Cut Your Heating Costs With A $50 DIY Solar Furnace

With the rising cost of gas and electricity, many folks are looking at ways to cut costs and keep warm this winter… Read on to find out how a solar furnace can help you save money.

One of the best things that you can do to keep warm is to ensure that your house is properly insulated, but it isn’t cheap to add wall and loft insulation, and lots of people can’t afford to invest in this right now… So what are some other options?

Well, having a wood stove is an excellent way of reducing heating costs. We have a wood stove and it saves us $1000s each year, mainly because we get all of our firewood 100% for free. We have done a post about how to get all the firewood you need for free, so be sure to check it out if you have a wood stove. The problem is – if you don’t have a wood stove, it can be expensive to buy and install… A wood stove is a great investment if you can afford one though. Especially if you can get free firewood!

For some lower-cost ways of cutting costs and keeping warm, we also have another post – How To Stay Warm: 25 Tips For Saving Money & Keeping Warm and this is definitely worth a read.

Turn Down Your Thermostat With A DIY Solar Furnace

Another interesting idea for helping to reduce heating costs is to build a DIY solar furnace. In fact, for maximum benefit, you could build several of them. Solar furnaces are never going to generate enough heat to become your sole means of heating, but they may be able to generate enough heat to raise the temperature by a few degrees. Depending on the size of your house, you may need to build several solar furnaces to achieve this though.

Apparently, the average household can save $150-$300 each year by turning their thermostat down by one degree. If one or more $50 DIY solar furnaces could allow you to turn down your thermostat by a few extra degrees it could save you $300-600 a year.

The video below shows how to make a simple solar furnace for around $50, but remember, once it is built and installed it is helping to heat your house passively with no additional costs year after year. You could also make a similar design, but a much larger solar furnace, or make several of these, for additional heating.

(Image from Raymond Gulley