Solar Water Heater
I've started looking at Solar Water heating as a project for my In-laws to be.
Long story short, they are temporarily moving into a caravan in their field
whilst their building project comes to fruition. Being resonably isolated for
Gas and mains electricity, they are keen to use green alternatives.
We found a book called "Solar Water Heating, A DIY Guide" by Paul Trimby which
contains plans for building exactly that. They dont look to hard to build, and
with some electronics thrown in I'm keen to have a go at building one.
The original plans for the "Solar Controller", the pump drive system ran on 240v
mains power, so a few modifications were needed for it to run from a 12v
source, and to drive a 12v water pump (instead of the 240v one they used).
The controller is a simple thermostat which has to temperature probes, one in
the solar panel and one in the water tank. When the temperature in the solar
panels is hotter than the hot water tank the pump is activated to circulate the
hot water, until the temperatures swap back the other way and it's then
switched off.
The plans indicate that a 4M2 Solar panel could provide up to 1200kWh
of energy a year, which when you're stuck in a field with no power is way
better than nothing!
I've built the prototype based on the plans found in the book mentioned above,
and you can see my plans and diagrams on the next page.
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