Love the FREE hangar heat!

[Yooper Rocketman]

I started this post just after lunch on my Iphone but no matter how I took pictures, once I posted them they kept coming up sideways.  I even took more pictures "sideways" and they still ended up the same in the post.  So..........posting from home.

Anyway, I was sitting next to one of my southern exposed large windows, enjoying the warmth of the sun on a 6 degree (for our high) day and reveling over my solar collector that was warming the hangar.  The hangar was already 10 degrees above the thermostat setting (48) and ended near 65 degrees by late afternoon.  I designed and built this hot air solar collector as one of my first solar projects (been many since).  This one was probably the fastest return on investment, as it was built pretty simply and with low cost.  It's been up for about 10 years and we've been monitoring the hours of run time for about 8 years (see hours meter picture below).  With the exception of these last two winters, where I am working on the Lancair during the winter, we only heated our bathroom through the winter and only turned on the main heat for the hangar the night before a planned flight.  When unplanned flights came up during the winter and the sun was shining, if I could delay the flight until 1-2 PM, my plane would be warm as well as the hangar, requiring no preheat for the flight that day.

Since my website does not sell any components for this style collector, I think it's appropriate to share my website for my solar business.  The site is MOSTLY build tips and projects anyway as we only provide one product, stamped aluminum absorber for DIY hot water solar collectors.

This particular project is at the bottom of the page listed below.  We changed the Polycarbonate a couple years ago, going from the cheap Home Depot corrugated product to twin wall poly.

https://www.aluminum-solar-absorbers.com/solar-hot-air-collectors

Tom

[MIm20c]

I really like the design and execution of this.  What is the temperature swing (inside) on a clear day and night with no supplemental heat?  30 degrees?  Any problems with condensation which the multiple temperature cycles?  Thanks for the link. 

[Hank]

Amazing results! Looks like a good hangar for a couple of great planes.

Come see me June-August, I have free hangar heat to spare then . . . . But so will you at Spruce Creek.  

[Yooper Rocketman]

1 hour ago, MIm20c said:

I really like the design and execution of this.  What is the temperature swing (inside) on a clear day and night with no supplemental heat?  30 degrees?  Any problems with condensation which the multiple temperature cycles?  Thanks for the link. 

Probably 30 degrees would be reasonable over a few days (high temp with sunny day followed by cloudy days).  Never saw any issues with condensation.  Probably because humidity level in hangar in the winter up here is pretty low.  

Tom

[kris_adams]

I’ve read about doing this. Very cool to see it really work!