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  • Hello from Colorado and New Mexico

    My real name is Ray. That's what my friends call me when they aren't using expletives
    I am retired and am currently "president" of the Tinkerer Contraption Company (also the VP, Secretary, Treasurer, Janitor, and handyman).
    I live in Trinidad Colorado, and have a non-commercial workshop in Raton New Mexico, 20 miles away, which means that I still drive to work.
    Why?? the buildings there were half the price of the ones in Trinidad, and I get thinking time on my way there and back.

    I am wanting to experiment with solar warming at my building in Raton. I do have natural gas service, but do not run the Modine heater
    when I am not there (which is most of the time). My goal is to use a solar heating process that will keep the building and contents at about 45 degrees during the 98% of the time that I am not there.

    Currently, without supplemental heat, the interior will be about 30 degrees, sometimes in the mid 20's when I walk in after being away for a week. It then takes about 2 to 3 hours of running my 100,000 BTU heater to bring the air temperature up to "sufferable" 55 degrees, and another 2 hours or so to get it into the mid-60s so that I can work without shivering. The temperature will quickly drop after the heater is stopped, due to the thermal mass of the contents still being at really low temperatures (wood shop tools, tables, mechanics tools, junk parts, etc).

    The building is 1800 sq. ft. and has cinder block walls, windows on the narrow east end, and 12 ft. ceilings. No insulation anywhere.
    I do not know the thermal characteristics of the building. The monthly degree days in Raton are 900 in Nov, 1100 in Dec and Jan, 900
    in Feb, 750 in March, and then drops quickly in April and May. Then dern hot in the summer, ...but that is another problem.

    The building has a flat roof, and a 70 ft. cinder wall on the south side, no windows. The west wall is 25 ft. with two very small windows.
    There is a 50 ft wide vacant lot along the entire south side of the building, and a 40 ft deep vacant lot adjacent to the west wall. Plenty
    of sunshine on those two walls. The 25 ft east wall has two display windows 6ft by 8ft each, so this end of the building warms up quite nicely
    in the mornings. An obvious solution would be to add windows to the south and west sides of the building, but this is in a high-vandalism
    neighborhood, so I don't want to do that. As for putting in shorter windows up high, the south wall is about 18 inches thick, so the shading from the window bucks would be substantial, limiting the sunlight through the windows. Aack !! Dead-ends everywhere.

  • #2
    Hello Ray, and welcome to Solar Panel Talk!

    Solar thermal heating is not the hottest [sic] topic on this forum, but you will find a number of members and staff who use it.
    Your best bet would be to open a thread in the solar thermal section of the forum and repeat your summary there, or ask specific questions. Then you can drop a link to that thread into this one to get everyone in one place.
    SunnyBoy 3000 US, 18 BP Solar 175B panels.

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    • #3
      Thank you

      Will do.

      hummh, inetdog, looks like we can speak dog to dog

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      • #4
        Originally posted by ThermalDog View Post
        Will do.

        hummh, inetdog, looks like we can speak dog to dog
        Yup.
        My handle is based on the old New Yorker cartoon "On the Internet nobody knows you're a dog."
        SunnyBoy 3000 US, 18 BP Solar 175B panels.

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        • #5
          Start another thread. Probably solar air heating.

          Before that, consider that your app. will benefit from (lots of) insulation, a programmable thermostat and reducing the size of the heated work space (if possible) before applying techniques that would be those of a decent application of passive solar heating.

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