Thanks so much for the detailed work and preparation to create this masterpiece. It's truly a work of art in addition to its functionality. I'll be able to use it well into the fall. Proud owner of a late night woodworker product!
I want to do this for my pool, but I'm wondering if 120°F going back into my pool?.. I'm thinking it's way too hot. But then again my pool is roughly 25,000 gal.
@@nwkwok Make sure that you empty the entire hose when the season is over, because else legionela bacteria might grow and they can kill you. And what i do before each season is fill a bucket with water and household clorine, and pump that through the hose in a closed loop for an hour to make sure every possible bacteria is dead.
All new users (or any user for that matter) of a solar heater need to be very careful when turning the heater on after it has heated up if not done in the morning. The hot water that was sitting still in the heater tubes WILL scald your hand or anybody in the pool that's near the outlet. It will be scalding hot for about 2 minutes.
I think I would have put the acrylic in a frame with hinges instead of screwing it directly to the frame if you ever have to get inside for any reason you have to take all them screws out
The issue with cutting tall wood like that has more to do with some pieces that would warp due to improper drying or structural reasons. Half height cut works but you can also try what's known as a contractor's flip. Though I am not sure if you would have the clearance for a long piece like that.
@@whereswaldo5740 Yup…gloves are kinda scary using a table saw but to his defense, he did have a push stick not that you mentioned that) and his video was well thought out and the end result is awesome.
To greatly improve this, you should not use a continuous coil. You really want to use a manifold for the entrance and exit with parallel small diameter tubes connecting the manifolds. This way every tube starts with water at the current pool temp... thus the greatest heat transfer rate.
Do you think I will benefit by building 3 three by 4 Solar panels or should I build one 4 by six Asking this question for 2 reasons I may have To move them according to the sun due to trees is not in the same place all day unfortunately also storage?
Cool project. When building a heater like this to heat a pool, do not focus on maximum output temperature, but instead focus on transporting as much heat energy as you can from the sun to the pool. Using two coils in parallel instead of one super long coil will decrease resistance and thereby increase the flow, you will heat up the pool faster, even if the temperature difference between input and output is only a few degrees. That is because more energy is transferred this way. Also beware that this solar heater can overheat when it is not in use and the tubes might melt, depending on the materials used.
Yup! Exactly why I did 2 separate 100 ft coils on 42"x48" pc of black plywood. I'm doing it for fall swimming. Our pool is already 82-88° IN JULY SND august. Trying to extend the kids swim season up here in maskachussetts 😂
Yes - we decided to go with a different pump because the water was originally coming out too slow (which is why it got so hot). Now it is ~95 degrees and comes out faster (which in turn, heats up the jacuzzi better as well).
I'm sorry to have to say this but, you make the most common mistakes of the DIY crowd and a lot of professionals too! You could easily but maybe not inexpensively but expensive can pay back faster, increase your efficiency and output by anywhere from 50% - ~100%. You make the same mistakes the pop-can solar air heaters do, so I'll try to explain so everyone can understand what makes a good solar collector and heater! There are just 4 things to remember when designing and building any solar heater: 1) heat will always flow to cold, never the opposite direction 2) the colour "black" absorbs the most amount of thermal radiation 3) the thinner a material is, the faster it conducts heat from one side to the other 4) every substance has a different ability to transmit heat know as Thermal Conductivity The biggest problem with designs for solar collectors is understand where and in what direction the heat is going to flow and trying to bare in mind where we want that heat to flow to. In this case, we want to collect solar heat radiation and transmit that heat to a volume of water. We know that the colour black absorbs the greatest range of Infrared Radiation, so anything we want to heat up, should be painted black but only those surfaces that we want to heat up, not any surface that is not in touch with the water, because once radiation strikes a black surface other than the solar conductor, that heat is lost and can never help to heat the water. The interior and exterior of the cabinet should never be painted black because every IR photon that strikes is absorbed and can do nothing to heat the water, which is what we are trying to do here. By painting the cabinet black you are encouraging the enclosure to become heated and dried out and that is a fire hazard, under the wrong conditions. The only thing that should be painted black is the solar collector tube. The