Close up of my solar reflectors for heating my home. See how utterly simple this is to make for yourselves, too.. I reused old lumber and painted them to extend its life. I spent very little.. You can cross off utiility bill off your budget book and free up more of your disposable spending.. Firewood is dirtier than coal!! www.youtube.com What you see in this clip is simple solar reflectors that bounces back sunlight from the southern sky … As any of you should know ,, everyone’s house in the Northern Hemisphere has a shady northern side where the sun never strikes to heat.. Dont u se parabolic mirrors or fresnic lenses to heat your house directly as it can set your house on fire… Just use plain aluminium foil glued on flat boards of all sorts and make it as big as you can .. Mine is 210 square foot and it is heating my house on my estimated equivalent of 20000 to 40000 btu depending on the intensity of sunlight as it sails across the sky. Aluminium foil is not highly efficient reflector maybe 50% or so unlike special reflector foils being sold by alternate energy shops that hovers around 95%. but mine do deliver heat and you can multiply several boards into one area through windows safely… Perhaps you can move your house plants off the windows.. as it will dry up faster… But you will enjoy same warmth you would get from dirty firewood and undesired smoke blanketing your neighborhood..
youtubesolar
Posted by admin on March 10th, 2011
Posted in Inside Ideas 
Tags: All Sorts, Alternate Energy, Aluminium Foil, Btu, Budget Book, Coal, Energy Shops, Firewood, House Plants, Intensity, Lumber, Northern Hemisphere, Parabolic, Reflector, Sails, Solar Reflectors, Southern Sky, Square Foot, Sunlight, Warmth, youtubesolar
@junkyardnut yeah youre right about glare. I think it’s cool what you did. I kinda did the same thing to boost my home made solar water heating system for the pool. I’d like to try or see some results with mirrors pointed at the can air heaters…
@toob247 Also you notice one of my boards is smooth . It is a hollow interior door made of masonite which works great with aluminium foil. YOu can try gift mylar paper . It may be harder to glue on than aluminium foil.. Aluminium foil gives off mellow warmth with less glare than mirrors and mylar.
@toob247 I am just demonstrating a concept on heating homes with free sunlight. It is strangely long enough that no manufacturer has yet to come up with one! All they care to do is to make photovoltaics or solar water heaters . Where is the space heaters ?? My concept here suggests that you can capture sunlight around your house and direct it toward your house. All houses and buildings has shady northern sides that never saw the sun all day, if you notice that.
I wonder if you used mylar , a cheap way would be the foil xmas paper , the kind with the mylar back , would that do better than the more diffused light from the aluminum foil?
No way! I dont need it.. I am redesigning my solar reflectors and it is going to be much more powerful and concnetrated than before. keep tuned
Try painting your fences white that should help a little bit.
The government is not offering any tax credits specifically for heliostats. Those industries makikng heliostats are selling to the utililities mostly for research purposes usually. Those heliotsats are so highly accurate suitable for long distance reflection as far away as hundreds of feet. I dont need those $10,000 heliostats. I need $29.95 plastic molded sprayed on shiner variety that is fine for close reflection less than 15 feet or so. It works great for me and I am waiting for someone
Do a YouTube search on “Heliostat” – There’s an industry for addressing that phenomenon. I’d like to have some set up myself, if only I had a place in my front yard…
Excellent! now go around to the shady northern side if you have windows there , too. you will enjoy the underused cold area more there as well. you know what is interesting ,too? Nobody is talking about it which is that you got to understand that anything you put up that creates shadows on your sunny side, you got a minus yourself. That is why solar rooftops is not a great idea. The rooftop need warmth from the sun . It is a theory of mine .
I’ve set up wall mirrors on the ledges directly outside windows on the south side. They bounce light up onto the ceilings of a bedroom and my living room, giving me free light and a little bit of passive heat. works great, and maximum reflectivity.
They are not permanent placements. I move them around . They are reused for summertime as well to reflect back the hot summer rays as well. See my other clip.
My digital camera doesnt come with a built in microphone. Many users cannot hear so I feel that it is more fair to use only captions.
yea but i like my yard nice and neat,the town would have me in court,im in fl so its nice to have a cooler room,or shelter from hot sun when working in yard,and shade will provide lower cooling bills
Thanks for sharing your experiments with the rest of us! I can talk a good game but you have actually done something !! If I may offer a suggestion. I could catch on quicker if you spoke and explained what we were seeing; even point yer finger at stuff as you talked about it. As if we were standing beside you and you were showing us your back yard items. I think it would add a lot. Thanks again, Rob
You never know , really..
Good idea but your yard must look like a landing strip for U.F.O.’s
You will be amazed at the power of your ability to capture and redirect the wasted sunlight back into the dark side of your house. Be sure to get thorugh your windows.. . You can concentrate several boards through the same window to increase light and heat, of course. You wil be warm and toasty indoors.. Be sure to postion them as close as possible so that you wil not have to repositoin the boards as often as further away since the sun moves and the reflection will slip away fast.
You can use 4 x 4 boards instead of 4 x8 boards that may be too heavy for you to move around as the sun move , you know. I find that 4 x 8 is not as heavy as I thought because I can “walk” it on its bottom corners like a duck , you know. Quack quack!! Also I simply use two giant 20d nails to pierce through the board for support. I originally used wiring and screws which keep on falling apart. In case you are wondering, I am still improving on my boards or so called solar heliostats.
Once you know where the northern side of your home is, you will realize that you would tend to flick on your lamps there while never doing it in the southren rooms because of the natural sunlight. You will save a lot of electricity by not having to use your lamps in the darker northern rooms during daytime hours. You will feel a few degrees warmer as well. A couple of 4 x 8 plywood sheathing boards with aluminium foil glued on can provide roughly as much heat as your portable electric heater.
The reflected sunlight is not fake because it can multiply light and heat all around the home that would have gone wasted into the ground from the Sun. You cannot bend the sunlight so you have to use aluminium foil to bounce back to the colder sides of your home. True, aluminium foil doesnt capture and bounce back all the sunlight due to impurities and uneven wrinkles on the foil even as tiny as “pixels’ you know.. Every bit counts. But it works well enough to brighten up and warm up a bit.
I hate that 500 count @$%##, anyway, You will be amazed to see that the northern side of your home never get shined on , never, never, never . Usually the northern rooms of your home is colder than the southern side of your home. Why limit yourself to one side that face to the south for “free ligthing and natural warmth” It is like stereo, you know, or even 7 to 1 speaker system. You can fake the sunlight coming from the norrth, east, or west by reflecting the sunlight around your home.
Ha ha ha ha ha it is not a photvoltaic device… it is just a reflector of sunlight to bounce sunlight to different direction. In case that you are not aware or never use a compass, you know, all northern sides of all houses north of the equator never see the sunlight even in the summertime. You know, the sun always stay in the sourthern sky. you go out of your condo or house and find the shadow of the home, this is where the norhern side is. You stay there all day and you will find that out.
but how did you connect it from foil to your house, which side is + or -
the cheapest glue I can think of is Tilebond weatherproof that looks like Elmer glue to the yellowish tint found at Home Depot or Lowes. A gallon for $15, if you plan to use glue..
I have made my first reflectors out of a plywood scraps I have laying around. They seem to be working well. I am gone from the house all day so I don’t get to move them around. I am still waiting on the tarp and I have grabbed some pieces of plexiglass from work to make 2 more reflectors this weekend. I will let you know how it comes out and maybe make a video if it comes out well. We had a 20″ snow in Northern Virginia last weekend and I still have limited access to the yard.