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Forum Index : Solar : Deciding if I should build this solar heater
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| Warpspeed Guru  Joined: 09/08/2007 Location: AustraliaPosts: 4406 |
I can hardly wait to see the direct comparison between direct solar thermal, and solar electric for heating. As far as I know its never been done. Agree with Dave, on a grey day, ten or fifteen watts from a 250 watt panel is bout par for the course. It sounds like you are beating that output by multiples. Cheers, Tony. |
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| Davo99 Guru Joined: 03/06/2019 Location: AustraliaPosts: 1578 |
So you gave her a 3rd job for the day... She's a hard working woman! Lucky the water was not scalding hot!! Or too cold hopefully. Now that's a classic comedy! I know what you mean though. I'm changing all the AC ducts here to clean new modern ones and bought a case of duct tape for the job. First thing Mrs said was it was for doing the aircon, not to go nuts with up the shed. Yes honey... The fact I bought a CASE of the stuff is due to my inexperience with doing this ( actually, done loads of it helping a mate but she didn't see that) and the fact I'll have half of it plus left over will be most unfortunate..... Yeah right! I have found they can be quite accurate, as long as you measure the same place each time. I also found just the other day playing round with a couple I have and another good thermo that turning the laser pointer off improves accuracy a worthwhile amount. Mine were different to each other and to the thermo by usually over a degree. With the laser pointers off they are within .2 degree and much closer to what they all read which is a good improvement. Aren't posties the best? Yeah, couriers bring me stuff too but they are usualy at least a frigging week late and the more urgently I need something, the more delayed it will be and the more frustrating the stupid justification they give you. Setup looks very professional and neat. Next thing is to get a bit of board behind it and see if that makes a difference. Try it painted black and try it covered in alfoil. One should make a difference. My Solar OCD just can't stand to see that wasted space between the tubes after all these years of panels covering 90% of available roof space solid! |
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| rogerdw Guru Joined: 22/10/2019 Location: AustraliaPosts: 804 |
That's part of my problem, I'm not really familiar with power requirements for heating water or for space heating. Probably just as well or I might not have started this little sidetrack.  Haha ... well that's almost our daily power useage for our whole place. Absolutely. Speaking about oil, I rang an aircon mate last week and at the time he was servicing an old fashioned oil heater. Said he's probably the last oil heater tech left in Australia. When I asked what they cost to run, he said old folks love them because they are far cheaper to run than gas. Having said that, we're in a bottled gas area, so have no idea what it's like for town gas areas. Apparently they pay $1.20 a litre for the oil. Haha ... I wonder how Tony gets on ... he just knows how stuff works and what's gunna happen ... where's the excitement in that? Cheers, Roger |
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| rogerdw Guru Joined: 22/10/2019 Location: AustraliaPosts: 804 |
Okay, so I dragged one 250 watt panel out to that wall. What's the best way to measure it's power output ... you were mentioning large resistors the other day, I need to go see what values I have. I should also mention that my evac tube array is only 1,415mm wide ... and two pv panels are 2,000mm wide. I'll give it a head start now that I'm getting a little more confident.  Today would have to be one of the best for testing because we go from rain to sunshine to wind, then lots of cloud and then back to the start. Almost a typical winters day except not quite as cold. I set up the two dataloggers and set them to simply record at one minute intervals, the temperature at the inlet of the fan and the other in the outlet. Will be interesting to download that lot tonight and see what's happened. Cheers, Roger |
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| rogerdw Guru Joined: 22/10/2019 Location: AustraliaPosts: 804 |
Yep, she puts me to shame. The ambo is volunteer, but it's still full on hard work for her at times. Luckily her other job is a little easier and less hours, but she still runs rings around me. Yeah true, not hot just cold rain water ... but anything under 45 degrees is cold to her, so it was a bit of a shock. That's the reason I'm going to all this trouble because she does feel the cold so much. She's a vegie and whenever she complains about the cold I tell her she just needs to go get herself a steak. Never finds that as funny as I do. Haha ... I don't get too many questions ... and it works both ways here anyway with all the medical knick knacks she has been collecting. I have a good relationship with mine ... he turns up most days with boxes of boards for me to fix and the couriers drop off the boxes of bits for me to fix them with. Thanks. It's a bit rough but it came together reasonably well ... except for the welding, we won't talk about the welding. I see your point about the lost space ... but it's only wasted while the sun is at 90 degrees. Most of the day the sun doesn't see a space between them because of the angle ... ... but I do have one trick up my sleeve ... with all the tubes and stands that I got, there was a set of three finely corrugated aluminium panels that I assume are meant to slide in behind the tubes to add some reflection. Once I have some figures for the basic machine, I'll add them to the mix. Cheers, Roger |
