and good afternoon YouTube here's a view of my solar hot air collector panels we've got
the two of them here they're about I think they're eight feet long and about 18 inches
bottom to top I've laid over you can see here just barely through the that used to be clear
lexan but now you can just barely see the that's the air intake or actually the air
outlet vent there but over the years I've had them up I don't know about four or five years
now and they've just gotten just like your headlights on the new newer cars with the
clear plastic they get faded over time kind of milky I was also thinking of getting some of
the headlight cleaner but that those kits are like twenty dollars and it's enough to do you
know you can imagine the size of a headlight is you know probably about the size of your hand
I could probably use five or six of those kits to do all of this but I was looking on YouTube
people are using things like toothpaste but I ran into one guy that said get some baking soda
and Murphy's Oil Soap and you kind of mix up a paste like this and then you put it on a I
have a damp this is a Teflon safe scouring pad so it's not non abrasive and it just kind of goes on
so you just kind of mix it up so it's about the consistency of toothpaste and you can hear the
the grit of the baking soda is seems to be doing a pretty good cleaning you can see how dirty the
it's getting and you just have to go over that a little bit and then you clean it off and hopefully
you can see I don't know if it shows up on camera but there's a distinct difference so I'm gonna
try this and in fact it's supposed to be raining tonight overnight so I'm not even going to bother
I'm just gonna do this scrub it all over the surface and then just leave it like this because
this is you know the baking soda is water-soluble the Murphy's Oil Soap is soap its water soluble so
I figure the rain will probably do a pretty good job of cleaning this all off for me so I'll just
do the I'll do the scrubbing now and let mother nature take care of rinsing okay so it's just the
last little bit of day like today I got the heater panels all scrubbed up with the baking soda and
Murphy's Oil Soap I'm just let it and it's gonna try leaving that up there because it's supposed to
have a couple inches of rain tonight and tomorrow so I think the rain should wash that all clear
and I'll take a look at what it looks like in the morning yes good afternoon YouTube looks like the
rain has passed us by now and the overnight rain and rain this morning did seem to do a pretty good
job of rinsing the panel's I left scrub them down last night with the Murphy's Oil Soap and baking
soda paste and then just kind of let that paste stay on there and the rain pretty much washed it
clean I went up and checked and there was just a little light film still on the panels and then I I
hit it with a my three oh three I think I misspoke before and called it four oh four it's the 303
aerospace protectant and I'll show you a picture of that yeah this is the 303 aerospace protected
it's I've used it for quite a number of years on the vinyl top which has clear vinyl windows on my
4x4 and it seems to do a pretty good job this is actually designed for you know non-yellowing on
clear clear plastic but you can see the webpage down there 303 products calm I usually pick this
up at West Marine they sell that they also sell vinyl cleaners which seemed to work pretty good on
the clear vinyl on my truck but I tried it on the clear lexan on the solar heat panels and it just
didn't seem to cut through the oxidation like the baking soda I think you get a little bit of grit
with the baking soda and then with the Murphy's Oil Soap it's not petroleum based so it's it's
actually a plant oil that they make a potassium soap out of and use that so that makes it I think
it should be pretty good for plastic because you don't want to get any petroleum products
on there because that'll cause the plastic to start to yellow so yeah I think the I'll have
to see if we get a good sunny day see if I get any increased solar heat output the other thing I
found while I was up there is that one of my fans up at the top wasn't running and the why you're
down below had come loose so I got that fixed now too so we'll see if those two things increase
they can't hurt and just just need a sunny day we're probably not going to have sunshine for a
while or at least extended periods of sunshine I need like a whole day to kind of get a an entire
day of sunny weather and then I can record the temperature rise for the whole house and that
kind of gives me a good reading on you know you can check temperatures and air flows you know
instantaneously but the the acid-proof is how many degrees does it raise the temperature over one day
that seems to be my good you know that sort of averages the heat gain you know over time and you
see what you get at the end so anyway I'll keep you updated and if you like this little video tip
on cleaning clear plastic you know that's there is some I noticed there last time a couple of
times I've cleaned it I think there's some either water or moisture getting inside the panels and
there's some of that discoloration is actually on the inside and without breaking the seals I
can't really clean that I guess it if it gets bad enough all actually because it's got a metal frame
and then it's been silicone in so I guess that at some point I could actually cut the silicone and
cut those out take out the the clear panels and then clean the inside and then reinstall them and
reseal them because I think the sealant starting to let a little bit of water inside I'll see how
these work I mean it still heats the house the heaters going today and we'll see how that goes so
if you like this little video tip give it a thumbs up share it with your friends be sure to check out
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