This design should be able to substantially heat homes in virtually all climates in the US! Common building materials and construction techniques are generally used in the construction of the structure. This makes the overall cost of the system relatively comparable to that of a two-car garage. Considering the savings that will accrue from having very reduced heating bills FOREVER, even that cost would soon pay for itself! That effectively makes this Solar heating system FREE! There will also never be any dependence on foreign oil or other uncertain or expensive heating source.
For solar space heating, the early 1980s was a brief boom time. Government tax incentives and rebates created a huge demand for solar devices, and a large number of companies popped up to sell things. Unfortunately, many of those companies didn't really know what they were doing! Manufacturers made a lot of different kinds of products, and some even did some research to advance their craft. Installers appeared everywhere, and suddenly EVERYONE was an expert!
It was astounding to witness the insanity of the time. We also operate a company that makes very high efficiency fireplaces and woodstoves (JUCA). A customer buying one of our woodstoves (in about 1980) was bragging about the solar heating system that he had just had installed, for which he had paid $7,000. When I inquired about details, it turned out that he had received three 4 x 8 solar panels mounted on his garage's roof, that was meant to heat his domestic hot water. During succeeding months, he became disillusioned with the performance of it (and therefore loved the performance of our woodstove he bought even more!) Since he realized we were knowledgeable in the subject, he would occasionally call for possible suggestions from us. (He had given up on the installer and the manufacturer of the solar collectors.) After a number of such conversations, we eventually realized that the garage was not on the south side of his house and that the collectors were facing a little north of west! It's astounding that someone would install them pointing such a weird direction, and then to charge him so much for it, too!
Many of the manufacturers were equally unprepared to sell large numbers of products. Most manufactured liquid (water) based systems, and seemed completely oblivious to the concept of electrolysis. This basic chemistry concept relates to ion transport between dissimilar metals in such a system. Aluminum and copper are particularly susceptible to corrosion due to electrolysis. Many of those companies (including nationally known companies) offered Five- or Seven- or Ten-year warranties on their products, only to find failure in half of their products within a year due to electrolysis!
Narrowing the field down to intelligently designed and intelligently installed solar systems, the better quality solar space-heating products that are still available on the market have always been (and are still) cost-ineffective. That is, they would not pay for themselves in fuel savings during their expected lifetimes.
The government also financed a few totally solar-heated, moderate-sized houses in the 1980s. In one, a $30,000 house had a solar heating system installed that cost about $700,000. It worked very well! But, it could never pay for itself.
More commonly, a good quality 4-foot by 8-foot solar collector panel often costs over $1000, with a final, installed operational cost somewhat higher. Assuming it is properly sloped, aiming South, in January, under PERFECT weather conditions, it can intercept all of the Sun's light and heat, about 300 Btu/hr/sq.ft around noon (considerably less at other hours), or a day's total of about 1600 Btu/day/sq.ft. Therefore, the entire collector panel can intercept 1600 x 4 x 8 or about 51 KBtu per DAY. An average sized house near Chicago will lose about 40,000 Btu per HOUR on a very cold day, or 960,000 Btu per DAY. To totally supply this much heat, one would need about 19 of those collectors, at an installed cost of well over $30,000, and it would only be completely effective on a perfectly sunny day. (During the winter, Chicago skies only average about 35% clearness, so it would probably need three times as many collectors for real life circumstances).
With this setup, the conventional heating fuel savings would be about $300-$400 per year (about $60 per month). Sounds impressive, huh? The system would actually have to operate perfectly for about 80 years to re-coup the initial cost, not counting repairs, maintenance and lost interest on money that could have been left in the bank! This argument is basically why solar heating has remained impractical for space heating of houses --- it requires a lot of Nature's cooperation, and even then is not cost effective.
Some attempts at partially supplying solar space heating have been made. In general, these same arguments apply. Installing a few collectors to reduce house space heating might seem like a good idea, but we are not aware of any existing system that could even pay for its own cost, much less accomplish actual heating bill savings.
UNTIL NOW!!!
Staying for a moment more with existing systems, A common "solar home" has three or four of those 4 x 8 collector panels. Better-planned installations have some heat storage provision, which might involve 20 tons of rock storage. Let's examine this. If the three collectors were perfectly efficient, they could collect, on a perfectly sunny day in January, at noon, about 300 x 4 x 8 x 3 or 28,800 Btu/hr. If the outdoor temperature was about 15 degrees F, then this COULD be enough to (momentarily) supply the entire (well-insulated) house's heat needs. But that's ONLY just at noon, and there is no room for clouds, or temperatures below 15, or even the system inefficiencies that always exist. If any of those circumstances apply, then it cannot entirely do the heating job (even at noon!), and backup heat is therefore necessary. The 20 tons of rock storage could hold up to 200,000 Btu of heat, but even that would only assist the solar heating system for less than a day of cloudy weather. (Remember that 960,000 Btu/day house loss (for a more normally insulated house) mentioned above?) The result is that you regularly need to use conventional fossil fuel heating to do the bulk of the heating. The approximately $10,000 that people spend to have such a system installed, will never pay for itself. BUMMER!