enclosure should be lined with aluminum foil to reflect any arrant heat photons and send them back to the collector and keep them bouncing back and forth until they do get absorbed where we want them to be, in the water we want to heat. You use a PVC plastic pipe as your solar heat collector which is already black so you don't have to paint it and although it may be convenient work with, if you are doing all this work you might as well make it pay for itself, even if it cost a little bit more, you'll have the improvements forever. The Thermal conductivity of PVC plastic is about 0.25 W/mK, where as the thermal conductivity of copper is about 401 W/mK, or you could say that a copper pipe would transfer heat to water, 1604 times faster than the PVC pipe you are using. Which means that with a copper pipe collector you can get 1604 times more heat and since solar energy tends to be intermittent when it is there at all, it is important to take full advantage when it is! There are various ways to build a solar collector but if you use soft copper tubing, you can probably get it already in a coil so you don't even need to fight with it. If you made your solar collector from soft copper and painted it with a solar absorbent paint designed for maximum absorption (or just flat black works too) and lined you cabinet with aluminum foil you could produce a great deal more hot water. The temperature increase of the water is less important than the amount of water heated but bare in mind you only have about one Kilowatt of heat / square meter, at Noon, when the Sun is directly over head, on a perfectly clear day, at the Equator and only the surface of the copper pipe facing the Sun can collect heat... There really isn't much there to work with, so we have to maximize our return if it is going to be worthwhile in the long run. Good Luck! and I hope this will help the DIYs out there to get even more enjoyment out of their projects! Go for it!
Was the 80-120 increase from a. Single pass through the tubing or from running it all day? Ive been researching to see if this is feasible for a car wash to cut down on water heating costs
pretty good and cheap approach, i did the same like 15 years ago using the black Gardena 1/2" plastic hoses from the microdrip system .. i bought 800 meters in 16 coils, i connected 4 flat coils in series and 4 of those strings in parallel to get a higher flow rate) on the roof of my garden hut, without any box around it. Unfortunately the wind fuzzed them up quite a bit when i had them emptied during the winter. I was thinking also of a boxed version, but never found the time to really build it .. i got stuck in thinking about which materials i should use, that i wanted to be waterproof but couldn't decide on the right material. This set of uncovered coils was bringing my water from 20 to 40 degrees in full sun in summer. Hint for creating the spiral: The trick that i found to get the flat spiral perfect and with least effort and without making a mess is: Keep the hose in its natural spiraling when it is delivered in a coil, put it onto the surface and then just pull it ring by ring into the flat spiral you desire.
nope, you need to ride the chair with the roll around the panel then. What i did was put the roll in the middle and then start to connect the pipe to the panel little by little and then just turn the roll with it.
I built this system for an added heat source for my electric w/heater, problems immediately showed where the kinks in the hose popped under the heat of the sun due to thermal expansion, NOTE" even copper pipe will "boiloff" if the water is not constantly modifying temp by re-circulation....expensive mistake going cheep
NICE JOB, GOOD MAN!!! It shows being determined pays off and was fun to watch too. Good editing and not showing every split second of making this. But overall you accomplished your goal.
The gloss reflects light and heat you really want the top cover to be "translucent" this way it does not reflect, I built 4 by 8 foot panels back in the 1970s and got 180 degree water.
@@daveparker839 Dave glass will reflect anybody knows in a solar water system you use translucent cover so it does not reflect rather absorb more. Translucent..difusser
Great video ! I've build something similar years ago but made one mistake. It was way too big so I couldn't handle it anymore. Eventually I had to cut it to pieces. Now, a new project similar to this is planned for the coming summer. This time much smaller individual panels that will be combined. I used garden hose (reinforced) from Gardena. After the summer you can buy these real cheap with lots of discount. It's easier to make sharp bend and it doens't fold as easy as the back tubing. With a simple microcontroller and a valve (recycled from a washing machine) you can slow down or stop the water flow when it gets late afternoon. The amount of water in the circuit will then slower get warmer and after a minute or so you can let it flow in a reservoir or so to accumulate. This worked out fine for me.
While absolutely enjoying this build, I’m sitting here and wondering how much hotter this could get if you’d make it Gas tight and replace the inside air with CO2.
