Greening Your Home - Solar power for heating a room/part of the house

Hi, I'm a newbie here and curious to know if there are any simple, do-it-yourself systems available to heat up just one room of the house? If there is something like that, how expensive and efficient it would be? On sunny days, the front of my house gets sunlight almost all day.

I'm assuming there has to be a power storage system for the non-sunny days?

You might want to do some research on passive solar energy. http://www.newenergy.org/sesci/publications/pamphlets/passive.html

And, on solar energy and how to collect it.
http://www.jc-solarhomes.com/

Ceramic tile with radiant heat is a great conductor of heat. Ceramic tile has a great cooling effect during summer months. Keeping curtains and blinds closed during hot months, keeps heat out. Keeping curtains and draperies closed on sunny, hot days will keep out heat.

:thinker: Vague description. One of the cheapest, efficient retrofit solar air heaters is a solar siphon-chimney. Works great but no storage. Framed double walled transparent polycabonate glazing with floating black sheet metal behind. Large ducts are placed at the top and bottom going through your house wall. The ducts have light plastic (garbage bag) check valves to prevent reverse convection at night. Check out green house suppliers for 4 by 24 ft. sheet of polycabonate ($160). Problem is no sun no heat. It's as heat cost saver not replacer. Sloppy drafty construction will increase heating costs.

Hi, I'm a newbie here and curious to know if there are any simple, do-it-yourself systems available to heat up just one room of the house? If there is something like that, how expensive and efficient it would be? On sunny days, the front of my house gets sunlight almost all day.

I'm assuming there has to be a power storage system for the non-sunny days?

There are solar collectors that heat both air and liquid (water or antifreeze). With a liquid,an indoor storage tank will serve as storage. It would seem to be possible to make one's owm solar collectors at a small cost and storage tanks could be obtained cheaply. Efficiency would vary greatly depending on the particular system. On Mother Earth News website I discovered a collector that focuses the sun energy without having to move to follow the sun's path. It's called a Hotline solar collector. It's said to be 80 to 90 per cent efficient. Though it was invented in the seventies I've not seen it in more recent articles etc.

Storage is the crux of the renewable problem. Coal and gasoline are portable and storable with lots of energy potential. Batteries are expensive and heavy. Hydrogen is dangerous. When we figure out how to store and move energy generated by wind and solar, the problem will be solved!

Google "passive solar conduction heater" and you'll find some interesting ideas.

Here is the plan for a solar heater you make and put in your window. From what I have read on these they work really well on South or mostly South facing windows.

http://www.jrwhipple.com/sr/solheater.html

The best approach for a single room is likely a passive approach, several of which others have posted above. This will help reduce the usage of the primary heating source for that room.

The most efficient way to do active solar space heat is with hydronics (water), e.g., radiant floor heating, or oversized cast iron radiators. Unfortunately, doing one room is almost never cost-effective. You need the heat most when the sun is least (winter). The room needs to have a very low heat loss so the coolest possible water can be used for heating, because the sun can only do so much work in the winter. Storage is not really a problem if you have a place to locate a couple hundred gallons of water in a tank. Collection would need to be sized for the winter (i.e., a bunch of panels), and depending in whether the system is drainback or closed loop, would need a way to dump the excess heat produced in the summer. It is a big investment and takes a fair amount of sizing, design, etc.

Active solar space heating is most cost effective when the structure is designed for it, and even then, the payback is long (15+ years, maybe much longer).

Solar domestic hot water (SDHW), however, is simple, easily integrated into the home, and quite often has a payback in the 4-7 year range. So if you have a roof with good exposure and want to jump into solar, SDHW is the "no brainer" of the bunch. (Speaking as a happy owner of a SDHW system that on this sunny late summer day is quietly providing all the hot water needed.)

I'm from the northeast and have a sunroom that is HOT in summer and COLD in winter. To use this room all year round I bought blankets (plain/neutral) at a clearance sale, installed dowels for rods and hung the blankets at the windows using wooden curtain rings with clips attached. I gave them large gaps at the top, using only 7 rings per king size blanket, and left them hang on the floor a bit to stop cold air on the floor. Works great and have had a lot of compliments.

Through solar energy equipments we can save a lot of energy and really it can create a great revolution in conservation of many resources. The only disadvantage in using solar energy is that the equipments are very costly and not every one can afford to buy it.