Sand Battery Heater Gets a Boost 

Thank you for watching and commenting! I havent had time to work on putting the PID control on and try it out but that will be coming up soon.

you have to watch the video from a guy in Austria who is running a sand battery for I think 20 years but it has the size of a small room:)

ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-OWOLk9U0ewg.htmlsi=zwcid7lXfNtVZM8k

@@ralfo1704 scale does help with a sand battery! But you have to be able to heat (= power of some kind) that large mass, I will try to find the video you are referring to..

Hi thanks for watching and commenting! That is the one I am planning to use! I think it will work perfectly for this. I will be posting an update soon.

Yes for sure it will be more efficient I just needed the access for temp readings. I will have a temp sensor for the thermostat in the next video. Thank you for watching and commenting! I am using the silica sand as a thermal mass but also as a thermal tranfer media. There is a trade off between more mass and shorter start time but yes more mass would last longer unpowered but also take more energy to get to maintenance temperature and more power to maintain. I think the mass has to be proportional to the power of the heat source, and in this case I have a very low power heat source at 750 watts. Wouls be different in a wood heat application where the power is greater. Just my thoughts.

@@mvpmachine was thinking on that. More mass will take longer but would not need a battery to keep heating it. But think on how PWM works if you started building heat all day and slowly release it over night you could have an all in one system. Scaled up it would look/work like the rocket mass heaters but with solar as the heat source. Add in simple logic to dump excess solar starting in the fall i.e. if outside is 70 and inside is 68 dump into sand battery. The fins and fan would not run till it hits inside temperature is higher then outside over days or weeks but it's stored energy. In solar solar winter minimum you would be putting most of not all into the heater to run but would be interesting to see. Wish I knew more on how to work out the math on it. But cool project keep it up have been mulling over this exact concept in my head for a few years. Went down the diesel heater to mass idea this winter.

I think it is all about scale and investment, there is no reason to pay the ridiculous fees to the power companies when we have the sun and the wind but it is a convenience. I am curious how your diesel mass heater worked