A heat pump will give you much more heat per watt of electricity.
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Agreed the new generation better performing air to air ones are being marketed this far north. Supposedly a 3 to one or better advantage over just heating with electric. ā¦
Hi Tom, the day Erie got five feet I got ten inches. After that it was about equal. But I get to drive into it when going to work. It also settles a lot over time. We have a snow mountain at work. Maybe Iāll take a picture for you.
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The Coefficient of Performance of Air Source Heat Pumps drops considerably with temperature. At 0F they perform about the the same as resistance heaters. Around 40F the COP is around 3 which makes their efficient justify their higher cost.
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Garry,
A solar array is not hard to build using bathroom mirror tiles sold at home improvement stores. I constructed a spider for the back of each mirror that causes it to focus down to a spot about 4" square. Each row of 9 mirrors is then mechanically adjusted to focus on the target. My collector has six rows of mirrors and each pair of rows is on a small pulley to adjust the beams up and down to follow the sun. The array was built on a boat trailer and the tongue of the trailer is moved every 9 minutes. The mirrors were fastened to the spiders with Gorilla Glue.
I built this to use as a solar oven, and it was used to bake chicken, angel food cake, bread, vegetables, french fries, biscuits, etc, (A stick is easily ignited if held in the beam.) This array is rated at 3000 watts, 950Ā°C, and is called a Helios. More information here: Solar Fire in a Nutshell | Symington Solar Fire
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Good to know. I know most are marketed with a resistive element backup in them. I would not invest in it myself the house is efficient enough that I would never see a return on it. Iāve never really sat down and figured out the cost of electric heat for my house. Iām in ontario running off aging nuke plants at 25 cent a kw with rural delivery so probably not worth it.
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I love that setup Ray. 
It looks to me like every tile is centrally distorted to tighten the focus? Great setup, I have mirrors already, just need to get a frame together and I would like to work on a tracker so it can run unattended.
Thanks for the link.
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Haha, that is quite a death-ray you have built there! I also use a solar cooker in the summer, that is just a box with little fold out mirrors on the sides. Mine does not get up to 950 degrees centigrade, but it managed to cook potatoes just the same. Also, I dont have to worry about stumbling into the beam and being cooked alive. I have always wanted to build some sort of solar concentrator, but we just have too many cloudy days here to make it worthwhile. I saw some interesting videos of using this technology to generate steam and drive a little steam engine, which was a cool idea.
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The unavoidable laws of physics and refrigeration dynamics.
A ground loop (or if lucky, a water loop from a lake or pond), or a well water - dry well loop will allow 3 or 4 - 1 heating per watt in, and boost air conditioning efficiency the same.
I canāt see why a mechanically able person canāt modify a big window mount ac unit to do the job, main thing would be replacing the aluminum heat exchanger with a stainless one enclosed in a water jacket.
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Important point, big concentrator arrays are not to be trifled with, enough power to instantly ignite a 2 x 4 can blind, burn, or set fire to nearby things if badly situated, aimed, or played with. Any build I do will have to be set on a steel pipe at least 6 ft tall so my youngsters donāt court disaster.
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Yes, the mirror tile is glued to a 3" square 1/8" thick steel plate. The 4 arms of the spider are also welded to the same steel plate and a 1/4-20 steel bolt pushes on each corner of the mirror. It takes very little pressure to distort the mirror tile, i.e. only a couple of turns on the bolt, since the focal point is far away. Each mirror is adjusted separately while focused on the front of the oven. The oven is also on tracks, so it can move back and forth, because the ācolorā of the light changes the focal point throughout the day.
Glass at the focal point was a problem for me. I tried strips of glass made from the glass in a copy machine, but they all shattered. Next, I tried Pyrex, and even changed the mount somewhat to hold the rotating tray from a Microwave oven. Every glass I attempted to use eventually failed, so my current solution is a heavy steel plate mounted at an angle inside the oven, and backed up with another 100 pounds of steel mass. The steel radiates heat into the oven. This idea came from India where a Scheffler Reflector was heating hunks of ships propeller shafts heated by the sun and rotated into a kitchen for cooking.
You are correct in the danger of this setup burning things. One builder left his unattended and the beam melted a plastic bumper cover on his car. Grass can also be ignited. In the photos, I have the array facing the opposite direction, and it is stored in the barn when not in use.
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Ray, (appropriate nameā¦
Thanks for posting your solar concentrator build. I have long been interested in this solar concentrator concept, but never thought of using it at this scale, only for novelty āsolar ovenā Boy-Scout merit badge stuff, or full-size industrial power production. With care, this could be a great part of a home heating ābudgetā system with many inputs! Its -15F in northern Indiana this am. My Dakota was a bit stiff, but started and got me to work just fine (on dino-juice).
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The glass is a tough question. But worth pursuing, as otherwise the radiative losses from the collector will significantly reduce the efficiency - 50% ? (Radiating both ways).
I picked up a couple of these, they are wood stove window glass. I wonder if they might handle the thermal stress?
What about the window glass from a kitchen stove? I suspect this stuff is tougher, though the kitchen stove glass is ubiquitous ā¦
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Yes, you have to have an area clear of targets in danger about twice the focal length, sheds, overhead lines, etcā¦
And if the array is left unattended, or if tracking failed eventually light will reflect from the parabola.
I was just wondering if you could use that concentrating solar setup to make charcoal by putting the drum of wood chunks at the focus point. Someone in the hot Asian sun could probably use it to convert bamboo and save all the fuel used to heat the bamboā¦
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@TomC a photo from work parking lot. What you can not see is how far back it goes and the length did not fit in the photo. But the real snow is two miles north of here. However I am not going to drive into town to take a photo 
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Thanks Jeff. The part that gets such an outlandish amount must be concentrated. I talked to a fiend in Cleveland and I asked him the same question because Cleveland is on the Lake Eire. He said they had a few inches but the real snow is up the road about 30 miles from him. Anyway they can have it, I donāt want it, itās to deep for me TomC
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Other than the cold, we didnāt do to bad with the snow. Yesterdays biggest problem was the drifts, but it did warm back up to 20-25 degrees, so Iām not griping any.
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Thanks for the pictures Allan .
It sure looks cold up there!!!
Can any of the long eared cattle ( brahman ) survive in your winters ?
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Although I donāt know of any local brahman ranchers, I worked for a feedlot in Worland Wyoming years ago where we kept a couple for someone from up here.
The ranch I work for has angus cross, which are real easy to work generally and some really good mamas. Theyāll get in a draw out of the wind and ball up when it gets cold to stay warm and the only thing getting them out is the sound of my horn when I show up to feed.
Speaking of which, I need to get to work.
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