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| Warpspeed Guru Joined: 09/08/2007 Location: AustraliaPosts: 4406 |
I think that may help quite a lot when the sun is at around mid morning and mid afternoon It may work even better with proper mirrors. Cheers, Tony. |
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| Davo99 Guru Joined: 03/06/2019 Location: AustraliaPosts: 1578 |
Well all of my problem is most people have better things to do than play around making oil burners and covering their Roofs in panels and checking meters to understand energy first hand like I do. OTOH, I don't say silly things like I can charge my Electric car off my panels and not have a clue of what that will actually take and what the requirements really are. You are definitely on your way to understanding though. Hands on is the best way to come to grips with it all and really understand what a KWh actually is. Those little power meters are good for electric though. Plug in a heater and let it run and feel the warmth and see the consumption. It's all experience that helps. Also actually looking at the power you use will help give an idea of the energy levels you need to keep your house warm. And yes, You can do the sums with firewood as well. There is a pretty constant energy factor based on WEIGHT and if you weigh out your fire wood you can get an idea of how many KW are in it. If your heater is fairly recent you will be getting about 66-80% efficiency depending on the actual stove so you can still equate it like that. The ones I know best are electric and oil / Petrol and engine power. When you know a litre of oil has about 10 KWH worth of energy and you can Visualise that to about 1.5 Kw of panels will make that in a day in summer or that a large car battery holds about 1Kwh of power if you run it way down, you get an understanding of what it all means in real terms. It's very interesting and enlightening. Even with gas, I can't get my head around how people can use so little power. If we are home and don't use the Ac, we are right around 20 Kwh a day. You know the "oil" is just diesel right? The difference is it does not have road tax added on but there is a fair amount added in for delivery. This is one reason I bought the little Diesel heater. It wasn't hard to calculate that it's effective heating power would cost about HALF that of electricity to heat the place. Given I can't make enough power in winter to cover my heating needs, I was better off to buy regular diesel from the servo than the power from the grid. The brother in law just coming up with 500L of diesel to run it on was a huge win I seldom have. I was going to make Biodiesel and run it on that but when I did the sums, Bio has gone from when I last made it for .27C litre to at least a Dollar. And no, it wasn't 100 years ago I made Bio and fuel was still over a Dollar then. Might be the current upheaval in the world that's sent the price of Methanol and KOH over the top but not worth it to cook it up now. Maybe he's like me and has enough excitement in his life or at very least, does not need THAT kind of excitement. I'd sure be happy enough to have his smarts and insight into things that's for sure! I had some good excitement this afternoon. My wife wanted some new family photos for Mothers day. We used to do them every year but haven't been up to replacing what we had for some years now. We went out yesterday just on the edge of town on the side of the road where all the maples are Dropping their Autumn coloured leaves. It's like a tourist attraction with loads of people in cars pulling up and taking pics. I knew daughter was on the edge of her sufferance for this much as I was but we went and did it and got some great shots there and down at an old dilapidated shed up the road. I actually performed a major Miracle in getting Multiple shots of her that she was happy with. They have already been awarded the Highest Honour of being put on her social media and I cannot begin to describe how picky she is about any pics that go on there!! Out of all the people we saw taking pics, I swear I was the only person with an actual camera. This morning Daughter comes in asking about a necklace she wore yesterday and looking at the pics, we could see where she had it and then did not. I don't know the significance of it is but clearly she was really down and upset about loosing it but was trying to hide it as well. I copied some of the pics to my Tablet, Drove down to where we were ( the stretch of trees is about 500M long ) Identified the exact tree she was standing in front of and after only about 3-4 Minutes of kicking the 12" deep leaves around, found it. I went there thinking I'd give it an hour and if I couldn't find it then, which I didn't expect to, I'd have tried and not much more I could do. Last thing I expected was to find the tiny little thing that quick!! Of Course Tony would have knocked up a metal Detector in 5 Min and taken it down and found it in 90 seconds..... And 2 Diamond rings, a gold bracelet, the 100 Yo buried railway tracks, 3 Horse shoes, 43 pre decimal coins, 11 sets of keys and a gold embossed invitation to the opening of the Sydney harbour Bridge. I took a pic of the necklace holding it in my hand and sent it to her and clearly she is one very happy little girl. Thats the only win I need for today. |
