SAH Solar Air Heater

*Update 20190119*
 In fully overcast but bright conditions, the SAH raises the air temperature by 7 degrees.
On days fully overcast dark and rainy, the SAH raises the air temperature by only 2.5 degrees (my SAH is cracked and needs to be sealed from moisture).

*end 20190119 update*

*Update 20190118*  I am really happy with my SAH under cold full sun conditions in winter!
   Outside temperatures: 34 to 37F
   Full sun attained at 9:20 am
   after about 1 hr 40 minutes of full sun
   Inside temperatures: 72 to 75F
Cubic Footage of air in dwelling: 1,440 ft^3
    ->see full data and the end of this post
*end 20190118 update*


The above performance is without the help of the rocket stove
 The rocket stove was not run the night before nor during the entire day.

So on a cold sunny day, I don't have to do anything:  how is that for no reoccuring monthly costs and no moving parts to replace or maintain????


  Note that my SAH leaves much room for improvement:
     -a very thin fully cracked pane could be replaced with a thick or double pane;
     -the body could be sealed to moisture (might move air faster);
     -a thin copper sheet painted black behind double panes;
     -a thermal housing to keep the wind from blowing across the insulated back.

The SAH's black back area measures 34" x 78" (1.7 m^2).
The lower input pipe measures 2" in diameter.
The upper output pipe measures 3" in diameter.
While the heater works, it works slowly, unlike Stan Geiser's SAH which forcefully pushed it's air out....Going to experiment to see what causes his to forcefully blow air out.

It's connections look like this:

Outside Ambient Temp (F), Inside Input Air (F), Inside Output Air (F), Sky
49F,                                        58F,                                          117F,    Clear/Sun
45F,                                        48.9F,                                         60F,   no sun, rain

 Input temperature near the floor

Output temperature about 40" off the floor.



On the third day the SAH's plexiglass snapped in half completely across the 34" span. Clearly the plexiglass was experiencing too much internal stress from thermal expansion: the first two days, the plexiglass looked like a styrafoam cup exposed to too much heat.  Then I took off the protective wrap and snap!  my SAH don't SAH no more.

I responded with duct tape until funds for a better remedy materializes (clear duct tape???? what's the world coming too?).

Here is how the SAH alone changes inside temperatures:



Here are the data I collected on December 25th with the SAH and the rocket stove running:
Beginning and End State of the over all tiny house December 25th temperature changes of the input and output air of the SAH (with the solar oven also included):

Here are the data I collected on January 1st 2019 with the SAH and the rocket stove running:

Tiny House 6" Rocket Mass Heater

 

Source for clay, clay, and rocks on their support.

Notes: 

-The rocks hold heat well: at 5:30am the rocks are 12 to 15F degrees warmer than the rest of the interior.

Burning the paint off the barrel

Sand, clay and water.

the metal riser was a mistake....metal burn tunnels, feed tubes, and risers will burn out in one year or two of usage.  Only specially designed 4" systems can use metal without this issue. check this site out for changes in technology to RMHs DIY Rocket Mass Heaters DVD

Firebrick, high temperature mortar, and 6" pipe: J tube almost complete.

J tube ready for barrel.

Barrel on J tube and cob 75% done.

Things learned on this build:
 -the feed, throat, and j-tube's geometry should be symetrical for a perfect burn...my first build, see the older rocket stove build, was built perfectly symetrical and it's smoke smelled like steam instead of smoke (indicating a perfect burn). This current build is not a perfect square, but rather the feed and throat is rectangular resulting in output smoke smelling faintly like smoke which indicates failure to burn perfectly;
-cement backer board doesn't hold up to flame or coals very well;
-high temperature fiber cloth doesn't hold up to orange hot coals very well.

