Banking on solar; a trip back 30 years

By BOB “hot rod” ROHR
contributing writer

For some unknown reason I managed to hold onto some 30-year-old solar data. It has managed to survive four moves and crossed state lines several times.

In 1978 Popular Science magazine published its Solar Energy Handbook 1978. I paid $1.95 for a copy.

Solar’s roots

The style of clothing has changed (though several items are still hanging in my closet) but many of the basics remain unchanged.

In 1870, Swedish inventor John Ericsson built a steam engine that was powered by direct input of solar radiation. Ericsson was better known as the designer of the famous war vessel the Monitor.

Aubrey G. Eneas pumped well water for his ostrich farm with a steam-powered pump. He used over 1,700 small mirrors to focus solar radiation on a steam generator.

Tinkerer/inventor O.W. Wood of New Jersey offered his collector plans to diyers for $25.00. The frame was plywood edged with pine. It sported 1" thick Styrofoam-edged insulation and four 60' coils of copper, installed and pitched to drain down. O.W. took heat enhancement to new levels by adding two 80-lbs. bags of Sakrete™ to the collector, and painting the whole enchilada black. To reduce cost he bypassed expensive glass and instead chose a piece of 5-mil vinyl as the covering. Four of these collectors, ground mounted of course, were providing about 100 Btu/h per square foot. O.W. spent $5.00 per square foot for materials. He also detailed a wood stove heat exchanger tie-in to the 350-gallon vinyl lined plywood storage tank. Groovy!

The “SunFloor solar collector” was built in Montana by none other than Larry Drake, of rpa fame. He, along with Drake’s production manager, John Fantuzzi, and Jim Chauncy, built a clever drain-back collector with rear connections and specific mounting hardware. The collectors flashed nicely to blend into the roof rather than stand proud on mounting legs; they were installed with the “Sunterra Home”™ package to provide dhw and radiant floor heat on these unique homes. Large commercial applications were also installed, like this one pictured in Billings, Montana.

Here are some names you may recognize…

Lennox Industries partnered with Honeywell to offer a complete solar-heating package through its Lennox 6000 dealers. The dhw package had an installed cost of $1500.00. A dealer-training program covered the design, installation and service of the systems. I helped a homeowner install some Lennox collectors just a few years back. He found a bunch of never used collectors somewhere here in Missouri.

ITT Fluid Handling Division offered pumps, valves and heat exchangers for solar heating, as well as design manuals for contractors and engineers.

Westinghouse Solar Heating and Cooling division offered a solar-assisted air-to-air heat pump. These systems used an air-type collector build by SunWorks™.

General Motors’ Harrison Radiator division developed sdhw systems around 1978. Perhaps gm could revive this division and lower the balance on the taxpayer funded bail-out.

Grumman Aerospace’s Sunstream™ division started marketing their collectors in late 1975. The curved surface Finplank™ was a copper-tube-aluminum absorber 27 square footer that sold for 300 bucks. Grumman was a popular, high quality collector. I still come across them from time to time.

Revere Copper and Brass was known to be one of the oldest and largest solar energy companies. The SunPride™ was a “tube-in-strip” design. These were closed-loop glycol systems. A two-panel system with tank sold for $950.

Our friend and hydronic wiz John Siegenthaler worked for Revere after he graduated from college. I believe Revere collectors still are providing sdhw and heat to his upstate New York home. Radiant floor heat is provided via a copper tube staple-up in his home’s system.

Universities across the country had solar research projects in the works. Nasa got involved in the testing of collectors. A lot of energy and brain power was directed toward solar in those years.

Solar builders also were appearing on the scene. California-based Blue Skies Radiant Homes sold out its first solar subdivision, with homes in the $37,000 - $46,000 range.

Business boomed in these years with 400 or more U.S. companies in the solar game. Collector production totaled 136,000 square feet in 1974. Four million square feet rolled off assembly lines in 1977.

Solar cooling also was installed in the ’70s. Owens-Corning offered the Sunpak™ evacuated tube collector. Collector manufacturers for solar window glass had approached inventor Y.K. Pei. While OC didn’t produce window glass, they were versed in glass container manufacturing. The evacuated tube concept was moved forward from an early version of 15 years prior, which had a problematic metal-to-glass bond. Y.K. came up with the glass-in-glass concept to address the thermal expansion problems that plagued the earlier designs.

Honeywell-nsf took the solar cooling idea to a higher level by building an 18-wheeler demo truck. With a grant from the National Science Foundation, they built the truck with 750 square feet of collector surface. Inside the van, both Rankin-cycle and absorption-powered ac units were operated.

Sunpak™ tubes were installed on what was billed as the “World’s Most Advanced Solar Home” on Long Island, N.Y. The 384 tubes provided in excess of 50% of the homes heating requirements. The 450-square-foot roof-mounted array stood up to Hurricane Belle. The solar control module, the size of a large refrigerator, included the plumbing, electronics and a minicomputer to operate the system and log data. Phone lines to “mission control” transmitted the data from the roof-mounted minicomputer.

The back pages of this informative handbook include a template to build the “Popular Science Sun Locator” device, load calculators, radiation data and a list of available tax credits and incentives from various state programs.

How about that? All the stuff we are talking about today has been with us since the ’70s, ’60s…even the ’50s. Perhaps now we can bring this fringe movement mainstream. Break out the tie-die. What was once old is now brand new…and needed more than ever before.