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| Warpspeed Guru Joined: 09/08/2007 Location: AustraliaPosts: 4406 |
Great story there Dave. Only real excitement I have had over the last few days, I was sitting dead still at my computer with headphones on, a bloody mouse walked right past me, turned the corner and calmly disappeared under the door of a spare bedroom. A bloody mouse !! Never had one in the house before ever. So jammed a piece of wood under the door so he could not get back out, and thought about how he got in. Only one single possibility was a copper gas pipe coming up through the floor behind a gas space heater, where there was about one finger space between the pipe and the wall. And that was in that same bedroom. Had to buy mouse traps on e-bay, nobody has them, not even Bunnings. Anyhow, the mouse disappeared back out through the same entry hole, which I have now blocked off completely. Must have realized I was after him after I blocked the door, and was smart enough to piss off. Cheers, Tony. |
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| rogerdw Guru Joined: 22/10/2019 Location: AustraliaPosts: 804 |
Yes, once I've used it a bit I can see it being really handy to learn just how much everything uses. I had no idea you could do that. Our heater is only 4 years old but has an oven below ... and while it seemed like a good idea at the time and is very nice ... we don't use it enough and I don't think the thing is as efficient as a normal high power heater. No, I didn't know that. Very handy. No, didn't know that either. Very worthwhile when you need the heat. That'd heat soak the house pretty smartly. Haha, you and me both. Yes, great story. I reckon you've won a few brownie points in her eyes today, well done mate. Maybe you should take up private investigating. I don't know if you've watched any 'This Old Tony' on youtube, but everytime I see him I think of Warpspeed. He could have a channel of his own leaning toward electronics and technology. If it's not over already, there's no prizes for guessing who's going to win this war. My money's against the mouse. Cheers, Roger |
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| rogerdw Guru Joined: 22/10/2019 Location: AustraliaPosts: 804 |
Well I have something to show you all. Late morning I activated my datalogger devices and hooked them up to the inlet and outlet. ... only I somehow didn't set the date and time on the second one so messsed it up. I also only fitted the second one as an afterthought half an hour after the first. I had to crib the second graph to try and match the times ... they both took readings a minute apart ... but the first one took 346 readings and the second 315. And I haven't worked out how to add two outputs on the same graph, though will probably be easier when they have the same date and time scale. The top graph is of the outlet temperature and the second of the inlet. As I said earlier we had all four seasons several times over today ... so to see the outputs was particularly interesting. The fan was running at its higher speed at 50 watts ... 560 cubic meters per hour ... all the time the data was being recorded. It went a lot longer than it should have because I was at the dentist having a root canal. Fun, fun!!  Cheers, Roger |
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| Davo99 Guru Joined: 03/06/2019 Location: AustraliaPosts: 1578 |
Wood, with some variations such as moisture Content and species is -around- 5kwh/ Kg. By Comparison, Oil, kero, Petrol, Diesel is around Double that per LITRE. LPG is around 13Kwh KG. Note the mixed measurements of volume and weight. Can be converted but most people have a better idea of a litre of oil rather than a Kg of oil. Litre of oil is around 900g depending on the oil. Wood energy does not vary a much between hardwood and softwood at a Given weight. You have less hardwood per Kg than you do softwood but on a weight basis, the difference in stored energy is very little. More depends on the seasoning and age of the wood than the species when measured by weight. I know the type of heater/ oven you are talking about and I would tend to think they could be pretty efficient. The heat would take a longer path around the oven and therefore have a longer resident time to transfer it's thermal energy. I'd also tend to think when not cooking in the oven, leaving the door open would increase efficiency as would gently blowing air into it which would create a greater temperature differential and allow it to give up more thermal energy into the surrounding atmosphere. I would REALLY like to get an old Aga or Woodburn type with the