Passive solar water wall battery
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 6 มี.ค. 2015
- How to make and monitor a 5 ton thermal battery to help minimize passive solar temperature swings.
Update: Sorry for the lack of a follow up. We moved from this house 6 months after the install, so I never did get through a full Winter with these installed :(
More details at misterhouse.blogspot.com/2015/... - วิทยาศาสตร์และเทคโนโลยี
Update: Sorry, but we moved from Utah to Alabama 6 months after making this video, so I never did get to collect a full Winter season of data. The new owner did not do any monitoring, so we are out of luck for follow up data.
Bruce Winter Wow that view was gorgeous, must have been tough to give that up.
Yeah, it was hard, not only for the view, but also for the scenic hiking and the nice neighbors. But we found an interesting house in Alabama that I'm having fun with (photos at brucewinter.net )
Cool, thank you for the update though! Did you/would you decide to go with all dark tubes, or just not worth the aesthetic sacrifice for the heat storage gain?
I changed the dark tube blue, but if I were to do it again, I would probably do what someone here suggested and make every other tube dark.
I changed the dark tube blue, but if I were to do it again, I would probably do what someone here suggested and make every other tube dark.
Love all your projects. Thanks for sharing!
Awesome design! Looks absolutely fantastic!
From one aspiring 'tech geek' to what seems like another (Bruce), great work! This is/was a very neat project, thanks for taking the time to document it.
Thank you for your reply Bruce. Watched it twice more and I see the tops,I must have blinked and missed them before.thinking of using this type of heating in the workshed because sometimes I do not want to leave the work I am on and go to bed until I finish the project but in the late night the temp drops, your idea of the tank to release heat in the night, should do the trick in my space. I think the cats will like the heat too.Thank you for sharing your fabulous idea.
@5:17 It's really cool how the clear day data is so smooth relative to the partly cloudy and cloudy day data !!!
Yeah, you very similar differences when looking at power from solar panels. Those sunny days are powerful :)
forgoing the heating benefits, this is absolutely brilliant.
much thanks for sharing.
That is a awesome job. I like the fact that you are able to get a great looking decor and hopefully save money in the long term. I just subscribed. Keep up the good work.
This was so awesome! Thank you. It is suddenly plain to see how water color affects heat capture. Definitely going to have to get an Arduino and some temp sensors. It has been certain exercise to heat an older singlewide by a wood stove with an 8" chimney straight up and out. Stoneage meets modern day.
awesome architectural feature that also is planned to perform a useful functional use.
Thanks for noting on your website where you sourced the tubes. Very cool
I noticed the Arduino and I thought "hmm, you must be a pretty smart fella" and then you proved me right.
I'm subscribing.
Bruce,
Interesting approach, but it seems like a half-way solution.
Have you thought about possibly combining radiant flooring into your domestic hot water system and just scaling up the tank size/volume?
This way, you get thermal mass of your flooring, combined with water circulation to help move/control ambient heat into your domestic hot water system.
On top of that, you get a more or less free source of infinite (for your purposes) hot water.
During the summer you pump cool water into the floor, and when it comes back hot, you drop it back into your tank(s).
During winter/nights/cold days, you circulate warm water back into the flooring to maintain temperature.
Sure, it isn't as blingy as your blue columns of water
Wow I'm impressed! and it's a crying shame the new owners weren't as enthused. So much I see went into this project, and I would have loved to see the outcome. Anyway don't give up and all the best.
Thanks Nikkie. Would love to do a similar setup in our new home in Alabama, but we don't get good sunlight here. But the beautiful forest around us makes up for it :)
Very cool! Awesome setup. Very inspiring.
Very cool setup!
Interesting and aesthetic concept, must have been an interesting view from homes below of the blue tanks at night.
Hi Bruce.
Nice Video, great setup, and yes, everyone loves a great view. Thanks
I have seen a design for a completely different type of system, but using almost identical hardware.
It slowly circulates the hottest water, ie the water at the very top, from seven of the Cylinders into the eighth.
The Eighth cylinder has the coldest water (ie at the bottom) fed to the bottom other seven tanks.
This has the result (I seem to remember) of 10 to 15 degrees improvement, depending on variables, even if there is no other heating system running at all. Kind of like an Inverse Maxwell's Demon.
