Solar Water Heater?

Sneakinup · 10-24-2003, 05:35 PM

Anyone ever see one of these? I believe it is custom made. It is on the top of my trailer, with a pump located in the wardrobe closet connected in to the hot water line. I disconnected it. I didn't think there would be enough water in those lines to make a difference. I could be wrong.

Thoughts? Opinions?

http://www.six55.com/AS/solar.htm

I posted the link because for some reason I can't get pictures to upload in to my posts. Must be something I am doing wrong!

John · 10-24-2003, 05:44 PM

I'd try it 1st before tossing it.

You may be able to get a quick rinse out of it or even enough to wash your dishes while dry camping.

It looks like a dry camping device.

Sneakinup · 10-24-2003, 06:54 PM

The weird thing is that there is a 110v pump located in the closet next to the bathroom. Maybe it is for pumping the initial water supply up there for solar heating.

**wahoonc** · 10-24-2003, 07:02 PM

We used to have one kind of like that...ours was made out of a piece of old tractor innertube that had been sealed shut on the ends. We laid it up on top of the camper. You would pump water into it with a pticher pump then shut the valve off. By late afternoon on a good sunny day you would have about 5 gallons of HOT! water. If you were careful you could get a decent shower out of it

'Course on a really hot day you could go jump in the pond to cool off, so who needed the shower

Wonder if the one you have there works as a thermo siphon system?
Aaron

John · 10-24-2003, 07:02 PM

But you'd think that it would work off of your 12V's and the water supplied from the holding tank????

Interesting anyways, maybe someone knows something.

But it sure looks like a one-of-a-kind!!

Sneakinup · 10-24-2003, 07:14 PM

Tomorrow I will take a picture of the pump set up and post that.

Right now my trailer has no hot water heater. I tore out the old rusted one, and vaguely remember this roof contraption being connected to it somehow. All the plumbing is still all there. When I get ready to put in a new HW heater I will look in to reconstructing it.

Actually, I believe the line up to the roof was from the cold water line, and the return was obviously in to the hot water line after the HW heater. That would make sense.

69Ambassador · 10-24-2003, 07:35 PM

Sneakinup:
I tried a similar setup using garden tubing to help with heating the pool. I wasn't able to get very much in the way of efficiency from it though. It seems that there needed to be much more exposure time to the sun in order to adequately heat the water. It may do something since the volume of water in the AS is less that the volume in a swimming pump.

wahoonc:
I'll have to remember the inner tube idea. Here in Arizona, we're big on sun, short on ponds. Sounds like a great way to have a late afternoon 'HOT' shower.

Sneakinup · 10-24-2003, 08:16 PM

This would probably work here in the hot Florida sun. I will have to pump some water up in to it one day and see what happens. My trailer sits on the side of my house and that plumbing setup pretty much bakes in the sun all day. I know that when I go to use my garden hose after it has been laying out all day, that it flows quite hot for a while, hence the idea of this setup.

I just wonder how much water that piping actually holds. I suppose there is a formula for figuring it out based on the length and ID of the piping. It would be interesting to know.

I believe it is half inch pipe. 9 revolutions of pipe, outer diameter at about 20-22" based on its relation to the vent, approx. 1/2" between layers... 3, carry the 1, x=z+6, hmmmm. Ok, I'm out! Maybe I should ask my son. He is the math whiz!