stove, oven and wetback. Mrs thinks it would be stupid to have 2 stoves in the house. My aunt and uncle have the old Carmichael Fuel stove combo for winter and the electric for summer and its a Brilliant setup. I'd guarantee your wood burner would leave it for dead at upper power levels. I was looking at the brochures for wood heaters a week ago and I'm pretty sure the small oven type like yours did 7 Kw output and the larger model was 14. Dads old Slow combustion stove I refurbed last winter will kick out a whopping 30 KW!... and going by the amount of wood he blows though in a winter, the temp he heats the place and the warped cast iron top plate I replaced and was sagged a month later, I'm sure it's been there many a time. He tends to stoke it right up, open the air full to get it going, then wakes up in his chair in a lather of sweat to a firebox full of coals... or ash. I cut plenty of Big Chunks of timber now and set them aside in the pile for him to use as " all nighters" . When he does nod off after stoking the thing, it still burns much slower with the limited surface area. Closed down a couple will last all night quite easy. She was a very happy girl when she got home and I got big cuddles and a nice steak Dinner. The necklace was what her mother and I got her for her 21st. I thought it looked familiar and given what I remember it cost, I'd have been down there looking for it before daybreak had I realised. Good outcome. Oh yeah, Can't find my favourite $10 Reading glasses and one of the many spare pairs I had I spent 10 Min looking for today which were hanging in the neck of my shirt where I put them. Yes, I know of the channel and many other similar channels I watch. If these guys had channels dedicated to computer games, they would literally have 1000X the views and subscriptions. I only posted the other day on a channel I follow how the guy can do such informative, practical and educational Vids yet have relatively Bugger all subs and he's been going some time and just getting better. Sad sign of the times we live in I suppose. I did laugh this morning when a car channel presenter I watch was totally and utterly bamboozled by a Carburettor and literally wouldn't even touch the thing. Sitting on a Dyno with a laptop on his knee doing the mapping for a 1500Hp Twin Turbo LS engine, not a problem. Change Boost, fuelling, 2 step and launch control maps at the drag strip between runs, matter of course! present the guy with an engine with a run of the Mill old Holley carb sitting on it..... you think the guy was handed some ancient alien artefact. Your graph is a bit hard for me to interpret. I can see a peak of 32oC but I do not have a practical understanding of airflow in that sense. As such it's not possible for me to relate it back to a power level I understand and can relate to. If it's pushing like my inline fan does, that's worthwhile heating. If it's outputting like a 12V Bilge blower, meh, probably not going to do a lot. I am ignorant to which one it is however. Root canals? Bah, I think I had 7 of them all up and I can't say they ever really worried me that much. People make out they are the worst thing in dentistry. Trust me, walk in the park compared to many things. I had all my ( remaining) teeth out about 4 years ago. That was my greatest fear but it was literally nothing. Had 10 out all at once in the chair and false teeth put in. Smartest thing I did in years and stupidest thing I did by not getting them at least 10 Years earlier. My teeth were a Harbour Bridge job and the money I spent on them, the pain I suffered with abscesses and infections, fillings falling out and all the rest of it was the bane of my life. Now.... Pain and worry free paradise. Only thing I can't do with the false teeth is bite an apple or whatever. Cut it up and not a problem. Small price to pay for the pain free comfort I now have. After a beautiful sunny warm day, the Cold has really hit here tonight already. I can Imagine what it's going to get like from now on in. Better go make sure the electric heating pad for my puss to curl up on is working. Edited 2021-05-10 23:18 by Davo99 |
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| rogerdw Guru Joined: 22/10/2019 Location: AustraliaPosts: 804 |
Another update for today. I made up some inlets to connect the heater to the house ... to take inside air out into the tubes, add heat and then pour back into house. Took a while to do and only set it going at 12:17. You can see the outdoor sensor hanging on the timber at the right of the array, facing the sun. One mistake I made was to switch the outside sensor on 5 mins before the indoor one. I didn't realise the software doesn't allow you to adjust the timing to match up the charts ... so keep that in mind when you look at it. The indoor sensor hung in the outlet of the hot air into the room. Here's a shot of the setup with the ducting connected.     Cheers, Roger |
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| rogerdw Guru Joined: 22/10/2019 Location: AustraliaPosts: 804 |