Instead of the 96 sq. ft. collecting area of a traditional solar heating system, this Solar system was designed with nearly 300 sq. ft. of collecting area, nearly THREE times as much collecting area. Our unique system even improves on this, making its performance equal to better than 5 times the heat-gaining ability of a common so-called "solar house."
Under those perfect conditions referred to above (at noon, when the normal solar heating system could momentarily heat the whole house, OUR system could be heating 5 houses! If there is 5 hours of good sunlight on that day, enough heat can be gained to supply heat for the entire house for the 24 hours of a full day in the dead of winter!
Our system has such high performance capabilities, that it makes sense to have substantial heat storage capability. Instead of the 200,000 Btu (mentioned above) of common systems (if they even HAVE storage capacity!), our system has much more! The actual storage capacity will depend on the climate and size of the house. Two to three million Btu of storage (more than 10 times that of other systems!) is often appropriate.
That much storage would allow going for several days without any Sun, in the intensely cold days of January or February, while still heating the house!
Our system's performance is so great that it almost seems pointless to even compare previous solar space heating systems with it!
To confirm all of this, we obtained ALL the US Weather Bureau records from their office at the South Bend Airport since they started keeping records in the 1940s. We then did massive computer simulations to see how our system would have fared in each of the winters. In early 1961, there was a stretch of ten days when the sun never shone, while the outdoor temperatures hovered near zero and often fell below. Our simulations show that this would have been one of the very few times in the past 50 years when the storage would have been fully depleted and back-up heat would have been necessary!
ANY method of providing that 60 million Btus would heat your house! You could use the conventional fuels mentioned above, or a woodstove (and several cords of wood). We see solar heating as a realistic possibility. A Chicago winter usually involves around 100 pretty nasty days. And Chicago, in winter, is a really cloudy place, with only around 35% clear days. That means around 35 nice and clear days to do serious collection of solar energy. (Most salespeople would incorrectly be using all 100 days, in a REALLY optimistic sales presentation!) Now, the Version 1 house has around 10 million Btu of heat storage, and at the start of the winter, that storage is full and available. So, we don't quite need to provide all 60 million, but 50 million Btu collected in a winter would do the trick. With 35 available days of sun, that means we need to think in terms of collecting around 1.5 million Btus per sunny day.
Do you see where we are going? Now that we know that we need 1.5 million Btu per sunny day, if we think in terms of five strong hours of sunshine, that means we need to collect around 300,000 Btu/hour of bright sunlight. As it happens, one square foot of surface gets around 340 Btu/hour of sunlight on a completely sunny winter day. This means we need around 900 square feet of collector surface to get the needed 300,000 Btu total per hour. This is roughly the derivation of why we see the need for around 900 square feet of collection area. (The actual math is somewhat more elegant, but the point is essentially the same.)
This should also make it clear why a few "bought panels" with a hundred total square feet of collection area has no chance whatever to seriously offer savings on heating bills. That's why no other company even dreams of their products fully heating any house. It doesn't matter if they would use special glass, or special collector configurations, or special insulation, unless they used many hundreds of square feet of collectors, no possible arrangement could entirely heat a house in a cold climate.
The Version 1 house actually has a little lower heat loss than the 60 MBtu used above, so the numbers are even a little better. The discussion above is meant to show that solar heating is actually a realistic possibility for existing fairly normal homes, in addition to the specially built houses like the Version 1 house.
Very constant, comfortable heat. NO heating bills. Sounds expensive, huh?
Actually, it isn't. We have sort of blue-collar attitudes toward such things. Super-rich people do not NEED to save on their heating bills! And, they can afford to pay for extremely expensive systems that might not actually work like their promoters say they will. We're not like that. Our goal is to (1) save people money on their heating bills and (2) be kinder to the environment than society has been in the past.
We actually have FOUR different versions solar heating systems. Three of them are fairly closely related, with the fourth rather different.
The version we have been describing here is one of the group of three. It is automatic, with even and comfortable and consistent heat for the house. It REQUIRES the construction of an two-car-garage-sized out-building in the yard relatively near the house. Structure size and the amount of the underground storage beneath it are both dependent on the climate and the size and condition of the house being heated. It must have a sloping wall.
There are links to the other versions of the Solar heating systems below.
Since people who have interest in this are likely to be all over the country, we came to realize that we could not become licensed to be General Contractors in all the possible jurisdictions where our designs might be used. That's just as well, because we would have had trouble having constructions crews agree to travel all over the place, and we also might not have been aware of nuances of local building statutes.
Therefore, we think it generally most appropriate to work with
architects amd/or local contractors.
The total cost of a Version 2 system will consist of four main expenses:
These considerations suggest that the grand total differential expense of this Solar system could range from a low of around $12K to a high of more than three times that (above the going price of a two-car garage). (Much of the construction of the out-building is pretty traditional.) If a specific contractor has already built one of our Version 2 out-buildings, it is liable to be around $20K.
