cheap hot water ( in the southern hemisphere ) i think

[bobanne]

i didnt believe it when i saw it but this guy Aaron in adelaide south australia took me up on his roof and showed me a home brew hws. Using 2 old sliding door pieces of glass, 4 lengths of 3/4" black plastic pipe going the height of the glass and 2 "manifold" type end pieces, plus 2 off 44 gallon drums well insulated and believe it or not a drill to reposition this "cell" to the sun has all the hot water he needs ( oh if there werent 2 females in the house )and hasnt had to pay for hot water in a couple of years, its got to be the simplest system i have ever seen. Dont get me wrong this is no answer for everyone but if you dont have $$$ but a bit of junk lying around and have the need a lot can be done, ie necessity is really thr mother of invention. I may try this myself.

Bob

[nothing to lose]

" ( oh if there werent 2 females in the house )"

Just run alot more pipe in the sun and use a larger storage system

 Often nothing is wrong with discarded hot water tanks other than sediment (flushes out) and the burner or element. I bleach them well with alot of clorox to purify them. I pay $3-$6 for scrap tanks at the salvage yard. I also get alot of good pipe fittings cheap this way too! Plastic, copper, brass, lots of good stuff

Place one or more tanks anywhere before your main tank. The more the better, but at least one works real good. Well water and even city water is cold comming out of the ground, so pipe that into a tank above ground to stand, it will warm in the air and take less energy to heat right there, big savings! Take off the insulation from this first tank/s, you want to loose the cold and gain the heat here.

That one (or more) is at the water source. Run from that one into water lines to the roof or up the south wall (sun side if you want vertical pipes) on the roof basically do anything you want with the pipe as long as it's in the sun. Several long runs connected at both ends with a manifold is good. Go as  long as you want or have room for. Take that hot water end and run it down to more tanks, as many as you want, for storage. Keep these well insulated, you want to keep the heat here.

Connect those in series and then into your main tank. The more tanks you have for storage the longer at night you'll have hot water without paying for it. If winter freezing is a problem, then just run all lines verticaly, put a valve at the lowest point to drain the system on each end. When you plumb in the tanks put a couple valves so you can shut off the water to the roof and open the lines to the normal tank for winter. Spring or summer comes just shut off the line to main tank and open roof lines again (after shutting off the drain valves).

That black plastic utility pipe is cheap, depending on size 1/2" or 3/4" it was $15 for 100 foot last time I bought some. Think that was at Lowes, been awhile. It works well as is just tossed on the gound or roof, as long as it's in the sun. The fittings for it are cheap and easy. Plastic barbed fittings, just push them in and screw on a hose clamp. Very easy but check for leaks anyway, I seldom having any leaks but sometimes I do get a drip and I have to retighten the clamp, but not often. Once installed I never have any problems.

Depending what you want to do for moving water, you can use a slow low power  pump to keep it flowing all the time, or just use water durring the day, taking out the hot water from yesterday and flowing in todays hot water. Washing clothes durring the hottest part of the day with hot water helps keep the storage tanks hot plus use less of what is stored at night. Wash the car with hot water also helps and cleans the car better than cold water too. It's free so why not? Watering the lawn (if you do that) would move the water also, but that should be done early morning or evening when the sun is not so hot, so that's probably not a good idea for hot water unless you do it about noon.

This works very well when the sun is hot, it even helps at night if your in a pretty hot area. 90F ambient air is much better than 50F wells

[pisces00797]

This reminds me of something else. I have a drilled well with lots of water. The water temperature from the well is about 42F. It is true that warming this water up before heating it in a hot water tank is an excellent cost saving idea. I also am going to try something else. (haven't done this yet)

If the water coming from the ground is cold ... and the room temperature is warm ... like on a hot summer day ... why couldn't I use this cold water for air conditioning. If I put a pre-hotwater tank in place that holds the cold well water, put a number of copper coils inside it to act as a heat exchanger, pump the coolant water through these coils ... i would have cheap air conditioning. Outdoor woodstove people (urg ... bad system) use heat exhangers on existing furnaces to exchange hot water from their outdoor stove to forced air vents. If I pump this coolant water from my prehotwater tank coils through a water-to-air heat exchanger, I will warm up the water for the hot water tank ... by taking heat out of the house. darn ... would that be all that bad ...

[Ungrounded Lightning Rod]

If the water coming from the ground is cold ... and the room temperature is warm ... like on a hot summer day ... why couldn't I use this cold water for air conditioning.

Should work just fine.

Won't work for me, though.  My well produces water at 72 degrees.  I'd have to pump a LOT to cool - or heat - a house, even though the water temperature is what I'd want the house to stabilize at.  You need a temperature difference to move heat.

[healerenergy]

This is another system I am working on for my  house. if you put heat exchangers in an atic space so the cool air falls and use a drip pan with a drain. I entend to use a closed loop system with a coil in the well I have a well in the back yard with a pump on the falling side. I am also going to use a float valve on the top part of the loop to let the air out the down side will be a larger pipe so it hopefuly won't vacuum the valve open. Im thinking of using auto raidiater for the heat exchangers that I put in the windows.

[JYL]

Actually, it is often done in Canada and in Northern US.  You may purchase branded unit from several manufacturer.  The SEER is often very high -- some 20 to 30 depending on the temperature of the water source.  These units are also pretty cheap (especially if you already have a forced AIR heating system).

Where I live, we are authorize to run a unit up to 3 tons from the City waters inlet.  Funny, the city will ask you to reduce the "water consumption" to a minimum but will authorize this kind of units all summers.

To my knowledge, most unit are in commercial building (store, computer room, etc...)

