Simple Solar Pleasures; My DIY (Thermal Siphoning) Solar Hot Water Shower System

Simple Solar Pleasures

One of my simple pleasures in life each day is upon waking up, I look forward to my piping hot solar hot water shower! This is a simple DIY method that anyone can build, (using a thermal siphon to circulate the water in the system when it isn't being used in the shower), which can drastically reduce the power consumption of your current hot water system, or give you a completely "off-grid" method to enjoy your hot showers.

I am in Costa Rica, where it is quite sunny (where it works better than necessary), however before you doubt it could work in a more northern climate, I built, and was using a solar hot water system in Canada for a few years. It wasn't a thermal siphoning system (not as efficient), but it worked pretty well, and could have been improved quite a bit. There are many ways to build them, and one can even use an anti-freeze type fluid, with a heat exchanger if you wanted to prevent it from being able to freeze.

The photo to the left is before I painted the whole thing black, but it shows the two main parts. The black part is the heat absorber, and the white part is the tank (which is simply in that shape to also act as a foot to hold the heat absorber at an incline. (you can see the incline better in the following photo)

I'm surprised more people don't build one for themselves. They can be an add-on "pre-heater" to an electric hot water tank system to cut your bill right down. If the water flowing into your electric hot water heater is already hot, then it just has to maintain the temperature, rather than maintain it, plus heat it up in the first place.

How it circulates the water, is that as the sun hits the heat absorber (black part in the above photo), the warming of the water causes the warmer water to rise to the top, pushing it into the tank. The entire absorber & tank is connected in a loop, so when the warmer water rises, cooler water replaces it at the bottom, causing the circulation.

If you are interested in building one yourself, and would like a little guidance, please don't hesitate to shoot me your questions and I would be glad to help!

I have been inspired to freely share all kinds of self empowering information for years now on pages I moderate on facebook, so now that I discovered Steemit, I intend to bring that and more recent information to the community here - and potentially make a bit of income. If you are interested DIY low tech sustainable solutions, I moderate a facebook page called Easy Green Sustainable Solutions, which you can visit at here

• My photos were previously posted by myself, to my Instagram and Facebook pages, and the video is posted on my YouTube page.

Please share the love (^), and any questions or comments you may have below. I'm new around here, so please help steer me in the right direction if I overlook something, and please "follow" and shoot me a message so I may follow you back as well.

Pura Vida! Shahee