Simple solar themal

[Joeboy]

I built small extremely basic versions on a ship when working in the med. It brought the small vol of water I used as a test up to too hot to touch very quickly indeed. It was a tygon tube close S'd and fixed onto an aluminium plate and spray painted black, water trickled in the top and collected from bottom. I love these styles of system, about as simple as you can get.

[Moxi]

The one I had was just vacuum tubes without the copper pipe in the centre, they say in to the collector tank at the top through neoprene seals and convection of the water in the tubes was the heat diffusion mechanism. That was in Warrington and we regularly saw minus 2 to 6 in winter but the tank and tubes never froze - in fact on a sun zero sunny day you could watch steam rising from the vent pipe as the tank rapidly got up to temperature.

Only reason I never bought a new one for here was the kids and the risk of glass breakage at ground level but a great piece of kit every bit as easy to use as photo voltaic panels and for folk with pools etc an absolute bonus. Almost fit and forget.

Moxi