Anyone interested in Making a Solar Water Collector

air

Hi there,
I recently came across this article on making your own solar water collector for helping to reduce your hot water costs:
Mother Earth News - Home Made Factory Solar Collector .

While the article isnt bad, the parts list is a bit vague and I was wondering if anyone would be interested in contributing such that we could come up with a parts list with Irish sources and eventually end up with a config that could be easily put together by anyone reasonably handy.

To kick things off, I'm stumped as to where one would acquire the following:

1. End Frame Rails
2. Fintube risers?
3. An irish source for the solar glazing material? Perhaps toughend glass would be ok.
4. 1/8" X 3/4" X 3' aluminum angle supports - I dont know of any decent suppliers of this kind of hardware
5. Thurmalox black solar collector paint


On the positive side the following items should be easy to find:
1. Hardboard backing - Any hardware shop
2. Foil backed foam - Kingspan insulation is cheaply available in 8x4 sheets
and would do the job nicely.

Anyway if people are willing to help out with sourcing bits, I'll buy the parts piece by piece and hopefully end up with a step by step construction thread
showing how to put it together.

ednwireland

i remember a holiday flat that we used to rent as akid and the guy had made aolar water heating panels from 2 old radiators painted matt black in from with a matt black background with an old window over the top he reckoned that it had no problem heating his water in the summer. must admit even
CAT(center for alternative technology) in wales didn't have info on this and they used to be great bodgers. in fact they'd be worth contacting, sort of info they might have.

air

Found another link with some further information.
http://www.bigginhill.co.uk/solar.htm
I'm starting to think a wooden frame would be the way to go, I could machine in the necessary grooves etc on a table saw pretty easily.
I'm sure if treated with an appropriate paint / preservative it would be reasonably long lasting.

air

Upon further investgation I've found that there's a chinese water heater available that is hopefully cheap enough to not make it worthwhile to make a heater.http://www.made-in-china.com/user/?com_id=zA0NzIyM&for=prod&prod_id=jAwMDIyMDYwM

Apparently its available in the UK for £335 +VAT from
Sustainable Technology Ltd

Tel: 01622 843068

Khannie

You going ahead with the purchase of that heater air?

Let us know how you get on. I'd defo be interested in one of these too. Cheap as chips.

List price on that page says $300. Does the £335 + vat include delivery?

air

LOL, no I think I'll wait & buy a house first
I got the price off a lad from a Yahoo forum in the UK so I dont think it would include delivery.
However the price is certainly excellent and the quality is well up there as well apparently.
It would certainly be nice to get one for $300, even 400 euro or so would be a steal.

I'm hoping to buy a house that is oriented suitably to use one of these.