Simple Solar Hot Water

[Classact]

I built a simple solar hot water heater for my home from mostly junk... I sold the idea to Back Home Magazine, a magazine that is based on homestead living in North Carolina... The system is really simple and not too costly in comparrison to a commercial solar hot water system... Also you don't need many plumbing skills or any permits... if anyone is interested simply reply and I'll explain the system.

I'm also in the process of finishing off my waste motor oil fired boiler that will run a homemade three HP steam engine to run a permanent magnet generator for charging solar battery bank when the sun or wind doesn't quite do the job.

Waste motor oil burns quite clean and is environmentally friendly... I get mine free and the same system can use waste cooking oil and could be adapted for home heating... If you are interested I will be happy to provide details and links to sources for research. It took me a few trials and errors but I can turn an old hot water heater tank glowing orange with my oil burner and the smoke coming out is less than from burning wood. Let me know.

[Sitarro]

I built a simple solar hot water heater for my home from mostly junk... I sold the idea to Back Home Magazine, a magazine that is based on homestead living in North Carolina... The system is really simple and not too costly in comparrison to a commercial solar hot water system... Also you don't need many plumbing skills or any permits... if anyone is interested simply reply and I'll explain the system.

I'm also in the process of finishing off my waste motor oil fired boiler that will run a homemade three HP steam engine to run a permanent magnet generator for charging solar battery bank when the sun or wind doesn't quite do the job.

Waste motor oil burns quite clean and is environmentally friendly... I get mine free and the same system can use waste cooking oil and could be adapted for home heating... If you are interested I will be happy to provide details and links to sources for research. It took me a few trials and errors but I can turn an old hot water heater tank glowing orange with my oil burner and the smoke coming out is less than from burning wood. Let me know.

I would enjoy reading about your designs.

[glockmail]

I used to burn waste motor oil in an old fuel oil furnace that heated my machinery barn in Upstate NY. I blended it with kerosene to get the thing started, and had a copper coil that ran around the furnace to heat the waste oil, lowering its viscosity, and a manual valve to switch to straight waste after a few minutes. I put an little add on the bulletin board at work that I would take used oil, and after a week got enough to heat for a year.

You're probaly wrong about not needing a permit to install the solar hot water heater though. In NC we are under the IBC which requires it for modifications to your system. When you sell your house you will be required to sign a disclosure form and state that work done was with a permit.

[Classact]

I would enjoy reading about your designs.

First let me point out I live in the tropics and it never freezes here… The system will work just fine in Alaska if it were purged of water prior to freezing temperatures.

I was lucky to find a couple used water panels after a hurricane blew them off someone’s house… amazingly they needed very little repair… but I added an additional homemade collector that, while not as efficient heats water quite well. Below I will discuss how you can make a homemade panel and connect it to your hot water heater.

What is a solar hot water collector and how does it work? A solar hot water collector is a method of allowing heat to travel to cold… the most efficient material to collect heat is mass such as metal and as the water passes through the metal pipe exposed to the sun the heat is transferred… Efficiency can be traded for economy when building a home collector… After all everyone has left a garden hose in the grass and solar heated hot water… Metal is the best conductor and copper is the preferred metal… excellent commercial collectors use a copper back plate with copper tubing surface contact to the plate thereby the heat stored in the mass of the tube and the plate is transferred to the water because hot always travels to cold. Because hot always travels to cold these collectors are placed in sealed boxes often insulated on the bottom of the plate… I built a large panel of this type in NC to heat a house with floor heat and it would boil water/antifreeze mixture in 10F weather if not circulated.

