Solar Thermalsyphon water heater

[TylerDurden]

Hot water is soooooo nice.

Even nicer when the "hot" is free (so to speak).

Good on ya for lookin out for mum.

[Jay64]

Yeah, I felt bad living over 4,000 miles away and not being able to help her with that. Glad to finally get it finished. It is all free from now on at least. Her neighbor said she wants to pay me to come and build her one as well. It will cover the cost of flying out there and the build material, and then I can do some more work for my mom while I'm out there.

[Jay64]

Oh, and I found out that her electric is about 38 cents/kwh, so this will pay itself off in no time.

[Harold in CR]

Not a bad price right here. $59.00 Free shipping
Link

[Jay64]

Thanks for the link. That would be perfect for putting one of these systems up on a roof.

[Samd]

I've often thought of using those hardware store aluminium premade fence panels for a diagonal crossflow unit. Aluminium has about 2/3 the thermal conductivity of copper from memory, and I think the holes usually go right thru where each bar meets the long rails...

For the cheaper prefab cost, just make it 33 percent larger than the corresponding copper one...

6478k0h_20.jpeg (68.59 KiB) Viewed 503 times

[Jay64]

You might be able to find one damaged at the store and get it for a big discount just to test it out to make sure it flows through OK.

[Samd]

Worst case it wouldn't be hard to drill the bars out thru the end rails, and put another cap along the rails (could be insulated while you are at it).

Have been thinking of burying a few of these about 500mm down in my yard for summer ground tube cooling also....

[amberwolf]

Just a warning about those sorts of things--most of the ones I have found as scrap and recycled for the parts have not had any holes in the upper/lower main rails, and the verticals are just basically tack welded to them (sometimes fully welded along two sides, but rarely all around each end). Most of the ones I've dealt with were steel, but a couple were aluminum, and made the same way. So take a good close look at them before you buy.

[Jay64]

Yeah, that is definitely why you would want to get a very cheap one to test and check out. Don't pay full price for something that might not work at all.

[Samd]

I guess using them for hot water would be a much higher pressure/risk than if they were buried in the ground and used at low pressure for cooling circuits....

[Jay64]

One of my mom's renters is a retired plumber. He saw how I made the one for my mom and now he wants to try and make one for the house he is in. I heard bits and pieces of his plan relayed to me by my mom, so I don't know if I got all the details. But it sounds like he is planning on using a roll of copper tubing instead of copper pipe. The idea is to not have so much soldering to do. I will check out his design the next time I go back and report how it is.

[dnmun]

copper is expensive, soft copper tubing is the worst. it may be useful to watch the local ads for a used panel. that would be a lot cheaper.

[Jay64]

I think that is according to everybody.

[spinningmagnets]

Here's all the technical info you'll ever need. Copper is expensive these days, if using PEX, you only need to make it a little bigger to have the same effect. Great project Jay!

http://www.builditsolar.com/Projects/WaterHeating/water_heating.htm

[Jay64]

Apparently the post that my comment above was referring to was removed. So now my comment looks out of place. Ha ha.