Investing In Alternative Energy For Practical Living
One of the hardest pieces of information to find is - just how large should you make your solar collectors for solar water heating or solar air heating? You may want to use the air to heat a room or a house, or water may be used to heat a room, your entire house, or something as simple as just the … [Read more...]
What Is Cob? Cob is the term given to a mixture of clay, sand, water and straw. It got its name from England / Ireland because the "bricks" look like little loaves of bread - which is referred to as Cob in much of the United Kingdom. (At least that's one explanation, we've seen a couple of others … [Read more...]
Yes, there can be more than one sun. In the solar energy area, there can be many suns. A parabola shape produces many "suns" the same as multiple mirrors focused on the same heat absorber plate does. The direct sunlight counts as one sun and each additional mirror counts as an additional "sun." … [Read more...]
This article is not about using mirrors to create "multiple suns" to intensify the sunlight hitting your solar collector. This article is about using plain old mirrors to help heat your house in the winter. It's all well and good if you have the luxury of designing a house to take advantage of … [Read more...]
Now you've built your solar collector to heat your hot water. What are you supposed to do with all that left-over heat that just fades away during the night while the water it sitting in the collector and hoses? Build a solar hot water tank for that heated water and enjoy it the next morning, … [Read more...]
In under 10 minutes you can learn how to build your own solar air heater that can provide a good portion of the heat for your house in the daytime. G. Scott Davis is the guy in this video. He lives in Maryland, so he knows how cold it can be in winter. He and his son build and film their projects … [Read more...]
The Fresnel lens was invented in France by Augustin-Jean Fresnel in the late 1700's. He invented it as a way of magnifying light, allowing the light to be seen over much greater distances. While employed in France as the Commissioner of Lighthouses, the lens he invented came into popular use in … [Read more...]
The solar furnaces are simply a form of solar collectors constructed as huge buildings that are used for one purpose - to concentrate the rays of the sun by use of parabolic mirrors or heliostatic mirror arrays (mirrors that follow the sun as it track across the sky) into a relatively small (about a … [Read more...]
This article is an introduction to readers on how easy it is to provide a very efficient "boost" to your heating and air conditioning systems by taking advantage of the earth's natural tendency (inertia) to stay at a constant temperature just a few feet down from the surface. You can go to almost … [Read more...]
This is the All Season Solar Cooker (ASSC) designed by Jim La Joie of Bonsall, California (it's in the general area of San Diego). We have been fortunate enough to meet Jim, talk with him one-on-one about his design, and learn to make one of his solar cookers during a class in San Diego. Jim has … [Read more...]
