Solar Air Heating

What do you do next after applying some of the more well known energy reducing options.  Aztec Solar Water Heating has looked into the issue of reducing energy bills further and has discovered that space heating is one of the areas where greater cost savings can be made by reducing the use of your existing central heating (oil, gas, wood pellets, wood) by using solar air heaters.

Solar Air Heaters  are currently used in households in colder climates and the hot air emitted by the heater can be up to twice the temperature of the air coming in and is therefore very efficient compared to other solar air heaters. A fan is needed  to pump the air into the house.

How does solar air heating work

There are 2 ways of heating air using solar energy, an active solar air heater draws heat through the solar array and duct using a fan.  Whilst a passive hot air heater uses a thermal syphon.  The active and passive collect cold air from the outside of the house and then warm it to provide space heating.  One advantage the active systems have over passive is that they can be mounted anyway and in our case on the roof.

The system that we have chosen is an active system and works in a similar vain to the solar water heaters.  Glass tubes (which have high thermal performance) are used to extract solar radiation and transform it into warm air to heat your house up.  They are also very easy to install and extremely reliable as the solar collector has no moving parts

Installing the air heater

The air heater should be mounted on the souith facing roof of your property and should have no obstruction that will block out the suns rays as this will reduce the solar energy and consequently the hot air provided by the solar air heater.

We use diamond core drills to drill through the roof tiles and then mount a piece of 2 by 4 inch wood between the roof frames and then bolt the solar collector to the roof

The electric fans

You can use a PV pabel to provide the electricity to run the fans but the initial cot of the solar cell can be expensive and considerably increase the paybackl time of the installation.

Controlling the solar air heater

The electric fans will heat your home to the temperature set on the controller using sensors or until the air heater can no longer provide any heat (the sun has gone down).

Construction

The units are made of stainless steel and the tubes are made of borosilicate glass both of which are very durable and should last up to 25 years. They weigh approximately fifteen kilogram’s and are 1.6 metres by 1.6 metres in area.

Advantage

So to summarise the are easy to install for the average diy enthusiast and can be easily fitted in one day by the more competent, they can be fixed to roofs or walls and freezing temperatures are not a problem because they contain no fluids.  They can also help reduce damp inside the home and aid ventilation.