[Kwazai]

I had seen some solar oven designs that were built on the sides of houses that would be ideal for the heat side using a radiator/condenser coil arrangement. seems like they were in Australia. I had run some rough geothermal calcs and arrived at about 600sqft for coooling a 1200sqft house (deltaT of 20F)- not sure what that would work out to in terms of gal/min from a well though- would expect it to be somewhere in the neighborhood of 4 or 5gal/min from the well.

[nothing to lose]

I think it would work better for cooling if the cold water flowed through some type of radiator system than a heat exchanger in a tank type thing. Beware of lead in various radiators not intended for this use. Auto radiators sound good untill the lead enters the picture. However something like 2 or 3 SAFE radiators like that with a fan blowing the air through them should work nicely to heat water and cool the house, need a drip pan or piping for condensation depending on your humidity there.

 Run the cold line into the front radiator, then to the second then to the third, fan at rear. this way your blowing the hotest air onto the hotest radiator first to pre-cool the air, then to the middle cooler one, then to the coldest one last. You should get the most heat into the water and coldest air this way I would think.

That's how I plan to do mine at this time. Also figure out your water useage and presure tanks size. I plan to add a couple bigger presure tanks to my well. With a well pump starting up more often it probably uses more power than if it started once and ran longer. So my plan is have as much pressurized water as I can, insulated good to hold the cold for the summer cooling. Instead of running a pump to circulate water, figure out where I need water most often and let it drip/trickle to stay full. For instance if I get pigs/chickens/goats etc... sometime again I will need the water for them all the time. Instead of running it all at one time I will set it up as a slow trickle to each location. If I pump 100gal at one time and slowly flow that to the animals durring the day the pump runs once but I have a steady slow flow through the cooling system and also the hot water solar heat system if I pipe hot water. 100gal water is the same rather I pump it fast all at one time to the animals or slowly trickle it all day long.

 I don't want the well pump kicking on every 10 minutes though, so I will add the extra storage. Also for me it's nice because the animals will probably be downhill from the house. I had alot of animals once, have not decided yet if I am getting more this year or not.

I would be piping mine into the solar water lines to the roof. If washing clothes, taking showers etc.. durring the day that also keeps the water flowing cold into the coolling system and the days sun heated water into the hot storage tanks. With high humidity around here I do sometimes take a shower in the middle of the hot days to cool off and get rid of the stickies from working outside. Then I go outside and get all dirty again

[nothing to lose]

"Where I live, we are authorize to run a unit up to 3 tons from the City waters inlet.  Funny, the city will ask you to reduce the "water consumption" to a minimum but will authorize this kind of units all summers."

 Depending what the electric conditions are for the city, maybe it's a ballance in savings here?

Run normal airconditionaires eat tons of electric, use to much the city has to pay higher peak rates for all of it. Cool with water, save electric, keeps the lower off peak rates, city comes out ahead in the long run. May cost less to process the extra water/sewage than to pay the peak electric higher rates?

 Save water, don't wash the car, don't water the lawn, don't wash clothes or takes baths, those things don't save the city any electric when your using water for them.

Don't know if that could be the case where your at, but I know some places in the USA have to pay higher prices for all electric used in a time period based on the peak rates used. So if the peak usage shoots too high durring the day they still pay those high rates on the lower usage at night also. I never paid that much attention to it to know exactly how it works and it may vary in different places too of course.

 But the rates are based on the peak for the time period, and I don't know if that's figured peak for the day, or month or whatever. But it gets costly when it happens.

[Kwazai]

the best water heaters to find are the ones which have a tank designed for gas and were used as electric- the tanks are usually the part that causes a need for replacement on the gas heaters. 'gas' tank is usually thicker than the electric tank. the element usually goes on the electric ones and people replace the elements until the tank leaks. the electric tanks are thin.

An automotive air condidtioning condenser coil is usally aluminum and a lot cleaner than a car radiator is (avoiding the lead problem, and the corrosion)

I gained this info from recycling some of this stuff- the code requirements usually prohibit people from putting used parts in under contract work (plumbers,electricians, etc.) and I was getting short pieces of cooper pipe an what looked like good brass pressure relief vales, etc. for solar stuff from people who were having to pay to dispose of it. My recycling (other than traveling time) was netting about 2.50/hr in addition to providing 'high efficiency' heat exchangers and pieces parts for projects.......

[picmacmillan]

hi pisces ..i have read that even ice can only keep something 40 deg. farenheit, so i would be guessing here, but i don't think you could get the pipe to release a reasonable amount of colder air for a number of reasons, one being, how much surface are of cold water pipe you have, distance of pipe etc..i have read the ice story here about someone who tried to keep things frozen by making an ice cellar....just my 2 cents pickster

[pyrocasto]

You could keep it frozen, as long as the ice isnt only 30 or so degrees. My freezer stays at 2 deggrees F so my ice last much longer, and gets my drinks colder.

You could do like my Chemistry teacher, and freeze your ice with liquid nitrogen. His ice stays frozen all day long, but so will his drink if he pours the cup full. He has to pour and sip, pour and sip.

[nothing to lose]

"i have read that even ice can only keep something 40 deg. farenheit"

Could be, but funny things happen. If you put salt on ice it melts, but salt and ice will freeze water

 Probably everyone knows that, kinda like making ice cream with rock salt and ice I geuss.

I remember long ago some goofey friends I had used to do that at restarunts with glass glasses, not sure if the plastic ones would work.

They get a glass of ice water, it gets the sweat ring under and round the bottom of the glass, dump in some salt and stir. Ask the waitress for more water and laugh when she could not pick up the glass, it was froze to the table.

Not really a good thing to do, once a glass broke and the waitress cut her hand, luckily not bad. I think they stopped doing it after that.