Recommended homemade panel: Check out a recycle yard for aluminum storm doors and door frames… or go to a plate glass dealership and offer to buy used plate glass from store fronts and then fabricate a frame made of channel from aluminum door or window framing material. To hold cost down use galvanized steel for the base plate. You will not require insulation for summer use only. The water collectors are groupings of 3/8 inch copper tubing that comes in 50 feet coils… standard “compression type fittings allow the “non plumber” to connect them together with a Crescent wrench. I would recommend you by a tube bender (about $15.00) so you can fabricate the coil in the shape of a mainspring to allow maximum use of the surface contact to the back plate. Leave a length from the center and the end of the coil to exit the collector box… drill two holes larger than the tube and use foam around the opening to seal. Note: The copper tubing needs to be in contact with the back plate but needs room to expand and contract… to do this place two or three strips of aluminum with weather strip between the aluminum and tubing… secure the aluminum strips to the back plate with self tapping roofing screws.

Connecting it to the home hot water system: Basically the plumbing consists of a loop from the drain faucet of your hot water heater to a circulating pump connected to the line feeding the collector panels and back to a “T” placed in the Hot Out pipe marked on top of the tank. Here are some considerations with this arrangement… Some areas have hard water and cause scale to form in the bottom of an active hot water heater therefore you may want to drain and flush any scale out first. You can connect to the existing faucet using a mesh screen and hose that will withstand water pressure (a washing machine hose and screen)… If you have a small tank then the gained hot water from solar will not save you much on your heating bill… I have an 88 gallon tank, about five feet high… In the event you have a very small water heater I would recommend that you buy a large water heater tank and simply connect it to the small tank “in cold” or in other words plumb the new tank from service water “in cold” to stored solar heated tank with the out hot feeding the cold input to your existing tank… I was able to find a used water heater for $40.00… If you check with a commercial plumber you may find a deal on a used tank for this purpose. Where I live I never needed to connect it to electricity anyway and it has served me well for ten years now. If you use a second tank then or a large tank the system will pay for itself in a couple years…

Other considerations: The plumbing between the circulating pump and the panel can be inexpensive PVC that is easily plumbed by a non plumber… it is low conductivity so you could actually place the ugly homemade panels on an out building out of sight… the circulation pump doesn’t need to run constantly… by a lamp timer so you can set it to come on for five minutes and off for a half hour during peak sun shine hours… I would also recommend that you buy a switch to turn off your hot water heater at night after showers and then back on just before prime use time in the evening so you could maximize the use of solar heated water. I have a solar electric battery bank and I use a 12 volt car windshield wiper delay switch to turn my pump on for 3 seconds and off for 25 seconds and have it connected to a lamp timer for prime sunshine… yet the circulation pump does very little work because it is merely circulating and not lifting or pressurizing water… you can find very inexpensive pumps in Harbor Freight.

Take the collectors down and blow out all the water during freezing periods or if you have an air pump set your system so you can purge the water with the pressurized air and the sun will dry what you miss.

Hope this makes sense… if not let me know and I’ll clear up any questions you may have.

[glockmail]

My grandpap used to have 150' of black rubber hose that he'd toss over the roof, connected to a flower watering head that hung off the side. When we came back from the beach he'd simply turn the water on and all us kids would take showers outside with our suits still on. The first one in would fry and the last would freeze. Then we's all have steamed clams and corn on the cob, along with whatever was ripe in the garden.

Man those were great days.

[Classact]

I used to burn waste motor oil in an old fuel oil furnace that heated my machinery barn in Upstate NY. I blended it with kerosene to get the thing started, and had a copper coil that ran around the furnace to heat the waste oil, lowering its viscosity, and a manual valve to switch to straight waste after a few minutes. I put an little add on the bulletin board at work that I would take used oil, and after a week got enough to heat for a year..

I got my idea form this web site http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel_...earth/me8.html If you go to their home page there is a wealth of information for homebrews... they are also affiliated with a discussion board that sends out a daily listing of threads on questions on Alternative Energy... I subscribe to the newsletter and read it daily... the group is a yahoo group with the name wastewatts if you or others are interested...