Depending on the size of the home and the climate it is in, the annual savings on heating bills may be $1K. This means that this Solar heating system should completely pay for itself in 20 years. After that, further savings are just gravy! All this suggests that there are a couple additional values involved. First, the security of KNOWING that the house will be fully heated regardless of political events in the Mid-East or decisions of executives or politicians that might affect fuel supplies or prices. Second, given these things, the property's VALUE would probably be increased more than the cost of the system, because MANY people would want such security.
This version is an air-based system, so there is no electrolysis threat to its longevity. Actually, long-term maintenance should be LESS involved than for a conventional gas or oil furnace. We think that air filters and air handler maintenance should usually be all the attention this system should require, for the lifetime of the house!
We believe that we have proven the performance of the system. The logic explained above should make the general point. In addition, a link below can show the daily performance results of any year's simulation for heating a house in the harsh South Bend, Indiana winters.
The design is specifically NOT based on exotic glass or exotic materials or insulations in collector panels, so there is no mumbo-jumbo arguments about using high-emissivity glass or other advanced subjects. This system is more a meat-and-potatoes approach that uses conventional (soda-lime) glass, normal building insulation, normal construction methods (for the most part) and a large heat storage facility beneath the concrete floor. With very large collector area and very substantial heat storage ability, we feel the logic of the system is obvious. If it isn't, please e-mail us, and we can discuss whatever subjects you would like. We have a Physicist available to field your questions, so, hopefully, we can respond to any technical subject you might bring up!
Please contact us so that we may discuss the possibilities for your needs.
E-mail to: Public1@mb-soft.com
Performance and storage will be extremely great. The VERY large collector area and storage space make it certain that NO back-up heat will EVER be necessary for heating the house.
This version has potentially higher installation costs than either of the air-based systems above. It would certainly involve much more maintenance time and cost. It also has all the advantages and disadvantages of a water-based system.
It has very good performance but has intrinsically less performance ability than any of them. It is a low-tech approach to solar heating.
We have no intention in trying to "cut in" to the market for such products! Each of the four Versions (especially Version 1) is intended and designed and engineered for SERIOUS solar space heating; situations where no competitive technology exists that can do the job!
SO, for the multitude of people who read about the Versions, and then ask us to supply them with something that might go on their roof, they're barking up the wrong tree! The only Version that could possibly be applied to an existing roof is Version 4, by far the least sophisticated and efficient of the four! And, even then, the Version 4 system involves far more than just nailing some panels to a roof. So, please realize that the Versions are NOT competitors to those available roof panel systems. We actually have no competition at all, because no one seems to know how to ENTIRELY and COMFORTABLY heat a home exclusively with solar energy. Except us!
I suppose that technically that is not quite a lie. At noon, on a perfectly clear day, it might be capable of creating the number of watts that was promoted during a sales pitch. The problem is, at 2 pm, it is liable to be down to 800 watts, but that is still on a perfectly clear day. As mentioned far above, Chicago in winter only has around 35% of clear skies. So, on the average, that means 330 watts at noon and 270 watts a while later. In an entire clear day, around 5 kWh might be collected, but that would only average 1.7 kWh per day. At current electric rates, that would be a savings of around 15 cents per day, or about $50 per year. Now, does it make sense to pay $4,000 for any device that would save $50 per year? If it lasted for 80 years, without needing any maintenance, and if you didn't consider the interest you would have earned in the bank with that $4,000, it might eventually pay for itself. After that 80 years, under those conditions, it might start producing actual savings. Do you see why that photovoltaic electric systems are nowhere close to being cost effective?
In addition, the electricity is created as Direct Current, like a battery. And, without some sort of storage, it would just disappear and be wasted. So, you have to have substantial exotic batteries to save that potential of 5 kWh that could be collected in a day. And, unless you intend to only use appliances that use direct current, you would need an Inverter to convert the electricity to 120 volts AC. These devices have losses, too, so final performance is reduced.
There have been people who have bought our $1,400 woodburning stove, which uses a conventional furnace blower to create extremely high performance and distribute the heat throughout the house. The most common of our blowers uses around 700 watts of electricity. The off-power-grid people expect to use their $4,000 photovoltaic setup to run all kinds of appliances and lights and the JUCA blower. However, that $4,000 electricity creation system, on a perfectly sunny day, could create only enough electricity to run ONLY the JUCA blower for around 6 hours that day/evening, so there would not even be enough electricity to run one device (the blower) through the night! If they could absolutely count on perfectly clear days, around $12,000 of photovoltaic equipment would be able to keep the blower running. For Chicago, with its 35% clear skies, around $35,000 of photovoltaic equipment would be necessary JUST to run the blower on the $1,400 woodstove! Seems pretty expensive.
The general point being made, is that salespeople of photovoltaic equipment tend to make very impressive claims for the performance of what they sell, in order to justify the rather high prices. But, since it is NOT sunny 24 hours a day, and any climate has cloudy days, and very little solar energy is collectable early or late in the day, the reality is that benefits are FAR less than the ideal scenario presented during the purchase! If you're seriously considering such equipment, ask to talk about these matters with several owners (who are NOT connected with that company!).
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