How We Made Our Own Solar Air Heater for Under $100 | David Dodge.
Solar energy is a popular subject on Green Energy Futures. We’ve done stories onsolar co-ops, passive solar design, solar start-ups, solar stocks, concentrated solar thermal and domestic solar hot water. And just when you think you’ve exhausted the well of solar stories we find another gem — solar air heating.
And best of all, solar air heating might be the easiest to understand and the most accessible solar technology we’ve covered yet.
Our DIY solar air heater 
It’s so simple we built our own solar air heater out of found materials, pop cans and about $80 worth of materials from a local hardware store.
You can watch our video and see how it works and how we put it together but it’s definitely not rocket science. We used 70 black painted aluminum cans with holes drilled in the top and bottom for air circulation under a panel of plexiglass in a ventilated wooden box. The dark metal cans are ideal solar collectors creating hot air that rises inside the box then we use a fan to push the hot air to where want it to go.
