Problem with warm air solar panel?

[Jonzjob]

Well, we are finally starting to settle in our new, to us, home at last.

I have had a workshop built in our garden and fitted a solar heating panel into one of the walls. It came with the house and was fitted in the garage wall and fed warm air into the garage to help with possible damp. I have no idea of the make as there are no markings on it and the 2 small leaflet type books that are with it give vertually no info at all.

It had been operating in the workshop OK after I fitted it, but a couple of weeks back I noticed that the fan wasn't running and after checking the connections on the small control unit I took it off and had a look at it on a couple of trestles, connected the panel and it operated fine. Re mounted it and it is inoperative again. So on to th etrestles again and although it operated for a few minutes it is now dead again. I remade the wire ends and tried again with no luck. I have searched on the web but can't find any info on it at all. So I am hoping that someone will recognise it? 




I realise that I haven't given very much info, but at the moment it's all I have 

[knighty]

sounds like either the fan controller of the van itself is duff

the fan controller will just be a temperature sensor, so when the pannel gets warm the fan comes on - you could swap it for a different temperature sensor?


it could be a fancy one.... compare panel and room temperature, or maybe control fan speed depending on temp.... but you don;t really need that, on off will do just fine :-)

do you know what voltage the fan is?


something like this would work, and give you a temperature display too

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/272449421127


it'll control any fan voltage.... but the fan could be 12v.... so you could get a 12v controller to match, make wiring easier?

(they do the same temp controllers in 12v)

[todthedog]

Looks to me like a solarventi

https://www.solarventi.es/en/

We had one in France.

It had good reviews, our house was old,  and we thought why not. I really wanted it to work.

It chugged out warm air in Summer but did diddly squat in winter. I guess could be very effective in bright dry alpine regions in winter  but in damp cloudy Finisterre was a waste of time and money for us.

Good luck

[Jonzjob]

Well I have found out who marketed the panel. SOLAR POWERED AIR HEATERS LTD, but they went out of business in 2017, so it looks as if I'm a bit screwed on this one?

The fan is a 2 wire DC brushless motor and this is the panel, not sure which model though? I've done a search on the board spec in the controller but no info there either? Two controllers, one manual and the other electronic. I have the electronic version. What the difference is??

This is the one  https://www.facebook.com/solarpoweredairheaters/photos/a.379769028829367/380650588741211/?type=1&theater  Some wonderful claims on that site, but as it was with the house??

[todthedog]

The maker speaks well of his own product!  

It depends where you live. It certainly did not produce winter heat in Finisterre, sunny bright  days are rare, mild cloudy days frequent.

[Jonzjob]

Well! I have discovered several things with this kit. One is that when I removed it from the garage wall I just fitted it to my workshop exactly the same as it had been removed.

Wrong! That's because the person who fitted it in the first place had fitted the thing upside down  and the air entry slots were at the top. Nice and easy for rain to get in. I didn't notice it as there was so much else happening at the time.

Second was that when I had ithe panel on my bench and was metering out all of the wiring I noticed that the green wire marked mot1 (motor 1) was connected on the controller and it went to a small connector board on the panel by the fan, but there isn't an ongoing connection as you can see.. The 2 fan wires are the 2 white wires going to blue and black. So my assumption that 'mot1 and 2' were the motor connections are wrong. But I did find that the fan is only operating intermitttently when I connect it to a 12v supply, so I have a new fan arriving today, I hope?

It's a great pity that the so called instalation/instruction booklet doesn't have a wiring diagramme! In fact it doesn't have very much of anything in it!

So, my next trick is to repair the 4" hole in my nice new workshop wall and put one near the bottom of the wall where it shoild be. The wall is shiplay so I will take oout the holy plank and fit a new one. That 'should' be fairly straight forward?

[Westie]

If the replacement fan doesn't work just ditch the electronics and use a bog standard electromechanical thermostat, mounted in the collector about 200mm down  from the top . You'll need a stat that can be set in the range of 30-50C which has some adjustment over it's hysteresis  , set it at about 30C and adjust the hysteresis to 6 to 8 C and just connect it in series with the motor supply.   

[Jonzjob]

Ta Westie, but I think that I have cracked it now. The new fan arrived yesterday and I discovered that they don't measure the fan size from the rotor blades but across the whole body, so my 80mm rotor blade fan now has a 70mm fan bladed unit in there. But it seems more effecient than the old one. I braved the winds yesterday and nearly got blown away! But I proved that it now works OK.

The old fan had gone intermittent! I can only think that because the panel had been mounted bum uppards that water ingress had screwed it? So, at the moment it's back in the wall, upside down, with a length of wood just above it to stop any rain getting in. When I have time I woll turn it up the right way, but that's for another day.

So thank you for all who have tried to help me and as they say in France say-la-veee, or sumfin like that?