Working at Last
If lack of beauty is a sin I am a sinner when DIY. But you can always do it prettier.
The thing is that it works it is mainly done with scrap and it supplies hot or warm water to bath and washing.
Air is easily heated by the sun, easier to transport, and ducts are made with waste. Ventilators are everywhere.
Exchanging heat is also very easy with a radiator.
Let's see the pictures, I think they are self explained.
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this picture is an improvement to an old one. Here, the water pump is an Aquarium air pump that simply "bubbles" into the rising hot water.
I tried before with just gravity, result: Really Hot Water (60 Celsius), but slow flow.
If you dont believe this works, try blowing with a straw into a 1/2" pipe filled with water. Here you don´t need gallons per minute.
Dimensions:
solar panel: 3.6m2
tank:120lt
ventilator: one 11w 220v + four 1w 12v pc fans
radiator: from car air heater
The Panel
For the panel I used the very roof of my house, it is 0.3mm iron, zinc coated, painted with ordinary black spray (no glow)
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You can see my roof, and the wooden structure to climb easily with the big and heavy 1m2 glasses.
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All glued with silicone. Quite heavy to do it all alone, just my dog watching.
"Mano! Porque estás täo longe?"
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as you can see I glued the glass to the roof. Now I think It would have been easier to do the complete box and put it up. It was cheaper this way.
I also made holes in the metalic roof to allow the air to flow up and down.
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This box is closed, air circulates in a closed loop. This way you avoid condensation.
I have no pictures on the inside, it is a wooden box, witch rear panel looks like this:
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In This Panel I made 2 holes 10x10cm and put this in and out made of thin metalic plate:
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The Turbo
This is the second turbo I made. The first one was with a radiator I took out from
a propane water heater.
Now you'll see the 5 blower and radiator that makes the heart of this:
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This radiator I found in a car junk (10 bucks), it must be from the heating system.
I first proved to see if it had losses. It can surely handle 1.5m of water pressure,
but you cannot connect it to regular domestic water pressure.
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4 12v Fans from Computer Power Supplies, they are easy to find, low wattage, can be connected to a Photovoltaic Solar Panel.
I also had an old fan 220v, 11watt. I put all these inside a box, like this
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This is the air pump connection, a needle into the rubber pipe. It can only be done
if you have no pressure in your tank.
This air pump is the ones used in aquarium and can't do more than 1m of water pressure. So it must be inserted no more than 1m above the water lever.
I was surprised to see how much water it pushes. you must also have an opening on the top of the tank.
I could have done some other pipe inside the turbo to heat this air before joining
it to the water, but air is only 1/800 of water density....
The Thermostat
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this is a transformed thermostat from a clothes iron, It goes inside the hot air box. I can even regulate the starting temperature. You would laugh if you saw it.
And that's it, I have no calculations of how many watts I am taking from the sun,
but in sunny days the water gets pretty hot. Now autumm has started And I still have
hot showers in the night. In the morning the temperature of the water in the tank is
almost enough to shower(35 Celsius more or less), but the house is colder, so I prefer to
shower at night. In cloudy days it only warms the water.
This house has lots of solar light as you see in the first photo, and it has another
solar panel to heat the floor: a typical panel with copper pipes. Now that I
confirmed that this system works I will improve this panel with a radiator and a
4.5m2 air panel.
In deed I started thinking of this air to water system because inside this solar to
floor panel the air heats a lot even if the water comes out only warm. I think most
of the losses are due to the hot air. In an air to water system you keep the air
temperature lower.
Another advantage is that the whole water system is far from the outside, thus it
will never freeze.
I hope you understood my english.
Thanks for the comments to my first posting, last year when I was thinking of this.
Hope you enjoy it, and helps you doing something like this. Make comments.
Paulo
"One day the sun will extinguish, make your solar panel today"
Blatant size violations on your photos. If it had not been an interesting post, I would have just killed it rather than spend 15 minutes of my time removing them. 20 photos all over 100K is just plain ridiculous.