I would assume the Hot cylinder would be insulated to hold its heat, and I would hypothesize that you could make a cold water tank also (possibly for some type of cooling in Summer).
Of course another option is if the cold water is colder than the Municipal supply, you could eject it (in small amounts).
Have you heard of what I'm talking about? Sorry for the long question, but maybe if you have a similar system again,
it could be a mode you could try at certain times when it makes sense, but hot water is more important than cols.
Thanks - and best wishes to the security puppy.
I had not met Maxwell's Demon before, yet alone an inverse one :) Interesting idea. Thanks for the comment!
This is rad! I will put fluorescent dyes into my dark blue cylinders for that night time effect to light up. Thanks for sharing!
Have you tried painting just the sun side of the tube black, leaving the inside clear so you can see the bubbles and still get the light show while maximizing use of the sun on the absorption/sun side ?
No, I did not try that, but sounds like a good idea! If I still lived there, I would give it a try.
While living in Alaska, I designed and built a passive solar heated greenhouse where I employed a black painted, south-facing wall of tubes above the grow zone containing an aeroponic system. The nutrient solution was then circulated through the tubes and stored in small drums employed to form the support the grow system. If left unventilated, ambient temperatures would exceed 135 degrees. I had three harvests per season using passive solar heat in a confined space. The black paint was what maximized the efficiency.
I think its right to make the tanks biologically productive like this. Painting the back of the tubes red or orange is an option, reflecting wavelengths useful to microbes back into the water, while sacrificing little of the overall heat absorbtion.
Very clever man with a purpose.
Impressive!
Wonderful idea and the night view was very cool.
In the middle of the video you could see the valley, and i thought, "that looks like utah!" And i was happy to find out i was correct. I moved away from there almost 15 years ago and might be moving back this year. Maybe i'll build a house with a water thermal mass system!
I loved living in Utah. The view we had of the Salt Lake City valley was incomparable, and the hiking trails were plentiful. Good luck with your move!
Your house is inspiring. And as a fellow engineer I love the cool customizations & data analytics. I wonder if your thermal mass water tanks would circulate themselves if the top was shaded so got cooler and bottom got most sun so go the hottest. Great videos!
Interesting idea. Would not want to shade too much though, as we would loose some direct heating on that section.
@@BruceWinter you might enjoy this guys videos. Like you, he has a passion for doing awesome tech projects
th-cam.com/video/R_g4nT4a28U/w-d-xo.html
Best wishes, from Australia.
If you do any projects using phase change materials for indoor thermal comfort, please do a video on it. There are some new innovative ceiling and wall products using this idea. I had the 'nutty' idea of using coconut oil as a phase change material but the costs looked prohibitive. And I'm not sure how well my girlfriend would appreciate 400kg of coconut oil in the house :)
Yeah, love that Tech Ingredients channel. That guy is amazing and inspiring.
:) I've heard of all kinds of uses for coconut oil, but not that one!
Thanks for the reply. I made a compost pile to heat water and I grow mushrooms that produce co2. Adding blue green algae to the mix would consume the co2 and act as a mass heater for the mushrooms that don’t need light. Let me know if I can ever return the favor.
Hook it up to a "floor " heating system. Copper toobing will also keep your water clean and slightly green
This is really cool :) It would be even cooler if you incorporated machine learning to the data your house collects and automatically optimizes power consumption and the water color. You could hook up a mixing tank to the water tanks so the computer can control the amount of coloring and even the color and find a maximum. All tho if you you set it to maximum temperature it should just turn black which might be boring, so you could do something like "Maximum temperature under the condition that this amount of light should pass through the tubes". This can probably be analytically calculated too based on the suns radiation spectrum, so maybe this isn't the best application of machine learning, but it would still be cool if you did it :)
i wonder if there is a black particulant that could be added and filtered out either by gravity and later pumped out or through a cheap filter midia so once a day you can watch the memorizeing die introduced into water look
leaving the tubes light may allow enough UV light in to sanitize the water if they were caped. a small high pressure diafram air pump would probably be more elegant. experimenting with airrator stones might have been cool looking but large bubbles also have their own good look. the particulent used in shimmery hand soap can be seperated out and added to the water it settles to the bottom but the air might kick it up enough to add a cool effect.
