Today (March 09, 08) my little heat box hit 200 degrees. Pretty impressive. There is about one horsepower of heat energy from the sun falling on a perpendicular square meter of earth's surface. This little hot air collector should bring in almost 2hp of heat. That is somewhere around 1500 watts, or 15-100 watt light bulbs under ideal conditions. Of course, ideal conditions are rare, unless this device were to track the sun. However, the cost of that is right now silly, so we'll just be happy with what it will put out stationary. The piece of glass we had measured 33 by 72 inches, so the collector was built around that. The collector box was built from old plywood and 1 by 6 wood. As pictured left, (note, picture will be forthcoming soon....) the box was put together with glue and ring-nails. The corners were cut at 45 degrees, poorly, so we found that it is much easier and cleaner to make the corners a simple 90 degrees. A lot less effort unless you have a good saw which will cut a 1 by 6 properly. Next was put down a layer of high temp insulation (styrofoam might melt...) and then the cans were laid in and temporarily adjusted into position. The core of the collector is a series of condensed milk cans which were saved and fastened together to make long tubes. In theory this box will push air all by itself. However, we added a 12v fan at the inlet and the outlet.


Check back, there is more to write on this subject, and this page will be updated.