Interesting to know that, puts things in perspective. Ours is a Jindara Cottage heater with similar layout to the Nectre. Looking at the specs they claim only good for 120 sq meters but then for the output they say n/a ... I suspect it's because it is so lousy that they were too embarrassed to quote it. All their other models have it listed.  Yeah, I like the idea of those too ... but need to have the right house for them. They certainly are big and bulky, but do an amazing job by all reports. A friend has one and they rave about it. I'm surprised at that, though it's certainly a lot easier to pour in another few litres of diesel than another hundredweight of wood. Haha, I remember the first combustion heater I had and came home one night to see that my wife had it so stoked up that the whole body was glowing a dull red. How it never burnt the house down I don't know. I do the same thing, but I have to stack mine right up to make it last the night. I think the extra space taken by the oven limits the rest of it too much. I think it's always been the way ... most people are looking for entertainment and never want to learn anything ... just expect a mate to work out their problems or fix their stuff for them. For free of course! Hopefully todays graphs are a bit more enlightening. The fan is a Blauberg 150 US. Has an airflow of 560 cubic meters per hour using 50 watts on high ... and 430 cubic meters per hour using 42 watts. They certainly shift a lot of air. Here's some details I have had one before, but nothing like this one. I must say I've considered doing what you've done ... just not sure it's time yet. It's certainly turned cold down here too. Really pleased my new ugg boots turned up today. The old ones have been glued up too many times and nothing left of the soles to glue together again. Still, I had a good 5 years out of them. Cheers, Roger |
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| Davo99 Guru Joined: 03/06/2019 Location: AustraliaPosts: 1578 |
The installed setup looks quite neat and professional. Can see the graphs better as well as read them but the thing you never mentioned was how did you FEEL it worked? Did you notice the area to which the air is being exhausted into warm up at all? The numbers are great but at the end of the day, the comfort factor is the important one and that can't be measured with an instrument. Couple of suggestions, I don't think you should have the logger in the sun and perhaps instead of inlet air, put the logger in the house and see if you can get an indication of how it's warming the place up. That's really the important bit. It was a bit 4 seasons in one day here today. Rained heavily for a short time in the morning and then was clear and sunny for a while in the afternoon. It did feel Chilly though. My dog has learned how to head butt the sticky back door when she wants to go out but doesn't bother closing it. I often shut the door but it does not always latch so when the 3rd child wants to go out, she lets herself out now. Was sitting here a bit after 5 and had the heater going out the back but felt a chill and draught. Sure enough, went out and the back door is wide open. I think it had been a while as I was sitting in here but it was noticable the chill it put in the place. I put on the AC for a while to get the chill off otherwise I knew I'd not really be comfortable for the rest of the evening. Place came up quick so .60C well spent. Different to what I thought. I believed the oven would be above the fire not below. Don't remember seeing them like that before. Going from the specs, I'd Guess it will do something around about 12 Kw. NOT insignificant at all. No substitute for Cubic inches, surface area or thermal mass! :0) Yep, 12 Kw Vs. 5 Kw is a big difference in heating power. I was looking at setting the diesel heater up today. I realised I should have bought the stand alone model rather than the Mobile install Type. I might buy the all in one as the heater core is the same and would give me spares. I realised I can put the whole machine inside and just have the exhaust going out. Might be better than doing it the other way round and ducting the heat in but either way. Also thinking that if I run the exhaust tube out Through the inlet air tube ( and extend the exhaust beyond so there is no gas mixing) I should be able to get some air pre heating going on and a bit more efficiency. It seems a catch 22 with these things. They are actually better burnt flat out but it can be hard to do that and not over heat the place while keeping the firebox temps up. For this a smaller heater is better. OTOH, with a smaller heater you have to cut the wood smaller and it's difficult to get enough fuel in there to last the night and put out decent heat. I think a bigger one slowed down but given a good hard burn once a week at least to clear it out is probably a good compromise. Meh, You are doing it wrong! Had mine a lot longer than 5 years! Wrap Duct tape around them... across the top and round the sole. Firms them up so they stay on better after stretching and adds an amount of water proofing and extra insulation as well. If they come off at the back, then go around the other way. Roll of tape or so on each one and you'll have the equivalent of Fur lined Gumboots! Great when you can walk out on the dew covered grass in the mornings and they don't get soaked. |
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| rogerdw Guru Joined: 22/10/2019 Location: AustraliaPosts: 804 |
