Low-cost solar heater for poultry barns

Hello Emily: I couldn't figure out how to attach photos myself. Please note that the solar air heater we evaluated was in a solid sidewall house; so the animals do not get any sunlight. When you have black plastic on the side facing the sun, the plastic does heat up and radiates heat inward but very little; worse, during nighttime, it will radiate heat to the outside. This type of radiant heating is very inefficient. Convective heating that you have with air pulled through black fabric or to a lesser extent, through a black plenum covered with clear plastic is more efficient. I agree with your idea to insulate the north wall. Based on your latitude, you might need R-19. I would prefer insulating also the south side to conserve heat. You could consider using insulated curtains (Farmtek has some) if you wanted to lower it under temperate conditions. I agree that using radiant heaters might be better. Take care, Sanjay

Hello: Thanks for your interest in this topic. The dark grey or black landscape fabric (2 layers) over a chicken mesh wire would cover all of the inlets on the southside wall of the barn. When solar air heating is needed, air will be pulled through the fabric and will enter the house through the ceiling or sidewall inlets. You want all the air to be pulled in through the fabric so leakages through the seams and sides have to be minimized. We designed the system to handle suction velocity of 8.8 ft/min, i.e., if your cold weather ventilation rate is 880 cfm, you would need 100 sq. ft. of the solar air heater. In NC, weather can change rapidly and even in the middle of winter, you can have warm days. To make sure that we do not overheat the animals by supplying warm air all the time, we had a small 15 in curtain that dropped when the air inside got too warm. This allowed the fresh air to bypass the solar air heater. Therefore, once the house goes out of the heating mode, the solar air heater no longer operates. However, it was difficult to make the curtain control system work well. In terms of results, in a 120-piglet nursery, we did not save propane or improve performance. However, over a 9-hour period, when the system worked well, we obtained average temperature rise of 20.7 F with a maximum temperature rise of 35.5 F. The take home message is that the system works but we need to work out the bugs in the system. If you are really interested, please contact me at sbshah3@ncsu.edu and I'll try to help you design the system for your house. Thanks again, Sanjay Shah

What will reduce energy cost in Africa is biogas from poultry droppings. The tools to work is right there with you.

Warming poultry farm with low- cost solar heat solve part of problem, the other part is to find solutions of low- cost to cooling. There are viable solutions to cooling of poultry farms in summer temperate or tropical countries?

I would like to know how to use it? How to install it ? Where to find the product?

Thanks so much for your notification. Please, help me with details to learn More about a solar heater

hi i would like to try the solar in ireland for ele and heat. thanks john

That is a very interesting topic.