Never feel cold in the Doble again

[rightwing]

As many of you will know I am a great fan of all forms of new energy - my main solar panel installation has paid £1650 in generation and export tariffs in the last nine months as well as providing free electricity and much reduced gas bills. I am currently researching solar air heaters and will shortly buy a commercial version of this:-

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FtfaZMahSUU

However I am showing you with this the possibilities of the amount of free heat that is produced by this simple machine. It would be another (better) application for all those aluminium cans collected!! Imagine a bank of them not only blowing hot air into the Doble but also heating the exec boxes and offices. We could be the first football club in the country to employ this system. Marks and Spencers HQ has just been fitted with a commercial version of it.

I am also looking at a Tesla type machine capable of producing electricity from the Earth's magnetic field - perhaps more info on that at a later stage.

 

[Jason H]

Or we could just close the gap between the stand and the roof.

 

[rightwing]

Or we could just close the gap between the stand and the roof.

A flippant reply like that really p*sses me off - particularly when it is from a moderator.

This is a serious subject.

 

[Jason H]

I'm serious too, for what it's worth.

I'm sure your idea has legs.

 

[Terryhall]

I'd be interested to see the ecological impact of these proposals - very often a solar panel can be economically viable but a lot of them actually never recover the cost of their own manufacture in terms of carbon footprint. I'm less familiar with solar air heaters but to me (instincively speaking with admittedly zero knowledge of the topic) it sounds like a terrible waste of energy compared to the simpler option of wearing a coat, scarf and hat.

If the club were looking at alternative heating / energy solutions, I'd be more of a fan of geothermals which are a greater outlay up front but then a much cleaner, more sustainable and often more efficient source of heating and energy.

 

[007]

I'm serious too, for what it's worth.

I'm sure your idea has legs.

not cold one's though

 

[Jason H]

I'd add that I'm someone who generally abhors artificial heat unless it's absolutely necessary - I find it nauseating (another reason to hate bus travel especially in winter as they always seem to have heaters on full blast).

 

[richard_portland]

I am presuming that closing the gaps at each end isn't particularly cheap otherwise would it not have been done earlier. If we hadn't got into trouble would it have been done when it was built? Is RightWings idea be something we could obtain a grant for?

 

[rightwing]

I'd be interested to see the ecological impact of these proposals - very often a solar panel can be economically viable but a lot of them actually never recover the cost of their own manufacture in terms of carbon footprint. I'm less familiar with solar air heaters but to me (instincively speaking with admittedly zero knowledge of the topic) it sounds like a terrible waste of energy compared to the simpler option of wearing a coat, scarf and hat.

If the club were looking at alternative heating / energy solutions, I'd be more of a fan of geothermals which are a greater outlay up front but then a much cleaner, more sustainable and often more efficient source of heating and energy.

Terry,

The cost recovery of manufacturing solar panels in terms of the carbon footprint I'm not aware of. I can tell you that my own installation has saved 7,083.76 lbs of CO2 since it was installed in March 2012 - seems quite a saving!

Solar air heaters have minimal capital costs as there are no major moving parts and no maintenance costs. It's a free resource as I demonstrated with the video. Commercial heaters have built in solar panels to run the fan.

Ground source heat pumps and air source heat pumps have high installation costs and additional running costs. Their cost recovery period is long.

 

[Terryhall]

Terry,

The cost recovery of manufacturing solar panels in terms of the carbon footprint I'm not aware of. I can tell you that my own installation has saved 7,083.76 lbs of CO2 since it was installed in March 2012 - seems quite a saving!

Solar air heaters have minimal capital costs as there are no major moving parts and no maintenance costs. It's a free resource as I demonstrated with the video. Commercial heaters have built in solar panels to run the fan.

Ground source heat pumps and air source heat pumps have high installation costs and additional running costs. Their cost recovery period is long.

It depends a lot from one type of panel to the next apparently - my better half works in that field and apparently not all of them are as good as they're cracked up to be - certainly I don't mean to disparage yours and that does sound like a great saving to a layman like me

On the solar air heater I was meaning more the environmental impact of the system itself, more than the £ cost of the system or maintenance - I imagine (?) it would be similar to a standard solar panel, but as I said I really know next to nothing about them so I am more than happy to stand corrected, that's just my instinctive thinking.

Geothermals are definitely cost intensive up front - but generally work out significantly cheaper on a long enough time line (I imagine the idea here would be a long term solution). They are very popular for residential heating in Switzerland (my in-laws have this in their home). Just a thought, I tend to look at all these kind of projects more from the environmental impact angle rather than the cost angle, which is a very idealistic way of looking at things & I know doesn't always work as one might hope in a "real world" application where cost is almost always the limiting factor...