solar heat from pop cans...

[patandchickens]

Eh, you can quibble all you like about Oh, it doesn't fully solve all possible problems in all possible situations.

So what.

Bottom line: popcan style heaters are TOTALLY FREE, you just have to collect stuff lying around, and does not require working electrical service.

And I don't really care what your paper calculations come up with... you just come over here and stand in the outflow breeze from my front run and tell me it's not warming anything up, or shut it one day and open it the next and look at the difference in coop temperatures. I believe you are failing to account for all relevant factors, such as the fact that you can build them BIG for larger coops and the fact that a fair bit of northern heating season takes place in months with longer daylength than early January has.

Even if a person lives somewhere real cold and have to use some additional electrical heating for some of the year because your coop is small, something is better than nothing, if you ask me.

I wonder if you are coming at this from the perspective of opinions on passive-solar features for *houses*, which often do not work all that well because they are subject to very different design constraints and requirements and so forth?

Passive solar house performance does not actually have a huge lot to do with *chicken coops*

(for instance, the volume to be heated is often vastly smaller in comparison to collector area; nighttime temperature drops are not such a problem in coops; and the cost of a popcan style heater will usually be approximately $0, so the performance criteria for 'usefulness' are much lower in coops)

Pat

 

[Mr. Peepers]

Nothing costs $0. At least not in this world.

 

[patandchickens]

What, we should tot up the storeboughten cost of things we get for free (given by people getting rid of them, picked up from the curb, saved from disassembly of something being thrown out, etc), just b/c by using them for project A they are then unavailable for project B?

Unless you insist on that sort of bookkeeping -- which seems strange to me but a person can count things however they want I suppose -- then I have built a LOT of things around here for only the cost of screws and the electricity to charge the cordless drill, and have built some things (e.g. a 3x5 coldframe from which I am still harvesting lettuce in mid-November in Ontario) for *genuinely* free, reused nails and all.

Pat

 

[gmendoza]

You didnt mention the hook up between cpu fan and solar panel.you just cant attach wires to eath other without some form of regulator or controller or battery can you?

Schematics are nice when dealing with wires!!!!

 

[Billjr]

You don't need a schematic for a cpu/computer fan. As long as the solar panel puts out the proper voltage/wattage for the fan. They usually have a red and black wire. Black is neg. red is pos.

 

[wolfandfinch]

Quote:
Pat you're my kind of person. And I'm not just saying that because you have over 10,000 posts LOL Seriously though, I appreciate your approach to life, and your responses on this forum (that I've seen so far) are all so practical. As is your siggy

 

[gmendoza]

Quote:
Thank,just making sure.

 

[hooadefender]

im going to try a solar collertor on my coop its 6x6x6 figure i should be able to do the whole thing for about $20 worth a shot if it works, great, if not well it has to be better than nothing