How to make a solar panel for a solar shower from junk in just ten easy steps....

Similar solar panels cost more than ?1000 and are between 90% and 95% efficient.  Ours will cost you nothing.   Its about 50% efficient, but that is still good enough to make piping hot water even in the UK. 

Just follow our simple step by step instructions and you could be the proud owner of  a solar panel that can make gallons of hot water per day for free!

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.
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At the end of the day, when you feel most sweaty and dirty, the water will be ready for your shower.  Enjoy!

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Comments (9) >>

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adewale said:

need free the step by step on how to build a solar panel

March 09, 2007

ALan said:

I made a solar panel like this for my pool heated th ewater very well but there was a lot of rust in the water from insode the radiator anyone got any ideas how to stop that.

April 18, 2007

adewale said:

For the rust in the water try this: Scrape all the rust from inside the radiator conductors and paint it with Rustoleum or something similar. I had the same problem a while back.

April 30, 2007

cazarupt said:

this is cool. Ill try it

July 12, 2007

name said:

A link to the type of radiator that you're refering to would help. If it's one meter by two meters it's nothing that I'm familiar with.

August 30, 2007

Dan said:

Instead of using a radiator, you can spend a couple of dollars (or find it) and buy copper tubing. After bending the copper into rows (with a U turn at the end of each) paint it black. This will likely be far more efficient and clean then the radiator. If you are using this for a pool, I dont know what the pool chemicals would do to copper, but for potable water copper tubing is awesome. You can also insert this between your water supply and your water heater, as the incoming water will be pre-heated dramatically reducing the water heater requiring the other source. As most of the energy is getting water from 50-60 degrees to 110-130. If you increase the temperature of incoming water to 100 or 120 degrees, your heating requirement starts to approach zero depending how/when you use your hot water.

September 13, 2007

Alan said:

Many thanks for this, and cheers to Dan for outlining the copper pipe system. It sounds simple to build, and a wonderful way to keep bills down. I wonder if the hot water could be used to make electricity? Perhaps using a Stirling Engine?

September 21, 2007

bernard said:

this is really stupid. it doesn't work, and I wouldn't try it if I were you. I mean hey, who has old radiators laying around their neighborhood, tell me that!

December 02, 2007

Mal Funkshun said:

Bernard is wrong, knows nothing, is no fun, lonely and has no friends!

May 12, 2008

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