I think to balance aesthetics with function you should make every other tube black/dark blue. Give the dark blue lights. This is very, very cool. I've been meaning to mess with this sort of thing, I have two windows on the south side, but not nearly as much light as you.
That's a good idea! Would probably do that if we still lived there.
Great post. I ran across your post while looking into passive heating for my greenhouse. I would be interested in finding out how you sized the system. How many gallons per cubic feet of space. Naturally I will be running black to get the most out of the system.
The rule of thumb I've read is 2->4 gal per 1 sqft window. I had 600 sf of window, so I was aiming for 1200->2400 gallon of water. In truth, I simply put in what would fit, which was 10 18"x10' tubes. At 132 gallons each = 1300 gallons.
Another calculation that might help is how much heat can be stored/released. Water has 64 BTU/cubic feet/degree F. At 7.5 cf/gal, my 10 tube system gets: 64 * 1300 / 7.5 = 11 kBtu/F. So when I saw a 7 degree rise in water temperature, I was seeing about 7 * 11k = 77 kBTU of heat being stored per day (and released at night).
I put a few more calculations on the web post here: misterhouse.blogspot.com/2015/03/passive-solar-water-wall-battery.html
Very cool system, how much energy is the control systems/fans/bubbles using in this 'Passive' system?
I ran the fan on medium, about 7 watts (high efficiency DC motors), for about 5 hours a day, so that would be about $.030 per Winter season. The air pump was probably around $5 / year, as it came only a few times a day for about a minute.
At night in the winter do you use shades in front of your windows to reduce heat loss?
Yep, there are motorized cellular blinds on all those windows. The house is programmed to open/close them automatically in both summer/winter to save energy, based on indoor/outdoor temperatures. You can see them in action here: th-cam.com/video/2aC2BBSmCRo/w-d-xo.html&t=3m04s
Love this idea of adding thermal mass via water tanks, Bruce! Do you have to have the water tanks positioned near the window in direct sunlight to absorb heat or can the tanks be positioned away from the windows, out of direct sunlight? Thanks
there is something even cooler which uses polarizing film that changes based on an electric current to switch on or off. search smart tint on google
what would polarizing film do? the point is to insulate the large glass openings against heat loss.
Awesome experiment! Great video!
Bruce this is awesome! What are some other strategies for dealing with hot climates like Texas? Are you aware of any? Would be great for winter even here but certainly how can it benefit in the hot season as well. Thanks. Sorry you had to let this house go. Looks amazing.
Having moved to Alabama, I'm now asking the same question :) If you are lucking enough to get cool/dry air at night, then whole house fans with some open windows works well. Otherwise, no good suggestions other than the obvious (e.g. good insulation and window coverings).
This is awesome!!! How much would you say you saved in heating and cooling bills?
We only lived with the tubes for 6 months, so no conclusive data. I did some rough calculations on the project page showed the tubes were storing/releasing about $50 a month worth of heating, assuming gas heating.
wow...nice... love the blue color with bubles
awesome idea. i live in florida and am working on designing a thermal battery that more or less works the opposite of this. something as a precursor to cool the air when the AC first kicks on. lots of math to do lol. would love some input on this idea!!!
+J Reed We recently moved to Alabama ... practically neighbors :) Have not exercised our AC units here much yet, but I'm guessing that will change when Summer rolls around.
+Bruce Winter OH YES. if its similar to here, which i believe it is, you will have your AC on 24-7 for most of the year. im thinking ac effeciency is more or less about passively keeping radiant heat out of the house. i am finishing my mechanical engineering degree now also.
Bruce, I love how you think of ideas and then build and test them. Amazing project. Did you move to northern AL, central AL, or down near the coast?
Thanks! We moved to central AL, Birmingham area, with frequent trips down to the lovely coast :)
Awesome. I am down on the coast but go up to Birmingham from time to time for corporate meetings there. Can't want to see your next project.
Great video!...where did you get the tubes?
solar-components, there is a link to them from the project page: misterhouse.blogspot.com/2015/03/passive-solar-water-wall-battery.html
Thanks for the video, inferred emitter and adrino box?? How do i learn more about that controller? Thanks again, great video.
