A solar water heater (often referred to as a collector) is simply an indispensable assistant, which has recently been increasingly used in a summer house. Collectors of the required size, as well as designs, are capable of providing warm or hot water to an entire family, which consists of several people, while saving hundreds, and sometimes thousands, of rubles that go to electricity and other energy resources.
If on your summer cottage there is still no gas and electricity, and heating the water for the hosts presents a number of certain difficulties, then you should make a solar collector do it yourself.
Step 1. First you need to find a faulty refrigerator, or rather, you need its main coil, which will be fixed on the back wall of a makeshift collector.
Step 2 After the coil has been successfully dismantled, it must be very thoroughly washed with a stream of ordinary water in order to completely get rid of the “layer” of freon.
Step 3 After this, it is necessary to stock up on slats, which in the future will be used for the manufacture of the frame itself. Still need an old rug, which is laid under the front door. It will definitely be necessary to use glass. Moreover, it is not necessary to buy glass - for example, you can dismantle it from an old unnecessarily window frame. They can often be found near houses - so they are stacked after replacing with plastic or metal-plastic windows.
Step 4 If necessary, cut the mat to the required size. In most cases, the rugs are much larger than necessary. But from the rails it is already necessary to create a frame, but taking into account that the coil itself can freely fit between the rails themselves. Then you need to choose a place for fastening the coil with the rug. After that, it is important to correctly and competently mark the place of cuts under the outlet for the tubes. After that, the lower rack of the frame is installed, and a foil is laid between the frame and the rug.
Step 5 After that, the structure is covered with glass, and we also glue along all the perimeter with ordinary adhesive tape.
Homemade solar collector can be considered ready. For the best quality heating, all the sun's rays must necessarily fall directly onto the surface of your home-made collector at a right angle. That is why it is necessary to complete the work by fixing all the supporting elements of this design.
Circulation occurs solely as a result of natural convection. It is important to note that when heated, the water inside the collector expands and becomes not so dense, rises up the collector and already through the pipe it enters the upper region of the battery tank. As a result of this, cooler water located in the bottom of the tank itself is displaced, and also flows into the lower area of the collector through the second pipe. Thus, water circulates.