My energy efficient house modifications

[SKR8PN]

I have a question.......... in THIS picture:

I only see ONE inlet/outlet. Where is the other one? Are they both on the bottom or is the other one on the top?

How tall and how wide is this unit?

What are you using for a pump??

GPH?

 

[TanksHill]

Holy cow, when you get done there can you please come help at my hose? What a great job. The before and after pics are fabulous!!

thanks for sharing!!

g

 

[patandchickens]

Great idea to sort of 'collect' this onto one thread xpc!

SKR8PN, isn't that a second inlet/outlet at the far left corner, diagonally opposite the one close to the camera?

Xpc, how much of a job was it to add a second insulated wall on the inside of the rooms? I toy with this idea sometimes, especially on the N side of the house, but am a bit daunted by the implications for having to move electric outlets, finish around the now-recessed windows, and code issues. Were those things pretty straightforward for you or did they require a lot of improvisation or technical skill?

That's about the purtiest solar hot water heating unit I've seen

Pat

 

[xpc]

I have a question...
I only see ONE inlet/outlet. Where is the other one? Are they both on the bottom or is the other one on the top?

How tall and how wide is this unit?

What are you using for a pump??

GPH?

Flat plate collectors of around 4'x8' cost about $1000 and purport a maximum of 6,000 btu/h (2000 watt hours) very broad numbers. Most of the manufactures recommend 0.2 to 1.5 gallons per minute flow rate or 13-90 gph.

Most of the USA will have around 4 hours of insolation per day averaged for the entire year, my area has about 2 in the winter and 6 in the summer. Using 317 btu per square foot per day with a 30 sq.ft. collector would give me 9000 btu or 2600 watts and would heat 27 gallons of water from 70F to 110F. Inefficiencies would probably drop this to around 20 gallons.

Here is a collector from PEX Supply Co. $1000
http://www.pexsupply.com/Stiebel-Eltron-185541-Sol-25-Plus-Flat-Plate-Solar-Collector-10113000-p

Aluminum pipe tracks I bought for my next collector - $8 each 4"x48"
http://www.pexsupply.com/Wirsbo-Uponor-A5080500-Wirsbo-Joist-Trak-1-2-Heat-Transfer-Panel-2111000-p

PEX-AL-PEX tubing 1/2"x300' - $140, used in floor heating and collector. A 300 foot loop in each of my four rooms should make about 25,000 btu's and easily heat my cabin. Pex is rated for 180F and floor systems run best at 120-140F.
http://www.pexsupply.com/Rifeng-050-300-PAP-1-2-PEX-AL-PEX-Tubing-300-ft-Coil

 

[xpc]

A little more info on my solar water collector:

Because of my more temperate climate where the winter temperatures seldom drops below 20F at night for any length of time and usually above 35 during the day I chose to build a "drain back" system for my domestic hot water (DHW) the future one for floor heating will be a glycol antifreeze system.

For my testing I bought a submersible pond pump with a 5 gpm flow rate with a 12 foot head, experimenting over time I throttled the pump down to about 1 gpm for the best results. Less may have been better yet but had a hard time keeping a constant rate that low with my simple homemade dump relief valve.

A drain back system self regulates the water temperature using a differential controller, one temp probe is in the storage tank and another at the collectors top inside discharge pipe. If the tanks drops below 110F and the collector is above 110F then the pump starts and harvests all the heat, once the heat is gone or the tank is above set-point then the pump stops and all the water in the lines drain back into the tank so it won't freeze in the collector. That is over simplified but the general concept.

The stagnation temperature of a collector can reach 250F when no water is flowing, in March mine went to 150F in 10 minutes with no water.

As said before I already bought some Wirsbo joist traks made of fairly thick aluminum so as not to need the aluminum flashing smashing system. 1/2" copper pipe snaps in snugly and will only use silicon grease for a fill as no gluing would be needed. I did not use selective coatings as flat black BBQ paint worked good enough for me, the 2 sun-tuff poly panels also worked good at $40 for both sheets needed for a 4'x8' collector are very light and indestructible to ice-hail and other weather (within reason).

I have not cost out the new system yet but will be more then my original one at $200 and would probably put it around $300 but also much easier to build, more efficient, and most likely needing fewer panels too. Copper has gone up since I built mine but would guess around $100 for all pipe and fittings, the plates another $100, the sun-tuff $50, and misc another $50. This is just for the collector and no ancillary pumps and controllers.

