Saturday, January 7, 2012

soda bottle lights or soda bottle sky lights

This is a picture of the first soda bottle light or sky light that we installed in Guatemala. This test was done at Rufino's shed.  The soda bottle sky light adds enough light to the room to equal a 60 watt bulb.  It can really add light in to a space that is dark.  As long as the sun is out you get free light.  Many of the small homes here have no windows or one window.  If you need to see you have to use electricity so this free source of added light can really help.  I would be curious to see what would happen if we added a reflecting shade to it.. 
This is one of  the soda can solar heaters that we built.  This model has fan in it that is hooked to a temperature control.  When the temperature in the collector reaches 110 degrees the fan starts and moves more hot air in to the coffee drying rack that we built.  Our test model is similar to the larger models they use at the coffee coop, or finca.  We tested this one today and it was producing warm air.  We are going to get another fan for the other unit and a speed control for it.  The solar heater in this picture has a fan that will start once the box temperature is 110 and will shut off when the temperature cools to 90 degrees.


  We should be able to dry coffee beans on Monday.  The coffee coop's water pump is broken.  They pump water from the lake up the mountain to the coffee coop.  The water is used to wash that beans.




The way I understand it, they pump the water up the side of the mountain from the lake.  That is a long haul.

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