Greenhouse
OEES/OEET 221

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One of the projects that will likely be part of our work is a solar powered green house at Laguna-Acoma  High School. They have  received a grant of over $10,000 for the project. One of our contributions will be to help the instructors involved (Carol and Earl) to choose the best equipment to buy, now that they have received the grant. One requirement of the grant is that professional contractors be the ones to install the solar power equipment. Thus, we can't use one of our homemade solar power systems. However, we can be there when the contractors do the installation, and we can perhaps take care of some of the odds and ends that still need to be done after they're finished. Most likely, we'll also be involved up front in choosing which contractor to go with.

Aside from helping choose the equipment and the contractor, our main contribution will be that of designing and building custom electronics to do some innovative things. One such thing is a low-cost heat storage unit. The tentative plan is as follows:
  • High school carpentry students &/or college building trades students will build a fairly large insulated enclosure to house containers of water.
  • We'll be designing and building control circuitry that will operate as follows:
    •  An electronic control circuit will measure the temperature of the water and the temperature of the air inside the greenhouse.When the greenhouse is above freezing, and the air temperature is warmer than the water temperature, the control circuit will turn a fan on to circulate warm greenhouse air past the containers of water and back into the greenhouse. Thus, the water will be heated up.
    • If the greenhouse is well above freezing and the air temperature is lower than the water temperature, the fan will stay off.
    • If the green house is close to freezing, the fan will come on to circulate greenhouse air past the warm water and back into the greenhouse.
  • The solar power system will supply the power for all this, as well as power for a swamp cooler, lights, etc.
 
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