Temperature Data on the Rocket Stove:
Highest recorded temperature on top of the barrel is 432F

***Update 20190118

erm, so the rocket stove had to be modified so that I had an air gap between the rocket stove's base and the wooden floor (obvious yeah, but I thought ceramic tile and thermal blankets would do the trick -nope.) To do this I got a 1/4" steel plate (with legs), the entire J could set on; took off the barrel, lifted the J onto the plate with legs, rebuilt parts of the J a which came unmortared, rebuilt the clay base, put the barrel back on, and clay sealed the entire assembly.  ....Sounds easy??? try water, clay, and sand in 40 degree weather with out heat.

The steel plate modification cause an unforseen issue: I can only run the rocket stove for about three hours before the throat becomes hotter than the vertical part of the J tube. 

This limit on the rocket stove means my heat sink, the cob bench, takes a morning and an evening burn over more than two days to get the bench up to 80 or 100F.  Since I don't have four to six days off to get my cob  bench heat sink up to temperature, I cannot really test how long the cob bench lasts between firings.

I still can heat my entire building for eight hours with a small  bundle of sticks (due to the fact the rocket stove by design gasifies the wood and burns the gas too).

I am now looking at a batch mode rocket stove which would fit the life style of a wage slave such as my self at the moment.  Batch mode means no fire tending.

Clearly any one can build a rocket stove however, it is much trickier to build one that runs at maximum efficiency .....check out the video download here:

$15 if you want to build one that works!

***end 20190118 update***

Tiny House Wool In the Walls

 

Notes:
-The wool shrinks and compacts with wide temperature swings (120F to 38 F). For the wool to be effective as insulation, the wool must be held in place (chopsticks?, glue?)

Tiny House Through the Wall Solar Oven Install

***Update 20190118**
My reliable summer solar oven doesn't reach more than about 155F during the winter. I strongly suspect it is because the back isn't insulated. I was really surprised that my SAH worked so well but my solar oven lost so much heat during the winter it maxed out at 155F instead of 224 or 227F. 

I won't modify the solar oven until I have designed an insulated version and have the funds to construct it (e.g. remodel the current one). The remodeled version will have insulation, good seals for the door, and thermal glass which won't melt at 320F.

***end 20190118 update**

Yep, it looks ugly. Later it won't look so ugly and it will have nice shiny side fins which open and close by through the wall stiff wires.

Eventually the oven temperature maxed out around 224F.  This is without sealing the two side 2" pipes and without reflective material on the east and west sides (both of which I will do later).

A quick search shows the melting temperature of plexiglass is 320F, so I guess it is a good thing I didn't have the funds to add the two adjustable wings. The plexiglass will have to be replace with glass that can with stand 400 F.

Tiny House Cool Box

A cool box is....well, a box that is cool inside.  Mine is the thing sitting on the back of the tiny house's porch in the pic below (it hasn't been installed yet in the pic):

It is currently installed now. It has a 4" screw cap on the upper east side which is meant to allow cool air to be sucked up by the hot air vent (yes, my shell has to be air tight for this to happen). It also has a below the floor 6" inlet pipe on its lower west side. It's three foot tall and about 2'x2'.

On the day I showed my nephew the temperature differences inside the cool box compared to the inside shell temperatures:

•  92 degrees F in the hottest area (near the ceiling)

• 81 degrees F on the floor 

• 69 degrees F in the cool box

These temperatures were taken around 5:30pm. Yes it's hot and dark inside the shell still...there's no windows yet so I can check the effectiveness of all my thermal devices.

BTW: the shell itself has a temperature lag of 3 degrees F (with the door closed).  When the sun goes down, the temperature inside is three degrees warmer until 9pm.

Experimental Second Function of the Cool Box

This resulted in a failure from my view point. It warmed the cool box inside temperature by three degrees and wasn't effective in cooling the house.

The second function was meant to cool the tiny house with in reason, say 10 to 15 degrees F from outside temperatures (remember there are no windows and no air leaks at the moment).  This meant I would open the 4" top exit to allow cool air to be sucked out when the shell's door was closed due to the hot air exiting the hot air vent near the shell's roof.

