Grid Runner Adventures

Every invention is the effect of a need. The portable solar water heater was brought on by a need (or a want I haven’t figured that out yet) to have warm/hot water on my Caneoing the inside passage trip spring 2009.

I started out with 20 ft of 1/4 inch copper tubing. You can get these very cheaply from a fridge water kit. What you do is grab a hold of the last 8 inches or so and start wrapping it around a circular object laying flat on the table/workbench. Keep on going until you reach the end.

Once you have the coil ready to go, you are set to take measurements for your tray. I purchased a sheet of polystyrene from lowes for

13 dollars when I built my previous solar collector so I had this laying around for use on this project as well. You need to measure the thickness of your wood and the foam board factored in to get total height /width of the tray you will be making. Inside dimensions need not be any more then what the copper coil will fit into. Use a spade bit large enough for the copper tubing to fit through and measure where the tail ends of the copper coil will fall through and drill these spots out.

You are now ready to paint the tray flat black (do not use any

high gloss here) so just coat it up and let it dry. while you are waiting for this to dry you can move onto the fun part – Carbon Blacking! To accomplish this I built a popcan stove. In the stove I am burning 91% iso alcohol to create a carbon soot on the copper coil. [caption id="attachment_148" align="alignright" width="300" caption="Tall Flame!"][/caption]

That is pretty much all that is required to do carbon blacking! no expensive equipment required. The next item on the bill is the collector array. this cost 2-4 dollars for a roll of 10 inch sheet metal flashing from lowes.

so without further hesitation…
With all 4 collector panels finished all i had to do was drill holes and pop rivet brass hinges to them and screw the hinges onto the collector tray.

Some notes that I did not document steps on:
I used a lexan sheet instead of glass for this unit because it is for portable use. I did not want to worry about breaking glass on the trail/sea. This unit is ready for testing at this point.

I will be powering this collector with a solar powered water pump from www.harborfreight.com as far as water storage.. I have my eye’s set on a pop up ice chest I found online. This was a really fun project and I cannot wait to try it out in real world conditions!