WARM YOUR SWINE WITH SUNSHINE

Image Gallery  The Murphy and Feyen families are doubling the size of their original solar collector, and soon the ""sun snagger"" will cover the entire south-facing barn roof. The extra heat gathered by the enlarged collector will be stored in buried pipes to provide more warmth in the farrowing house on cloudy days. The hot air will run a solar grain dryer as well! PHOTOS BY THE AUTHOR

I suppose I should admit it right off: When John Feyen and I first decided to "go solar" with our jointly owned pig farrowing house, our motive was more financial than ecological. We simply wanted to trim the cost of heat for our sows and their babies ... and figured that—by using We sum's warmth—we could cut our fuel expenses.

Now that we're into our second season of solar heat, though, I can pronounce the project a rousing success. We have saved money! In fact, by the end of this winter, our installation will have paid for itself. But that's not all! As an added bonus, John and I have become totally hooked on solar energy as a safe, dry, ecologically sound heat source . . . and one that can be adapted to any number of uses.

Perhaps most important of all, though, what we did can be done by anyone who knows which end of the hammer meets the nail! All that's needed is a bit of planning, a commitment of time, and enough confidence to overcome the notion (which many solar-products companies have tried to foster) that "sun heat" has to be complicated and expensive. The operation at our two-family farm in southwest Wisconsin offers a simple, inexpensive rebuttal to that particular solar industry claim.

BACK TO BASICS

In the fall of 1977, our families invested about $550 and a few weeks' work in the construction of a solar collector ... which sits on the southfacing roof of our barn. The farrowing house is in the lower section of the building, so it was a simple matter to duct the collected hot air into the enclosure, rig up a fan controlled by thermostats in series, and let 'er rip!

She ripped very well. By the end of that first winter, our backup gas heater was not only shut off, but removed from the farrowing house altogether. (We'd spent $250 on liquid propane for that heat source during the previous year.) Now, the only conventional energy the farrowing house consumes is electricity to power a 1/4-horsepower fan (to pull the hot air from the solar collector) and another blower which removes the stale air from the building.

The U.S. Department of Energy was as impressed as we were with the initial results. In fact, that agency has since chipped in some man" to help us expand our system. As a result we're working to double We collector size, add heat stop age, and incorporate a sun-powered graindrying operation. In return for the grant, DOE wants to study the setup for five years and let other people take a look at it. That's fine with us, because we're proud of our accomplishment, and—as far as we know—it's the only such "solar system" in these parts.