How to make a solar water heater

A solar water heater utilizes the heat from the sun in order to create warm water. If you want to build your own solar water heater, here are some basic considerations for you. Typical solar water heaters consist of heat collectors and water storage areas. The heat collector is placed in an area of abundant sunlight which it collects and uses to heat the water.

Collectors can be as simple as black sheet metal attached to tubing, and duly insulated to keep the heat in. The black color allows for more heat absorption and also provides additional insulation. Another way of collecting heat could be a concave mirror that concentrates the sun's rays on a certain point. The collected rays can be focused on the water collector in order to heat the water contained therein. Choosing the method of collecting sunlight for heating would depend primarily on the availability of sunlight in your area.

The next component of a solar water heater involves circulating and pumping the heated water for general use. Consider heating small amounts of water at a time since large amounts of water would take longer time to heat up. Once the water contained in the heat collector has reached an optimum temperature, it is usually pumped into larger storage areas where it can then be used.

Pumping the heated water from collector to storage can be done in two ways: utilizing active methods or using passive methods. The passive method does not involve the use of electrical pumps which would require additional power. One passive method of circulating heated water involves convection. The principle of convection can create natural pumps since hot water rises. A typical configuration would involve having the heated water from the collector flow up to the storage tank while the cooled water would flow down to the collector due to gravity. In this way, the water temperature in the storage tank remains constant.

Active systems utilize pumps in order to circulate the heated water from storage to collector. In this setup, the collector can be located above the water storage tank. Setting this up involves a temperature sensor in the storage tank that is directly connected to the pump. Once the temperature in the storage drops below a certain threshold, the pump is activated in order to move hot water from the collector to the storage tank to maintain the temperature.

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