my black pipe solar water heater

xymox · 07-29-11, 02:11 PM

I had a bunch of 1 inch black pipe laying around so I thought I would make something fun for the kids to shower up with outside cause Im sick of bending over the tub to wash hair. Its more fun to hose them off, only problem is water gets really hot and need to let it cool down first.

I bought an old water heater for 25 bucks and mounted this whole thing on top of my little flatbed trailer so I could pull it round the yard to where I needed it. At first I tried to make it a full thermosyphon set up but thermosyphon was way to slow and most of the heat was wasted. I ened up using a differential thermal controller and a 120 volt pump to force it into the tank when it should. THen I relaized that my coil has over 30 gallons of water in it alone(more than enough) so I disconnected the water heater and just used the water in the hose. At 8 foot diameter, this thing is picking up about 3000 watts of thermal energy, It can recoup heat from 55 to 120 in about 35 minutes so I think thats pretty good.

Heres the differential controller I initially built using arduino to turn pump on etc. let me know if anybody needs code.

07-29-11, 02:11 PM	#1
xymox Lurking Renovator Join Date: Jul 2011 Location: sturgeon bay, wi Posts: 8 Thanks: 0 Thanked 0 Times in 0 Posts	my black pipe solar water heater I had a bunch of 1 inch black pipe laying around so I thought I would make something fun for the kids to shower up with outside cause Im sick of bending over the tub to wash hair. Its more fun to hose them off, only problem is water gets really hot and need to let it cool down first. I bought an old water heater for 25 bucks and mounted this whole thing on top of my little flatbed trailer so I could pull it round the yard to where I needed it. At first I tried to make it a full thermosyphon set up but thermosyphon was way to slow and most of the heat was wasted. I ened up using a differential thermal controller and a 120 volt pump to force it into the tank when it should. THen I relaized that my coil has over 30 gallons of water in it alone(more than enough) so I disconnected the water heater and just used the water in the hose. At 8 foot diameter, this thing is picking up about 3000 watts of thermal energy, It can recoup heat from 55 to 120 in about 35 minutes so I think thats pretty good. Heres the differential controller I initially built using arduino to turn pump on etc. let me know if anybody needs code. Last edited by xymox; 07-29-11 at 03:01 PM..