How is the water flowing through the hose? Is there a pump that pumps water from the pool through hose? If so, what kind of pump did you use? Thank you
I've done several of these panels for my pool. Best thing I've found is a lazy suzan that I put right in the middle and just uncoil the tubbing from there. As you get close to the center you can unspool some extra pull the lazy suzan out of the middle.
I love how he included all the mistakes he made so that we can all avoid from And learn from those! A lot of people just want to ‘look cool’ on youtube! Thanks so much for keepin it real!!!!
Hm interesting idea. I can't quite imagine how that would work but I'm probably not understanding what you're meaning. But yes, there were probably a million ways I could have uncoiled the tubing better hah.
@@nwkwok Just like is working with thick cables or optic fibre street installation,yo need to pass an horizontal pole or thick metal tube thru the coil as an axle in order to revolve the coil as you pull the end ,so the plastic tube will not twist.
Great build. I'd love to know how this is going 6 months later. Any gotchas or things you'd have done differently? I expect there may be some issues, do you get condensation on the blocking sunlight?
Oh I built this for a friend so I'm not quite sure actually. His name Is Jim Lee and he was one of the first comments on this post if you want to ask him :)
@@nwkwok I'm now watching your video for the 3rd time, and I'm very impressed. I'm thinking about building something like this. Your opensource idea is cutting edge stuff!
@@jameshart678 Thanks so much! I really cant take credit for it though - lots of people have built these before me and I'm grateful for the content they created I was able to learn from as well :)
You'd be recalling correctly ;P I wasn't able to test this prior to delivering this to my friend. He did do some testing of his own but unfortunately do have these #s. I do know that he needed to get a little bit of a stronger pump, which reduced the temperature of the output by 10ish degrees but it worked plenty good for the size of their jacuzzi! :]
Thanks for all the encouragement through the whole process and helping to answer all my questions! There were some moments where I had some serious doubts and was grateful for your support in the process :).
for the sake of your fingers and hands ditch the gloves at the table saw, a friend of mine who was a woodworker for years wore gloves only once and now he lost 2 fingers and the use of his hand otherwise nice job on project
Nice video. Working with this irrigation tubing can be frustrating. I've not used it for this purpose, but for actual irrigation, but you run into the same problem (kinks especially as you try to unfurl from a large roll). A good approach is to unfurl the whole roll across a wide open space (backyard), carefully pulling loops off the coil as you unfurl the whole thing. Then run down the length of the tubing to untwist/unfurl some "memory" from your coil. If I were doing it now, I'd use smaller lengths of tubing in the first place rather a full 500' length. Buy the 500' roll for the price, but then unfurl as described previously and cut it to more manageable sections (maybe 100'), then use common irrigation tubing couplings to attach your sections to create your desired full length. The couplings might slow down your water flow a *little* (if you use the inside-tube/barbed ones) and would make your final coil less "clean" looking, but for me those would be acceptable trade-offs for the reduced frustration of trying to work with/lay down a single 500' tubing length :)
This is great advice. After going through that debacle, I would gladly trade the 'clean' look if it saved me the frustration of dealing with that 500' length... without hesitation haha. Thanks for the input!
@@nwkwok I always leave the tubing out in the sun for about an hour before working with it. This softens it up and lets you shape it to your requirements after which it "sets" in the new shape you have laid it out. At least, this works in the Australian sun. Not sure about other climates.
I've built one of these.The easiest way to get the roll unrolled is to put the new roll in the box,THEN cut the ties that hold it together.Then you are working "with" the natural curves of the pipe and not fighting them.With my first roll i tried running it out over a distance and uncurling it as it was fed into the box.This was frustrating and i still kinked it a few times.With the next roll i did as i said before and it was done in five minutes with no kinks and no swearing:-)
How to stop it from over heating my hot tub? I made one and it got my sauna (hot tub) up from 53 degrees to over 105 and the weather is still only 75 degrees outside. I can manually watch and turn the pump off when the weather gets really hot, but will the water boil in the solar collector? Should I let the water drain out of the tubes when I turn it off? Do you know an inexpensive sensor that will turn the pump off when the tub gets to a certain temperature? Thanks.