Here's what happened:

Shell's Ceiling Temperature

Shell's Floor Temperature

Actual Inside Cool Box Temperature

This is a cooler day than usual this summer as the ceiling isn't 92F or higher (I've seen the ceiling get up to 117F).

 

This is failure because the cool box is now only 5F cooler than the floor of the shell instead of 12F cooler and the cool box is only 8 F cooler than the hottest part of the shell instead of 20F.

 

Therefore the cool box cannot act as a cool box and a room cooler.  Given the inlets and outlets, the second function doesn't really even cool the shell very well either. After seeing the data (and yes, I've collect more than I show here), I believe there should be at least at 16" cool in and a 12" cool out for a room cooler to work in a 10x12x12' shell.

 

 

...while somewhere in upstate NY there is a tiny house being built, I am posting a test today for a backpack solar panel meant to charge cell phones and other usb devices.

Item: RAV Power 24Watt 3Port backpack solar panel
Item charged: Samsung 3.8Volt, 9.88Wh, 2600mAh cell phone battery inside of a SG4

*The phone battery has been in my sole possesion for about 3 years (was part of the phone package I purchased).
 *The phone was not off but was in airplane mode while charging.



20180724 at 2:22pm attached phone to middle port.
phone's battery was at 7% power before attaching to solar panel

2:55pm phone's battery 37%

3:22pm  phone's battery 67%

3:45pm phone's battery 89%

3:55pm phone's battery 94%
             note: had to reposition panel as 1.5 panels were partially shaded by tree.

4:05pm phone's battery 96%

4:10 to 4:13pm phone's battery remained at 97%

4:17pm 98%

4:25pm  99%

4:32pm  100%  I did not watch the phone's charge level for the last 7 minutes so it may have reached 100% before 4:32pm.

I've noticed the same trend in wall charging of my samsung battery; the battery charges at a much slower rate for the last 10% of the a battery power than the first 90% of the a battery.  This is also true for batteries in solar battery banks that I've worked on.

So for a 3.8 volt 9.88Wh, 2.6Ah cell battery, it takes a full two hours to charge in full sun between 2pm and 4pm end of July (yeah it does matter).
  What might increase the speed???
-did not try for perpendicular angle with sun;
-phone was in airplane mode but not off.

However, for a 2.6Ah cell  phone battery, you can expect it to charge  %10 for every 10 minutes up to 90%.....it's that last 10 percent which will take forever!!!
....1 hour charged sixty percent!!!

If you strap this to your backpack and you hike through shadows, your charge time will be hella longer (40 to 60% longer).

The tiny house got a tiny bit more wool in its walls while I waited for the battery to charge...more to come later on the tiny house.  I've one more solar backpack panel to test for some people first.

A Tiny House's Biogas Generator online June 22nd, 2018.

Important things to remember for a biogas generator:
-both pipe extend to the very bottom;
-intake pipe is cut at the bottom at a 35 degree angle;
-output pipe is cut at a location which corresponds to the middle of the fluid tank;
-best have two ball valves (one for the digester tank and one to fill the other containers;
-airtight;
-55 gal drums have two bungs holes one is coarse threaded and one is fine threaded;
-put extra vertical pipes, ropes, poles so the bacteria can have more surface area to live on;
-one category of methane producing bacteria will live near the bottom and and second category of methane producing bacteria will live near the top of the tank;
-1:1 slurry of cow manure first and water but don't agitate or the mixture will end up with more oxygen which kills the methane producing bacteria;
-it takes two weeks for the first methane gas to show up in quantity enough to burn at outlet;
-begin to feed only after getting burnable gas after two weeks.

Dryer Vent Winter Heater

Like most awesome ideas, dryer vent heaters aren't a new idea. Someone verbally mentioned it to me (imagine that, f2f actually works) and I googled youtube for variations.
I found youtuber MissouriWindandSolar to be the most informative:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mTBy3oIOgKg

In the video, he warns that one must place the 5 gallon bucket outside the room containing the dryer.
The reason for this is because if one keeps the 5 gallon bucket inside the room with the dryer, that room's humidity will increase and so will its temperature.

