So this little guy maxed out above 52C! Time to ramp it up... I put a meat thermometer up there, with the probe touching the surface of the cans. Here's the result:
Yes, that reads just above 82C or about 185F!
This panel is tilted at a shallow angle, fixed in place in one of the windows of the solarium. It's completely passive, meaning that I don't have a fan or anything moving the air across the hot surface. It certainly adds to the heating of the room, but a solar driven fan would obviously be an improvement. Baked turkey anyone?
Needless to say, without a vent to be able to use this heat in a thermal siphon cooling setup, I will likely have to take the panel down or cover it for the summer. Regardless, this should mean my winter electric heating season is over. The whole house is a balmy 20 at the moment with no heat on.
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7 comments:
Interesting project. I'm pressed for time and only skimmed the blog, but I didn't see any catalog of steps taken so far and energy saved. I'd find that really interesting and useful.
The soda pop can furnace is remarkable.
I managed to cut my electricity usage about 30 pct simply using CF bulbs, unplugging everything not in use and taking care not to waste. Of course these were the easy steps.
These type of things will have to become the norm if we are to make a dent in greenhouse gas emissions.
Keep at it. I'm watching!
Awesome results Mateo!
Mateo
Was that your pop can furnace I saw on CBC last night? Pretty nice design if it was. I was just looking at a couple of pop cans and I figure if you had a sharp knife like the heavy duty break-blade box cutter variety you could easily cut out the top of a pop can then flip it over and cut a two way cross. You'd do the same with the next can and then start stacking them. If you were to push a stick down from the top it would push the four petal like bits of the can bottom into the top of the can below. I expect you'd need a modified plier or something to crimp those petals so that the top can would be somewhat permanently bonding onto the lower can. I'll have to try that and see how it goes. I suppose that if they just nested one on top of the other and were held together by some force from top and bottom that would do fairly well. Something else that would hold the cans together and provide a gas seal is strips of the aluminum tape that you can purchase in rolls from some building supplies. I have used it to seal up furnace ducts. I also used it to seal my wife's leaking exhaust pipe on her little Toyota until I could afford to buy her another pipe. It stayed on there a year before I replaced the pipe and the aluminum tape was still working. I expected that the adhesive would soften with the heat and fail but it didn't. Good stuff. Keep up the good work. If you come up with some good ideas for the rest of us to try it would be nice if you post the pictures and drawings on this site to share. By for now!
Here on the West Coast, the winters tend to be very overcast, though much warmer than the east coast.
Do you have any figures for the temperature differences you saw on an overcast day?
Unfortunately, on a cloudy day (like today) there is almost no boost to the temperature on the pop can panel. The good part is that is does heat up dramatically and very quickly with the littlest amount of direct sun...
When I first built the panel, I had to wait at least a week to see it in action. Our winters are pretty cloudy too. :(
This is a wonderful invention.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lysBkzlspp4
a home made solar furnace project in Canada
This solar energy project received second place in the 2007 Bordeaux Energy Colloquium's Annual Sustainable Energy Futures Casestudy Competition, an international competition for the most innovative renewable energy initiative.
The project exceeded proof of concept.
The furnace helped heat a 250sq ft room and did so quite well even in intermittent sunlight. It does not replace conventional home heating. While the results were impressive, I have chosen to wait another year before rebuilding it.
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