Hi Guys, I've been playing Mr. Wizard lately and designed a solar heater for my house that actually works well. I found being thrown out some nice double Pane glass windows, boxed those in with 2 X 8's, lined the inside with foam board, glued down aluminum gutter downspouts to attract and hold heat, and painted it all flat black inside. There's a cold air intake (4" hole with dryer hose) on the bottom that goes into my basement window and brings the basement temperature air into the box to be heated, and a hot air outake (4" hole with duct work) that runs into my basement window. I elbowed that up directly upstairs underneath my kitchen sink and have a duct work there that blows the hot air (4" in line duct fan blowing the hot air out) into my kitchen when I open the cabinet door under the sink, you never see it when its closed.
On a sunny day in optimal conditions the temps in the glassed in box reach 160 and the air blowing into my kitchen is 140 degrees, enough to warm the kitchen and raise the temp by 2-1/2 degrees so far, I had my kitchen at 72 degrees and it was nice and toasty in there :-) . I just built it and we've only had one really good sunny day since, but having hot air come into my house from outside heated by the sun is pretty cool. It wouldn't replace normal heating sytems but it helps out and was a lot of fun to make.
Paul
That's what's been keeping me busy lately, playing happy homeowner scientist :-)
