Bongo Fury

Hi guys, i have just bought this new toy:

http://www.cnmonline.co.uk/Thermotube-T ... 16971.html

I have been looking for ages for a much cheaper method of heating my bedroom in my new apartment as the normal 1200watt electric heaters are draining my pockets.

Anyhoo i have the above tube heater fitted and working fine, however now i am thinking about buying a solar panel and leisure batt to run it for free in the flat, it would pay for itself in no time then and reduce my outgoings after the initial purchase.

Do any of you good people know how solar panels are rated, along with batteries etc, i have been looking but it all seems a bit baffling.

The tube heater is 180 watt, so am i looking for a 180watt solar panel or have i got it all wrong?

cheers

You won't get much too much heat out of that, it might keep an airing cupboard warm & to power it with solar you'd probably need to spend over a grand with a couple of square meters of pv panel as a minimum, & that depends on the efficiency & position of the panels & how much sunlight.
I'd have thought you'd be better off with a ceramic or halogen type heater?

Hi
Those heaters are ideal for caravanning. You make a large box, insulated with 4 inches of foam insulation, plus a quilted lining, put the heater in with your aquaroll, and close the insulated lid....you can still have running water in one or two degrees of frost, but as to warming a room....3 x 60 watt light bulbs to heat a room???
Solar panels...We hardly have 3 months over here without sunlight with a UV content which will run a solar panel, so for an investment in solar energy, we looked into it. Solar panels of a suitable quality are immensely expensive, and to run a house it would take solar panels costing around £10 - 20, 000 when you factor in the cost of the controllers, and batteries to store the energy produced....now, I don't know how much a month your electricity costs, so I would suggest you think around £60.00 a month or more for a house....divide, say £15,000 by £60, and it would pan out at 20 years to break even....every time I calculate this out for each house I've lived in, factoring in the costs of current electricity bills, the cost of panels, and charging/ monitoring/ storing / distribution systems, it works out around 20 years to break even. This is alright on a new build house, as the house will, hopefully , appreciate in value, but it simply isn't worth it in a house not designed for energy efficiency in the first instance.
We have done a lot of calculations over the years, and the best cheap-to-run houses not designed for self-sufficiency in energy consumption are semi-troglodyte houses such as those in certain French and Spanish regions, and, of course Mexico, California and Australia....where they enjoy a degree of popularity...
Cheers
Helen

No chance at a realistic price One of these would nearly power it when it was aimed correctly in full sun http://www.maplin.co.uk/Module.aspx?ModuleNo=97381 but you'd probably need 2 to be safe. Of course, you probably wouldn't need the heater when it was sunny enough to power the panels
As for a leisure battery, I doubt if they'd cope with a 15amp drain - they certainly wouldn't last long at all and you'd also need a converter to step the voltage up from 12 to 240volts
£2000 buys a lot of electricity

Gaza69 wrote:Hi guys, i have just bought this new toy:

http://www.cnmonline.co.uk/Thermotube-T ... 16971.html

I have been looking for ages for a much cheaper method of heating my bedroom in my new apartment as the normal 1200watt electric heaters are draining my pockets.

Anyhoo i have the above tube heater fitted and working fine, however now i am thinking about buying a solar panel and leisure batt to run it for free in the flat, it would pay for itself in no time then and reduce my outgoings after the initial purchase.

Do any of you good people know how solar panels are rated, along with batteries etc, i have been looking but it all seems a bit baffling.

The tube heater is 180 watt, so am i looking for a 180watt solar panel or have i got it all wrong?

cheers

I suspect yer best bet for using solar energy for heating is to use the solar energy direct. So if you have a south facing window, that'll help. And I believe you can get mirror filled tubes designed to trap solar energy and convey it into the room, but don't quote me on that.

I use one of these in my porsche 911 to protect my pants from frost in the winter

Dreadfully sorry....must take more time over my typing.... should have read ....I use one of those in my porch from 9 to 11 to protect my plants from frost in the winter

I'm putting one of these in my Bongo to use as a night heater not only when on site with electric hook up, but at home in the winter as Bongo has to sit in the car port and soon it will be nice and warm every morning
Just wondering where to fix it. we used a larger one in our american wind up camper for years. Just have to remember to unplug the power in before driving away now.

Well my 3ft'er arrived today, lol. So its already powered up and in the bedroom, if it doesnt work or even provide a little background heat then i'l use it for the bongo when its not in use.