How to make a solar panel for a solar
shower:
The solar panel
1. Get hold of an old central heating
radiator. Take a look in skips around the streets of your neighbourhood or at
your local tip or recycling centre. This just needs to be an ordinary flat house
radiator.
2. Paint it with black paint.
3. Get hold of some fibreglass loft
insulation or old emersion tank lagging. You will probably be able to find these
dumped in skips too.
4. Put the insulation or lagging into
the bottom a box made out of wood. The box needs to fit the size of your
radiator, with a wooden bottom and sides about 20 to 30 cm deep.
5. Place you black radiator on the
insulation inside your box and attach a piece of glass or clear plastic on the
top of the box.
Similar solar panels cost more than
1000. You have just made you solar panel for free!
Your panel will heat about 12 litres
of water for every square meter of panel. If the radiator that you started with
was 1 meter by 2 meters, that’s 24 litres of hot water per day.
The hot water tank
1. Get hold of a something that will
be your tank. The best thing is an old insulated hot water tank saved from a
skip.
2. Your tank needs to be mounted
about 1 meter above your solar panel.
3. Connect a tube, hose or pipe from
the bottom of the tank to the bottom of the panel. This is also where you need
to connect a tap or a shower head.
4. Take a tube, hose or pipe from top
of the tank to the top of the panel.
5. Add water and sun.
The cold water from the tank will
sink to the bottom of the panel, as the sun shines and heats it, it will rise go
into the top of the tank, the cycle repeats meaning that no pump is required.
At the end of the day, when you feel
most sweaty and dirty, the water will be ready for your shower. Enjoy!
