What about sources for straight forward solar powered products? Excluding toys, garden frogs and outdoorpath lights I have found few useful items for the home. What I have found are solar panels for under $100 each, inverters, rechargeable indoor lights and a few camping/RV products that are interesting. It seems to me that these could help me start to wean the family off the power company. I can't afford to go cold turkey and cover my roof with solar panels and I don't think the HOA would allow me to even if I could. Is anyone using solar on a small scale?
Solar panel technologys are advancing all the time. I could be wrong about this as it has been at least 6 months since I checked, but last time I checked, solar panels as we know them, the kind you put on your roof cant generate enough power to run a full household especially if you have kids, with various game consoles, TV's, lighting, cooking, fridges and so on, not to mention power tools like the electric lawn mower or sander! That is to say, they cant generate enough power unless you are willing to spend considerable monies on the bestest most up to date ones and you have plenty of roof and garden space to mount them on. Actually, it would be cheaper just to pay the bills over the next 30 or 40 years at present prices than to do something like that.
However, other ideas are more reasonable, I have seen people mount rectulanguler plastic tanks on their roof, paint the outside of them a matt black, and put a transparent layer over them. This heats the water inside, saving them on heating costs for bathing and for heating the home in the evening. the most expensive part of this is getting it mounted and the pump to pump the water around the house.
Another alternative, is the geo thermal approach. That is the idea where you replace your radiators and heating system all together with a set of coiled pipes going through out your house. These pipes then lead out to the back garden under the ground about 3 or 4 feet. The idea being that the ground at that dept is always of a constant temperture no matter the weather, so if the house gets too hot the pipes (which are filled with a water/antifreese solution and are not connected to the water system) transfer heat out of the house and under the ground outside, but if the house gets too cold, the pipes take the heat from under the ground outside, and bring it into the house. This however will make any heating or air conditioning system almost useless as your house will always stay at the same temperature. Again you need a pump to pump the solution in the pipes it round the house.
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