The Solar Heater Pays for Itself

Enlarge Image Image Gallery Most "conventional" solar heating systems cost upwards of $2,500 to install the Gilman Family in the mountains of New Mexico—however—designed and built their own sun powerd heating unit for $35...and it works as well ans any!

Contrary to what you might think, solar heating installations don't have to be complicated and expensive in order to do the job. We proved this to ourselves not long ago when we outfitted a home—an old adobe dwelling located high (8,000 feet) in the mountains of northern New Mexico—with a bare-bones simple, yet highly effective, $25 solar heating system.

When we took it over, the house was nothing but a drafty, unfinished, 750—square-foot adobe lodge that featured lots of window area and walls with an equivalent insulation value of less than an inch of fiberglass. Not exactly what you'd call a cozy shelter in which to brave—19° New Mexican winters!

Fortunately, the building's roof was insulated with a full six inches of fiberglass ... but the floor—like the walls—had no insulation, and we were told that during the winter previous to our arrival the house's occupants had spent $60 per month for propane to keep the place warm.

That was all the incentive we needed to begin looking for a way to improve the dwelling's heating efficiency. So we pondered the situation for a while ... and ultimately decided to [1] put in a wood-burning stove and [2] rig up a large solar collector for the south wall of the structure. (Because we were rentingnot buying—the place, we felt it wouldn't be feasible for us to go to the expense of insulating the entire building . . . even though that would've solved the better part of the heating problem.)

Building the collector was a cinch. All we did was [A] tack up a sheet of black plastic to the outside of the south wall, [B] construct a 9' X 14' framework of 1" X 6" boards, [C] cover the outside face of this framework with see-through 4-mil plastic (we put a few lath reinforcements between the one-by-sixes to help the plastic withstand the strong mountain winds), and [D] mount this stud-wall-like frame to the side of the house, right over the black plastic.

As you can see from the accompanying diagram, we also cut two 12" X 15" vent holes in the wall near the ceiling and a 24" square opening in the wall near the floor, and placed doors over all three openings. (These holes vent the collector to the house, but not to the outside.)