Hot Water for the Homestead
(Page 2 of 5)
January/February 1974
James B. DeKorne
Construction materials for our new luxury were no problem. We live on the edge of a national forest where, every year, crews with chain saws thin out the smaller trees so that the remaining timber can grow to a marketable size. These thinnings are left where they fall to eventually rot back into the forest floor. They're free for the taking, and, if gathered while still green, make fine log-cabin-type buildings. An axe, a chain saw and a copy of Bradford Angier's book How To Build Your Home In the Woods were all I needed to put up a 10' x 12' bathhouse.
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Flagstones for the building's floor were gathered in a nearby quarry, and a friend who was remodeling his old house donated a 1940-vintage bathtub to the cause. All we lacked was the water heater. Since (for all the obvious reasons) gas or electric devices were out of the question, our choice was between a solar collector or a wood-burning unit. Back then, in the summer of 1972, 1 didn't know enough about the former method to feel very confident of the results, and felt that a wood-burner looked like the most practical solution.
At that point I thought back many years to when I'd lived in Mexico for a short time and my rented house had contained a commercially made wood-burning water heater. Was that unit a rare old relic of Mexico's past, I wondered, or was the same thing still available? I passed on my question to a friend who was making a brief trip south of the border, and, sure enough, within a few weeks he drove up with an honest-to-gosh, wood-fired hot water heater lashed to the top of his VW microbus.
On a subsequent trip to Mexico, I found that such devices are for sale in just about every hardware store for the equivalent of around $20.00. My own model is a Calentador Corona, Modelo L.R. 47 made by Calentadores Corona, S.A., Murillo 49, Mixcoac, D.F. Mexico. We find it an excellent product: Four or five small sticks of wood in its firebox will heat 30 gallons of water to near boiling in fifteen minutes.
At present the water supply for our Corona is a 55-gallon drum (Fig. 1) mounted on the roof of our root cellar (to which the bathhouse is attached). The stored liquid flows down to the heater through plastic pipe, which is available in most hardware and building supply stores, and ridiculously simple to assemble. When we eventually get our wind pump and tank erected, however, water will be piped directly to the bathhouse, eliminating the need for the overhead tank. (How soon we're corrupted by soft living! Already we find it an odious task to haul water and fill the barrel.)
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