Build-It-Solar Blog: August 2009

Monday, August 31, 2009

August Performance for the $1K Solar Water Heating System

The performance for $1K Solar Water Heating System is in. This is the day by day performance plot.

The solar fraction for the month was 100%.

I'm going to continue the logging through September so that there is a full year of monthly performance plots.

Here is a road map of all the pages on the design, construction, testing, and performance for the system.

Saturday, August 15, 2009

An Exceptional Residential Energy Retrofit

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Gordon and Sue took a drafty 1963
brick schoolhouse with almost no insulation and converted into a home that
could meet Passive House Institute standards, and that has a heating bill that
is 6% of a similar size code built home in their area. Building a
new home with a thermal envelope this efficient would be an excellent
accomplishment -- doing this in a retrofit situation with all the challenges
that go with trying to bend an existing structure to your needs makes it much
more difficult. Meeting nearly all of the space heating needs with
a good thermal envelope and passive solar heating was a very difficult
challenge in this tough 7,150 heating degree day climate in Ontario. On
top of all this, the house looks normal and fits into its neighborhood just
fine.

Full details...

This is the most carefully thought
out and carefully executed energy retrofit I have seen.

Some of the features of the retrofit include:
R40 Larsen Truss walls, triple glazed R6 super windows, glazing revamped for
passive solar heating, a new solarium, a hand crafted masonry heater, and much
more. In addition to a very good thermal envelope, Gordon gives a lot of
attention to fire safety and to redundancy in the space heating system.
Like most good designs,

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this
one is simple and robust without a lot of gadgetry.

Gordon has done a very good job of describing the logic leading up to the key decisions on the insulating, glazing, passive solar, and thermal mass solutions used in the final design. He has also described some of he things that did not go so well, and why -- all good information for would-be rettrofitters.

The
full details include a 30 page description of the design and construction
process, an extensive photo gallery covering all stages of the project, and a
very detailed thermal analysis spreadsheet.

Gary

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Wednesday, August 12, 2009

EcoRider -- Converting a riding gas mower to electric

This is an interesting ongoing set of entries on the Eco-Renovator site about converting a riding gas mower into an electric operation running on lead acid batteries.

This could become a solar charged mower with the addition of PV panels and a charge controller.

Details on the EcoRenovator conversion here...

More on converting mowers and tractors to solar electric operation...

The EcoRenovator site has a number of interesting articles.

Gary

Tuesday, August 11, 2009

Single Seat VW Car to Get 250 mpg -- Production in 2010

This
single seat car that VW is working on would get 250+ mpg, top speed 75 mph.
It can travel over 400 miles on its 1.7 gallon fuel tank!

It weighs 660 lbs.

This car is powered by gasoline only, and its 250 mpg is not one of the
phony plug in hybrid mileage ratings that does not include fossil fuel
burned to make electricity -- its an honest 250 mpg -- amazing.

Said to be ready to go on sale in Shanghai in 2010.

More here...

Gary

Saturday, August 8, 2009

Matt's "$1K" Solar Water Heating System

This is Matt's version of the $1K type solar water
heating system. Matt tried a few new things that might be just what you
are looking for. One of Matt's innovations is what might be the worlds
first bicycle powered groove forming machine!

Matt is a very good craftsman, and
provides a wealth of interesting alternative ways of making the components.

Some of the unique features of Matt's
system:

- A unique forming machine to
form the groove in the aluminum fins.

- A new method of attaching the fins to the copper tubes.

- A copper heat exchanger that
uses 6 parallel coils of 3/8 inch copper pipe.

- a galvanized metal collector
frame.

- A steel tank instead of the
EPDM lined plywood tank.

- Glass for glazing instead of polycarbonate.

Thanks very much to Matt for taking
the time to document this project!

All the details on Matt's system here...

For those who have not seen it, the $1K Solar Water Heating system aims at providing a quality solar water heating system with a high solar fraction that is simple and easy to build and will work in cold climates.
All the details on the $1K system here...

More examples of $1K systems here...
Gary

Friday, August 7, 2009

New Product: Nissan LEAF EV for US in 2010

Nissan Motor Co. has announced that they plan to offer the Nissan LEAF pure electric car in the US in late 2010.
The LEAF seats 5, and will have a range of about 100 miles. It uses a 24 KWH Lithium-Ion batter pack. Top speed of 90 mph.

More info here...

Thursday, August 6, 2009

Getting the 30% Federal Tax Credit on a DIY Solar Water Heating System

I've received several emails from people who would like to
build the $1K Solar Water Heating System, but who also don't want to miss the
30% federal tax rebate that is part of the new Energy Bill -- I think you can
do this.

The new federal rebate for solar water heating systems offers a 30% tax credit on the full price of the system.

One of the requirements is that the collectors used in the
system must be certified by the SRCC under their OG-100 program. Since its only the collectors that must be
certified, you can
build and install your own system and get the tax rebate as long as you use a
commercial collector that is SRCC certified, as most commercial collectors are.

As an example, if you were planning to build
the $1K system with a homemade 40sqft collector, you could substitute (say) a
Heliodyne Gobi 40 sqft collector . This
will make the entire system qualify for the rebate. The numbers might work out like this:

The $1K system costs                      $1000
Delete homemade collector         -$200
Add commercial collector           +$1000
--------------------------------------------------
Total cost of system               $1800

Minus 30% rebate $540
----------------------------------------------------
Cost after rebate $1260

So, this approach increases the cost of the system a bit, but you get a nice shiny commercial collector, and avoid the work of
making a collector. You also end up with
a solar water heating system that is about 1/5th the cost of a professionally
installed commercial system, and that will pay back your investment in a fairly
short period.

So, this is a good deal for you, and an even better deal for
the feds in that they are paying a rebate of only $540 instead of a typical rebate
of $2400 on an $8000 system -- as Barack would say, win-win!

Another approach would be to buy off the shelf components
for the full system and install them yourself.
You save the cost of the installation, and you get the rebate. Lots of material on how to install a system here...

Most states also have a rebate or tax credit program that might further reduce the cost of the system. For example, my state (MT) offers a $500 tax credit on solar water heating systems with no stings attached. Information on state programs here...

Disclaimer: I'm not a tax expert, so you might want to do
some checking of your own on this.

Gary

Monday, August 3, 2009

Insulating Underground Pipe Runs

If your solar collectors are located away from your house, you will probably want to run the supply and return pipes underground from the collector to the house. Insulating these pipe well is important in order to avoid a lot of heat loss to the ground.

I've added a new section to collect schemes for insulating underground pipe runs:
http://www.builditsolar.com/Projects/SpaceHeating/Space_Heating.htm#UGPipes
Currently it shows the scheme I used on my Solar Shed, a commercially available solution.

The new section also shows an interesting method suggested by Don Stephens (of AGS). He makes mix of Portland cement and polystyrene foam beads (as in foam coffee cups). This is similar to the building material called Rastra, and has an insulting value around R1.7 per inch. He lays down a thick bed of this in the trench and waits it to harden, then he fastens the PEX pipe lines down with large staples, which apparently are easy to embed in the soft cement. He them pours a 2nd thick batch of the bead-crete over the pipes. Once its dry, he covers with poly film and backfills the trench. Because of the relatively low R value per inch, you would have to use a greater thickness than for something like XPS rigid foam, but it may still be cheaper and easier to do this. Don's more detailed description is at the link above.

If you know of any other good schemes, please let me know.

Gary