Arduino boards come in lots of different flavors. Some info here: www.arduino.cc
I know you did this 6 years ago.... And you moved 6 months later... Yes I read a number of the comments. But you are still responding to comments. Just some thoughts. First even though black will absorb the greatest amount of heat, aesthetically I agree with the blue. One way to improve the heat retention would be to insert an aluminum pipe painted black down the center, maybe a little behind the center for aesthetics. run your air line down the black pipe and out the bottom through a drilled hole. As someone else mentioned get a aquaculture (fish tank) pump. they make them with six air line attachments. It would be quieter, easy to control and require less energy. IF your tubes were against a wall you could wrap the back with chrome vinyl or silver foil for that matter. that would redirect lost light back into the tube and if the black aluminum were in the center it would help focus the rays on the black pipe. Now you can light the entire tube with color changing LED strips all the way down the back. attach a small 1 to 2 inch wide strip of white pvc on the back side of the black aluminum, run the strip of color changing lights down the back side of the clear outer tube, (small split in the chrome vinyl or aluminum foil) pointed at the white pvc which will reflect the light trough out the tank especially with the chrome or foil.
Cool project. well done. I love the testing and measurables.
Some good ideas there! Thanks for posting.
The lights are rad! Did you publish newer data yet?
No, sorry, we moved from UT to AL the summer after I did that installation, and our new house is not suited for a solar wall.
Great and neat experiment, thanks for sharing. Can you share the diameter of these tubes? What they’re made of? And where it’s possible to get them from? Considering this for passive heating a green house.
18" x 8', fiberglass, from www.solar-components.com
Bruce Winter many thanks for the quick answer, i guess it’s good to add this link to the video description for other people.
I was wondering if you faced an alge problem? Or if you know the measurements to avoid one?
@@m.s683 I do have a link to the tubes in the project page listed above: www.solar-components.com . I used a small amount of (1 gram per 250 gallons) of Copper sulfate to avoid alge.
Can you make an update video please? I'm terribly curious to know how everything is working, and what you've done to fine tune the system. Thank you for the great video.
Sorry, but we moved from Utah to Alabama 2 years ago this Fall, so I never did get to collect a full Winter season of data. The new owner did not do any monitoring, so we are out of luck.
Thanks for the reply! I hope you're enjoying Alabama. Perhaps if I install a similar system sometime in the future, then you could come and continue your testing.
Love your sense of humour. The tanks are amazing, very sci fi , was expecting an alien to pop up from the depths of the huge tubes .They should easily work on reducing the fluctuations of the temperature within your home.the black is good for absorbing the suns energy but the blue looks great.look forward to seeing the outcome of this adventure. Do they have tops on the tubes? Would tops hold the heat in longer?
Yep, they come with flat removeable fiberglass tops. In the night clip near the end of the video you can see the desk lights sit on and shine through those tops.
You could have dispensed with the air bubbles if you put a vertical divider from side to side that seperated the front and back halves and stopped short of the surface of the water as well as stopping short of the bottom the bottom. This would have had natural convection continuously circulate the water.
I think a small ozone generator is a good way to keep water in large drinking tanks fresh. But it requires some stuff and also you'd need to vent to the outside so the ozone doesn't come into the living room.
Thanks for the video. I also have wanted to do this, but the clear tubes have always been too expensive. I could not find where you say what those are and where you got them. Could you please let me know if you can. Thank you!
There is a link to solar-components.com on the above referenced project page: misterhouse.blogspot.com/2015/03/passive-solar-water-wall-battery.html
Thank you very much for the quick response and link. That is the kind of price I have trying to avoid - but clear tubes like that don't come up too often on Craigslist!
Interesting video and implementation
cool project. Where did you get the vessels?
There is a link to solar-components.com on the above referenced project page: misterhouse.blogspot.com/2015/03/passive-solar-water-wall-battery.html
I suggest shorter tubes. 4 or 5 feet tall. That way, you can still see the view. Also, with the angle of the sun entering the home, the sun mostly hits the lower part of the tubes, not the upper part.
black or red would have been most useful wouldn't it? Blue would be reflective of what's already filtering through the air?
