Make a Solar Thermal Water Heater for Less Than $5
by Jasmin Malik Chua, Jersey City, USA on 08.29.07
All you need is legal access to a junkyard (or dump) to plunder parts such as the grill on the back of a refrigerator, some wood for the frame, a pane of glass, and a discarded rubber door mat. Yeah, eat your heart out, MacGyver.
This first-prize winner of our TreeHugger/Popular Science/Instructables Go Green contest also used duct tape to seal cracks, rather than the more-expensive caulk. The only thing he purchased new was a $3.76 air-pump hose from an aquarium store, because he already had the screws he needed on hand.
Our winner managed to heat a 5 gallon bucket of cold water to 170 degrees Fahrenheit on a day that averaged 76 degrees, thanks to some frugal ingenuity, gravity, and that big flaming ball in the sky. Learn how by following his step-by-step instructions. ::Instructables
This sounds like it really needs a mixing valve or tempering valve not to mention a temperature/pressure relief valve!
I would think a batch heater would be just as cheap and effective.
I made my home made water heater with large diameter copper pipe and many 90 degree elbows to loop everything back around over and over, but this was back when copper wasn't so expensive.
Mine is made of 500 feet of 1/2 inch diameter black plastic irrigation tubing wound in a coil about 6 feet by 8 feet. My son and I wound it on a "t" shape piece of wood and had to tie it in place with string until the shape could "set". It produces about 1 qt/min and I am thinking of adding on another 500 foot coil to double the rate. It feeds into the base of a 48 quart cooler and then when that cooler is filled, into another cooler placed on top of it. The coolers have 1/2 inch diameter spigots at the base so all I use is a 1/2 inch plastic connector between the coil and the cooler. The water is fed in from a regular water pipe with an irrigation adaptor. I adjust the flow rate according to the sound of the water flowing through the valve.
It is my "grown up" toy.
adrianakau@aol.com
When you remove that heat exchanger from the fridge you release the freon, but I'm guessing in most cases its either already leaked out, or will after it sits and deteriorates a bit more.
How would one go about finding local dumps/junkyards that provide access?