UPDATE: THE SOLAR PIG FARROWING HOUSE
July/August 1979
By the Mother Earth News editors
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SOLAR PHASE II Air enters the collector through holes in the roof (A) and flows down to a manifold under the eave, then enters the building through a window-mounted fan (B) and is drawn into distribution tubes (C) buried underneath concrete.
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Here's more information on Jim Murphy and John Feyen's commonsense approach to "sun energy" technology.
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In the last issue of this publication, Jim Murphy- told how he and John Feyen turned half of the roof of their Wisconsin pig farrowing barn into a solar collector. (See "Warm Your Swine With Sunshine", MOTHER NO. 57, pages 34-36). Now thanks to a $5,000 grant from the Department of Energy-the second half of the roof-collector is finished . . . and, instead of the hot air being blown into the barn, the "free" solar heat is ducted into pipes set into the structure's concrete floor.
"When the warm air was pulled directly into the farrowing house," reports John, "the temperatures inside the barn would often reach the high 70's during the day, but sometimes dropped to the upper 40's at night. Now we can maintain a nearly uniform 60 degrees all the time. Of course, a consistent temperature isn't particularly important for animals, but would be necessary in a building for human occupants."
Unfortunately; just before the second half of the collector was completed (the wooden batten strips had not yet been secured over the seams where the fiberglass-reinforced clear resin sheets overlapped), a terrible windstorm ripped the covering right off. That could have been a serious setback, but winter was just about over . . . and the farm's regular insurance coverage paid for the loss.
"The claims adjuster told us that our collector wasn't 'standard construction', and came out to make sure the problem wouldn't recur," John told us. "Had it been a unit that was just hung on somehow, the agency might have felt differently . . . but since our solar 'system' was an integral part of the barn, we were able to collect on the damage. I was really sorry that the accident happened, because I didn't want to see the insurance company face a claim on the first sun-heated building they'd ever covered. But let's face it: Solar energy is a reality!"