Haha, I'm trying to be the scientist here ... none of this touchy feely stuff ... just the facts, the numbers! I have to say that burst of heat when I first turned on the fan was awesome ... pumping out 40 degree heat was amazing. I was expecting a good high burst because I hadn't had the fan on at all up to that point, so it had all morning to store plenty of energy ... and I wasn't disappointed. No question the lounge was warming up. By the end of the day it was several degrees warmer. Reached 20 degrees in that half of the room ... but the house is all open ... so will take a few days of that to make a big difference I think. I've never been keen on airconditioning where all you feel is a draught ... and this is a bit like that in that area ... but it was definitely warmer. The noise from the fan would annoy me eventually ... I should have left it outside where it was ... but I can put it back out there easily enough. In an ideal setup it would at least be in the ceiling. It only reached 16 degrees here today, yet you can see the temperatures that were pumping in at times. They had to make a difference inside. Tomorrow is supposed to be 18 with a bit of sun, so can't wait to see what that does ... especially if I turn it on from first thing, not just lunch time like today. The outside logger is in the sun because I already know the ambient temperature ... and I wanted to see what the array was 'seeing' as far as sunlight goes. I was quite surprised to see the temperature of that logger get to 25 a couple of times ... yet the ambient never went past 16. The second logger is in the house ... in the hot air outlet (where it blows into the room) because I wanted to see the output from the machine and be able to compare it with the warmth outside. Clearly it follows the warmth from the sun outside ... and mostly several degrees hotter again. Measuring the temperature inside seems all over the place so far. I really need half a dozen loggers scattered around to try and see some pattern. That's exactly what we had yesterday, a lot of showers and occasional sun shining through the clouds. We have that touble here too ... a certain daughter who insists on having her window open ... then comes out, leaves her door open ... and the rest of us are all wondering why it's so cold. Really pleased to hear my wife point it out to her tonight, so we'll see how that goes. I probably sound like a miser, but I'm still hanging off lighting the fire until I see just how much (or not) warmth we can get out of this thing. So far it's looking really promising ... and I can see a double width device with 36 tubes up on the roof being very worthwhile ... but that may just be my optimism showing through at this stage. That makes a lot of sense, get all the warmth from it you can. That's exactly right, though I've been able to make it work ... but not as well as the earlier one I had years ago. Haha, never thought of that ... though I did get tired of having soggy feet every day after walking out across the back lawn to the workshop. My new ones are 'hiking' ugg boots. Look more like rubber boots, but they're warm and dry and I'm too old to care what people think about me wearing them. I might just duct tape my old ones as well ... got plenty of black duct tape ... get a few more miles out of them too. Cheers, Roger |
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InPhase Senior Member  Joined: 15/12/2020 Location: United StatesPosts: 178 |
When you guys talk of "duct tape" are you referring to classic duct tape or the kind of tape an HVAC installer would use? An HVAC pro would never use classic duct tape to wrap a duct. Metal foil tape has become the norm. Duct tape is only used to hold trash bags over broken car windows, or as emergency shoe repair, or for kidnappings. |
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| Davo99 Guru Joined: 03/06/2019 Location: AustraliaPosts: 1578 |
Seems a double edged Sword with house design. This place has a Huge Kitchen are that Joins a Large lounge through double Doors. It's a lot of area to heat or cool, especially when you are only there a short time. The other longe we use the most is off that with a single door and another double door set off the end of a hall way. Everything else is off the hall way that runs all the way to the other end of the house. When the area is open is a lot to " Condition" and when the rooms are off hallways or have normal doors, it's almost impossible to get any heat or cool to transfer between them. Even using the Ducted air fan is not as effective as one thinks. The return air for that is closest to the bathroom/ toilet windows so I was thinking about ducting the diesel heater through there but I can hear the complaints of having the tiny toilet room sitting at 40o and heating the bathroom with all those tiles seems wasteful although it may provide thermal mass.... which will probably be difficult to transfer without the fan running and it does not have a vent at all. I Might go for the Kitchen area although that's going to leave the bedrooms pretty cold but can always put the fan heaters in there for a little while to take the chill off at night. If Tony can help you with a Variable speed controller, that will automate the thing so you get heat