Heating Greenhouse Soil With Solar
Air Heaters -- And Other Applications?
The paper listed below from the University of Minnesota Extension
shows a really simple way to to use solar air heating collectors to heat
the soil below a high tunnel greenhouse.
While a fair amount of excavation is involved, the system is really
simple and cheap if you have access to a backhoe.
The results in terms of heating both the soil and the air were
impressive.
I think there are some potential shop, barn, and home heating
applications for this idea -- see below.
In a nutshell, the heated air from the solar air heating collectors is run
through the soil under the greenhouse using the commonly available corrugated
plastic tubes. The only other components would be a blower and a thermal
snap switch. Really simple.
The that carry heat from the solar air heating collectors to the soil being
placed.
They are yet to be covered by the GH soil.
Other Applications?
This has me wondering if the same sort of scheme might be
used to help heat a shop or barn or even a house.
Sand beds as a means to store heat for solar heated homes is gathering a
following, and this would be a really simple way to implement sand bed heat
storage for space heating.
Simple but good solar air heating collectors can be built
for less than $4 per square foot. This is
one example of a solar air heating collector using layers of black window
screen that is inexpensive and fast to build and actually tested better than
more expensive designs. It could be built it much lager units and could
also be integrated into the building wall or roof. For something under
$2000 (I think) a pretty effective solar home heating system could be built.
