Energy from warm room

nzmegs

I am wondering if there are any experts out there who could tell me if it is possible to use the enrgy from our very warm south facing conservatory.

I got home at 4pm this afternoon and it had been shut up all day and the heat literally blasted out and into the rest of the house. Today i don't want all that heat but next month I might.

It gets up to 35-40 degrees in there sometimes, it is floor to ceiling glass and double glazed.

Can I store it up somehow, convert it to electricity or what?

I do use the room to dry my washing which it does brilliantly but sometimes I feel all that heat is going to waste!

In the winter we use underfloor heating to heat the conservatory as it is used year round and it would be good to offset some of the electricity costs of this heating.

Any ideas?

Cardew

Unfortunately there is no cost effective way of storing heat, or turning it into electricity.

A simple fan to blow the warm air into the adjoing room will have some effect, but at some point the heat from the adjoining room will go back into the conservatory.

caroline1973lefty

Water will store heat for a little bit longer than air, so you could use it to heat your hot water for that day - either with a thermal hot water system - maybe about £2k+, which will probably get much more moneysaving as oil and gas prices continue to rise - or just some kind of home made improvised solution, perhaps using black painted radiator or metal box, or even a camping shower bag (£5 from argos) perhaps?

The Low Impact Living Initiative (LILI) does courses in making your own proper solar water heating system - you can go on the course and take away your own system at the end of the weekend for about £1500, though i assume you'd need some rudimentary plumbing knowledge.

Or I guess you could make a haybox for cooking - keeping it in the conservatory might speed things up a bit!

I guess you already leave the door from the conservatory to the house open during winter, to heat the house?

I think there are also some more high tech options like water systems that stay warm, also heat exchange pumps, and things like that - check out https://www.cat.org.uk and https://www.theyellowhouse.org for more ideas and information.