You had me at arduino and github.
interesting setup, but surely it would be better to contain the heat in say a green house with the tanks in? with under ground storage and have its tanks painted black?
this guy is a man after my own heart
Thermosiphoning - STRUCTURES AS POTENTIAL ENERGY.
The existence of a T&P valve suggests untapped energy source.
Implementation example -We surround a wind mill with vertical evac tubes,raising water,
then drop the load, hydro generating. then repeat the cycle .
I agree with you, continuous flow probably won't work.
But filling a basin, then dropping it, would work.
This is not a stand alone solution, but rather an add on.
That's the concept, we need help.
Figuring out how to bring concept to fruition.
How, and who to pitch this to ?
where we get funding ? gov grants ? crowd funding ?
Calculate loads ?
How do we explore further developments with your services ?
Regards JP.
Very cool project!
Now this is the kind of project I dream of doing for a living. Beautiful project!
Hi, I heard you mention the service xively. As you might know (or not), xively shut down on jan 15th this year. I was using it to monitor my solar water heater temperatures (also using an arduino wit temp sensors). Have you found a viable alternative that works wit an arduino? Thanks!
I haven't yet, but it is on my todo list. An entrepanour just created a plugin replacement, but says it is pretty beta: iotplotter.com . Probably will switch to thingspeak.com , or maybe locally run RRDTool .
how are the air bubbles used and why ' best video in ages .
Excellent work!
I've been trying to find some clear tubes to use in my build. Could you tell me where to find them?
Fantastic place! Thanks for showing it!
Wulf
Thanks! Tubes are from solar-components, there is a link to them from the project page: misterhouse.blogspot.com/2015/03/passive-solar-water-wall-battery.html
@@BruceWinter what are those tanks made of? Polypropylene? How thick?
@@lii1Il Fiberglass, I think 1/8" thick. More info on their website: www.solar-components.com/TUBES.HTM
@@BruceWinter If I can get my greenhouse up and running, I will definitely be using this! Read dozens of vids on this topic, but this is my favorite and what I will go with. I'm in Arkansas. I'll put up banners during the summer to keep the heat down. Just wondering how well bubbles works for circulating the heat? Also wondering if the tanks can be used for structural support, saves money? Never heard of that one, using bubbles to circulate heat before if I understand correctly? I'm also open to low power ultrasonic devices to cheaply mix the water but not sure how well it will work with those volumes of water. Love the color schemes, it's worth loosing a little heat. Thank you in advance!
@@lii1Il The bubbles efficacy is reflected in the graphs shown in the video, they help. I doubt ultrasonic would do much. I would not use the tubs for structural support.
TOO SMART house improvement for me ! BUT IS AMAZING ! This could be the house of the future ! ! ! Will be hard to find some technicians TO BE ABLE TO DO THE WORK ! The labor might be too much (just thinking !) Good subject for a doctoral dissertation ! ! ! BEAUTIFUL invention. Thank you !
Thanks! The arduino with temperature probes are optional, as are the bubbles and fan. Take those away then all you have is water in tubes. Should be easy maintenance, just add tiny bit of copper sulfate maybe once a year.
Bruce Winter - hi Bruce, I'm loving this and your other videos, and I'm learning a lot about little technical gear elements I want to use myself... I'm going to be putting lots of plastic jugs into my green house to regulate the night temperature during the winter, and I've been wondering but not putting too much thought into what I might use as a disinfectant, even though all the jugs and containers will be sealed tightly... You mentioned copper sulfate, I'm assuming the purpose of that is as a disinfectant, correct? Thanks! And I can look it up as usual, but i already typed this in, sooo... ;)
Thanks for explaining your harmonious system's bits and pieces!
Hi Justin. Copper sulfate is a very effective, and safe, way to keep algae from growing. It doesn't take much. I mixed 2 teaspoons in 1 quart of water, then split equally between the 10 tubes, which were 130 gallons each.
Laur, thanks for the kind words!
Cool. Did the bubbles drop the temp or was it even measurable?
Yep, 30 seconds of bubbles equalized bottom/top temperature, as seen by the graph about 6 minutes into the video.
I can tell you like tech for tech's sake. Controlling an expensive remote controlled fan with an arduino when you could've just replaced it with a regular fan for less money and effort. Still fun to watch.
