The Oil Drum: Campfire | Practical Passive Solar Renovation

57 comments on Practical Passive Solar Renovation - Part 1: Easy First Project

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Will Stewart on February 12, 2009 - 8:26am

David, you're right,they are very similar. The key differences are the solar windowbox adds more solar collection area above what a window already has, and can be removed during non-heating seasons (and used for food dehydrating). We will cover wall mounted passive collectors in another article, so stay tuned.

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Wyoming on February 12, 2009 - 10:37am

Will,

From your above comment I am getting the impression that this apparatus is removed for the part of the year that one does not need additional heating. Is this correct? If so, how much on average do these things weigh. I am thinking of the effort of carrying them, durability if they are moved often, and then one needs storage space. Logistics!

Wyo

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Will Stewart on February 12, 2009 - 3:16pm

Wyoming,

Good point; some people may prefer to leave them in place. In that situation, having a summer vent (see figure) not only discards any heat gain, it acts as a solar chimney and pulls air from the house, a desireable effect on those hot, windless summer days (make sure to block the heated output that normally comes into the house in the winter). This approach is an extra detail from the James Dulley article;

Another trick is to use a piece of poster board or thin cardboard as a turning vane to reduce the turbulence at the bottom of the collector, helping to 'bend' the airflow in the reverse direction;