Dear Mother: February/March 2007
Letters from our readers
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For more than 30 years, Mother Earth News has been writing about how to tap the sun for free solar heat. Check out our latest article, "Build a Simple Solar Heater."
GARY REYSA
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February/March 2007 Issue #220
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30 Years of Free Solar Heat
My late grandmother was fond of saying, “There’s nothing new under the sun except the people.” This came to mind when I read “Build a Simple Solar Heater” (December/January 2007). My grandfather had a nice little beach house on the coast of New Jersey, where the family spent time each summer. We constantly clogged the bathtub drain with sand when we came back from the beach, so my grandfather built an outside shower, but the water was cold.
Then he built a simple wooden box that lay on the ground behind the shower, its inside painted black, with copper pipe running back and forth through it, covered with a couple of old storm windows. We could then mix in hot water from his solar heater and take a warm shower to rinse off the sand.
Thirty-some years later, when my son was in high school and wanted a larger bedroom, we finished the basement. It was cool in the winter as the carpet was on top of a cement floor. There was an energy shortage in the ’70s, Uncle Sam was offering a tax cut for alternative heating sources, and I remembered my grandfather’s water heater. So I designed and built my own solar heater, similar to the one in your article.
I used a 2-by-8 frame with a plywood back and painted it all white inside. To collect heat, I used lengths of dark brown aluminum downspout. I built what looked like a ladder, with two long vertical rails and as many “rungs” as would fit. I cut holes in the rails for the rungs and cut the rung ends at parallel 45 degree angles. I stacked the rungs with alternating angles, so that each one opened into the one above it. Air passing from bottom to top had to go through all the rungs, a circuitous route of about 40 feet. I covered the frame with a piece of polycarbonate. It looked somewhat like frosted glass, but sunlight passed right through.
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