Friday, March 27, 2015

consuming to invest 11


CONSUMING TO INVEST 11

Passive Solar

I went to some lengths in describing passive solar projects in the book “Frugal Living”, so I’ll try to focus mostly on the economic aspects here ( although I’m sure the material grossly overlaps ).  You have a clothes line, right?  What else could be a better poster child of solar?  We only dried on the line in Florida, and that lacked direct sun ( trees out the wazoo there, great for negating the need for AC ), didn’t have any wind and it rained every day.  Yet still we always got the clothes dried just fine.  When it was “outlawed” by the landlord, I put up a line below the level of the fence.  When we got our own mobile home the carport ( again, not owning a car comes in handy ) was the laundry line area.  I got lazy here in the desert, seeing little reason to arrive home after dark and hang clothes up in fifteen degrees.  But now that I get home early afternoon, I’ve taken to drying by line again ( they go from wet to damp in the worse weather, I drape them up inside and continue the next day-which is why Friday is a good laundry day ).  I didn’t as much mind the $1 a week for the dryer as the extra hour of intense boredom it cost.  I only spent half what a new dryer would cost from the years drying at the Laundromat so I don’t feel too bad about my lapse.  Worse case, an indoor laundry line in the garage will suffice. 

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I noticed an electronic food dryer on sale while surfing online.  Almost $200.  Good gravy!  Really?  If you dry in the oven in the winter, your heater bill goes down and cancels out any operating costs, and in the summer just dry by solar.  You can make a slanting trough with black metal bottom covered with glass to collect the heat, which rises to an attached square tower full of trays with a vent at the top ( and an intake vent at the bottom of the trough ).  Or, if you are lazy, just make square lumber frames with a bottom screen ( check the drying books- I think you want nylon rather than metal ) and the tops covered with cheese clothe.  In both cases, bring the trays in at night and repeat the next day.  Using electric to dry is embarrassing and retarded when other cost free ways are available.

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Most people think a water heater is an expensive add on to pre-heat water for the gas fired heater.  Or, even if the solar alone does the trick, it is still a mess of pumps and pipes and wires and nicely perforates your roof for near future add on maintenance costs.  I don’t know how they do it in China, because the unit there cost under $100 and over half of all homes have them, but I’m sure it is a much simpler design than what we came up with over here.  Perhaps if Americans didn’t use hundreds of gallons of water to bathe they wouldn’t need to spend thousands of dollars for sun fired water.  Just sink an insulated box into the ground at a south facing angle, cover with glass, and have some canning jars inside the flat black painted structure.  A few hours later, a gallon of hot water-which is a wastefully large amount for a whores bath. 

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A solar food cooker is the same as above but you need reflectors on the outside to double the interior temperatures.  Just look online at any picture of a commercial solar cooker to get the idea of the shape.  Solar cookers and water heaters are to be had for the cost of scrap wood and a marked down piece of recycled glass ( you might want to consider a completely above ground unit that can be stored inside safe from theft-just add extra insulation ) with a few bucks in rigid board insulation ( cover that from solar rays-in a few years they become brittle and almost melt and shrink and I’m sure lose effectiveness ) and some shiny metal sheeting.  Even if it cost you $100 in material, that is one third the cost of commercial units and you start saving money right away in saved fuel costs.  There are plenty of other solar projects, and once you get a taste for one of two you will embrace others enthusiastically.  Because you are producing luxuries at zero operating costs.  And, yet MORE money saved on both utilities and from appliances you need not buy.

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9 comments:

  1. And if you have solar electric panels and a hint of handyman capabilities you can dual use the solar cooker reflectors to reflect extra light on to the solar electric panels. OR if you can find one of those big old satellite dishes, just coat it with foil and place your to cook item or water at the focus point (right about where their is already the doodad sticking out from the middle) for real solar heating power.
    Of course putting up solar anything will piss off your landlord or HOA pretty easily. (As the well coifed Lord Bison mentioned when discussing the clothes line). Which takes us back to owning your own 'junk' land out of town - little to no HOA, neighbors, or landlord.

