Thread: Home made Part time solar hot water

Sounds reasonable to me.

Good idea, as long as you are using the hot water during the day.

A friend of mine had an outdoor hot tub - simply circulated the water through multiple coils of black poly pipe by natural convection, Didn't require any additional heating at all.

Roger

As said above, it would only help if you are using the water during sunny weather.
if your system is mains pressure, there may be a drop in the flow rate because of the extra pipe.
I hate to say it, but it would really only provide a few litres of hot water each time, then the pipes would cool, and the water going into the heater would be only slightly warmer than the supply.
you really need the water to be constantly circulating to keep taking the heat away as it flows through the system.


Fraser

what if I was to use 20 to 30 meter of 1" polly pipe (maybe a roll still coiled up), dont know how to work the volume of the pipe out but it must be a bit. I reckon a shower would only use 30- 40L of hot water
have to think some more but I think it may have some merit.
cheers
blaze

Originally Posted by bblaze

what if I was to use 20 to 30 meter of 1" polly pipe (maybe a roll still coiled up), dont know how to work the volume of the pipe out but it must be a bit. I reckon a shower would only use 30- 40L of hot water
have to think some more but I think it may have some merit.
cheers
blaze

See post #4 this thread.

Roger

30 mts of 1" poly would hold a bit under 15 lts. would be better if you could circulate a larger qty of water during the heat of the day and store that to feed your mains system. The idea has a few issues to be resolved, but a good concept.

Paul

if you can get a clean one....

put an lpg tank horizontally on the roof.

set it up like a convection tank with your coil of copper or mains rated poly pipe.

Feed the cold water in at the bottom and the hot water out at the top of the tank.

Or just install a solar hot water system.