You're probaly wrong about not needing a permit to install the solar hot water heater though. In NC we are under the IBC which requires it for modifications to your system. When you sell your house you will be required to sign a disclosure form and state that work done was with a permit

You're probally right that it is a good idea to check for permits in our free nation for everything you do... don't want anyone to get in trouble with the government or their insurance company.

My grandpap used to have 150' of black rubber hose that he'd toss over the roof, connected to a flower watering head that hung off the side. When we came back from the beach he'd simply turn the water on and all us kids would take showers outside with our suits still on. The first one in would fry and the last would freeze. Then we's all have steamed clams and corn on the cob, along with whatever was ripe in the garden.

Man those were great days.

I bought an 11 acre plot in Hoke county NC just outside of Ft. Bragg when I was stationed there and had about a mile of cheap black plastic one inch hose laying on top of the ground to use for irrigation... I had to use it in the morning before sun up or the boiling water would kill everything.

I had a fishing buddy that had a trailor at the beach and he set up a 55 gallon drum on stilts and painted it black... he put a commode cutoff valve to fill it and a shower head on the bottom sitting over a little concrete platform... the water was toasty but not too hot for an end to a funky day of deep sea fishing before going into the trailor to cook up the catch of the day.

[Mr. P]

I bought an 11 acre plot in Hoke county NC just outside of Ft. Bragg

AIRBORNE!!

[glockmail]

...I had a fishing buddy that had a trailor at the beach and he set up a 55 gallon drum on stilts and painted it black... he put a commode cutoff valve to fill it and a shower head on the bottom sitting over a little concrete platform... the water was toasty but not too hot for an end to a funky day of deep sea fishing before going into the trailor to cook up the catch of the day.

Gotta love the redneck shower!

[actsnoblemartin]

brilliant, how did you come up with such a cool idea

I built a simple solar hot water heater for my home from mostly junk... I sold the idea to Back Home Magazine, a magazine that is based on homestead living in North Carolina... The system is really simple and not too costly in comparrison to a commercial solar hot water system... Also you don't need many plumbing skills or any permits... if anyone is interested simply reply and I'll explain the system.

I'm also in the process of finishing off my waste motor oil fired boiler that will run a homemade three HP steam engine to run a permanent magnet generator for charging solar battery bank when the sun or wind doesn't quite do the job.

Waste motor oil burns quite clean and is environmentally friendly... I get mine free and the same system can use waste cooking oil and could be adapted for home heating... If you are interested I will be happy to provide details and links to sources for research. It took me a few trials and errors but I can turn an old hot water heater tank glowing orange with my oil burner and the smoke coming out is less than from burning wood. Let me know.

[Classact]

AIRBORNE!!

All the way sir!

brilliant, how did you come up with such a cool idea

In the 70's I was really into solar energy and Jimmy Carter was prez and was pumping up alternative energy... that was one of the few agreements I had with him... anyway I joined a solar energy club on base that was a joint Army - Air Force club and we had some higher ranks in the club... our club invited a professor from CA to come to Fayetteville Technical College with the promise that ever club member would take the course... The professor was great and the course was great and the club prospered until re-assignments sent us to the four winds... Inspired by the course I built a passive-active solar home on the 11 acre plot... it was a two story post and beam construction made from the wood I traded for lumber from my land... and when I say "I built" I mean I built it on free time and with a little help from my beer drinking friends... took a couple years and cost a little over $20,000... I had it appraised before going to Germany shortly after it was completed for $77,000... I divorced after leaving Germany and gave the house and land to my X to seal the break... Didn't even go back to pick up my brand new 4WD Ford Diesel tractor and implements... love gone bad really sucks!

[kowalskil]

I built a simple solar hot water heater for my home from mostly junk...

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About 20 years ago I built a solar cooker. It was a wooden box of about 2 ft by 2 feet and 7 inches tall. It was covered with two layers of glass. It was used to bake cookies (2-3 hrs on a sunny winter day) and to prepare frankfurters. This was done for fun; no one would buy such an improvisation. The secret was to make sure hot air does not escape easily.