I have taken down and stored all my solar heat and voltaic systems to finish the house to get ready for sale, going off on a tangent and playing with these neat contraptions have set me back a full year on my cabin, had I stayed on task I would already be living in the new place (are you reading this Jax?). Building a solar electric panel, solar water heater, solar oven, solar space heater, chest freezer to refrigerator modification, instant ice maker, rocket stove, and now completely side tracked with pressure canning all set me back considerable money and not working since 2007 wasn't a smart thing to do.

 

[xpc]

Xpc, how much of a job was it to add a second insulated wall on the inside of the rooms? I toy with this idea sometimes, especially on the N side of the house, but am a bit daunted by the implications for having to move electric outlets, finish around the now-recessed windows, and code issues. Were those things pretty straightforward for you or did they require a lot of improvisation or technical skill?

One of the reasons I did what I did was because I knew I was installing all new windows and siding at the same time so framing the windows was not a problem, even without replacing the windows a simple jamb extension would work. Moving outlets was easy and depends on how they were wired as from above, below, or the side.

Constructing the new wall in my living room only took a day, I used 2x4 top and bottom plates and 2x3 studs flush to the front which left me the 1" air gap between the 2 walls. The 2 outside walls were 14' x 20' and cost about $70 in lumber, $50 in drywall, $40 in cellulose insulation, and $40 in fiberglass insulation.

Since my original walls were not insulated I cut holes at the top and filled with cellulose and topped off with fiberglass batts cut and stuffed in the hole. I also pulled the electrical wires out at the time for moving to the new sub-wall, seen in the below picture.

 

[xpc]

In a previous post I mentioned an instant ice cube maker as I will not have a freezer but do like a cold drink from time to time. So I bought a 168 watt pelter cooler module a while back to play with.

The maximum heat removal ie coolness this pelter junction will do is 90 watts or 306 BTU's. You need 1 BTU per pound of water to drop 1 degree F, the heat of fusion of ice is 144 btu for phase change.

So to drop one pound of water (1 pint) from 70F to 32F requires 38 BTU's and an additional 144 BTU's (total of 182 BTU's) to solidify it into ice in 1 hours time. Of course that is much too long, they make these units in 545 watt models for about $30 and would use 2 of them for my instant ice cube maker which would then only take 5 minutes to make a tray of cubes or chill a warm beer in 1 minute etc.

I know most of you are saying my math is wrong but you failed to realize that 545 watts is total consumption and can really only remove 270 watts of heat being 50% efficient. They make a small 1 foot cubed table top ice machine for $150 that is suppose to make a tray in 15 minutes and may just go with that when the times comes as this experiment has been shelved for now.

Here at low power of 10 volts it is drawing about 5.5 amps for a total of 55 watts or is removing about 85 BTU's of heat. It cools the little bowl of water quickly but in this experiment the heat from below just warms it back up.

As you can see in the picture I thermal greased it to some big blocks of aluminum or it would instantly burn up, as it was that block got too hot to touch after 10 minutes and in real life would have a fan blowing the heat away.

Pelter cooler on ebay
http://cgi.ebay.com/USA-GIANT-62mm-...s=63&clkid=6956933560396990362#ht_3636wt_1179

Table top unit at amazon
http://www.amazon.com/Portable-Coun...3?ie=UTF8&s=home-garden&qid=1279754438&sr=8-3

This draws about 300 watts at 115 vac and is about 2250 watts at 12 vdc plus the inverter loses of 10% equals about 2500 watt hour and over twice the electronic one.

 

[SKR8PN]

I wanna know where you got those blocks of aluminum!!

 

[xpc]

I wanna know where you got those blocks of aluminum!!

They are lovely aren't they, handling them bring thoughts of gold ingots at $100,000 less the cost. Procured them many years ago and have been lugging around ever since for a project just as this. Don't know how much extruded bars like this cost but are not cheap or readily available to us regular humans.

 

[SKR8PN]

I wanna know where you got those blocks of aluminum!!

They are lovely aren't they, handling them bring thoughts of gold ingots at $100,000 less the cost. Procured them many years ago and have been lugging around ever since for a project just as this. Don't know how much extruded bars like this cost but are not cheap or readily available to us regular humans.

Dude......got any EXTRAS???

Seriously though...........are they 2x4? or what?