True, but by enabling computer control of the fan, I could optimize better when the fan was on, play with speeds, and measure the effect it had on energy absorption and dispersion. But you entirely correct, much more complicated than it needed to be.
The one thing I caught Chris is that DC fan is incredible efficient- only 10 watts vs about 45 for an AC fan of the equivalent size
Mark Osborne That just reaffirms what I've heard about DC, it is better for running motors.
You maybe able to improve efficiency of heat transfer water to air with a car radiator setup. You could pulse width modulate the fan. A large diameter fan at a slower speed pulse width modulated could. Save more energy then a full speed little fan.
Pumping water through the radiator can equalize tank temp as well. Cool setup. Might want to setup a watchdog with the Arduino as well
Bruce Winter pulse width modulating the fan motor is easier than playing with ir. The ir codes use up a fair bit of mcu resources verse pwm
How have you liked your solar battery wall? I have a new home project in Sacramento CA, where the temps reach as high as 110 F and as low as 25 F. I am trying to build a passive home, and I think your wall could be a step in the right direction.
We had to move 6 months after the install, so I'm afraid I can't give you too much feedback. We liked it for those 6 months though!
Seems legit but I'll have to go get a PhD from MIT then come back and rewatch so I can comprehend this video
hey there, are you sure you want to be using "lead" weights ??
Great Video mate.
it is nice what you did with the voice commands of google now. gj
Duuuuude :))) Nice looking installation ! I would've put in steel wool instead of the paint for better absorption however, this is flipin sweet! Shame you had to move away from it :)
Thanks! It was hard to leave, loved Utah, but we found a "sweet home" in the forests of Alabama with a little creek: misterhouse.blogspot.com/2017/06/gravity-fed-fountain.html
Sweet :))) Happy for you . I don't see many solar related projects coming from that location though :D Nevertheless I thoroughly enjoyed all of it :) keep tinkering.
how many degrees in electronics did it take to be able to build and program what you want it to (and work)
:-) I do have a couple, but I learned all the tricks used in this setup post-degrees via online websites. But it is all optional. The 'cool' (or 'hot') thing about passive solar is all you need is sunlight and something heavy, like water.
Dear Brus.
Looks very high tech. You did not mention anything about black tube & why it is black colour different from other blue tubes & what is top secret material used..
appreciated..
Thnx Man
Top secret material :) The dark tank used a greenish blue pond dye, the lighter tanks used a light blue dye. I show them at about 3 minutes into the video. You can see the effect on solar gain at about 6 minutes in.
Thnx Man for qik reply....I like it looks very fun...Godbless dear...
Great system!!! Have you thought about adding high amounts of salt to your system? Salt would prevent most common algae from growing and improve your thermal mass capacity of your water.
Did not consider salt, as just a bit of copper sulfate avoided algae. You are right about the heat capacity, looks like salt water is 5% higher than fresh water.
I believe the eventual gain might be even higher seeing as the saltiest (sp?) water will sink down and the fresher water sits on top. This creates a layered system that increases the amount of heat that is possible to be stored. Search for 'solar pond' on youtube and you'll find systems that are used to generate heat and electricity with this.
Update in 2019 please - what would you do today - same with modifications or ??? - Standing by hoping to hear from you. Building a passive solar 'greenhouse' space along south frontage come Summer... what to do?
Yep, if I were to get into another home with cold winters that had with similar south windows, I would likely add tanks again. But our home in Alabama has neither south windows or nasty cold winters. I only lived with those tanks for 8 months, so I don't have any good long term feedback.
@@BruceWinter Thanks Bruce for your reply but I'm disappointed after such a well produced and narrated video by you that your reply was just a short I'd do it again. Maybe there-in lies a real answer of KISS and the tubes with water only require an outside black south surface to boost thermal collection as suggest by a viewer from Alaska... and/or plumb that mass into a 500% efficiency geo-heat pump system... knowing the sun delivers more energy in one hour to planet earth than all mankind consumes in a year there is an 8,000:1 advantage when it comes to Sun vs Mankind... surely our home energy needs are within reach using basic and best of breed science principals. Thanks again... you have excellent talent and hope you will again post a video that causes us to think... I'm subscribed and following...
