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I wanted to give a shout out to Tom, @yooper rocketman  As a sideline to his main truck business, Tom has solar heating company called www.upsolarsolutions.com  

I recently bought some of Tom’s aluminum solar absorber plates for a fun solar project my hangar co-owner and I are working on.  Our hangar floor is heated with hot glycol heated with an electric demand water heater.  Wanting to reduce our heating costs and our carbon foot print lead us to Tom’s company and his novel product.   

With basic Home Depot supplies and ideas from Tom’s website we are building a 32’ x 2’ solar collector to be mounted on the roof of our hangar.  Here are a few pictures of the project.  Leaning against the hangar door on a sunny day the collector plates got to 160 degrees.  I can’t wait to see what they will do for our floor.

Thanks Tom for a neat product!

Clarence

08FC53BF-DCC6-42F7-B938-E0EFDF4500C7.jpeg

24D17ABF-BAC6-4E74-9DC9-05A97CDB4096.jpeg

Edited by M20Doc
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1 minute ago, N201MKTurbo said:

Does it work better than beer cans?

The beer can heater works very well, on a sunny day it will raise the air temperature in the hangar 6-8 degrees.  Quite impressive considering the hangar is 2000 square feet and 16’ tall.

Clarence

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6 minutes ago, M20Doc said:

The beer can heater works very well, on a sunny day it will raise the air temperature in the hangar 6-8 degrees.  Quite impressive considering the hangar is 2000 square feet and 16’ tall.

Clarence

I like Tom’s heater, but I would really like to hear more about the beer can heater...maybe pictures?

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1 minute ago, N201MKTurbo said:

Can’t wait to hear how the new heater works.

We’re very hopeful that it will do even better than the beer cans.  Storing heat in the concrete is like charging a giant battery.  My shop is heated with a hydronic floor as well.

Clarence

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17 minutes ago, takair said:

I like Tom’s heater, but I would really like to hear more about the beer can heater...maybe pictures?

Here’s is a partial picture.  The box is made of metal studs, with a plywood backing, 1” insulation lining, and a plexiglass lens.  Air is drawn from the hangar through a 4” duct to a dryer vent to act as a check valve, up through the beer cans which are opened top and bottom with a hole saw.  The heated air re enters the hangar through a 4” duct at the top.  Air circulation was originally by dc computer cooling fans powered by a PV cell.  We’ve found that a larger AC fan delivers greater volumes of air.

There are just under 300 cans, (not all are beer) on a sunny day we’ve seen temperatures of 180, enough to melt the PV cell in the top.

Clarence

EA1E2254-6B9E-4058-AD70-B279C3B263D9.jpeg

Edited by M20Doc
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9 minutes ago, takair said:

That’s impressive.  What is the lowest outside air temperature where it is still effective? 

In winter the air temperature in the hangar is typically 40-45 degrees, with OAT in the minus 10-20 degrees Celsius.  

On sunny days a rise of more than a 100 degrees is common.  Even on overcast days a rise of 25-30 degrees is normal, all for the cost of running an AC computer fan.

Clarence

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23 hours ago, M20Doc said:

I wanted to give a shout out to Tom, @yooper rocketman  As a sideline to his main truck business, Tom has solar heating company called www.upsolarsolutions.com  

I recently bought some of Tom’s aluminum solar absorber plates for a fun solar project my hangar co-owner and I are working on.  Our hangar floor is heated with hot glycol heated with an electric demand water heater.  Wanting to reduce our heating costs and our carbon foot print lead us to Tom’s company and his novel product.   

With basic Home Depot supplies and ideas from Tom’s website we are building a 32’ x 2’ solar collector to be mounted on the roof of our hangar.  Here are a few pictures of the project.  Leaning against the hangar door on a sunny day the collector plates got to 160 degrees.  I can’t wait to see what they will do for our floor.

Thanks Tom for a neat product!

Clarence

08FC53BF-DCC6-42F7-B938-E0EFDF4500C7.jpeg

24D17ABF-BAC6-4E74-9DC9-05A97CDB4096.jpeg

Glazing might be worthwhile as far north as you are.  That may boost the Delta T even more.   It can cause extra thermal degradation of the physical box but will boost efficiency.

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12 minutes ago, TTaylor said:

Glazing might be worthwhile as far north as you are.  That may boost the Delta T even more.   It can cause extra thermal degradation of the physical box but will boost efficiency.

