My Cabin Setup

50acres&acabin said:

Hey Earl good to see you too man. I am working on a video now that I think people here will really like, automating my whole house fan with Arduino. Hopefully I can get it done in time for Saturday.

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Are you talking about the vent/exhaust fan in the cabin? If so I'm definitely interested in seeing that. My yurt has a lot of solar heat gain and I need to figure out a way to run a fan that will vent out through the dome (which opens) so we can keep it bearable in the hotter months. The thing I'm worried about with running a fan off solar is that it'll kill the battery off too fast. Been looking for low wattage 120v fans but hot having too much luck so far.

elewis33 said:

Are you talking about the vent/exhaust fan in the cabin? If so I'm definitely interested in seeing that. My yurt has a lot of solar heat gain and I need to figure out a way to run a fan that will vent out through the dome (which opens) so we can keep it bearable in the hotter months. The thing I'm worried about with running a fan off solar is that it'll kill the battery off too fast. Been looking for low wattage 120v fans but hot having too much luck so far.

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I just saw the email about the video on Patreon. Very cool idea!

elewis33 said:

I just saw the email about the video on Patreon. Very cool idea!

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Yea that is the one, the first half of that video is kind of a summary of two previous videos. Then we wired in that controller so now it comes on automatically. I used a 24 volt DC fan. I like running anything I can off DC so that I don't get hit with the inverter inefficiency tax, plus the 35 odd watts it takes to be in idle mode.

elewis33 said:

Are you talking about the vent/exhaust fan in the cabin? If so I'm definitely interested in seeing that. My yurt has a lot of solar heat gain and I need to figure out a way to run a fan that will vent out through the dome (which opens) so we can keep it bearable in the hotter months. The thing I'm worried about with running a fan off solar is that it'll kill the battery off too fast. Been looking for low wattage 120v fans but hot having too much luck so far.

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You might want to look at DC fans used for RVs. Efficiency is a prime concern in those applications. Also keep in mind that when you're getting the most heat, hopefully you're already at float and would be dumping that power anyway, so might as well use it to run a fan.

Freep said:

You might want to look at DC fans used for RVs. Efficiency is a prime concern in those applications. Also keep in mind that when you're getting the most heat, hopefully you're already at float and would be dumping that power anyway, so might as well use it to run a fan.

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Bingo! This is a (almost) full size ceiling fan for RVs. Don't know why this didn't popup in my previous searches. All I ever found were these dinky little things that just wouldn't work for my application.

Yeah my father in law got a similar fan for his cabin in Canada. The cabin was built in the 40's and had propane lanterns in all the rooms. Huge fire hazard. Now he's got all LED lighting thanks to the solar we set up. He's considering adding more fans now too.

Good to see more people with yurts. We've dreamed of having a yurt for years but we don't like being tied to one place.

If this is not allowed let me know and I will gladly take this down. That said I think people here will be interested in this project. My system is 24 volt and I really like to avoid using my inverter whenever possible. So if I can, I run stuff off DC power. My in laws have a whole house fan, and I was amazed at how well it cools down their house at night. I was inspired to do something similar for my cabin. I bought a 24 volt truck radiator fan and installed it in the gable end of my cabin, it worked awesome but it was super loud and ran much faster than needed to to the job. So I got a PWM controller and wired that in. That was a good addition but then I wanted it to come on automatically at night when the outside air temperature drops but the inside air temp lags behind due to my insulation working against me at that point in the day. So we used a M5Stack ESP32, Arduino a relay and two temperature sensors to automate the fan. So far it works great. When the fan kicks on it acts like an audible alarm reminding me to open the windows. The fan is a puller and it sucks the inside air out, drawing cool air in the windows. Below is a link to the video of this project.