You sir are my hero.
i believed antill you had the 1200w air compressor going twice aday,
1st you need to make a (mercury vapour pump) and use the dump line to pump positive air in ,
2nd you will need to have to air running all the time and heat the air before you pump in to the tanks ,
lastly you need to make a night time heat storage out of coxrix bricks ,ie heat storage bricks
"Dafuq are those lights?"
"Oh, that's just the house of the Mad Professor."
ur house is pretty slick
What could you do with algae if you grew it in those tubes? Fertiliser? Food? The air pump seems over sized and may use more energy than it would take to gain the heat distribution benefits of the water towers. DC pumps are even quieter than AC pumps and can run from solar + maximiser combo without batteries.
I think algae farmers sell dried algae as a food supplement. I never tried it. The air pump was oversized, but hardly ever ran, so used little electricity. I needed enough pressure (I forgot, maybe 20 lbs?) to get the air all the way to the bottom of the tank so it would bubble up.
Where did you buy your tubes? I would like to put them in a green house for thermal storage.
www.solar-components.com/TUBES.HTM . More project info at misterhouse.blogspot.com/2015/03/passive-solar-water-wall-battery.html
SalmonHunter - 'Ever thought of making an outside-ground-insulated, greenhouse thermal mass sub-floor using water-filled 3ltr plastic milk cartons with gravel fill in between, dc fans blowing through ceiling floor controlled using thermal sensors / arduino / raspberry pi, solar panel 12vdc, deep-cycle battery, some supplemental LED lighting?
you manufactured the water tubes? ,from sheets of the plastic material?..I see a seam I believe?
Tubes are made by a company in NH from fiberglass sheets that are rolled into a cylinder, so one long seam.
How about summer cooling of the summer warm air?
Where did you get that waterfall in the background?
The previous owner bought that at the local furniture superstore, RC Willey. The copper valance was from the local Kennecott copper mine.
What were the tanks made from? where can I get some of that clear pipe?? I want to use it to grow alge
Fiberglass. The maker sells an alge version (adds a valve on the bottom). solar-components, there is a link to them from the project page: misterhouse.blogspot.com/2015/03/passive-solar-water-wall-battery.html
Just a small idea if you install something similar in your new home: Put a blackout curtain on the outside wall to prevent cooling losses at night.
I had pretty good insulating motorized cellar blinds on all those windows which we would close on cold nights (and hot summer days). Good suggestion :)
Since you moved have you tried any other solar energy related experiments?
Unfortunately our current house in Alabama is surrounded by trees, so no solar options here. Fortunately, our house is surrounded by trees, so I have a very fun forested playground :)
Where did you source your tubes?
From www.solar-components.com/TUBES.HTM . More info at misterhouse.blogspot.com/2015/03/passive-solar-water-wall-battery.html
Bruce Winter Thank you
SolarEdge
so the heat is simply radiated from the tubes surfaces? and helped by the ceiling fan?.....what is used to keep algae or to keep water clean...?..
Yep, heat is simply radiated, with help from the bubbles and the oscillating fan.
U should know that water can be kept clean by throwing in a bottle of H2O2 (hyd perox) per tube
If you put pipes around your airators you will have much better lift and flow of water in the tanks
So is this for heat retention with the aim being to save money on heating expenses?
It seems cool and is interesting but I don't get it. 🤷🏻♂️
The goal of heat retention is to minimize temperature swings. This has two benefits, improved comfort and energy savings. The savings is not intuitive and may not be significant. It comes from the same reason you benifit from turning your heat down at night. The energy lost is proportional to the difference between inside and outside air. You loose more energy when outside it is 30 and inside is 80 than you do when inside is 70.
Hi! I´m doing some research to write a monography about water wall and mass thermal storage for college. What kind of water did you use? is it salty or stilled, is it trated in any way? did you used greywater?
Normal tap water, no greywater, with a bit of copper sulfate to avoid alge growth. Does not take much, 1 gram / 250 gallons, so 5 grams per tube, which is about 1 teaspoon.
Thank you!
AboutDisneyFriendsGa There's a wonderful piece in the Harrowsmith Reader 2 compilation about a home in New England that uses 400 five gallon glass carboys in the attic, heated by an outer skin greenhouse (single glazing) totally separate from the inner house (a 13' inner glass wall with triple glazing, goes right to the peak). Super insulated, has a rock bin below the house that air from the attic is blown thru, avoids condensation problems and I believe most if not all the heating needs are met by this system
So you took solar energy that was already in your home, stored it in water, then released it slowly during the evening. I'd like to see the math behind the net energy savings of heating up the water vs heating up the walls.
