Homemade Solar Water Heater

Welcome to new topic of www.solar-city.net . In this topic I’m going to put my homemade solar water heater in your hands. Wish you will find it helpful. First thing to know is that the total budget of my solar water heater was 460$. It was a simple design to see if I can take my shower with solar energy

Work Theory :
When we fill the tank with water we also fill the tubes as shown on figure so water can make free move through them.
When water heated it makes natural move upwards as its density decreases.



Inside the tank I fixed a coil .
The two ends of the coil were made to get out of the tank .
Cold water enters from one end and we get hot water from the other end.
The heat exchanging happens between the cold water inside the coil and hot water outside the coil (in the tank )






A black surface heats up quickly.
So I used eight black tubes to heat the water inside them .
Each one of these tubes is opened from one side witch is connected to the thermal store tank.



Assembly on Solid works ( CAD Program )

Ok. Now I’m going to talk about each part :1- Tubes
2- Thermal Storage Tank
3- Insulating Tank
4- The Coil
5- The Carriers
6- Solar Collector
7- Fittings
Let’s get started
-Tubes
I cut two long tubes of 2 inches diameter to 8 pieces
Each piece is 1.5 m long and blocked one side of each piece and I gave the tubes a black color to absorb high amount of heat.(the 8 tubes shown on the right figure)

I welded screwed cylinder to each tube in order to be able to fit it with the tank
.



(Orange circle on the left figure )






- Thermal storage tank










It is made of steel sheets .
It was rounded to form the shape of the tank then welded and as you can see before welding I made rounded holes (where the tubes will be ) then I welded small screwed cylinders in order to be able to fit tubes with the cylinders.
The tank then was covered from inside and
outside with some material to avoid
corrosion as shown on the figure .






- Isolate tank


For isolating the thermal storage tank I used
fiber glass layers in order to try stopping heat transfer by convection, conduction or radiation.

- The coil

 It is 15 m long copper coil.
Outer diameter 0.5 Inches .
Inner diameter 0.3 Inches .
It was rounded as a helical shape with desired diameter to enter the tank (400mm Diameter)
Why I used a copper coil ?
Cause copper has good thermal characteristics
It works as heat exchanger between Hot water inside the tank and the Cold water comes from the outside
By the way >>this is me in the picture





- Carriers
The tank is carried by Two Stands one of them is shown in the figure.











- Solar Collector
As we see the eight tubes are connected to the thermal storage tank .
The collector was made of wood and covered with aluminum sheets to reflect sun rays.



The solar collector was fixed by the two rods as shown on the right figure.



About the angel and position to fit the collector it changes from place to another so I’m going to make a topic telling you how to find the perfect angel and direction of your solar device .



Then I covered the house with glass and
insulated it well from all sides in order to
avoid losing heat by convection.








- Fittings 

After I were sure that there is no Leaking in the tank . The cover was then insulated using fiber glass like the other sides of the tank .

In the next topic I’m going to talk about measurements and results . I’m going to show you how it is effective and now I’m going to have my shower.

Thank you and wish you interest my homemade solar water heater ^_^
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