Saving Freak

I have learned to harness the power of the sun. Well at least for the purpose of heat. I made this great discovery because we have a black door on the front of our house. In front of that is a storm door so from time to time I would open the main door and feel an immense amount of heat coming from the black door. I then began using this to bring heat into the foyer of our home. As you enter our house there are two rooms, one to each side, that have two large windows each (about 6 feet tall). So I started opening the blinds to let the sun in. This helped with heating these rooms but I thought there had to be a better way.

Here is what you will need : 2 rods (curtain, dow, the lighter the better) that are the width of your window frame, black sheets of plastic like what you would find under a house, and a stapler. Cut the plastic so that it is about six inches longer than your window. Take each end, wrap it around the dow rod and staple it into place. This will create a similar function as a curtain rod. In fact, if you have curtains this would work fine on a curtain rod, but i don’t right now so I had to make do. The next task is to secure the black plastic curtain to the window. You want to create a gap at least six inches away from the window and preferably that far from the ledge on the window sill.

Although it would be effective I am not suggesting you nail ugly dow rods into your window frame. I am not to blame for any marital disputes.

Now that this is attached you have your own personal solar heater. As the plastic heats up it will heat up the air between it and the window. That air will rise and the cold air from underneath will pulled up into the heater. The heating works like this:

In my area (southeast) the heat coming out the top should be in the high 80’s. Having talked to other people online who have tried similar experiments, people in the northern US get temperatures a little above 80 degrees Fahrenheit (26.7 C); not too shabby. Hope this helps with your home heating.