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"Poor Man's Heat Exchanger"
For more than 20 years, farmer-inventor Ben Kambeitz, Medicine Hat, Alberta, has been saving money by heating and cooling his home with what he calls his "poor man's" heat exchanger. He says the simple system costs very little to install and requires almost no maintenance.
"My furnace has two air intakes on the
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"Poor Man's Heat Exchanger" ENERGY Alternative Fuels 28-6-11 For more than 20 years, farmer-inventor Ben Kambeitz, Medicine Hat, Alberta, has been saving money by heating and cooling his home with what he calls his "poor man's" heat exchanger. He says the simple system costs very little to install and requires almost no maintenance.
"My furnace has two air intakes on the outside of the home. One brings in combustion air for the furnace and the other brings in fresh air to circulate," he says. "Warming up this cold ambient air causes the furnace to use more fuel.
"I decided I'd simply warm that intake air by bringing it in through tubes buried below the frost line," he says.
When he built his home, he buried two lengths of corrugated solid walled plastic pipes. They run 200 ft. straight in back of his house buried below the frost line. An insulated inlet pipe comes up above the ground at that point. A 1-hp. fan blows air through the pipe. When he installed the furnace, he piped these tubes to a manifold over the two air inlets.
A heat sensitive switch on the furnace chimney turns on the blower to force air into the furnace after the furnace burner has warmed the chimney. "Using the blower to force air into the furnace gives the house a slight positive pressure, so it reduces drafts," he adds.
"Another advantage is that if the blower is run steadily in the summer, it blows soil-cooled air into the house and reduces the load on the air conditioner. And in some areas, you might not need air conditioning with this system," he says.
"If you're going to try something like this, be sure to insulate the tubes where they come out of the ground to the manifold where they enter the house," he says. "If you don't the air will cool quickly between the top of the ground and the air inlet."
Contact: FARM SHOW Followup, Ben Kambeitz, Box 23027, Medicine Hat, Alberta, Canada T1B 4C7 (ph 403 529-2038).
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