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Guest henry

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Hi, Has anyone got any thoughts on running a small oil filled electric radiator from a solar panel alone? We now store away from home and it would just take the damp away when stored for any length of time. This works very well when on site and attached to an electric supply but have now pondered, is it possible to hook in some magical way, up to a solar panel? Look forewards to the replies! Regards Henry
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You dont sat what wattage the heater is rated at. However as solar panels give out 12V (or possiby 24V im not sure) So your heater would not give out its full rated heat You could make up a special extension lead with a connecter on one ed to suit the solar panel; the other end haveing one to suit the heater - say 3 pin 13A outlet If the solar panel gives out 230 watts Then that would be the maxium amout of heat available
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Henry Regular solar panels produce 12Vdc. You either need a 12Vdc heater of some kind or a dc to ac inverter. My guess is that you would need a 12V battery in the circuit whatever. So, you could be looking at a 120W solar panel connected to a 12V battery (the leisure battery). The heater is plugged into a 1000W inverter, which is connected to the leisure battery. One point to consider is all that electricity running around, and a heater on, in an unoccupied vehicle. May be asking for trouble. Regards Neal
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To have any meaningfull heating effect the heater would need to be say 200 watts minimum. A 200 watt solar panel is HUGE and EXPENSIVE. Guess at £1000. Then you will either need a special 12 volt heater or an inverter to convert 12 to 230 volts to run a commercially available tubular greenhouse type heater. But when the sun is shining enough on the panel to provide this amount of electrical power the direct heating of your van due to the suns rays upon it will be so much more than the panel can ever provide. Photo-voltaic solar panels have their place but providing heating is not one of them. Now, if you wanted to lay some black painted domestic radiators on the roof of the van under a class cover and pipe these to some more inside the van, then fit a header tank and water pump this would get more heat inside. But hey, surely you want anti-damp heating when its cold, dull and damp, not sunny. If you consider this a necessary requirement then plug your heaters into the mains or use some other form of direct heating. My advice would be to ensure that the van body is impervious to water and hang up a couple of bags of silica gell to take the moisture out of the air. Change them regularly. Such things can be found in most caravan shops or talk to a friendly BT linesman. (They hang these bags by the thousand inside those junction boxes situated alongside the road).
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Good thought about the silica gell However it has been in mmm and on another web site about the use of silica gell and the use of dehumidifiers in motor vans and caravans The technical bods said that there were too many open vents - gas bottle enclosures, heater intakes, gas vents in cupboards and also the fact that your roof vent is double skinned with a permenant ventilation path between the two skins to inside & outside One chap was getting 2 litres of water out of his van daily
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One additional point: solar panels normally produce about 16.5 to 17.5 volts, NOT 12 volts. This is so they have enough voltage to drive current into the battery - it would all be stalemate at 12 volts. So Clive is right: you would need an enormous solar panel which would, of course, produce the maximum heating when you don't normally need it - during the day!
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