Do You Use Solar or Wind Assist in addition to burning wood?

Welcome back, may your burning season be shorter than our's looks to be... :lol:

I'm moving this to the "Green Room" area as that is where most of the other sorts of energy discussion takes place - I'm sure you'll find some interesting resources if you look through the threads in that area...

Gooserider

Last fall I converted my south-facing front porch into a passive solar heater, 72 sq ft of polycarb, with fantastic results. Since then, I use about 1/3 less wood and don't even bother to light the pilot of the central steam boiler anymore. On sunny days (which is 85% of the time), it and a couple south-facing windows are enough to keep the main floor in the 68-72F range from 9am to 4pm. I plan on putting another one in just like it before next winter. Sun + wood is an unbeatable combination.

I use a wood stove in the spring and fall, a wood boiler with no storage in the cold months, oil as backup for heating. I run flat plate solar panels into a seperate hot water tank that is plumbed so I can use it direct for about 6 months per year and as preheat for my oil or wood fired hot water maker for cold season. Plus I have two small solar electric systems. Realisitcally, solar hot water, has reasonable payback, but solar electric doesnt unless your state has excellent incentives. I have purchased from Alternate Energy store for much of my equipment. SunElectronics is a great source for solar electric (PV) panels. They sell B spec Evergreen brand panels which are currently a great deal. Their house brand panels are low cost, but arent UL listed, so they can only be used off grid (so no rebates).

Solar Hot water systems are relatively straight forward and use a lot of the same skills, used for hydronic heating, they can be a DIY project and kits are availlable. Solar Electric is farily complex to build a code compliant system. The 30% federal and most state rebates have to be grid tied, so your system has to be code compliant. The skills required are specialized and dont line up as well with heating applications. There are kits for sale, but the installation details are still complex. Stay away from small wind, there are very few successful long term installations and a lot of expensive pieces of metal on tops of poles out of service.

Do yourself a favor and spend a lot of time time up front learning. Home Power Magazine is a great source for DIY installations. Its worth the subscription or you can buy a back issue DVD rom for $75. Whatever you do avoid the Harbor Freight or Ebay deals unless you want a hobby system and enjoy troubleshooting, very rarely do systems built out of those components, run for any length of time or qualify for rebates. A lot of the components sold on Ebay are not UL listed and the companies quality control is if you buy it and it doesnt work, they may eventually send you another if they are still in business.

There a re a couple of active solar forums on the web, google solar forums and you will find a few.

For now, I have 1 wood stove and solar passive.

As you can see on the pict. the house is not finished yet. But all the back of the house is facing south. You can see the small roof between 1st and 2nd floor. It's 4 feet wide. So in the winter time, as the sun is low, it will hit the window and dump a lot of heat on my first floor. In the summer time, as the sun is high, this will block the sun from getting in the house and overheating my main floor.

Eventually, I want a wood boiler, water solar heater and pv solar panel with grid tie in... I too have a small stream with steady flow year round, I didn'T have the time to look at it yet, but micro hydro maybe an option......... but I have to finish the house first. And this house is my retirement project in my hometown ... so i still have a long way to go, I'm only 28.....

An where I'm from , I need to see all of this as a hobby and the thril of being more energy independant. The electricity in Quebec is only 5 to 7 cent a k/wh. With no credit tax at all for personnal renewable. Even the wood boiler don't make sense economicaly. But the price of power will only get higher through the year......

Not sure wind is the way for most people. You really need good winds (be on the coast or something, or in the foothills). Small wind turbines don't really generate that much. Big wind generators cost a lot and they have to be mounted above the nearest high point (trees). I am sure a small one would be good for keeping charges up on batteries and maybe running a few lights.
Do some serious reading before jumping into wind.

Solar water heating is the cheapest and quickest payback.

Now if I only had sun in the winter (stupid mountains and clouds).

billjustbill said:

Any pictures?

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Before/after pics are here, taken before anything was done to the interior:
https://www.hearth.com/econtent/index.php/forums/viewthread/24643/

What did you use as an absorber behind the polycarb sheeting?

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Two layers of black aluminum screen. The interior is insulated with R13 fiberglass and covered with black PE sheeting.

Would like to see your pics and air movement ideas.

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I consider this a work in progress. Despite the fact that it's working well (I estimate it gives the equivalent of two woodstove loads of btus per day), the triangular shape of the space is a negative efficiency-wise, so I'll be experimenting to see if it can be improved. Am currently using a 6" fan at the top to pull heat out. One strategically-placed ceiling-level duct between living room and bedroom gives circulation through most of the house, for this and the wood stove as well.

I just built a solar air collector this year to supplement my wood heat (picture attached). I made it in 3 removable sections so I can remove it for the summer months. It's based on a downspout design I found at the Simply Solar yahoo mail group:

http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/SimplySolar/

I heat mainly with wood and usually only use around 80 gal. of fuel oil a year. I mainly burn the oil furnace in the spring and fall when it's a little warm to burn the wood stove. I also tend to use it on the evenings we get home from work and the house is cold. It's either try to play catch up with the wood stove and basically burn an extra fire's worth of wood or warm the house up with the furnace. So far the solar collector has been great. Today, even though it was cloudy most of the day, we got some sun in the afternoon. The house was a comfortable 68 degrees when we got home even tho the wind was blowing and cold all day and there were only coals in the wood stove. On a good sunny day, it heats the house (so far at least) without even burning the wood stove. We have very few good sunny days in central NY, but solar makes sense even here. Solar is a great complimentary setup to use with wood heat. I have no doubt that it will bring my oil use down close to 0 and maybe even put a dent in my wood use.

DIY solar projects are the way to make solar pay for itself fairly quickly. Check out the above site and the following one for ideas:

http://www.builditsolar.com/index.htm