shop.
At first, since we all know that hot air tends to rise, we put a set of louvers in this outlet hole on the housing and positioned the flow guides so they'd direct the stream of hot air down toward the floor. That didn't work so well, though, because the concrete immediately under the blower tended to soak up most of the heat and what was left of the air's circulation never seemed able to make it past various benches, equipment, and other objects in the shop to the building's other side. So we took the louvers out, and immediately noticed a much more even temperature throughout the whole 30' X 40' workshop.
As you wind up your blower installation, remember that the job won't be complete until you've put a furnace filter screen over each of the cool air inlets in the collector's bottom corners. You don't want dirt, sawdust, and other fine debris to float into the collector, cling to its plastic cover, and thereby reduce the amount of sunlight (heat energy) that the unit absorbs. For the same reason, it's a good idea to frame in all three of the holes cut through the wall ... to keep any dust, insulation particles, etc., that might be inside the partition from floating into the collector.
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