Homemade Solar Water Heater

Today we are going to see three different ways to create a homemade solar water heater, both the version of 100% recycled materials, to supply our home with hot water, and two others based on materials that we will have to buy (if we do not have them at home).

Homemade Solar Water Heater Free With Pet Bottles

Let’s look at this example first. A couple of decades ago, José Alano, a retired Brazilian mechanic, was inspired to collect used plastic (PET) bottles and milk cartons to develop a simple solar water heating system, a cheap and efficient home solar heater. Anyone could build.
The Ecologist dedicates a great article to him telling his story:

Seeing that in their small town of Tubaro there is no infrastructure to recycle containers and feeling unable to throw all those containers in the trash, Alano and his wife soon found themselves with a room full of empty milk bottles and cartons.

Using their ingenuity and experience with solar collectors, he and his wife built an alternative version using 100 used PET bottles and 100 milk cartons. The prototype worked perfectly, while they responsibly gave a new life to all that waste.

Since the invention of this solar heater back in 2002, Alano has not stopped spreading this idea in Brazil through conferences and workshops in neighborhood communities and schools. Local entities, the media, and even electricity companies have collaborated in disseminating this magnificent practice. The exact figures are not known, although Alano mentions some:

More than 7,000 people are already benefiting from these self-built collectors (DIY) in the state of Santa Catarina alone. There are already two cooperatives, one in Tubaro and the other in Florianopolis, the latter of which has produced 437 collectors to be installed in town halls. In the state of Paran, the number of collectors installed in 2008 was 6,000, thanks to workshops and brochures distributed among the population.

What is most impressive is hearing how Alano describes himself:

I do not consider myself an inventor, but a simple citizen who tries to find solutions to problems.

How To Make A Solar Water Heater With Bottles

Let’s see what are the basic materials needed:

The 100mm PVC pipe is used as a mold and the bottom of the bottles is cut out. The 20 mm PVC pipe is cut into 10 x 20 x 1m and 8.5 cm pieces and assembled with the T connectors. The cardboards are cut and painted in a matte black tone, as well as the one-meter long pipes. . And they are assembled.

The panels of the home solar heater must be placed at least 30 cm below the tank and be located to the south, in the northern hemisphere, and to the north in the southern hemisphere, on a wall or roof.

To optimize heat absorption, panels should be mounted at the angle of your latitude, plus 10. This varies depending on the geographic area where it is installed.

PET bottles are replaced every 5 years or when they have been breached due to being outdoors and the cardboard is only re-painted, with all this described, it is only necessary to give us a weekend to assemble it and have an alley of these characteristics so peculiar.

How To Make A Solar Pool Water Heater

Let’s look at our second example of how to make a homemade solar heater for a small pool. It is something simple and not very expensive, so let’s see a step-by-step tutorial on how to do it.

The first thing is to understand what we are going to do. We will remove it with a bypass so that part of the water from the filtering circuit, once it has been filtered, is directed towards a secondary circuit where we will install our heater, as seen in the diagram below.

To build the homemade solar heater we will need the following:

The process is to first make a frame with the 120 cm x 120 cm plywood, paint it black, mark the center and drill a hole the size of our pipe, in one of the corners we will make another hole the same size.

Then we introduce the pipe through it and begin to draw circles as much as we can to then remove the pipe through the center of the frame, we fix once we have all the pipes in place the entrance and exit we will place an elbow to make it simpler.

We connect the lower part to the derivation that we previously placed with its stopcock after the chlorinator and finally we will put a section of pipe from the center of the heater to the pool.

As an improvement, we could place a glass or polycarbonate on the frame to gain a few more degrees, the frame must be placed at an angle of 45 degrees or the one corresponding to the geographical area in which we live.

A simple trick to calculate the angle of the sun is to use the same angle of the parallel where we live, that is if we live in the 37th parallel then we put it at 37 degrees from the ground.

The system would manage to heat the pool only a few degrees more than we usually have. But because of how cheap and simple this homemade solar water heater is, it’s worth it.

On a sunny day with this system, it is possible to raise the water temperature of this pool to about 14,000 liters from 18 to 22.

Thanks to Rob for building and sharing this material with all of us and showing us that you can heat water using a black hose rolled up and exposed to the sun.

How To Make A Small And Portable Homemade Solar Water Heater

Now let’s look at the third type of home solar water heater, in this case, a small and portable one.

Heating water to the sun is relatively simple and we get good results when we keep it exposed to the sun for several hours.

The ideal temperature for shower water is 35 to 40 degrees Celsius, which can easily be achieved by exposing a black hose filled with water to the sun. That is why we will explain to you how to make a homemade portable solar water heater step by step.

Materials To Make Our Portable Hose Water Heater

To make our homemade solar heater that works perfectly with the heat we get from the sun’s rays, we will only need:

They may seem like a lot of materials, but most of them are the ones we usually already have in our home workshop, at least those of us who are DIY enthusiasts and do it yourself.

Assembling Our Portable Home Solar Heater Step By Step

1. First step. On the board, draw two lines joining the vertices of the square. From the central point of the board towards the corners, make marks every 2.5 cm. Finally, at each point of the lines, the 3 mm diameter drill bit or auger passes, leaving the last 5 or 6 marks undrilled.
2. Second step. Cut the four corners of the board 4 cm from the hole closest to the vertex.
3. Third step. Begin rolling the rubber hose over the board, leaving a 12-inch free end. Passing the wire through the holes you will sew the hose.
4. Fourth step. In its back part, you install a fastening system. To do this, prepare a frame with four 60 cm long slats. Screw another 60 cm strip to the board, since it is very thin. Fix the tabletop and the frame with a hinge. To fix the inclination of the device you can join the leg and the homemade solar heater, at the bottom, with a strong cord or a wire hook.
5. Fifth step. At the ends of the homemade solar heater hose, install two cut-off keys or unions. The inner end of the hose will be where the water will enter, and at the other end, you can place a tap on it since that will be where the water will come out.

How The Portable Water Heater Works

In the schematic section of the drawing, you can see how the sun’s rays are absorbed by the black hose snail and heat the water inside. The circle shows an enlarged detail of the operation.

There is also the possibility of making the heater with a copper pipe painted black. In that case, the system is the same, with the difference that copper retains heat longer.

In this video, you can see perfectly how to make the portable solar water heater with some variations, but with copper instead of a plastic hose.