Solar power for my coop - I wanna be Green

[PurpleChicken]

Quote:
Maybe some Midwesterners, Southwesterners, or Texans like you have.

For us we have more water than we can handle and a submersable pump in our
well that feeds 3 houses and waters multiple lawns and gardens for $.50 a day.
Our problem there is we have a dedicated well house that uses a ton of electricity
to heat in the winter. I'm trying to design/build a small solar thermal system to
reduce the energy useage.

I like the idea of using a mechanical pump to lift water into an elevated storage tank.
But again, here in the northeast, it would freeze up in the winter.

 

[Wolf-Kim]

My Father in Law built a solar heater for their house. You only needed energy enough to run a small fan, which could easily be provided by a solar panel.

He bought an old glass sliding door. He built a metal box to the size of the door and only made the box about 6" deep. He painted the inside of the box black and then fastened the glass door as a lid. This box goes outside the house with a duct running to the house. When the interior of the box reached a certain temperature, the fan would kick on and blow all the air into the house.

Is was really cool and worked quite well for them. They plan to make more for next winter and hope to move them onto the roof of the house.

-Kim

 

[PurpleChicken]

Quote:
That's a perfect example of solar thermal power. If you do the math and physics you
will find that the one homemade panel produced (absorbed & converted) the same amount
of energy that a photovoltaic(makes electricity) system 5 to 10 times the size can produce.
This is why I'm alway preaching about solar thermal systems.

 

[TexasJoe]

Quote:
Maybe some Midwesterners, Southwesterners, or Texans like you have.

For us we have more water than we can handle and a submersable pump in our
well that feeds 3 houses and waters multiple lawns and gardens for $.50 a day.
Our problem there is we have a dedicated well house that uses a ton of electricity
to heat in the winter. I'm trying to design/build a small solar thermal system to
reduce the energy useage.

I like the idea of using a mechanical pump to lift water into an elevated storage tank.
But again, here in the northeast, it would freeze up in the winter.

how about solar water heaters or storing the water in tanks underground

Lol..i'm taking it WAY too far

 

[PurpleChicken]

Quote:
Maybe some Midwesterners, Southwesterners, or Texans like you have.

For us we have more water than we can handle and a submersable pump in our
well that feeds 3 houses and waters multiple lawns and gardens for $.50 a day.
Our problem there is we have a dedicated well house that uses a ton of electricity
to heat in the winter. I'm trying to design/build a small solar thermal system to
reduce the energy useage.

I like the idea of using a mechanical pump to lift water into an elevated storage tank.
But again, here in the northeast, it would freeze up in the winter.

how about solar water heaters or storing the water in tanks underground

Lol..i'm taking it WAY too far

The thermal solar heater to heat the well house has always been on the list
of projects to get to someday.

Burying a tank wouldn't have the payback for what little water demand there is.
The whole system is a waste. It was built in 1972. We could eliminate the entire
thing by installing bladder tanks in the 3 houses it feeds. I'd like to make a
chicken coop out of the well house but it's community property.

 

[Wolf-Kim]

Quote:
That's a perfect example of solar thermal power. If you do the math and physics you
will find that the one homemade panel produced (absorbed & converted) the same amount
of energy that a photovoltaic(makes electricity) system 5 to 10 times the size can produce.
This is why I'm alway preaching about solar thermal systems.

He salvaged all the materials. The sliding door, the wood, the metal(off an old truck camper shell). The only materials he bought new was the ducting, the fan, and the thermostat. It did quite well for something that size. They weren't doing it to go green, gas had become too expensive for them, so they didn't have heating.

-Kim

 

[rhetoric]

I built a thermal heater as an experiment. A 3x4 window, a sheet of foil backed insulating foam (spray painted stove pipe black) duct taped to the backside of the window. I cut two intake holes in the bottom of the foam (about an inch) and one on the top (about two inches). All stuff I had laying around the house.

Stood it in the sun on a fairly clear day and the air temp going in the holes was 43 degrees F and the air coming out was 118 degrees F.

And that's w/ green glass (most glass is -- has iron in it) and not the "white glass" they now make for solar applications that lets in even more light, and without a fan to circulate the air and etc.

I plan on installing under my coop window during the winter.

google "clear dome solar" and you'll see some good thermal mass thermal siphoning for reasonable prices if you aren't a tight wad like me. I'm gathering most of us are tightwads at the BYC.

 

[tazcat70]

Quote:
I knew it was too good to be true, when you typed this statement.

I have a friend who wants to get a t-shirt that says you are eating the solution, I am eating the problem.

 

[tazcat70]

Quote:
Well maybe they aren't THAT bad...from a treehugger point of view...

Ask TreeHugger: Is Mercury from a Broken CFL Dangerous?

 

[DominoDoggy]

One way I was gonna try to be "green" w our coop was to use a compost heap to generate the heat needed to keep their water bucket above freezing. The biological process in the compost creates heat, which I could harness w a coil of that pex pipe stuff in a channel inside the compost using solar power to run a small pump to slowly circulate water. I already have the solar panels and battery setup running a led light in the coop. A small pump wouldn't strain the battery beyond what a days sun or so can charge. If it works out well I may expand it to the dogs water and other animals.

Was gonna try to find a 12v heater of some kind but so far couldn't find any that were suitable based on available battery power (a deep cycle marine battery) and a 55w solar array. Biological derived seemed best, and I already have the compost pile going and making heat as well as BSFL for the birds.