A Homemade Solar Water Heater
(Page 3 of 4)
September/October 1979
By William J. Weber
After that job was done, we laid the $45 copper collector sheet on a level concrete surface (so the heated material wouldn't warp) and brazed the manifold to this backing. Then we put the pipe-to-sheet assembly in its wood and Styrofoam frame bed, soldered the supply, discharge and relief valve lines in place, and topped the finished structure with the six awning windows.
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A Trying Moment
To test the airtightness of our manifold, we plugged the collector's intake line, attached a garden hose to the top outflow opening, and trickled water into the pipeworks until air quit coming through the relief valve outlet. Then we tightened up the release mechanism, opened up the hose spigot and let 'er have it!
Sixty pounds of water pressure rushed into our lines. The pipes held for about ten minutes, then a small trickle started running down the collector, so we drained the conduit and resoldered the leaky seal. We left the equipment under pressure all night for its second test, and — thank goodness — when we examined our "sun catcher" the next morning, not one drop of H20 had escaped.
Hot Times
The last construction steps were to paint the collector sheet and manifold flat black, coat the exposed wood with a protective oil-based covering, set the water heater in place (at a 45 degree angle), attach the storage tank and rig up our outdoor shower.
That was that. For about $160 in materials, we'd built a solar heater that now gives my whole family an abundant supply of free hot water. (In fact, we actually had to add a cold water line to our shower stall to keep from getting scalded on especially sunny Florida days!)
Now I'll admit that our fresh air facility does look kind of silly perched by itself on the side of a hill, but we're all as blissful as bluebirds over our outdoor showers. After all, it may take us more than two summers to finish our house, but we're enjoying the pleasures of sunheated bathing right now!
EDITOR'S NOTE: While we congratulate Bill for his clever design, and acknowledge that Mr. Weber's homemade water heater is perfectly suited to his family's needs, we should also add that his device won't be appropriate for everyone because there's no feature in Bill's collector to keep the water in his pipes from freezing! Since such a mishap would obviously damage the unit, any folks who want to copy William's ideas, yet live in colder climates than the Floridian enjoys, should include some method of preserving their pipes.
