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Creative Homeschooling is...Thinking Out-of-the-Box!
Nov. 9, 2006
Make a Solar Heatcatcher and $ave!
Last
night we ran out of heating fuel (it was a cold night!) and thought
this would be a great time to post again about heatcatchers.
I
recently stumbled across an article that claimed heating bills could be
cut in half by nothing more than black paint, duct tape and aluminum
foil. With gloomy forecasts of skyrocketing heating fuel costs this
winter, I was hooked from the get-go! The author of the article went on
to tell how she made homemade heat catchers and put them in all south
facing windows of her large, drafty Victorian house. She said that her
heating bills (which were very high) were reduce to more than half last
winter! I was intrigued and couldnt pass up the opportunity have a
science project on solar energy and possibly save lots of money at the
same time!
We got our black paint and heavy duty aluminum foil and set
out to see how we could harness the sun and turn it into free heat for
our home. First, we had to decide which would be the best room to try
out our experiment. It was a general consensus that the computer room
was the perfect candidate! It had absolutely no heat and the windows
were flimsy and single paned. This room could double as a meat locker
in the morning hours, it was COLD!
We first took the average morning temperature of the room.
With no heat source (outside lows ranging from 35-40 degrees) it was
around 50 degrees in the morning, give or take a few degrees. We hung
our heat catcher in the south window (there are 2 windows in the room
but the other is on the west side) and watched the thermometer rise! It
was truly amazing! After a couple hours of the aluminum foil being
directly exposed to the sun, that room was warmer than the rest of the
house. It took a little less than 2 hours to heat the room by 20
degrees. As I am sitting here writing in our computer room, the outside
temperature is 54 degrees and the room is a toasty 75.8 degrees. In
this experiment, our computer room really heated up since it is a
smaller room, so you might not get as dramatic increase with a larger
room.
There are a couple drawbacks to this form of supplemental
heating. One, is that you lose light in your house which could be an
issue in the winter time. The other is having large pieces of aluminum
foil draped across your windows is not really a home dιcor enhancement.
You can try hiding it by pinning the foil to the back of draperies.
However, when you do this you get less heat produced as you are
blocking the warming foil (with the drapery) and getting less of a
current.
Try it out for yourself and let us know how much solar heat you captured!
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Anonymous 
Posted by
Nov. 9, 2006 - Untitled Comment
It's so simple, yet such a great idea.
I guess that's why they call you the Creative Homeschooling Mom!