Solar Hot Water System at Carolina Biodiesel Install Workshop
Thursday, September 18th, 2008 (Events, Local Area, New Projects)
I am writing to solicit your help to form a technical support team to assist in installing a solar hot water system at Carolina Biodiesel in Durham, which will heat the biodiesel during fuel production and will serve as a demonstration project for yikes! (Youth Involved in Keeping Earth Sustainable) and Ecolounge educational workshops we're developing at the site. We are working with two high school science classes -- one at NC Sch. of Science and Math and one at Chapel Hill High School, who are considering this as a science project for some of their students. We have many ingredients of the project, but need a little more techical back-up to make it happen in coming months. Marc Dreyfors already has a set of 8 used collectors (need to be pressure tested), an 80 gal hot water heater, a pump, and access to cheap copper pipe, and I have a run of pex left over from our system, so that should cut costs for parts greatly. Also, for starters we may just hook up 2-3 collectors facing south, mounted at ground level on a mound right outside the biofuel production bldg. With option of adding more later, perhaps on the roof -- after he has fixed leaks there. Also, for the science project part -- I have a 10-watt PV panel we can use (as we did on our system in UNC project) to test efficiency of water heating against degree of sunlight on daily basis, and I have copy of the Hoboware program that we used for recording our data, and Rebakah Hren has a Hobo recording device for the data gathering (sunlight and H2O temp). I can give an introductory presentation to the students (w/ Darrell??) using the slide show we developed from the UNC project. Rebekah has also offered to give a technical workshop on installation, as long as we work around her travel schedule. But we may need a 2nd technical day, and we'll need some hands-on assistance on the actual work-days, and help with complications of plumbing and elec., mentoring students, etc. A follow-up project some of the students are interested in is building a good appropriate technology design of a system -- perhaps using some of the home-made plans available on the internet, that would be adaptable for low-income households in US, drawing on what's being promoted and tested now in poor countries. I'm not sure of the total timeline for this, but I think we'd like to get installation of the basic system done before December. Can you help? Can you refer us to others who can help? What if we held an NC Powerdown session on solar hot water, followed by a planning meeting w/ the students at the EcoLounge?
Sandy Sandy Smith-Nonini, PhD Research Assistant Professor Dept. of Anthropology University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, NC 27599 Email: scsmith @ email.unc.edu http://snonini.wordpress.com http://yikeslink.blogspot.com