The biggest issue was the temperature swing. When the energy was stored in the walls and air, the swing was higher, since those materials have lower heat storage capacity. 80-90 degree indoor temperatures less comfortable than 70s. Closing the curtains would fix that, but then we are wasting free energy.
Well if you mix aluminum sulfate with your cement it will have an r value unlike regular cement.
The principle problem with this setup was going to be how to get the heat back out of the tubes overnight in the winter. I suspect that their ability to absorb heat vastly outstrips their ability to re-radiate it, even with a little force air convection (tiny fan). Increased surface area is what's needed, tough problem. The solution is passive convective radiators with plumbing and solenoid valves all computerized up. Hot water will self convect and circulate to higher surface area radiators if properly designed, simply shutoff the valves during collection, no pumps required.
I wondered about that also, but the temperature plots from the water in the tubes showed they would loose all the heat they gained during they day at night. We let it get pretty cold at night (upper 50s), might have been more of an issue if let the furnace keep the night temperature higher.
Well that's very interesting and a pretty good result. Although it also means that in winter you would've been short on heat, but of course it doesn't mean you wouldn't have experienced an improvement.
The question I have is: Why "bubble" the tubes to equalize their temperatures? Correct me if I'm wrong but, you've collected a certain amount of thermal energy into the tubes, equalizing them does nothing for the total temperature within your enclosed space (room, house, whatever)... the energy is already in there. In fact, wouldn't it be easier to extract the heat if it was all contained at the top instead of dispersed along the whole height?
Good question! The thinking based on Newton's law of cooling, "The rate of heat loss (or gain) of a body is proportional to the temperature difference between the body and its surroundings". This is the reason you can lower heating bills by lowering your thermostat at night, even though you have to re-heat the house the next morning. You loose less energy because of a lower temperature differential inside to outside.
During the day, by lowering the temperature at the top of the tube, that increases the temperature differential at the top, allowing it to absorb more heat from the hotter air at the top. Probably more importantly, there was mixing of the hotter water near the edge of the tube and the cooler water in the middle.
There are enough other factors (e.g. direct heat absorption from the sunlight, heat gain at the bottom) that it was not at all obvious if that would help much. But it seemed a good excuse to have fun with bubbles :-)
Yes, that's right. Even though my comment even suggested it, I hadn't considered that the higher temperature differential would have a higher heat dispersion. Equalizing the temperature keeps the differential lower, making it easier for you to increase the stored energy. The thermal mass/heating solution I've considered has "heat chambers" and uses thermo siphoning to circulate the fluid from a highly insulated holding tank. Later, when the heat energy is needed, it's pumped through a radiation circuit. Thanks for sharing your project.
For those interested in this method, look at California Air Tools air compressor. I believe their Ultra Quiet's are the quietest.
on a smaller scale....I always keep empty spaces in refrigerator filled with water filled milk cartons...keeps the cold from dissipated out of frig quickly when doors open....same idea on peewee scale..,true?
Russ, sorry, I missed your comments from a year ago. They somehow got flagged for review and that put them in a different place which I missed seeing.
no problem,,I enjoy your work. :)
Hi. In my opinion, in order to keep that water cold, instead of the same volume of air, you're going to use more energy.
yes but the water won't flow out of their fridge every time they open the door. in a way the only reason its useful is it decreases the volume of air the fridge has to cool with the added benefit that the fridge will have more thermal mass.
Spot on. There's a reason why some appliance manufacturers advise you to be cautious of having "too much" in the fridge-- it gets too cold! My extremely basic understanding is that a refrigerator checks the temperature and if it's too high, it runs the compressor for X amount of time. Perhaps it's checking air temperature, which can vary by simply opening the door, rather than radiant temperature (much less fluctuation). I can say from personal experience that my fridge iced over simply from filling it up with food and drinks purchased before a party.
is it worth it?
WoW this looks like something from a sci Fi Movie. I want it just for the look of it. Let alone the benefits it provides.