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countrygirl
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# Posted: 16 Nov 2015 11:40 - Edited by: countrygirl
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Well the last two weekends we've been working hard to put in our solar vacuum tubes. We put up three racks sun rain vacuum solar tubes (90 tubes). Which is attached to an 80 gallon hot water exchanger. That is hooked up to a radiator system running through the cabin. The plan is to heat the cabin just to keep it above freezing in winter 5 Celsius. the first day out the top of the temperature in the collector was it 77 Celsius that's 170 Fahrenheit. holding tank got to 65Celsius /149 Fahrenheit. And the radiators were putting out 60Celsius / 140Fahrenheit. next week we will be hooking up an element that will heat the tank with wind, when available. one vacuum tube was put in the sun with a meat thermometer clamped to it's tip got to over 200 Fahrenheit in less then hour.
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Haltzy
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# Posted: 18 Nov 2015 21:39
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Very Nice. More pcis of the system would be nice, we have been looking at this option for our cottage as well.
Cheers;
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countrygirl
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# Posted: 23 Nov 2015 10:52
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Well the first week we had the solar collectors up there was only partial sun. There's about 15 different ways to set up the tanks and the settings on them for heating pools hot water tanks radiator systems. We work on changing the pump settings for the radiator it was pumping too fast and cooling off the tank too quickly. There's also different settings as for when the tank starts to dump into the radiators.So now we were able to keep the temperature of the tank consistent and it didn't stop making the vacuum collectors have to work to regain lost heat. We were also able to go under the cabinet and insulate all the radiator pipes, which should also help from losing added heat. Never got a chance to hook up the windmills to the element. Oh well something to do for next weekend.
Set up and tanks
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Putting up the collectors
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countrygirl
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# Posted: 27 Nov 2015 10:48
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just want to the cabin for a night. it was -10c out side +3C inside with very little sun all week. under the cabin it was +7c!!! this was a great surprise. the top of the holding tank was at +50C. so far its looking good cant wait to see what it can do at -35c outside.
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ColdFlame
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# Posted: 27 Nov 2015 15:52
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That's fantastic. Looking forward to hearing your findings from this new venture. 
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countrygirl
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# Posted: 8 Dec 2015 12:22
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Adding eight more batteries to our battery bank that'll make 16 total. The temperature here has been very mild so far the solar collector tubes are keeping the underneath of the cabin +12 Celsius. But the temperature outside has been hovering around -5+3 Celsius.
More batteries
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The whole off grid set up
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countrygirl
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# Posted: 29 Feb 2016 15:11
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Well it gone ok with the collectors. the first months November & December we didn't have the pumps on the right setting. The holding tank form the collector was dumping the heat in the cabin at to low of a temperature. January we were able to keep the holding tank at +45C(that the low, high +70C) all the time. under the cabin temp stayed at +4c, but the inside of the cabin when to -2c, two times . that was when the outside temperature was -35 to -45c. before the cabin would get down to -15c inside with the cold temperature outside. right now think we will need one more collectors for next winter so on the low light/short days, we can draw in the heat to stay above 0c.
only had to clean snow from the collectors one time so far, which took 20min. most of the time the snow has blown off on its own. next job is to make covers for the summer, or the cabin will really warm up.
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countrygirl
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# Posted: 26 Oct 2016 17:40 - Edited by: countrygirl
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Well we decided to put up two more solar vacuum collectors. hopefully we can bring the temperature up to 5° Celsius for the whole winter when we are not there. Took quite a bit of time to prime the system after putting in the new collectors. Of course things don't always go smooth when you add onto your system. One of the settings on the pipes wasn't set right. So on the collector side it overheated. Now we need to replace one of the pumps! Nothing else broke thank goodness.
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