A Simple Solar-Heated Shower

Enlarge Image Image Gallery PHOTOS BY DIKE MASON

Is it possible to use the sun to do useful household chores at latitudes north of Toronto, Canada? Of course! And if our experience in building and using the simple solar-heated shower (shown here) on an island off the coast of Maine is any indication, it's not only possible . . . but practical, economical, fun, and a great subject of cocktail party conversation too!

This, by the way, is no ordinary solar-heated shower either. This is our family's incredible Mark IV Model . . . and it incorporates a number of subtle improvements over its predecessors. (The Mark I—merely a black tank of water with no "greenhouse" over it—didn't warm up enough to be worthwhile. The Mark II did have a greenhouse and got so hot that the pressure of its contents burst the tank. We thought we'd taken our concept as far as it could go with our Mark III design, which had a heavy-duty storage tank, greenhouse, and insulation. As it turned out, though, the world just isn't ready yet for the sheer genius of that model: It worked so well that it scalded the first guest who used it. The detuned Mark IV, though—which is basically the Mark III without insulation—seems just about right.)

You should be able to find everything you'll need for the fabrication of this water heater at your friendly neighborhood dump or secondhand store (see the accompanying drawing). We soldered the hanger straps (two pieces of galvanized iron, each one inch wide and two to three feet long) to the bottom of our heater's tank and bent them so they'd hang over our cabin's ridge-pole and catch two headless nails on the other side.

Next, we punched the two holes in the left side of the tank and soldered 3/4" galvanized couplings over them. The two 3/4" galvanized iron nipples (each 6" long) were then installed with their 90° elbows (which "aim" the pipes coming out of the tank down toward the shut-off valve and shower below).

The open-ended standpipe, which comes out of the cold water inlet line right at the elbow and which then extends about 6" above the top of the water heater's tank, is the system's "pressure relief device". Crude, but when used properly, nothing more complicated or sophisticated is needed.