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FRUGAL LIVING 22

UTILITIES
SOLAR

We’ve covered the fun solar, which is photovoltaic, PV, the electrical panels, wherein you get electric lights, enabling the luxuries such as TV and using the computer and watching movies and whatnot, but not the most practical which is plain old passive solar which with plain old glass and some wood and insulation allowing comfort and the ability to mostly replace propane and other costly carbon fuels.  Passive solar allows you to take a two dollar line and some wooden pins and suddenly you don’t need a five hundred dollar machine using a thousand watts or massive gas use to dry your clothes.  It lets you heat your home most days, or your water.  Passive solar saves you the Big Bucks.  You don’t need huge water drums to capture the days heat, or even a $300 factory made oven to cook your food.  You can do it all with a bit of ingenuity and some scraps of material.  And I’m not talking about a cardboard box and some tinfoil, which is fun to play with but won’t last longer than the next strong wind.  A few pieces of plywood makes a box, which is cut to the size of a scavenged piece of glass with hinges from a stereo system.  Place rigid foam insulation inside, cover that with foil, and the outside reflectors are covered in metal sheets of shiny metal.  The reflector is wood backing, cut as such \_/ on all four sides leaning away from the box and bolted down.  Without a reflector, you have a warmer, but with them you have a heater.  That is all those commercial ovens are.  Just look on the Internet for one for sale and you can easily envision how to make your own.

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For heating your dwelling, enough south facing windows do a marvelous job ( at night, cover with insulated drapes.  Or, if you want frugal, a sheet of foil covered bubble wrap they sell in Home Despot for a buck a foot, cut to fit the window, and a wool blanket or comforter clamped on to the curtain rod over that ).  If they are lacking, or too small, build some solar troughs.  A rectangle piece of wood, with a underside of insulation, the sides and top and bottom two by fours, with an air intake bottom and outlet at the top, the insides painted flat black and a glass sheet caulked to the top of the 2x4’s, the whole contraption at an angle leaning against the side of the dwelling with the top set inside a cracked window ( with squishy foam stuffed in the cracks almost as you would install a window air conditioning ), is you basic window solar heater.  If you create a series of baffles inside on alternating sides, more pieces of 2x4, it lets the air flow slow and warm up further, the air shifting left then right as it moves upward to the window outlet.  At night or in clouds, close off the opening into the house.  Alternately, if you place a long sheet of light weight metal hung from the interior curtain rod and painted flat black as it faces the window, this allows the heat entering the room to be increased. 

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For a less efficient but dirt cheap water heater, take a plastic ice chest, such as you take camping with beer and ice.  A junked one without the lid is ideal, or if your glass piece is small, cut a hole in the top and caulk the glass in place ( if it is larger than the cooler box, just remove the lid and place the glass on top, held down with, say, a bungee cord.  I like windows still in its frame for ease of removal ).  Dig a hole to place the whole box in, slanted at an angle facing south with the dirt packed up to its sides until you reach the lip.  Then the glass sits atop the box and the surrounding earth.  The inside is lined with foil or shiny metal sheets and the bottom has a piece of wood to elevate your water jars out of the shadow of the south facing side.  Take quart Mason canning jars, each one filled to the 16 ounce line with the lids on.  If you bath in the late afternoon rather than the customary early morning prior to work, the water is usually hot enough on its own to use without extra heating on the propane stove ( except in the three winter months, unless Gore Warming continues and then you are in luck most of the year ).  Beware of leaving water filled jars in the box during deep frozen cloudy days as you make ice and the jars shatter, even if they are only half full.  And there you have it.  Drying clothes, heating your water, heating your home and cooking a lot of your food ( check the InterWeb for solar cooking tips ) for a few bucks each.  Passive solar is fun and easy.

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