Creuzer – Page 53 – Random things Creuzer

Yesterday and today I made a 60 cubic foot Solar Hot Air panel to heat my garage….

Yesterday and today I made a 60 cubic foot Solar Hot Air panel to heat my garage. I spent a total of $7 on it – most of the parts where salvaged or found or freecycled parts.

A hot air solar panel is probably the most efficient way to draw energy from the sun. The sun has about 300 watts of heat per cubic meter. If you put stuff out in the sun, it gets hot. A panel like this is simply a contrivance to allow that heat to get moved to somewhere where we want it.

My panel works by putting black landscape fabric out in the sun. This fabric is in a long, insulated, shallow box with a clear vinyl front. The fabric is touching the back on one end, and touching the front on the other. The only way air can go from one end of the box to the other is to pass through the fabric. This will cool the fabric, warming up the air. By putting a fan in the garage blowing into the panel, the panel will recirculate the air into the other end of the garage, heating the garage.

I started with an idea of how I wanted it to turn out and just winged it as I built each step as to how the next step will be built. That is a lot of the fun of using salvaged materials.

I am using a 4 inch inline duct fan I got on freecycle to blow air through the panel. Ideally, I would like to get a solar panel to run the 12v PC case fan so the whole thing counts as 'free' heat. The photo-voltaic would cost as much as the whole hot air panel would if I had bought all the materials new!

I need to add some strips to help hold the vinyl tight against the frame so it doesn't leak air. I am going to make this look like window trim so the whole contraption doesn't look bad.

I put an indoor/outdoor thermometer in the garage with the outdoor sensor in the hole for the air returning to the garage. This should tell me how hot the air is coming out of the panel.

If this works well, I plan on building a more permanent installation. The garage is old, aluminum siding right now. I want to re-side the garage to match the house in a couple of years. At that point, a permanent, glass, panel will be made that will be built into the garage.

View all the images in the 7GarageHotAirSolarPanel | 112180831536834517676 Photo Album

In album $7 Garage Hot Air Solar Panel (32 photos)

Sunny side of the garage.

I seem to have misplaced my automatic board stretcher, so I needed to manually create notches so I can splice short boards together to make long ones.

A circular saw will get a cut this far quickly.

A back saw is quicker to finish the cut than to adjust the circular saw 1/4 inch every cut.

Two ends cut like this can be screwed together and be strong enough for this purpose.

Assembling the frame from salvaged wood from a friend’s flooded basement.

If you squint hard and look some other direction, you would never know that I spliced these boards together.

I’d found some sort of black shrink wrap in the basement when I bought the house. It seems to work well enough to make a back for the solar panel.

The shrink wrap sticks to itself so it forms an air tight back. Starting to put the cross members used for hanging the panel to the garage wall.

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I am wishing I had 8-10 feet of bi-fold door hardware

I would make a solar heat garage door something along the lines of http://www.builditsolar.com/Projects/SpaceHeating/SolarGarageCollector/garcol.htm . It would allow me to have sun in the the garage in the afternoon for light and heat.

For when I am not using the garage, I would also black out the garage door and close it onto a pair of 2×4 scraps. This would leave a gap under the door, and the top would be kicked in a bit so there is a gap on top too. The afternoon sun would hit my West facing black garage door which would cause the door to heat up. The hot air would go into the garage, drawing the cold air off of the garage floor. This would effectively be a Trombe Wall.

Although, maybe I could rig up a lock-slot so the door has about 2 inches of travel and run a micro-controller timer to automatically lift the door the 2 inches around noon and shut it at dusk.

#Ideas #Solar

Solar Workshop or Studio
Describes how to convert a garage into a delightful solar heated and lighted workshop, studio, sunspace or playroom

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A coworker has been bringing in different board games to work

I thought It would be fun to try to make one. So I made a print-and-play game that fits into an Altoids Tin. I am calling it "Tins of Zombies – Curiously Strong Zombies". #TinsOfZombies

There are 3 piece types in the game. The Cards, which on one side have the game board pieces, and on the other side have the items used in game play. Then I have a bunch of small dice which are used for the player tokens – multi purpose is good! And Last, I have Zombies, A crazy amount of Zombies.

The part I like about this is that it's a turn based game, but there is potential for players to play during every other players turn as well. The game is also co-opitive, that is to say, your playing with each other and against each other. The game is easier to play together, but you can play it alone, and you can play against the other players.

I am going to play it a couple of more times to see how game play flows and to work out any kinks, and then I may publish it.

I am thinking about making a smart-phone companion app to go with the game to help with scoring and to add extra game play dimensionality.

In album

My zombie game is designed to fit into an Altoids Tin. These are smaller than normal dice.

Fancy that, it fits!

All the pieces laid out as a ‘town’. I only screwed up one piece. The Grey is roads, the brown are sidewalks and alleys.

Nearing the end of the game, you can see how this town was built out. The stacks of slips of paper are my zombies. The different colored die are the player markers.

One turn left! We only made up a couple of rules as we played **grin**. You can see an item card in the corner of the photo.

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A coworker brought it Fill or Bust to work and we've been playing during lunch….

A coworker brought it Fill or Bust to work and we've been playing during lunch. It's a simple game that plays fast so it works well for us.

I wanted to play with my wife, but didn't have the game.

I do have dice and a printer. So I made up the game. I printed out the card on pain paper and cut them out. This works well enough. The cards are easy to bend though – will need to try card-stock in the future.

We played it while the baby was still up which worked surprisingly well. She wanted to play to, but we told her not to touch only 2-3 dozen times and distracted her with chip crumbs.

When we where done, we where looking for a way to keep it out of the chip-crumb-monster's cut little hands-of-destruction. I thought it may fit in an Altoids tin, and it does!

This got me to thinking… I may need to make a card & dice game set that has several games in it. Mostly just because I can.

In album

You can see the dice well here, but not the Susan B.

The Susan B looks better here, but the dice are now lacking…

It fits into an Altoids tin. Pretty cool!

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Bella got an aquaponics aquarium in her room

It was funny listening to her talk to the fish while she was supposed to be sleeping. We will see what today brings for her sleeping with the water sounds in her room.

In album

I am not a fan of painting, yet I painted twice this weekend!

Looks lacking…

Oh, Hi! A fish! Bella has a fish!

The whole system got a little tall on me. I may need to swap out the 14 gallon tank for a 10 gallon tank and take about an inch and a half off the stand.

I added a couple of plants to help clean the air in Bella’s Room

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