The Elegant Solar Wall Heater

Reader Contribution by Kyle Chandler-Isacksen
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This post continues my words on Appropriate Technologies. My last entry was about our $30 greenhouse – a super appropriate technology for sure. Here’s another quote from EF Schumacher’s Small is Beautiful that I love which relates to AT’s: “…To redirect technology so that it serves humanity instead of destroying it requires primarily an effort of the imagination and an abandonment of fear.”  Yes!  Go Ernst Friedrich!  While the Solar Wall Heater does involve a bit of imagination and creativity I’m betting that no one is afraid of it thus making it even easier to employ for humanity’s continued existence. (I will share about fear in future posts.)

There are several great articles on making a solar wall heater in the MEN archives to which I can add little. However, I will share some of why I feel everyone on the planet should be using this simple and elegant appropriate technology.  What follows is an analogy-cum-brief rant with a little about our own model afterwards. Enjoy!

When a friend offers a gift, and a good one at that, do we turn our backs and refuse it?  Do we go even further in rejecting it by behaving antagonistically to the spirit of the gift?  Of course not!  We accept it graciously and use the gift with love and respect. Hopefully we think of our friend who made the effort to share the gift each time we use it and thereby strengthen our connection to them and to love in the world generally. We may even rejoice in the abundance of our lives and feel so moved that we “pay the gift forward” to another so that they too can feel so uplifted.

For me, it’s the same with the Solar Wall Heater. Nature/God/the Universe…has given us a great gift in the Sun. It shows up daily and predictably and lights and heats our world, all without attachment to results or even to recognition. I’m reminded of this poem by Hafiz:

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