Putting up some siding & Going (homemade) Solar!

OK I'm back...
I had a stat run that grew from about an hour and a half, to a four hour run. ChaChing$$$!

All righty ~cracking knuckles, rolling up my sleeves~

Brent, Carol got it right, I'm building a passive "thermosyphon" heater. What you see there is just a touch under 75sf of solar collector. To that I will add another 24 sf as soon as I can rework the right half of the original doorway. This is not the 'total' system, I've still got to add stand-offs and a double layer of metal window screen, then some sort of clear film (plastic sheeting) or corrugated rigid clear roofing to keep the heat in. I have some, but not enough of the corrugated on hand, so I'm most likely going to use some clear plastic this season and i'll upgrade to the corrugated overall later. I've got enough that when I put the smaller panel in, I'll use the corrugated for that section. In addition to the screening and the enclosure, I still have to cut several holes in the wall for airflow. This black section alone will Not warm the building up enough to make a difference as it stands now. Once the thermosyphon is started however I should be able to get the shop to what I consider comfortable on a sunny day. I'm not looking for a sauna, but rather to be able to work out in the shop on milling, turning etc... I expect that glue ups will have to be in the house unless I do them early in the day. No big deal, I've done them in mid winter before, I can do them again.

I drew my inspiration from Gary's solar barn project as well as from Rob's Thermosyphon . Both are from northern climes, and Rob's is even fairly 'near' me north by northeast of Albany. Rob reports gaining 30° to 40° above ambient with only a 36 sf collector. I'll have twice that sf, so we'll see how well that generates heat. I hope we aren't hit with another deep freeze like we had last winter, if that happens, I'll have to suck it up and run a couple of electric oil-radiators.

I'm also going to be installing a drop ceiling of 2" rigid insulation. I've got that mostly ready to put in now, I simply have to fit the panels together, tape the joints and fit one of them around my fluorescent light's chains. That will let me keep the heat from blowing right up through the roof which at this point is uninsulated. I looked into having spray foam put in when we had work done on the house this spring, but the budget didn't allow for it.

Hope this helped. I"ll keep you updated.
 
Looks like it's really shaping up to look really good! Just wondering though, how much wood did you have to pull out from storage to get it where it is right now? I've never been good at guaging this sort of thing..
 
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