DIY Solar Heater Wall (NO SOLAR PANELS needed!): How it works and how to make it better

0:00 - That Solar home heating in Minnesota
0:39 - How much heat does it produce
2:33 - My Bottled Heat Storage
4:20 - How the System can be improved even more

This black wall was built by these young people, and it absorbs solar radiation and converts it into thermal energy to heat this room.Now I will show you how the black wall was built, and first they installed cement board sheets and made these holes. After this, the sheets were covered with black paint and transparent plastic. This is the thermal insulation on the inside of those sheets, and these are the connections of the room with those holes to provide such air movement when fans direct the air of the room here, where the air is heated by solar radiation and returns to the room.

These young people hoped that the construction costs for this solar heating would be paid off within one year, and they even wanted to remove these trees whose shadows reduce the heat production of this black wall that is located here, near the border between the United States and Canada, in these forests of northern Minnesota with this climate during 8 months of its heating season. We see that the winter is very cold, but the percentage of sunny hours is high, and it determines this heat production by that black wall with an area of 30 square meters.

These kilowatt-hours of thermal energy allow you to calculate for yourself the payback period of that black wall, which, according to those young people, cost them about 2 thousand dollars


Unfortunately, they chose an inopportune type of solar heaters because this type does not work well in Minnesota's low ambient temperatures, and that is why it has such poor efficiency during the winter months when similar other types of solar air heaters work better. In addition, such a vertical position of solar heaters, without tilting, gives poor performance in the spring, although they can work well in more northern latitudes because their spring sun is lower.

However, we have seen that this is a simple and cheap type of solar heaters, and its operation is based on the fact that solar radiation heats this black surface to 50 or 70 degrees Celsius, and the hot surface heats this air higher than 30 degrees, and this hot air goes into the room.

But unfortunately this hot air will often overheat the room above 25 degrees, and therefore the thermal energy will be thrown out by opening windows or turning off those solar heaters fans, and this is my estimate of the amount of the energy throwing. We see that about half of this energy will heat the room, and the other half will be thrown away, and that is a problem that significantly worsens the payback period.

That is why I am describing below how to solve that problem, how to return this energy throwing and use it to heat the room at night.