when it's available and it shuts down when the sun goes down. I think it will take a threshold output for a certain time to level it out in one area and You'll have the problem above in different rooms unless you run the ducted fan to move the heat around. My Daughter has been known for having a Jumper on and complaining about the window down in the car on a 30o day making her cold and I'm not kidding and it was not just once. Lately though, she has been complaining about everything being too hot. got in the car the other night and I had it set to 24 and she was telling me to turn it down. Mrs and I were both surprised but Mrs always complains about being too hot as well. Seems I'm the cold frog now. Oddly enough, we have all Lost weight, The Mrs a lot, The daughter some and me 14 Kg and falling. I don't believe that has changed my temperature threshold though, I have always hated the cold. Also hate wearing loads of Clothes to keep warm. Daughter did say it was Chilly last night though so had no problem when I put on the heat. For once. Only Logical. Can't test a new and unknown heating appliance with another heater going. Well it should Multiply out what you are getting with this setup and then some. You don't have a backing on this one yet and the roof would provide that. From much experience putting panels up, Roofs are very hot, harsh environments. Even this time of year on cloudy days, You get up there and are sweating like a pig and thanking your good sense you didn't try this job when the sun was out! I have to think that would add to the output of such a system beyond the multiplication of the number of tubes you have now. |
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| Warpspeed Guru Joined: 09/08/2007 Location: AustraliaPosts: 4406 |
I have been looking at commercial differential temperature controllers, and all that I have seen so far are simple on/off controllers, and they are not exactly cheap for what you get. Ideally we want something that maintains a constant temperature difference between the hot air manifold and the room, by adjusting fan speed. The fan would remain off until the hot air manifold reaches say ten degrees more than the room (or whatever). The fan just starts to creep and blows just enough air to maintain that temperature difference. If the sun goes behind a cloud, the fan slows down, or stops. A bit like Dave's heat sink blower. That is the general strategy, and it should not be too difficult to home brew something that can do that. And it would very likely solve the noise problem because it would almost never have to run absolutely flat out. Cheers, Tony. |
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| rogerdw Guru Joined: 22/10/2019 Location: AustraliaPosts: 804 |
I dunno. What I call duct tape has been around since I was a teenager. Like a cloth tape that you can tear off across or lengthwise. Was big in the motorcycling field. There is also a grey plastic tape like normal electrical tape except wider. Have to cut it, it won't tear unless it's been in the weather for a while. Cheers, Roger |
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| rogerdw Guru Joined: 22/10/2019 Location: AustraliaPosts: 804 |
That's the issue we face as well. Big central passage that has two double door size openings into the lounge (but no doors) and then into the huge kitchen, dining, living area and another passage to bedrooms and bathroom. The only room that can be closed off is the games room ... which is always cold and acts like a huge heatsink. My initial thoughts if I end up with a collector on the roof, were to pump all the hot air into this room to try and make it liveable for winter. We were talking about trying this as well ... maybe run any hot air into the ducted aircon return duct and use the aircon on fan to circulate to the rooms we want. Sounds good in theory, but would need a lot of hot air to make it work I suspect. Yeah, I wonder if that's not a bad idea ... once all the tiles etc are warmed up, I reckon that would have to help make the place feel warm. A real balancing act. Much easier once you've tried a few places and see how it pans out i suppose. Certainly using fan heaters to warm up any cold spots will help as long as the main areas are liveable. Yeah, I put it outside this morning before I switched it on. Much quieter ... though what you suggest is exactly what I was thinking also. Have a fan on automatic control that throttles it back to nothing if there's no heat .... or right up to flat out if the heat is available. Now that the fridge has stopped, I can hear it from where I'm sitting, but it's no louder than a fridge or aircon running. Certainly louder up closer though. Congrats on the weight loss for all you guys, it sounds great. And it wouldn't surprise me if it could affect how someone feels the heat or cold. I remember deciding as a teenager helping out in the stinking hot dusty sheepyards home on the farm, that I preferred winter coz I could always put on more clothes ... but not really sure that's the case for me any more. Yes, that's pretty much how my thoughts have been going also. The more I play with it and see what's happening, the more this makes sense. Cheers, Roger |
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