/diy/ - Do It Yourself

>>610353
>Electric power
Expensive and lots of other things..
>Solar Heat energy
Pet bottles and high school science fair level of stuff. You can even use water bottles stuck into the ceiling for spreading solar light in dark places. You can heat all your water house with bottle/pvc

>>610353
Monitoring this thread

>>610554
Wait, what?

>>610665
In his pic are plastic bottles I think. You can get hot water by having bottles or pvc pipes out in the sun then pump into your house.

>>610665

Yes, you can do it this way but it's pretty ghetto.

A more usual way is to harvest heat in panels and have a second hot water tank to store the heat. When the main hot water tank is used a flow sensor kicks another pump on and pumps solar-heated water through a heat exchanger to heat the potable water going into the main hot water tank.

You start with a hot water tank at least as big as your current tank. This is your heat storage tank.

You have a heating loop running from the storage tank to the solar collectors and the pump is wired to start only when the temperature in the panels is higher than the temperature in the tank.

You have an exchange loop running from the heat storage tank to a heat exchanger with a second pump that turns on when there is flow going into the main water tank.

Solar collectors heat water in your storage tank, which in turn heats the cold water going into your main hot water tank.

A well thought out system in a place with half-descent solar potential will pay for itself in a very short time, particularly if you scrounge free materials.

Opie asks about making electricity.
Hijackers take thread to hot water.

>>610697
>OP starts a stupid thred
>thred turns good
>you complain
/diy/

>>610704
hows my thread stupid?

>>610708
because a self-important namefag said so.

feel free to disregard him.

>>610745
Ananamus is leejun

>>610665
Uh sorry for the delay. Yeah you can do that it's dirt cheap and works quite well. And you do that>>610685 so you don't even need a pump because of water magic. Sorry if this wasn't you wished OP but you usually don't buy solar panels (photovoltaic ones) for house shit.

this would be a good diy project

http://www.truckcitycbgps.com/solar%20oven.htm

you can buy the complete oven or just buy the tube and make the rest yourself

>>610754
I'd buy them to charge a battery pack in my car while I'm on the road

>>610759
Uh.. But aren't cheaper methods of doing the same? It could work though.

>>610758
lol, why wouldn't I just start a fire?

>>610761
well like a battery system to charge my laptop/work a grill

>>610759
>>610763
your car already has an alternator

there is no point in adding solar panels

>>610764
ya...but I'd rather have a dedicated battery system that isn't tied to starting my car.

>>610764
alternators are designed to fit the maximum load of the car with not a lot of overhead. If you run anything significant on it, it will overheat and kill itself.

Don't use those flimsy batteries from HF on your roof. The HF panels should be used just about never.

And as far as using it for your RV meth lab, all you need is a charge conditioner and chain those panels in series ( +-+-+- ) to be higher voltage than the battery.

>>610766
>>610771
Whatever. Do stupid shit. Its your money to waste.

>>610772
Hence why I was wondering what the best thing to use is.

http://www.grainger.com/content/solar?currenturl=%2FGrainger%2Fstatic%2Ffos_solar.html&cm_sp=CS_Banner-_-EL-_-Solar_launch

Use name brand products. They will most likely be Chinese, but they are durable to EPA standards.

If you lack the know how, go to your counties office for environmental and economic development and see if they have someone who knows about the systems. (you will have to get a building permit for a roof install).

There's always solar panels for dummy's too. :)

personally, id look into a cheap 12v system like the ones they use on yachts. a few vehicle batteries to form a decent battery bank and an inverter to run all the basics on

op is an entitled little shit
stop replying to him

>>611762
How could you tell from 2 posts?

>>610353
Check out Northern Tool. They have better stuff than Harbor Freight and more homeowner grade than RV grade.

>>610697
because using solar panels to generate electricty is hippy level scam bullshit. The only useful form of solar is to use solar to either grow fucking plants or to directly heat water/thermal mass.

Solar panels are made out of toxic slug which lose their effectiveness day by day, as do the batteries you are forced to use as a storage system. Its one of the most inefficient forms of electrical power generation that humans have ever come up with and it only makes sense if you live in the middle of a god damn desert with no access to civilization.

What about wind energy?

>>612189
>What about wind energy?
What if you need a constant supply of electricity, not just 1/3 of the time when the wind is blowing the right amount?

What if the same eco-faggots who demanded "renewable energy" then come and sue you because dumb birds fly into the turbine blades?

Yes, it has happened, look it up.

>>612185

And by toxic slug you mean.... silicon?

