self sufficient life

Catching the sun

One freely available green energy source is the sun. It shoots its power-packed rays at the earth every day, all we have to do is catch them and convert that energy into a form that is usable. Solar panels that convert the sunlight into usable electricity cost a lot of money. They do pay off in the long run, but the up-front costs are just too high for us. There are other ways to use solar power though.

I am looking into using the suns power to heat our water. A solar water heater can be home-made for a fraction of the cost of a commercial unit. The design and construction doesn’t require any special knowledge or tools and the materials needed can be bought at any hardware store. What we have to make is a big box, with a glass (or plastic) top that allows the sunrays to enter. The inside of the box is painted black because black absorbs most of the light (and heat!) Sound familiar? What we have is basically a solar oven. Now all we need is to run our waterline through it, so the water can absorb the heat. To give the water passing through the heater time to absorb heat it should flow at a slow rate. We can easily slow down the flow rate by dividing the total flow with a manifold and using a second manifold at the exit to combine the different pipes again.