Great job. I just completed 80 % of 1 i am making. I didnt make it as big as my yard wont allow that. But i am going to make 2 smaller ones each with 200 hundred feet of irrigation tubing. I was surprised at how easily it kinks to. So i put it on the table next to my project and spun it out. I had to pick it up 3 times to spin it around as well. The stuff is a nightmare. But i am going to add a valve on the feed side of mine to slow the water down. This will give the water more time to absorb the suns energy and come out hotter. I am allso going to use a submersible pump. That way Its independent of the pool filter and much more cost affective. Dont put valve on return side it will pressurize the tubing and cause it to pop. Love your work shop. Are you thinking about selling these ?
Good job buddy. You work too hard. You cut 2X4s in half? Frame on both sides? Do you really need that? Oh my God. Tiewraps? X4 on each loop? There has to be a better way.
Ah - it's a good point. I would probably do something more in depth and thorough if I had access to it myself but I didn't think of these suggestions in the comments until after I delivered it to my friend (who's a little ways out). I think RC Insiders (who has a fantastic build of this video), has some pretty good footage of the pump connection and water flow -- I don't remember if he has exact #s but might be closer to what you're looking for? If you research enough, I do remember watching one made by an engineer who showed all of the data but... twas a little beyond me 😅
@@nwkwok yeah. its hard to see what's what without info. Water came out at 120f. is that constant water going through, what rate? or is it with it sitting on the sun all day, then turn it on and for 1 min you get 120F then goes down to 90? thats the point
Yeah... probably haha. Another idea that came to my mind is cutting the irrigation tubing the length of the frame (minus an inch or two) and use 90 U-connectors. I feel like that'd be 50x faster. The U connectors might waste some space in between but you also wouldn't have to waste empty space in the middle.
I think 2 panels at 250 feet each would be more efficient. Water travel 500 feet won’t be getting any hotter after a certain distance. Also the bottom should be insulated.
For my research it best video I found, must of ppl doing small size, this is excellent size, I need probably 4x of this for my pool, 800cm x 800cm x 1400 cm (deep). Thumbs up, keep doing, GOOD JOB !!!
Hello Nick Thank you for the viedo. I want to do this but the hardest part for me would be building a box. Could I use an aluminum water heater 30" pan? This set up is fantastic. I bet someone could build them and sell them and make a nice profit. Also I want to put the solar pannel on my flat roof patio cover will any pump work? We live in California and limited on space the pool will go between pato and fence with inches to spare. Thank you in advance...
Wow sorry for the delayed response! I don't have the insight to speak to the aluminum water heater 30" pan (though I don't see why not?) but I have seen a couple of videos of people not even using a frame and just mounting it to their roof with good results. The things to consider would be the how powerful the pump is and angles the tubing would be inclined / declined but otherwise, I'd imagine it's doable? What did you end up going with?
Oh -- that's a great point. Though, I'm having a hard time figuring out how I would apply silicone to it since I screwed it in from the top...? Maybe I could have used the silicon as glue as I placed it on top. Hm good to think about for the future.
You used a vaccuum? LOLOL just get a leaf blower man and blow that crap into the lawn ;) in fact it'd keep your workshop dust free also if done regularly!
Haha yeah - if I kept up a clean environment that be great. A blower or air hose on my compressor would kick up a bunch of dust and settle in the frame. Good apologetic for a cleaner space tho!
You could have bought a single solar panel from facebook marketplace for about $100 used and it would have done the same thing. So much labor wasted for this.
id be interested to know whether it's better to paint the frame black, or white/reflective. My thought being that if the frame is black, it's absorbing heat, but you really want the hose to be the hottest part. a reflective enclosure might help the hose absorb reflected heat/light. just a hypothesis, well done!
Ah we didn't exist it to the existing pool pump. There is a pump in the jacuzzi that pumps water out of the jacuzzi, through the water heater and back into the jacuzzi. The water heater is just resting on top of all the pool pump stuff.