Here's the scoop. PV cells can be efficient if utilized correctly. You are right in assuming that you need a "desert," or more correctly, a lot of real estate unhindered by foliage (if you have a large flat roof with not other near by buildings, this becomes a prime spot). You also obviously can't live in an area with a lot of cloud cover (for obvious reasons).

Second, you should set up solar collectors, which are essentially just concave mirrored surfaces. The hard part is determining where to place the collectors so that it doesn't impede the already collected incidental light. A lot of math to determine the perfect position, and even if you do, you will probably look back on it a few years down the road and say "damn, if I had only adjusted it like this..."

And finally, here's the kicker. If you live in the US, you are probably going to try to offset your cost of materials w/ tax deductions (remember, you can claim a portion of your labor too which is what makes it so attractive if you are willing to work for peanuts). The shitty thing is that the system has to be "Energy Star Rated," meaning you are going to pay out the nose for a kit rather than pieces from friends of friends, vendors, and the retard down the street who bought a bunch of the materials but "never got around to it." You can still take the tax deduction, but you'll have to do what is called "taking a position," which means claim it, and if you're audited, be prepared to defend your position.

If you have all three requisites and are willing to do the research/defend your claim to the IRS, I'd say yeah, you can definitely come out even or maybe slightly on top.

>>612185
>It's the liberals pushing their agenda to make us all Prius driving queerosexuals.

>>612593

I think most people go off the grid as more of a piece of post-apocalyptic insurance. These are the same guys who stockpile guns, non-perishable food, and fuel.

The reduced cost of energy is just an added bonus in the event that the probable happens (which is nothing).

Grow your own petrol, dude. Algaefarming petrol/diesel works, and is unlimited fuel forever.

>>612185

>Converting solar to electric energy
>Less efficient than letting the sun fall on plants, letting the plants get eaten by trilobites, letting the trilobites be fossilized, waiting for them to be compressed into carbon, expending gigantic amounts of force to dig that out from hundreds or thousands of feet under the ground, then refining, transporting, and converting it to heat, pressure, kinetic, and electric energy

>>613026
You don't know what efficiency means.

>>613026
you are so brainwashed. Lulz. Can't respond, on phone keyboard

consider that solar panels use those same petrochemicals.

consider biodiesel or bioethanol. Cyanibacteria is the shit and we should be growing it in gigantic tanks, compressing it and converting it to biodiesel. This is carbon neutral. You could even take some of it and bury it to get a carbon credit.

>>613179
>solar panels use those same petrochemicals
>shiggy diggy doo

But I agree that bio fuels are a way better option.

>>610353
>Hey DIY, there a good guide for doing small scale solar stuff? potentially something with the harbor freight stuff and either those universal battery back up systems(daisy chained potentially) or those RV battery systems with an inverter.
the harbor freight kits are okay to start with if you want an all-in-one kit to get going, but the electronics tend to have issues (most fixable, such as poor soldering) and the panels are low-output (they are amorphous not crystalline, but you can use different panels on the same charge controller if the voltages and currents of the panels is the same). The solar panels is the most expensive part of the setups.

to use the solar electricity, you just charge up a car battery and use a cheap 12-volt inverter to operate normal stuff off of it.
Using several of the mini-car-inverters might seem amateurish, but there is a BIG price jump between the car inverters and the smallest home-style grid-tie/off-grid inverters. The Outback FX2012T costs around $1400 US + shipping.

solar electricity's advantages is that it is silent, but it is relatively expensive per-watt compared to other methods--even compared to other portable methods such as a gasoline generator or a windmill. On a day that is even just only-slightly-cloudy, the panels voltage output can drop 80%.

---------

Solar HEATING is very cheap and efficient, if you are in a situation where you can use it. And you can home-build setups to do it, for not a lot of money.

>>613193
>implying solar panels aren't made mostly from plastic (by weight)
>implying the manufacturing process doesn't involve petrochemicals

Funny people like you don't even bother to research facts.

>>613232
They are made of silicon crystals doped with other metals. Some might have a protective plastic coating, maybe some plastic in the frame.

Read this and tell me where it even mentions petrochemicals. http://www.solarworld-usa.com/solar-101/making-solar-panels

>>613195
>>610353
Best solar panels I know of, much better than the cheap harbor freight panels:
http://www.amazon.com/Ramsond-Monocrystalline-Photovoltaic-Battery-Charging/dp/B005QUALBW

This guy does a lot of outdoor projects. He's got some videos on how to make your own solar panels, solar hot water heater, and water turbines:
https://www.youtube.com/user/markp0177/videos