Imagine trying to dry your damp wet clothes in high humidity as opposed to drying your clothes in very dry air: if you place the 5 gallon bucket in the same room as the dryer, your dryer will have to work longer, increasing your electric bill.

 NOTICE: IF YOU DO THIS WITH A GAS DRYER, YOU WILL DIE
 
BTW: One can dry their clothes on the line in the middle of the winter in places where the ambient temperature is 10 F below freezing. Yep, I know, sounds impossible but it works: your clothes will first stiffen and then dry. I saw a couple do this in the mountains of New Mexico and was completely dumbfounded that it worked (until I looked at the fact that all the moisture has been frozen out of the air)!
   
A dryer is being used in this house by three people who have no will to hang their clothes on a line in sub-freezing temperatures, so if one cannot convert people to one's point of view, give people an alternative which doesn't totally waste all the excess heat from drying their clothes: behold the dryer vent heater!
   

Whoa! that looks like a 55 gallon drum! Didn't the video say a 5 gallon bucket???
                       Yep, I'm lousy with instructions like that. NOT.

I sometimes use thought experiments to modify an idea. I imagined three or four over-worked, sleep deprived people bumping about a laundry room which also contains mops, brooms, etc....

This thought experiment did not bode well for a bucket, even with a liter of water, made tipsy with a single hose pulling on it.

More importantly, I want the hot air from the dryer to be as effective as it can in heating this house. Without any calculation, it would seem to me running that hot air over a dense mass such that the dense mass's temperature would rise significantly (2 or more degrees), the dense mass would radiate heat back out once the dryer turned off.

The 55 gallon drum allows me to experiment with mass and insulation whereas a smaller 5 gallon bucket pretty makes this more difficult given the conditions I have to experiment in.

Lastly, I wanted to push the hot air into another shared living space other than the laundry room. Which in this case meant I needed an exit hose of significant length so the 5 gallon design simply wouldn't provide a large enough lid for two 4" vent hoses.

Behold the 55 gallon drum dryer vent heater!

                  WTF???? Vanilla so concentrated it's flammable!?!?
 Yep, pretty much. It was that or cinnamon.  Better than toluene or iodine in my opinion. Hate to read the MSDS on toluene.

                     Behold the 55 gallon drum vannilla dryer vent heater!

Yep, the vent I ended up using wasn't the one shown in the first picture. The orignial vent projected out into the room in a garish fashion, whereas the vent with the vanes simply lies flat against the wall and is the same color as the wall.                   
                                 Guess which one is more expensive??

                                       Nice Warm Air in 4 Minutes

End result:

-After four minutes of drying, hot air instead of cool air is vented into the shared living room;

-After one load of clothes is dried, the humidity in the shared living space goes up about 20% from the ambient humidity

-After one load of clothes is dried, the temperature in the laundry room goes up 4 F and atleast 2 F in the large shared living space (which shuts the furnance off for a minimum of 1 hr).

Conclusions:

-The laundry room contains both the furnance and the water heater: by simply raising the ambient temperature 4 F for both the furnance and the water heater, I can conclude I've captured energy what would be normally vented as waste heat. This is an example of "systems feeding systems synergistically" or permaculture.
     The reason the laundry room gets warmer should be obvious  due to the surface area of the 55 gallon drum and the fact that no insulation was used at all on the dryer vent hoses. Clearly the laundry room is much smaller than the living room also.   

-By raising the large living room by 2 F and shutting off the furnance for a minimum of 1 hour and there being three people who dry clothes once a week, I've saved the household 12 hours of furnance run time per month using waste heat.

I'll update this with real thermodynamic calculations once I get my hands on a IR thermometer. I will also be able to add things like insulation on the outside bottom of the barrel and bricks to the inside bottom to determine what the appropriate amount of mass is for high temperature heat storage.