He has been running a large part of his house on solar electric for a few years now, and a couple of years ago he heard about solar water heating. At first, I thought he was talking about a water heater, like you use to heat your shower water, but I was entirely wrong. What he was talking about was using special solar panels, that instead using the sun to generate an electrical current, use the sun to heat black sheets of metal inside the panel, which in turn heat your water. The other end of the equation is storing enough water, so the heat doesn’t dissipate too quickly.

To do this, he bought 5 260 gallon plastic water tanks from a local distributor, connected them all together, and placed them along side his house. He then built a heat box around the tanks, using insulation to keep the heat inside the box as long as possible. Next, he connected the solar heat panels to the tank closest to the panels using a insulated hose, which he then ran underground to the tank, to provide additional insulation as well as keep it out of the way. Connected between the solar heat panels and the water tanks is a commercial grade water pump, which continuously circulates water between the panels and the tanks. Interestingly enough, the pump costs very little money to run, even though it’s running all the time. Due to the amount of water being stored (1,300 gallons), the water stays nice and warm throughout the day, while the sun is out anyway, and cools down throughout the night. You may then ask how does the heat get into his house? He cut 3 holes in the wall that the water tanks are on, and installed 1 small computer fan in each of the holes, which he controls via a toggle switch inside the house. The only thing he continually pays for is the electricity to power the fans, which then pump the warm air into his house during the winter. While the tank temperature can reach 128 degrees or so during the day, the temperature inside his house is usually in the mid 70′s, so now, even if the temperature outside is 28 degrees, his house can be a nice 72 degrees. It costs around $3 per month total to heat his house. He can also power the fans and water pump using his solar panels, so it would be no cost to run.

Today, he decided to add something to the tanks, to keep the heat in longer. It turns out, it’s easy to do that using lead to line the tops of the tanks. So, we set out to buy as much lead as we could. We finally found 800 pounds of all kinds of small pieces of lead, which work great for packing together. So, the next step in this project is placing a bunch of lead on top of the tanks, which will heat the lead up, and the idea is the heat will dissipate from the lead much slower than directly from the tanks, keeping the heat in the tanks longer.

The same setup can also cool his house during the summer. All he does then, is disconnect the solar panels from the water tanks, and the cool water inside the tanks (which cool down even more throughout the night), provide cool air to pump into his house.

While all of the solar heat panels and the water tanks cost around $2,500 for used equipment, he’s already saved enough money to pay for the project by not paying heating or gas bills. It’s already paying for itself, that’s what so awesome.

I’m not an engineer by any means, so if this article is confusing or you’d like some more information, please feel free to contact me (click here) and I’ll pass it onto my dad. He’d love to share his ideas. Obviously, I didn’t provide any technical details, but my hopes are to strike an interest any anyone who might be thinking of taking on such a project, or didn’t even know this existed, and would love to save a lot of money on heating and/or cooling.

Now, I still stare at my monitors for 8 hours a day, but I recently tried taking a 30 minute walk before I go to work in the morning. WOW, now I know this may have been obvious to those who exercise on a regular basis, but my life has completely changed in the course of a couple of days. I’m now suddenly able to think clearly, I don’t get as tired, and I’m able to be a lot more productive at work and in my life!

Before all of this, I was the poster child for lazy programmers and I thought I was going nowhere. I realized that 10 years ago, when I first started programming, I could knock projects out really quickly and with no problem. Over the last few years, I noticed that I wasn’t the programmer I was in the past, and I thought my mind had stopped working in that area of my brain! I was completely frustrated and ready to give up on programming, but I used to really love it so I knew something was wrong.

I’ve always known that no exercise and a poor diet only leads to problems, both physically and emotionally, but of course I was always too stubborn to do anything about it, until now that is. I’ve only been walking for a couple of days, but I can already see the results…yeah, I am in that bad of shape. It’s pretty pathetic, but I know I’m not alone.

Let me give you an example of just how much simple exercise helped me at work:

I have been working on a project for about a year and still have not really gotten anywhere with it, and I’ve been extremely frustrated with the fact that it’s not a huge project but I couldn’t get my head around it (On a side note, my dad and I own our own company, which is why I still have a job…mainly because of other streams of income produced by my earlier programming projects.). Anyway, over the past few weeks, I have been trying to figure out a way around a problem and it seemed no matter what I tried, I always failed. Sometimes, I would get lucky and something would work, but for the most part, I simply haven’t been able to think like a programmer consistently, for a very long time.

My parents have been on my case for the longest time about how I need to exercise (and start eating the right foods too, but I’ll conquer one problem at a time) at least a little each day. I have tried walking in the past but really didn’t pay attention I guess, or didn’t want to change for some reason, because I always fell off the wagon. So, I decided to try walking in the morning again, and this time I am definitely going to stick with it. I noticed a complete change, the very first day I did it! I have been trying to figure out a solution to a programming problem for several weeks and it was driving me up the wall! The very first day I walked, I came in to work with a clear mind and a lot more oxygen than usual, and voila…out the code came! I couldn’t believe it, my mind started working FOR me instead of against me!

I was still tired when I got home from work, but I knew it was because I had actually used my head instead of beating it against a wall. I can’t say this enough, but if you’re in the same position I was, you NEED to try exercising just a little bit each day…it WILL change your life, I promise! You don’t need to overdo it, in fact overdoing it is probably a bad idea because you’ll want to quit really fast….I’ve been there too.

For now, I’m sticking with my 30 minute walk each morning, come rain or shine. I hope that my solution will become your solution, or even part of the solution. My dad always says “There’s only one way to eat an elephant….One bite at a time!”. So, even if a little exercise is only part of your solution, your life will be that much better…trust me!