I have one of those gray Rhino shelters that get very hot inside when the sun is out. I thought of putting another one right next to the house and piping the hot air into the house and cooler house air back out to it in cool weather. A kind of poor man's solar heater. I'm sure if I make it more air tight it should heat even better. Anybody tried this?
How many cubic feet of heated air can it produce per minute?
How many cubic feet of heated air is needed per minute?
The point is that your shed isn't going to produce nearly enough heated air to do anything at all as far as heating your house.
We live north of Baltimore. I built a 12' by 14' greenhouse onto the south side of the house; the back wall of the greenhouse is what was the outside wall of the laundry room. On sunny winter days, the temperature goes over 80 degrees in the greenhouse so we open the two windows between the laundry room and greenhouse and hot air flows in. Not enough to heat the whole house but it makes a significant contribution.
When the greenhouse starts cooling, we close the windows. Someday I'd like to have the windows operate based on temperature but there are a lot of other projects with higher priority. At night, an electric heater keeps the greenhouse at 50 degrees.
Paul
Dont listen to these people flame your idea ; go ahead, give it a try . You have nothing to loose . Some great inventions end up from refined ideas like yours.
I was doing the same during my 14 x 28 foot patio into a green house. Temp in there got to nearly 100 on sunny days. This heated the house well but I still had to run heat at night. Unfortunately it a wintr storm took it out. It ws just an expeiment anyway.
Jimmie
VC-
I didn't try it but I thought about & did some calcs to see checkout the feasibility of it. But the science of it didn't really mattter, my wife told me she wasn't too interested in a "solar collector" covering part of the south face of the house.
A rough solar heat load number on a skylight or south facing window is the vicinity of 120 BTU/ hr / square foot....maybe a bit higher.
Soooo...depending on the exposed area of your Rhino shelter, during good sunlight hours you could be getting about 10,000 btu/hr (continous) being applied to the Rhino. Of course you have to move this heated air into the house & replace it with "cooler" air from the house...... ie some sort of fans / ducting.
In any case (imo) the numbers can work....the 10,000 btu/hr is a continuous number where your furnace (like ~ 100,000 btu / hr) only runs xx% of the time.
So on a continuous basis it may only do 20,000 or 30,000 btu / hr or less depending on its typical duty cycle.
Based on my SWAG numbers you might be able to supply 1/3 to 1/2 of your heating demand. Of course, these numbers are rough but they're in the ballpark.
cheers
ps my dad & I built a solar pool heater the 60's .... pretty crude but effective. On a sunny day we captured about 5,000 btu per hour using about 100 sq ft or so. It helped a bit, we figured it extended the pool season by about maybe a couple weeks on each end
You are probably assuming 0 losses. A tarp covered "collector" is going to have lots of losses, and thus deliver way less than the solar power it receives.
That is wildly different than what the OP is proposing. His idea is similar in possibility to the idea that you can use the cool air down in your basement to cool off the upstairs of a house.
I DO use the cool basement to cool off the house.
I dont think my "back of the envelope" SWAG is close enough to do much than motivate someone to take another look. I don't even know what a Rhino shelter is, how its constructed or how big it is....
I gave the OP some rough numbers so he could pursue it if he were so inclined
I've a got a house with a set of very large double pane south facing windows. Even in the dead of winter (20's / 30's) , a sunny day will warm up the house enough to preclude the use of the furnace until after sundown.
A little bit of solar can go a long way.
cheers Bob
A quick google solved that for me.
If you have an attic, you likely already have an even larger solar collector similar to your add-on shack. With a reversible adjustable speed whole house type fan you could draw warm air from the attic into the house during days when the attic gets sufficiently above the house temp. And do the opposite to cool the house on other days.
I guess you have more way interest in a Rhino shelter used as a solar collector than I. Personally I was too lazy DAGS.
My aim was to give the OP some info so HE could pursue it further, not do all his homework for him or completely discourage him either.
cheers Bob
I gu
We live north of Baltimore. I built a 12' by 14' greenhouse onto the south side of the house; the back wall of the greenhouse is what was the outside wall of the laundry room. On sunny winter days, the temperature goes over 80 degrees in the greenhouse so we open the two windows between the laundry room and greenhouse and hot air flows in. Not enough to heat the whole house but it makes a significant contribution.
When the greenhouse starts cooling, we close the windows. Someday I'd like to have the windows operate based on temperature but there are a lot of other projects with higher priority. At night, an electric heater keeps the greenhouse at 50 degrees.
Paul
You could consider something like this for the greenhouse;
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