Heating.htm

My Heating system

My Fifth Wheel Batch Heater

	For my 5th wheel I have constructed a Batch Heater using the tank of an old hot water heater. It is very easy to build and very efficient. I was totally surprised by the amount of hot water it produces and how fast. It is basically a box, with 2" of insulation on the bottom and sides, and a glass cover, which helps protect it from the wind. me for a drawing. The cold water comes in thru a PVC galvanized pipe connection at the left bottom and exits at the top right thru a galvanized to copper dialectic union to copper pipe.. I have also made myself an outdoor shower which you can see in the right background. I recycle the water from the shower to nearby plants.

	As you can see it is tilted so that the hot water thermosiphons to the top. I also have a Radio Shack temp sensor attached to the outlet pipe that I check just to see the temp. In the morning it is anywhere from 60 to 100 deg, depending on my overnight usage - if I took a shower, did the dishes the night before, etc and the time of year. But on a average sunny day, of which there are many here in Arizona, it reaches a temp of 130 to 150. It really is great to take a hot shower outside after working, sweating in the hot Arizona sun.

	In the winter time I used to cover it at night with a 2" piece of foam since once the sun went down it would cool off pretty fast, it only has one layer of glass on it to act as an insulator. I plan to put another on. But now I've learned to take a shower within a short while after the sun sets. One less chore to do in the morning and evening.


My Shop Heating system

	This is my radiant heating system ready to be covered with concrete (20 yrds). It has 3 heating zones. The 1/2" Pex is in a reverse spiral pattern so that the first hot loops of all zones are on the exterior. The tubes sit directly on the compacted earth. I was going to put 2" foam under the tubing on the exterior 4 ft, but after talking with some locals that were "knowledgeable" about radiant heating I decided it was not worth the effort. I put a 2" layer on the inside of the stem walls. Nobody I talked to or emailed could give me a definitive answer about insulation under a slab in Tucson AZ. Some said that it was not worth the effort since the ground temp did not change drastically. Some said that in the summer it was beneficial to have the slab directly on the earth as that would add some cooling. If you have any info about earth temps in AZ, please let me know.

	My radiant manifold, pumps and Pex came from www.Lightheat.com. Ron Hyatt has been very helpful. It is a very simple system. Temperature sensors sense differences between the outlet of storage tank and the outlet of the Sol-r-beams, and start a pump which keeps storage tank hot. For the radiant heating a thermostat setting sends a single to a zone pump and then pumps hot water from the storage tank into the slab. As you can see I have 3 zones in the floor and 4 zone controls, 4th is for future use. Visit ourcoolhouse to see a very ingenious monitoring system using 1-wire sensors. This system could also be adapted to monitor moisture values inside SB houses.

	This is the manifold system with the controller, sensors and pump. A) Hole in the wall where the hot and cold water pipes come in and go out to the batch heater. The temp sensor for the Batch Heater tank, high hot (T1) also goes thru here also. B) is the temp sensor (T2) of the cold coming from the radiant tubes. C) The USDT2004 Controller D) A Temp Thermostat L37-840. The controller turns the pump on when there is a difference of 15 deg between T1 and T2 and off when there is only a 7 deg difference.

	I originally didn't have the Controller in the circuit, only the Temp Thermostat L37-840 so when I saw it was hot enough I would turn on the pump. Now it is set up so that the Thermostat is on all the time but only energized by the Controller when temp sensors say yes. I originally was going to use the USDT controller on the SOL R BEAMS to pump the hot in to the storage tank (batch heater), and the thermostat on the inside to control the heat, but they are not set up yet.

	On the left is the cold feed in to the batch heater tank. The pipe coming out of the wall is the cold out from the radiant heating system. On the right is the hot out from the batch heater that goes to the copper pipe that then goes into the radiant heating system. You can see the high hot (T1) sensor that links to the differential controller.

	This is a Schematic of the system that I have. It is an open loop system where the water that is heated by my batch heater is pumped thru the slab pex tubing and is also connected to my hot water for sinks etc. The storage tank in the Schematic is the Batch heater in the above photos and descriptions.

	Here is my SOL R BEAM system, it is made up of 3 modules. The modules are a 5' long by 1'6" wide parabolic dish and linked to each other. It has a motor drive and a solar sensor which orients the panels to the sun. The cold water goes in at the bottom of the modules and out at the top. The system is not yet hooked up, there are problems with the tracker circuit. It tracks the sun fine during the day, and goes to sleep looking west, but does not wake up to reorient itself to the east sunrise. I have to manually turn on the motor and let it reposition itself and then it will track the day sun.

	These are the specs on the Sol-r-beam. SOL R BEAM Solar Resources International, A Division of Standard Management Corp 1735 E Indian School Rd Phoenix AZ 85016 602 263 9447 Model SB-201 14.76 sq ft .973 Gal Max Flow 5 Gal/min Thermal Performance Rating BTU/Hr Per Sq Ft Low Temp 153 High Temp 132 Thermal Efficiency Slope -285 Y Intercept 60%.

	Inside the glass jar is a LED3X Solar Tracker from www.redrock.com that I will probably have to use to replace the existing tracking electronics. (This is from another SOL R BEAM installation.)

	This is my existing tracking unit, you can see the rust at the bottom of the housing, some of the resisters are pretty corroded.

That's all for now. Any Questions or comments or ways that I can improve my system would be greatly appreciated


All Images, Designs, and Works of Art are copyrighted by Dougherty Designs 2005