Aluminum and black paint in my water. Yum.

The rest is good, though.

Interesting build :)

that's a nice looking project--however it's simpler to install a mirror where it will reflect the light into a window--benefits more light, no piping, no breaking the house's envelope, easier to install. It is an ongoing mystery to me why mirrors, durable stainless steel ones, are not used with more solar projects. I have mirrors in my one south facing window and they work fine,

p

I believe this is active solar, as the air is then pumped somewhere (active takes energy). Passive solar would simply be having the sun heat your house through south-facing windows (passive uses no energy).

Yes, the pumping does make this "active" solar (though a little air pump should use vastly less energy than running a heater).

If you can mount one of these things onto the side of a building then you can use the fact that hot air rises to get rid of the pump, like this one:

http://www.motherearthnews.com/gallery.aspx?id=74688

Does this really work?

Gloria,

I think it would kinda have to work. You've got a body that absorbs a fair amount of light (black cans), so they'd heat up and heat anything inside of them. Circulate the contents to the point of use, and you'll have a hot-anything-that-was-in-the-cans. For heating water, though, I would imagine that their action would be a bit slower. You'd need an insulated storage tank that cycled water through the cans.

Still not a bad idea. I might have to build one myself and see how well this works. Granted, I live in South Florida, and frankly, we have an abundance of heat as it is, so I'd have to find more meaningful things to do with the hot air or water.

Anyone? Bueller?

Ivan,

I can't see how that would be more efficient, a mirror is rather limited in how much it actually transmits into the structure. (unless it's a convex mirror, in which case it is likely notably expensive, or it's a rather large window). One isn't really limited in how big to build their can-array.

Mirrors also are much more limited in what percentage of the day they work unles you want to shift them every hour, but as this seems to be mainly a mostly a morning thing anyway, I'm not sure that'd be too much of a problem.

did this as a model for my 6th grade science fair. my partner and i won first prize. we built a house to scale and had the heat trapped by the solar collector heat the house.wow that was in 1992, i'm glad to see if have come so far..(lol)...

If you're worried about aluminum and black paint in your water, use a heat exchanger :-) I don't think you'll hear people at nuclear power plants complaining about contaminated turbines and such :P

This is a great solution for garage and basement growops where careful power management is a must unless you want to alert the authorities. Delightful.

Very smart,
Aluminum inside is clean, no paint.
Solar panels are the best investment you can do, it will pay for it self in less that 5 years.

I might do it in my house.
A mirror is a stupid idea.

You can make it a passive, by using different heights.

Add a small solar cell and fan and you DO have a passive system.

This system really does work and it works good.
To improve upon it would be to fill the cans with
dry sand and you would now have bio-mass that
will hold the heat after the sun has gone down.
Adding the sand will also create more heat for heating
water by raising the temperature. I have used this type
of system to heat a 24ft above ground swimming pool.
Find a small solar panel and a deep cycle battery to
run the pump and pay the electric company nothing.