The front lens isn’t fitted yet, but will be before they are installed on the roof.

Clarence

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  • 2 weeks later...
On 11/1/2018 at 6:54 PM, M20Doc said:

I wanted to give a shout out to Tom, @yooper rocketman  As a sideline to his main truck business, Tom has solar heating company called www.upsolarsolutions.com  

I recently bought some of Tom’s aluminum solar absorber plates for a fun solar project my hangar co-owner and I are working on.  Our hangar floor is heated with hot glycol heated with an electric demand water heater.  Wanting to reduce our heating costs and our carbon foot print lead us to Tom’s company and his novel product.   

With basic Home Depot supplies and ideas from Tom’s website we are building a 32’ x 2’ solar collector to be mounted on the roof of our hangar.  Here are a few pictures of the project.  Leaning against the hangar door on a sunny day the collector plates got to 160 degrees.  I can’t wait to see what they will do for our floor.

Thanks Tom for a neat product!

Clarence

08FC53BF-DCC6-42F7-B938-E0EFDF4500C7.jpeg

24D17ABF-BAC6-4E74-9DC9-05A97CDB4096.jpeg

Thanks Clarence for the post.  I thought this post had been sent out right after your first post but when I went to reply today it came back up as saved.  Now remember a minor "wife household Emergency" came up as I was posting.  

Tom

 

 

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29 minutes ago, M20Doc said:

Today we managed to left the 2 solar water heaters made with parts from Tom, @yooper rocketman  Next we’ll add plumbing to connect it to our existing floor heating system.

Clarence

36DB5FD6-AA50-45DA-A57C-ADFA675985D4.jpeg

Clarence, 

If you don't mind would you compile and send a little story/description and photos to my work email ( tom@uptruckcenter.com ).  We like to post builders projects on my solar website to motivate others to try using solar heat.  Hangars especially are a great place for it because of the wall and roof size and the significant offset they can provide on sunny days to your heat bill.  You also normally have unobstructed solar exposure on airports (tree's and other buildings).

Tom

 

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14 minutes ago, Yooper Rocketman said:

Clarence, 

If you don't mind would you compile and send a little story/description and photos to my work email ( tom@uptruckcenter.com ).  We like to post builders projects on my solar website to motivate others to try using solar heat.  Hangars especially are a great place for it because of the wall and roof size and the significant offset they can provide on sunny days to your heat bill.  You also normally have unobstructed solar exposure on airports (tree's and other buildings).

Tom

 

Hi Tom,

I have a number of pictures saved already.  I’ll put them together with some notes for you.  

Clarence

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For those that wonder about the feasibility of solar (cost verses return), here's a picture of my first REAL solar project.  I had played around with a small pop can collector, which convinced me of the value of solar.  One day as I am standing outside my building talking with a customer in January, with the outside temperature around 15 degrees F., but a nice sunny day with the sun beating on the southern wall of my brown steel building, I noticed my hand touching the building (I was leaning on it) was warm from the 90-100+ degree skin temp of the metal.  At that point, I decided I was going to give this a shot.  My hangar solar collector has been installed for about 10 years.

The second photo shows how many hours of free solar heat I have gotten off my hangar "hot air collector" over the last 6 or more winters since I installed the hour meter.  On a average winter day here in the U.P. of Michigan, with outside temps anywhere from +20F to -20F, I will see the hangar inside temp rise to +50F to +60F by 2 PM, with no heat in the hangar (I have a gas furnace, but only run it when working in there) .  This is just a simple solar hot air collector, very cheap and easy to build, but only supplies heat when the sun is shining.  Hot water systems such as Clarence's will store heat longer, either by storing it in the concrete or in a storage tank.

The link below is for the hot air collector (which is a total DIY project for which I sell no parts for).  If you go to the main home page, there are links to many affordable DIY solar projects, of which only one does my company sell something for (the aluminum solar absorber for hot water systems).  That is about the only item for all those solar projects you can't source easily.  My website is more about "How to do a DIY solar collector" than about selling the absorber.

On a last note: I can't count how many hangar owners have talked about doing one of these collectors, yet none have.  It's pretty clear Clarence has thought this through and is a leader in more than just aircraft maintenance!  Hopefully he will help some of the other stragglers in giving this a try!

www.upsolarsolutions.com

Tom

 

Hangar Solar 1.JPG

Hangar Solar 2.JPG

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