MNN - Mother Nature Network

Twenty years ago I used to heat my home with the woodstove. Ten years ago I thought it would be good to replace this primitive way for space heating so I installed a heat pump system. Just a year ago, I found great idea on the internet - how to build cheap diy solar panels for free home heating using empty pop-cans! As soon as I learned everything about passive solar systems for direct air heating I started to collect beer cans.

I remember the excitement during the assembly of my solar home heater. Basically, it is incredibly simple solar panel for supplemental home heating, which heats the air directly. Most interesting fact is that such 2KW diy solar panels are almost entirely constructed out of empty aluminum cans!
 

Extraordinary results

Dress rehearsal of diy solar panels was carried out in the backyard before installing the system on the house. It was a sunny winter day, no clouds. I used small cooler extracted from a faulty power supply of PC as a fan for driving the air flow. After only 10 minutes in the sun the solar collector released 70°C hot air! The test results have encouraged me to install solar heater on the house as soon as possible.
After completing installation of collector, the outside temperature was -3 ° C, and from the solar collector was coming out 3 m3/min (3 cubic meters per minute) of heated air. Heated air temperature went up to +72 °C, measured by digital thermometer. Calculated power that the solar panel produced, was approximately 1950 W (watts) which is almost 3 HP (3 horsepower)!!!