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    1. Didn't someone say reflectors and panels kill the panels quicker due to heat?

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    2. Yeah, you did, and I've seen that mentioned before but never any reason why. It seems weerd that a thing that is designed to sit in the sun will be killed by heat from that sun. Anyway, get some small diameter copper tubing and lace it all zig zaggy on the backside of the panel and connect a 9v solar pump to it and pump water through it to keep the panel cool like a radiator in a car. If you're delicate you can put the copper tubing on the front side too just make sure it is on the seams between the actual cells. And don't forget them fresnel lenses, double your bang for the buck.

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    3. Thatt was me! The Great Maned One reads minion posts (not just "auto-post").

      If you live in a cloudy place, some reflectors are okay, but if the sun shines through clear air, it will overheat the panel if it's a standard type. Manufacturers frequently disclaim all warrantee when used with reflector systems.

      Panels are cheap: $149 for 100W Renology, so just buy more rather than mess with over-optimizing leading to breakage. You might need a fancy controller like Midnite Solar Kid or Morningstar Tri-Star MPPT series to deal with higher panel voltages than your battery bank.

      pdxr13

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    4. PDXR13, good input. Sounds like what I'm planning but my hang up is a decent inverter that won't cost me $2000. 2500 watt range 24v system. Ideas?

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    5. "Decent" meaning cheaper than Outback/Magnum/Xantrex (the good stuff), right?

      Samlex. But, you should not pretend that you can get 100% of rating for more than seconds. If you NEED 2500W, get a 4000W model.

      I am saving pennies for a refurbished Magnum Energy 4448PAE, even though my real-world max is going to be ~2KW, because 240v runs more capable well pumps, there's a good charger included to maximize effectiveness during genset run time (the most expensive power of all), and a single string of L-16's (8x 6v) as storage. Even at 24v, the copper between the battery bank and inverter needs to be short and beastly to get real 2KW. Unless I run across a used one for half of a refurb price, everything will be bought together, and reassessed for price-function-application at that time.

      Until then, it's used/cobbled/small-time rv-scale. Surplus high-end computer UPS is sometimes pure-sine output. Multiple inverters may acceptable, with mod-square models running laptop power supply. Spend early on breakers and fuses, as well as good crimping tools. A 300W pv systen can make fires!

      pdxr13

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  2. “We only dried on the line in Florida, and that lacked direct sun ( trees out the wazoo there, great for negating the need for AC ), didn’t have any wind and it rained every day. Yet still we always got the clothes dried just fine.”

    Another argumant in favour of wearing wool or fast drying synthetics such as polyester, nylon, etc.

    “Just sink an insulated box into the ground at a south facing angle, cover with glass, and have some canning jars inside the flat black painted structure.  A few hours later, a gallon of hot water-which is a wastefully large amount for a whores bath.“

    It's always good to have many alternatives. But for $10.00, I think it's perfectly justifiable to get a solar shower. Sure, you can accomplish the same with a 1 gallon jug painted black with holes poked in the lid. But for a very reasonable price, you get something that you can hang easier, and has a shower head with on/off features. You can point one of your defunct vehicles southerly, and hang it from the mirror, or some other point, and have a super solar heater.

    http://www.amazon.com/Coleman-2000014865-5-Gallon-Solar-Shower/dp/B0009PUT20/ref=pd_sim_sg_5?ie=UTF8&refRID=0M5CHKKAXZPRPKVS1JZM

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    1. I certainly don't mind a solar shower bag, and own one or two ( still unused ). My reasoning against them is that they are not long lasting items, generally being as poorly made as possible.

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  3. A good solar water heater is a 5 gallon bucket painted black with a V shaped reflector so it get sun on all sides . If the weather is bitter cold but sunny I warm up by sitting in my truck . A car or truck is air tight and the windshield makes it one of the best passive heat sinks. If you make a small green house it can hold your cloths line as well as plants. A cheap food dehydrator is a old screen door painted black on 2 bricks covered with a screen or cloth.

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