From Guest Blogger Brian McGowan: Renewable Energy — Summer Ops

Summer has arrived and it is time to change how I use energy around the house.

First order of business was to disconnect the solar air heater from the house and remove the interface from the window in the computer room so I could put the standard 20” box fan back in the window. I set this up so it always blows out to suck air through the house. I also add a 4”x10” to 6” diameter right angle duct with a piece of 6” flexible duct which goes up to the ceiling to suck some hot air off the ceiling. Otherwise the top of the fan is at 48” off the floor and there is no reason for any of the hot air above that point to be moved. This actually makes a surprising difference. I only have 1 window AC unit located in my bedroom and I did the same thing with that and it also made a surprising difference since it fit in the window the same way and was unable to move any air above it. This made a pool of cool air in the lower half of the room and left warm air in the upper half of the room. You could literally feel the dividing line. I only used this for 3 nights last year and after making the effort to install it the year before, I didn’t use it at all that year.

Since the fans for the air heater ran off my batteries I now have some extra power there.

Second was to install the car radiator fan in the top of a window in the garage also set up to blow out. This fan is designed to suck air through a car radiator and when that restriction is not there it can move an amazing volume of air and consumes a paltry 60 watts as compared to the box fan which consumes around 250 watts for what seems to be about the same airflow. When I use the car radiator fan I open the top of the window between the kitchen and the garage. This also serves to suck hot air off the ceiling removing the hottest air from the house and allowing the house to fill with the cool air being sucked into the open windows. When I want to get the maximum airflow possible I also open the door from the kitchen to the garage and open the glass in the screen door. These two fans combined with opening 3 or 4 strategic windows lets me to really cool the house down during the course of the night. Last year I used a regular timer to shut the window fan down just before sunrise so as not to suck any air in that might be warmer than the cool air I had sucked in all night. Since the cool air had been cooling the walls all night it stays nicely cool all day long allowing me to avoid using any AC. The house temperature rarely gets above 80 in the house during the day. This year I intend to use the control box for the solar air heater in reverse to shut the fan off when the temperature outside the house becomes greater than the temperature inside of the house. This will save me having to pay attention to the changing sunrise time or anytime the temperature changes even without that. It should also automatically turn the fan on when the outside temperature gets lower than the inside temperature to make maximum use of the cooling time.

In other news, I have contacted the place where I purchase my biodiesel and asked about bioheating oil. They now sell a 20% mix as opposed to a 5% mix when they first started. It’s not 100% biodiesel but it is better than straight petroleum heating oil. It will reduce my yearly oil usage by another 100 gallons a year. I have considered a straight vegetable oil burner, which employs a Babington burner.

They also sell electricity, which ends up being 1.5 cents less expensive than the peak power I am currently buying but 1.95 cents more expensive than the off-peak power I am currently buying. My current supplier offers wind electricity for an additional $2.54 per 100kWh. I have yet to figure out how exactly I am always getting wind power unless they just buy the amount of power I use from wind farms to generally reduce the amount of power being purchased from coal or nuclear plants. I am also not quite sure why they seem to need more money when the power source is free especially considering the tax credits windfarms get. The biodiesel place says they will offer “green energy” soon. I will check it out when they do.

Lastly I have obtained a 2.5 quart pickle jar that fits perfectly into my solar oven and is twice as big as the jar I am using now and has a larger mouth. This will make it easy to cook the recipes I make in my 5 quart crock pot since I will be able to just cut the recipe in half.

That’s all for now.