Winter is almost upon us and, knowing how cold it can get in our mildly insulated flat, we welcomed this making idea Anthea forwarded to us: a solar convection heater made out of pop/beer cans. Apart from wondering where to get that many empty cans from, I do appreciate the idea of giving them a second life.

If my workshop wasn’t that small and east facing I’d consider installing something there. The more I look at the idea though, the likelier it becomes I’ll work on a properly sized version for our flat – maybe 100 cans instead of 50, as in the example. The instructions for this project you can find on a blog all about cars, strangely enough; car enthusiasts do spend many hours in cold garages, after all.

I’m also quite intrigued by the commercially produced solar heater now (oh, them inventive Canadians!). A testament to the efficiency of the product is that it was actually developed in the cold North.

Now, don’t start sending me your sticky, empty pop cans (in fact, avoiding them in the first place would be much better), but I may have to arrange for some fun dumpster diving times.

-Thomas