I used to be a physicist, I'm more practical now. Some time ago I had an idea for an instant and cheap way of reducing heating bills without the need for expensive solar panels. I've done the maths on existing installations, and basically apart from the government subsidy it's all overpriced and inefficient, you pay £20K for possibly a 25% reduction in your bills. The "idea" is not patentable there's a variety of companies that do things in the USA that would invalidate any patent attempt. In about 3 years I'll be starting a company based along these principles if no-one else does but at the moment I have another business to run so I thought I'd share it.
Roofs/ Attics are massive solar heaters, I've taken some temperature readings over the last three months and found that at the minimum for UK spring my house is 19 degrees in the roof space and a maximum of 33 degrees. The roof is extremely well insulated. Now I could panel it, or I could put in pipe water heaters, both of which are really expensive. Also there could be structural issues because of the weight. So what I have experimented with cost £55 (with a normal household power source) and worked in the most basic of ways and will be properly installed later.
Take the cheapest 110mm bathroom extractor fan you can find, attach 45 metres of outlet tubing to it, place fan in attic turn on and run the tube down the stairs. The hot air is taken from the roof space and blown into the dowstairs. It looses a little heat on the way and it's not a very powerful stream of heat as the extractor fans aren't designed for this kind of distance but in it's most basic form it works, so the downstairs requires less heating and the energy bills go down and all that wasted hot air gets moved.
Second stage is getting a little more pricey. You add a solar panel to power the extractor fan. Unfortunately at the moment the extractor fan is an AC induction motor, so at only 20 watts it needs a transformer for the most common type of solar panel. I was lucky and found some solar briefcase that produce 20 watts for under £100 on promotion and normally used for charging caravan or boat batteries from a big UK store, so that £200 on top producing 40 watts peak power, but you lose some when you attach a DC to AC convertor (had one knocking around). So now there is no additional cost, I have air being piped into the downstairs in a basic fashion (the briefcases just slung over the roof with wire).
Downsides, only really suitable for autumn and spring.
Initial £250 costs will probably take 2 years to make back although using a 20 watt fan just wired to the mains produces a lot cheaper results instantly.
Wife not happy about running the pipe / hose down the stairs
Son complained about the noise of the fan.
Now there are a ton of ideas I have like this, I find that people aren't thinking simply enough, the Americans have got a pump to heat their outdoor swimming pools (hence the lack of patent-ability), which is a luxury and also requires heat exchangers with the costs running into the thousands. They actually even produce a solar powered fan to just throw the air out of the attic space so they can run their air conditioning ! What one wants is the most basic of simplistic ideas. I wouldn't mind looking for a business partner on this as I've developed the ideas further and I'm a serial business builder, I then sell them on afterwards when I get bored, but with this concept I'm thinking that there is enough of wide enough field for me to be interested in it for a long time.
Roofs/ Attics are massive solar heaters, I've taken some temperature readings over the last three months and found that at the minimum for UK spring my house is 19 degrees in the roof space and a maximum of 33 degrees. The roof is extremely well insulated. Now I could panel it, or I could put in pipe water heaters, both of which are really expensive. Also there could be structural issues because of the weight. So what I have experimented with cost £55 (with a normal household power source) and worked in the most basic of ways and will be properly installed later.
Take the cheapest 110mm bathroom extractor fan you can find, attach 45 metres of outlet tubing to it, place fan in attic turn on and run the tube down the stairs. The hot air is taken from the roof space and blown into the dowstairs. It looses a little heat on the way and it's not a very powerful stream of heat as the extractor fans aren't designed for this kind of distance but in it's most basic form it works, so the downstairs requires less heating and the energy bills go down and all that wasted hot air gets moved.
Second stage is getting a little more pricey. You add a solar panel to power the extractor fan. Unfortunately at the moment the extractor fan is an AC induction motor, so at only 20 watts it needs a transformer for the most common type of solar panel. I was lucky and found some solar briefcase that produce 20 watts for under £100 on promotion and normally used for charging caravan or boat batteries from a big UK store, so that £200 on top producing 40 watts peak power, but you lose some when you attach a DC to AC convertor (had one knocking around). So now there is no additional cost, I have air being piped into the downstairs in a basic fashion (the briefcases just slung over the roof with wire).
Downsides, only really suitable for autumn and spring.
Initial £250 costs will probably take 2 years to make back although using a 20 watt fan just wired to the mains produces a lot cheaper results instantly.
Wife not happy about running the pipe / hose down the stairs
Son complained about the noise of the fan.
Now there are a ton of ideas I have like this, I find that people aren't thinking simply enough, the Americans have got a pump to heat their outdoor swimming pools (hence the lack of patent-ability), which is a luxury and also requires heat exchangers with the costs running into the thousands. They actually even produce a solar powered fan to just throw the air out of the attic space so they can run their air conditioning ! What one wants is the most basic of simplistic ideas. I wouldn't mind looking for a business partner on this as I've developed the ideas further and I'm a serial business builder, I then sell them on afterwards when I get bored, but with this concept I'm thinking that there is enough of wide enough field for me to be interested in it for a long time.
