# Heat your home with soda cans? Sure!



## CapnJack (Jul 20, 2012)

http://www.realfarmacy.com/how-to-heat-your-home-using-aluminum-cans/

This is pretty cool. (Sorry if it was posted already, I may have missed it.)

Video at the link.



> This 240 can unit heats up to 10,000 BTUs.
> 
> "Jim Meaney, owner of Cansolair Inc. displays how he converts pop cans into a powerful solar heating panel&#8230;Cansolair Inc. has developed a forced convection solar heating unit called the Model RA 240 SOLAR MAX. A dwelling of 1000 square feet can have a complete air change in 1.5 hours. Working experience indicates that comfortable room temperature can be maintained in a 1000 square foot dwelling with 15 minutes of sunlight per hour"


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## PrepN4Good (Dec 23, 2011)

I've seen something similar on Youtube (may have been posted here). A guy used a wooden frame with a glass cover over the cans.

There's a small house down a side street where I walk my dog that appears to have a set-up like this, attached to the house with that bendable aluminum ducting (like you would use to vent a dryer). Never seen the folks outside, I'd like to get a closer look at it.


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## CapnJack (Jul 20, 2012)

I'm all for home-made energy solutions. If you ever get to talk with the owners, be sure to share us some pics and info


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## weedygarden (Apr 27, 2011)

I've been seeing these online for a few years. I may have enough cans to make one now. I am going to start it after the holidays and see if I can reduce the heating bills.


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## CapnJack (Jul 20, 2012)

weedygarden said:


> I've been seeing these online for a few years. I may have enough cans to make one now. I am going to start it after the holidays and see if I can reduce the heating bills.


Would love to hear how it goes, and possibly a how-to? :wave:
Wouldn't be hard for me to salvage the cans. One pro to living in an apartment complex.


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## crabapple (Jan 1, 2012)

There are other systems that use metal pipe/tubing, not cans.
All seem to work, in heating air & heating at least one room from sunrise till sunset with little or no grid power.
I have not tried this yet, but it should work, it should be easy to make & use.
I saw on this site where someone used a an recycled water heater tank to pre-heat the cold water in a solar glass/plastic case, before it went into the grid water heater tank.They worked together, that the way this would work with the AC or heat exchange .


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## LincTex (Apr 1, 2011)

Cans work OK, but its a lot of labor.

If you have any metal screen, you can paint it black and make a better solar collector.

DIY Solar Air Heating Collectors: Pop Can vs Screen Absorbers
http://www.builditsolar.com/Experimental/PopCanVsScreen/PopCanVsScreen.htm


> DIY solar air heating collectors are one of the better solar projects. They are easy to build, cheap to build, and offer a very quick payback on the cost of the materials to build them. They also offer a huge saving over equivalent commercially made collectors.
> Two of the more popular designs are the pop can collector and screen absorber collector. The pop can collector uses columns of ordinary aluminum soda pop cans with the ends cut out. The sun shines on the black painted pop cans heating them, and air flowing through the inside of the can columns picks up the heat and delivers it to the room. The screen collector uses 2 or 3 layers of ordinary black window insect screen as the absorber. The sun shines on the screen and heats it, and the air flowing through the screen picks up the heat and delivers it to the room.
> 
> This page gives a rundown on building each of the two collectors, and also compares the heat output of the two collectors in a side by side test of the two. The two collectors were built specifically for this side by side test and are identical in size, box construction and glazing -- only the absorbers are different.


The Best Solar Collectors
Comparing Solar Hot Air Collector Design Performance
http://www.n3fjp.com/solar/comparisonhotair/comparisonhotair.htm


> For a traditional, 4' X 8' design, I would build a collector with a two or three layer aluminum window screen.
> 
> - Best comparative performance
> - Least expensive by far (a 25 foot roll of 4 foot wide, aluminum screen is only about $29 at Home Depot). Fiberglass screen is even cheaper and performs great, but we are uncertain about the paint at really high temperatures.
> ...


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## PrepN4Good (Dec 23, 2011)

I'd like to do something like this for the RV at the BOL...It's a small space, so should work well (I hope).


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## weedygarden (Apr 27, 2011)

CapnJack said:


> Would love to hear how it goes, and possibly a how-to? :wave:
> Wouldn't be hard for me to salvage the cans. One pro to living in an apartment complex.


If and when I do this, I will post about how it is working, but there are so many videos about this that I will not be doing a how to.


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## CapnJack (Jul 20, 2012)

LincTex said:


> Cans work OK, but its a lot of labor.
> 
> If you have any metal screen, you can paint it black and make a better solar collector.
> 
> ...


I will have to check out those links, thanks!


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## crabapple (Jan 1, 2012)

LincTex,
Thanks, the screen fooled me.
I would think the cans where a lot cheaper to build & Absorb a lot more heat to air flow.
I also thought that high temperatures & low air flow would be better, before I watched the videos.
The link was easy to understand, thanks again.


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