Is it going to be Solar or Electric?

[dianer29]

We are getting ready to finalize our coop . We live in a heavy rainfall area/tropics. Due to all the humidity on a continuous basis ,we are at a standstill as to weather we need to do a solar attic fan in coop or the dreaded electric, due to high electric costs including self install and monthly bill. We have contacted Northern Tools , Home Depot ,Lowes, various rv supply stores as well as solar company. The rv stores online ,we thought could provide a lighter weight solar unit. No one and I mean no one can give us a definite straight to the point answer on : will we ,with a battery be able to provide 24/7 ventilation in the coop? Iti s increasingly becoming closer to the time to move the chicks in to the coop and we are STILL without resolution..Surely someone can shed some light on this ........... Please advise!

 

[sillybirds]

In my opinion, it would be much better if you could design your coop so as to provide adequate ventilation without having to use a fan. You can certainly run a fan 24/7 with sufficient batteries and solar panels, but that's going to make it way more complicated, expensive, and difficult to maintain. Check out Pat's post on ventilation.

 

[patandchickens]

Do I remember correctly that you've posted about this before? I am still 100% not getting the reason for wanting powered ventilation. If you have near-100% humidity all the time, a fan will really not do much good anyhow; and under ANY circumstances, a fan will not do any better than having most or all of the walls of the coop be mesh. Honest.

If you are concerned about rain coming in with most or all the walls being mesh, all you need to do is have a WIDE roof overhang and make the very bottom part of the wall solid (where some rain may blow in despite the overhang). That still leaves like 75% of the walls being open, and this will be MUCH BETTER VENTILATION than anything you will achieve with a fan.

Honest.

GOod luck, have fun,

Pat

 

[rebelcowboysnb]

One for a boat.


I would build it my self if it was me. You can get a pretty good solar cell for about $40 . A deep-cycle battery for about the same or a little more an 12V PC fans are very cheep . One blowing in an one out.

Assuming my math is right?
Those fans use .5 A/H
2 would draw 24 A/H a day
The battery can be drawn down 45 A/H before it has to be recharged to prevent damage. That's 45 hours of no sunlight at all.

In full sun the solar cell would charge the battery from that point to full in 9 hours. So if you had rain every other day it would work. But the solar cell should create a watt or 2 on rainy days too so lets say it makes an average of 3 W/H an the sun is up 12 hours a day an down 12 hours a day. That solar cell could run 3 of those fans 24/7 an not kill the battery. So running 2 would be great.