Solar Hot Water Panel

Solar panels can come in two varieties. One will push air through its exchanger in the panel and warm up the air and the second will push a liquid, like water, through it and warm the water.

A solar how water panel normally fails into the second variety. Simple because it is more effective to heat water if you want hot water, then to heat air and then try to warm water with it.

Therefore, the building of the solar hot water panel is just a tad more critical as you will probably have water running through it under pressure. We will have to take a few more critical steps to ensure we do not have a compromising situation with leaks or possible frost damage.

But the overall design is actually quite simple and extremely effective. The trick is to capture as much of the solar heat energy as possible by the solar hot water panel as possible.

This will mean that we will want the box itself to reflect as much heat energy to the piping system within the box and the piping to absorb as much of that heat as possible.

With careful planning and design, it’s not unreasonable for water to enter the panel cool and exit fairly warm.

Upon hunting around for information on the Internet, I discovered that even though this may be a simple device, there is a lot of ways to mess it up. I did read the if you decide to build your own solar hot water panel, here are some suggestions:

• Make sure you do use a top cover of standard glass. Not Plexiglas. Glass will better pass through the solar energy, but not let the heat inside the box escape.
• Make sure that the inside of the box is coated with reflective material. A simple suggestions is cooking tin foil.
• Try to air seal the inside of the box as much as possible. Like double pane windows, you want to keep the heat trapped inside.

If you’ve done your job right, you can get water that comes out of the solar hot water panel that is quite hot. 

Once you’ve completed your design you can attach it to either a direct system – the water that passes through the solar panel is the water that you are using.

Or you can is a closed design, where the water that passes through the solar panel circulates to a heat exchanger where it releases it’s heat in the water that is consumed and then is re-circulated back to the solar hot water panel.

One advantage of a closed design is we can have a more flexible design. You can use a smaller solar panel, because the heat is being stored in the heat exchanger and is available when needed.

If you design upon a do-it-yourself technique to try your very own solar hot water panel, make sure you seek out some good literature before attempting to build it. It could very well save you some grief!

Click Here for the DIY Solar Hot Water Heater Guide