Mother's In-Line Collector

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Start by cutting the Thermax to match the width of your 1 X 12, and securing the foam board to the wood with panel adhesive. Then carve two grooves—down the length of the insulation—about 1/4" deep and 6 inches apart on center. (The angled knives described on page 103 of MOTHER NO. 47 will do a very clean job of cutting foam insulation, but a sharp utility knife will do the trick.)

Now set the base aside and pull out the printing plates. Using your tinsnips, trim the sheets into fins that are roughly 5-1/2" X 6". You'll need eight times as many of these fins as your collector is long (in feet) ... minus eight, to leave space at each end. (That works out to 72 for a 10' unit.) Once all the BTU-catchers are trimmed to size, form an indentation along the 6" dimension in the middle of each one. A fin press, such as the one described on page 96 of MOTHER NO. 61, will make this job a snap. ([EDITOR'S NOTE: Back issues are available for $3.00 per copy plus $1.00 shipping and handling per order fromTHE MOTHER EARTH NEWS®, P.O. Box 70,Hendersonville, North Carolina 28791.]

With that done, lay out the lengthwise copper tubes on your workbench, and ar range the fins above and below the pipes. Then just move down the line, stapling the upper and lower aluminum plates together as you go. After the staples are in place, grab your torch and solder, and link the two elbows and the 6" hard copper crosspiece to the long tubes ... to complete the "innards" of your collector. Just lay the assembly into the grooves in the Thermax, paint the whole thing flat black, and you're ready to begin attaching the cover.

GLAZING

In the course of building numerous solar projects, our crew has become quite fond of corrugated translucent fiberglass. The material is easy to work with, strong, and inexpensive . . . and it can be sealed with caulk. Therefore, we elected to cut out wooden end pieces that would match the corrugations of the glazing and allow us to simply wrap the fiberglass around the collector. Use a section of the cor rugated glazing to trace the appropriate curve on two 4-1/2" pieces of 1 X 12. Then just trim out the shaped pieces of wood with a saber saw.

One of the two end pieces will have to be drilled, to provide an opening through which the collector tubes can pass. Bore the 3/4" holes 2 inches above the base of the end board and 6 inches apart (on center). Then fasten each rippled board in place with No. 10 X 2" wood screws.

Glazing the In-Line Collector begins by laying the sheet of corrugated material on the assembly (so that the bends in the fiberglass match the ripples of the end boards) and trimming it to size. (When you cut the glazing with your utility knife, we recommend that you leave about half an inch of overlap at both the sides and the ends ... to provide a lip for the silicone sealant.)

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