Almost free heating
Posted on Jul 28, 2008 under Heating, Solar power |
We have found the perfect home and can’t wait to start moving. The place is currently empty, so we could have moved in when we first saw it 3 weeks ago. All the paper work, however, takes time and real-estate agents and bankers who are on holiday make the waiting time even longer.
I’ve been doing some thinking on space heating and DHW heating for the place. The property contains a big greenhouse complex consisting of 8 greenhouses, totaling over 6000 square meters. We wanted a big greenhouse, but this is way more than we are going to use. When checking out the place, one of the greenhouses had all its windows closed and it was unbearably hot in there. This got me thinking, the property has a huge heating system, which is designed to heat all of the greenhouses. The space heating for the house is just t-ed off of the big heating system, but since we are not going to use much of the greenhouse space to begin with, firing up this monster heater just to heat the house would be a big waste.
What if we can store the heat from the greenhouse for later use? One greenhouse would just function as a huge solar panel with water flowing through tubes and back to a big heat storage tank. A 20.000 liter oil tank, which is already there, can probably be used as the heat storage tank. I would only need to insulate it and run some pipes from the greenhouse to the tank.
I have no idea how much the greenhouse will heat up on a sunny winters day, but I will probably need some supplemental heating. If you have a big heat storage tank, you can use several heat sources to feed it. I will probably install a wood burning stove right next to the heat storage tank, to ensure we don’t freeze in winter. Heat generated by a Lister engine can also be fed into the same heat storage tank.
I found builditsolar.com to be a great resource on DIY solar projects. If you want to know more about wood stoves for heating, you should check out the forums on heart.com
