The Rural Voice, 1978-07, Page 11In an attempt to reduce heat bills in his hog operation Neil
Hemingway of Brussels has built a solar heated farrowing barn.
A solar
heated
hog barn
No, it's not sunny Florida,
it's in Huron County
near Brussels
[By Debbie Bonney]
Neil and Donna Hemingway of Brussels have something
unique in Huron County. A solar heated hog barn.
The barn is based on an airflow system of solar heating. He
could have used a waterflow exchange system but if there's no
sun for three or four days there's a chance the water lines will
freeze up.
The airflow system works through exhaust fans in individual
rooms in the barn. Air is carried up from a vent into the attic and
then runs horizontally along the solar panel s right to the other
end of the barn and then an air duct carries it down into the barn.
The solar panels are constructed of fiberglass and black tentest.
There is a 3% inch air space between the two materials which
acts as a heat exchange. The sun comes through the fiberglass,
hits the black tentest and carries the heat down into the barn.
Mr. Hemingway had no real working model to build from, so
he got some ideas from Canadian and U.S. government research
and took the ideas that would work best in the kind of barn he
wanted to build, then with some outside help he built it, at the
beginning of the year.
Correspondence
He also had quite a bit of correspondence with a professor at
an Ilinois University who had been working along the solar
heating line for the past five years. Actually the whole idea
stemmed from the Ontario Pork Congress in Stratford where the
professor was speaking at one of the seminars.
The Hemingway were just in the planning stages of the barn
and the solar heating system was going to cost a little more than
a conventional barn but Mr. Hemingway thought it was worth
trying anyway.
"It's worked beyond my expectations. The first day I turned it
on after the barn was built -- when that heat hit us in the face it
was a nice feeli ng," Mr. Hemingway said.
Mr. Hemingway said they've noticed a big change in the
temperature now that the snow has gone off the ground because
of the reflection they used to get off of the snow. Now for the
THE RURAL VOICE/JULY 1978. PG. 11