When most people think about solar heating panels they envision those expensive electronic things that actually turn the suns energy into electricity. This can actually be an expensive alternative to providing electric heat when you consider how many panels you would need to produce enough power to run a space heater. A nontraditional type of solar heating panels can be made cheap using many of the materials you probably already have lying around the house or garage.
Consider making solar heating panels to raise the temperature in your garage a few degrees during the coldest months of the year. By harnessing the sun's heat, it can be made out of empty soda cans, some stray lumber and plastic pipe. The first thing you will need is a box in which to hold the cans, which can be made using 2 inch by four inch pieces of lumber with a thin plywood back. Make the box for your solar heating panels about three feet wide and five feet long, so that it can hold enough cans to provide sufficient heat.
Using the empty soda cans, cut a hole in the bottoms of each of the cans. The top already has a hole from which the soda was drank. Place then end-to-end in a serpentine fashion inside the box to form a continuous snake through the box and tape them together using duct tape. Cut a hole in one end of your solar heating panels, through which the plastic pipe, about two-inches in diameter can be passed and seal the top of the can on the other end of the can snake.
Hot Air Is Forced Into Garage
Cut another hole through the outer wall of the garage and pass the plastic pipe through it and fasten the box in a sunny spot on the outside of the garage. With these types of solar heating panels as the air inside the cans heat up, the air will be forced out of the opening, into the plastic tube and then into the garage. Covering the solar heating panels with clear glass or plexiglass will help concentrate the sun's rays, heating the canned air more efficiently.
A small fan can be used inside the garage where the plastic tube enters to circulate the warm air coming in from solar heating panels attached to the outside of the garage if desired. By no means will this contraption make the garage as warm as the house, but you will see a definite difference in temperatures.
