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"Solar Air Heating Systems",
Steve Kornher and Andy Zaugg
The Good News -- Bad News
The Very Good News is that Solar Air
Heating Systems is now back in print. You can get the
information on availability from the publisher
here.
The Bad News is that it can't be a
free download anymore. The introductory chapter on solar air
collector options, and the the full index of the book are still available below
as downloads, so you can get a good feel for the material in the book.
I highly recommend purchasing the book if you
are interested in building a solar air collector.
I'd like to thank Steve and Andy for
making the book available over the past year as a free download, and I hope the
exposure it got here helped get it back into print. Thanks guys! |
|
"The Complete
Handbook of Solar Air Heating Systems", by Steve Kornher with Andy Zaugg. This is the best book I know of on designing and
building solar air collector heating systems.
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Very detailed information on how to
design site built solar air collectors
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Very detailed information on how to
build solar air collectors
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Covers a wide range of air
collectors from small window size to one that will heat a whole house.
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It even covers water heating with
air collectors.
There are home heating projects you
can build in a half a day, all the way up to ones that will take a month, but
will heat your whole house.
Steve now operates Flying Concrete, a
construction company near San Miguel
de Allende, Mexico that specializes in concrete buildings that are works
of art. If you want to be wowed take a look at his website:
www.FlyingConcrete.com.
The authors of this book built dozens
solar air collectors for many types of homes during the solar "rush" of
the 1970's and early 80's. The book documents what they learned from
designing and building many collectors. The book is still largely
up-to-date, in that when oil prices went down in the 80's most activity in solar
air collectors stopped. I have noted a few changes (e.g. new materials)
that have come along that you might want to take advantage of
here.
As always, do not
totally rely on the correctness of this (or any) reference --
do your homework.
Downloads by
Chapter:
Introduction --
Site Built Collectors in the San Luis Valley (263
KB pdf)
Chapter 1 --
Keeping Warm: The
Principles of Solar Heating (355 KB pdf)
Chapter 2 --
A Survey of
Air-Heating-Options (1.2 MB pdf)
Chapter 3 -- The Economics of Solar
Heating (Coming)
Chapter 4 --
Designing the Collector (3.0 MB pdf)
Chapter 5 -- Construction Materials
(1.7 MB pdf)
Chapter 6 -- Thermostats, Blowers
(1.3 MB pdf)
Chapter 7 --
Building Passive Air Heaters: The Window Box and Thermosiphoning Air Panel
(2.6 MB pdf)
Chapter 8 -- Building Active Air
Collectors (5.0 MB pdf)
Some newer information from Andy
Zaugg to supplement Chapter 8
Collector Cross
Section From Above (40K pdf)
Collector Cross
Section From East (80K pdf)
Collector Metal Parts
(44K pdf)
Chapter 9 --
Designing and Installing
Duct Systems (3.2 MB pdf)
Chapter 10 --
Solar Water Heating (1.2 MB pdf)
Chapter 11 --
Thermal Storage for
Large Systems (2.1 MB pdf)
Chapter 12 -- Some Shining Examples
(1.5 MB pdf)
Appendices --
Appendix1 through 6 (2.7MB pdf)
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Sun Path Charts
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Wire Schematics
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Working With Officials
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The Characteristics of an Efficient
Flat Plate Collector
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Monitoring Your System
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Calculating Static Pressure
Index -- Full,
searchable Index (72K pdf)
As always, do not totally rely on the
correctness of this (or any reference) --
do your homework.
Gary 07/15/06, R10/18/06, R11/19/06