DIY Solar Hot Water heater attempt #1
- Filed under: Solar Power and Off-Grid Living
- Date: Jun 17,2008
Now that my sister has a little bit of Solar Power in her off-grid house, my next mission is to get them water.
A couple of summers ago they got a rain water collector that catches the rain that comes off the roof, but it froze and cracked in the winter because it wasn’t drained.
I figure that if I put the water collector UNDERGROUND, below the frost line, it will not freeze. Once there’s some sort of underground tank, with a pump that will bring up the water when they turn on the faucet, I have a working source of water. I would like to heat this water.
Solar Hot water heaters are not the same thing as solar panels at ALL. Solar panels generate electricity, where as solar hot water heaters make liquid flow through pipes and/or hoses that are placed in direct sunlight. It’s the same effect as when you turn on your garden hose that has been sitting in the sun for the last couple of hours. The water comes out scalding hot ! Basically you circulate water through the solar panel and back into the hot water tank. Every time that the water circulates it comes back a little (or a lot) hotter and increases the temperature of the entire tank. From then on it’s regular plumbing from the hot water tank to the sink and shower. (Although in this case, there IS NO shower at all)
I’m not ready to get too much into this, but I should mention that when you pump water directly through the solar hot water heaters, this is not a winter friendly setup and the water will freeze in cold environments. Winter friendly hot water heaters pump a kind of anti-freeze liquid through the solar hot water panels. The piping containing this liquid goes THROUGH (or around) the hot water tank and heats the water by transferring the heat from the hot pipe to the water tank. This setup it a little ahead of what i’m willing to try and will not go into it further.
For the sake of experimenting, I went out and bought 30 feet of tiny plastic food grade tubing. I needed a pump to make the water go from my water bucket, through the plastic tubing, and back into the bucket. I first tried a pet store and looked at the water pumps they had there, but they were all 120 volt pumps and I needed a 12 volt pump. So I went to Canadian Tire and found a 12 volt Windshield Washer Fluid Pump that I thought would do the trick nicely.
I was partially right, the pump was able to push the water through the 30 feet of tubing just fine, and it’s 12 volts so it’s perfect. Then I made the mistake of reading the instructions. “Do not turn on the pump for more than 5 SECONDS at a time, and wait 20 seconds between using it in order to not have the pump overheat. Major bummer. I ran it for 5 minutes and stopped it. Still worked. I did this a couple of more times, and it stopped working. Oh well. I will return the pump to the store I guess. (It was only $20)
For the brief period I got to use it, the water WAS in fact coming out warmer than it was going in. (Just barely) I assume it would work MUCH better once the tubing is setup in the right enclosure (I need MUCH more tubing that’s for sure) and once I have a proper pump !
Although this attempt was a small one, it helped me understand the concept of heating water with the sun, and definitely showed me what kind of pump NOT to get. Thomas Edison said it best when he said “If I find 10,000 ways something won’t work, I haven’t failed. I am not discouraged, because every wrong attempt discarded is another step forward.” I learned that saying a long time ago when I was a child, and it is practically my moto in life. Learning something that doesn’t work to achieve your goal is just as important as learning things that DO work.
Please stay tuned for my future attempts at this with a new pump, more tubing, and a REAL enclosure.
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