I believe his pump was powered by plugging it into an electrical outlet. He was able to get one long that was able to weave around the perimeter of his backyard so it wasn't intrusive. This was placed on the west side of his house
I made a very similar Solar Water Heater for my in ground plunge pool, but I used Toughened Glass and put my Solar Heater on my Kennel Block angled at 45° Degrees , and the Temperature 🌡 reaches 122°F = 50°C and thats on a Sun/Cloudy ⛅ day, on a Cloud Free day the Temperature reaches 165°/175° and best ever was 192° F 🥵🌡 i use BBQ Thermometer pushed through the wooden frame, works a treat 😉👍I used 25mm black water pipe, which tends too kink/bend less ? I would recommend any small pool users to make a Solar Powered Pool Heater, 🏊♂️🤽♂️ ☀️🌡👍
83 degrees outside and water in jacuzzi 82? That’s what it would be without solar heater. What about on a cold day? What is the rational or proof this design works?
Hahah TBH, it's really piggy packing off of the other great DIYers / content creators who have made this. So it was inquiring / learning from their experiences and having a friend who trusted me enough to build it for him :)
I built one with landscape style tubing...just be sure to keep water and circulation during sun hours or you will melt it down... I also used steel studs vs. wood. Made it lighter.
Hi nice work man. Inspiring. What was the original temp of the water in the jacuzzi? You mention the temp that it got to during the day, 82, but not the temp before. Thanks a ton.
Please don't wear gloves when using a table saw. All it takes is one tooth to catch on the glove and instead of losing part of a finger you lose your entire hand.
Hello i would like to make a pool heather .i just dont understand the end part .where to put the howes .can you please let me know .maybe send me pictures .thanks
There’s a pump in the pool. There’s one hose that pushes pool water into the unit by a hose connected for the in-feed of the unit. The out-feed had another hose connector that goes from the unit back into the pump.
Hi from Fiji. Just a small comment. Do you know how mosquito coils fit together? When making the coils, run two pipes together. Run one of the pipes an extra half circumference so that it ends up 180 degrees away ie 6 clock and 12 Oclock. On the end of each pipe put an elbow. Across the centre, use a short piece of pipe to join the two. This way the water comes in one direction and out in the other. This keeps your pipes all in the one plane, and you dont have a messy tail crossing from the centre. I suggest to start with the centre piece with the elbows facing opposite directions and clamp it down with saddles. Then start winding the two pipes together. Using saddles as you go will make the job a lot easier. You will end up with two pipes coming out of your frame. If you are careful, you can make one come out on one side on the top and the other on the bottom. This way if you angle the frame, and it is below your tank or pool, it does not need a pump.
@@nwkwok they are spmething you burn to keep mosquitos away. They are packed in pairs hence the refere nce. Bit like yin and yan- both tails cam eventually coil in the same direction.
I just kept my 500' roll of tubing under some double pane used glass windows and made sure that the low emission side was facing the hose inside. Done. Puts out lots of heat, went from 78 degrees f. to 92 f. in 2 days in a 20,000 gallon pool. I can't even touch the water at the outlet, Temp outside was 88 f. But the heat output is so hot that I often put a towel over it to minimize the heat. It's like an oven.
Thanks so much for the detailed work and preparation to create this masterpiece. It's truly a work of art in addition to its functionality. I'll be able to use it well into the fall. Proud owner of a late night woodworker product!
So glad that y'all like it and even more glad that it works! hahah :]
I want to do this for my pool, but I'm wondering if 120°F going back into my pool?.. I'm thinking it's way too hot. But then again my pool is roughly 25,000 gal.
@@richardb4022 it barely gets my small jacuzzi above 75*, nothing to worry about! You can also turn the pump off if needed
@@nwkwok Make sure that you empty the entire hose when the season is over, because else legionela bacteria might grow and they can kill you.
And what i do before each season is fill a bucket with water and household clorine, and pump that through the hose in a closed loop for an hour
to make sure every possible bacteria is dead.
@@jimhlee how long does it take to heat the entire jacuzzi? and what is the liter capacity of the jacuzzi?
Amazing work, as if you are building a piece of art, result also is great.
Thank you so much! :]
All new users (or any user for that matter) of a solar heater need to be very careful when turning the heater on after it has heated up if not done in the morning. The hot water that was sitting still in the heater tubes WILL scald your hand or anybody in the pool that's near the outlet. It will be scalding hot for about 2 minutes.
I think I would have put the acrylic in a frame with hinges instead of screwing it directly to the frame if you ever have to get inside for any reason you have to take all them screws out
Hm. That would've been a really good idea haha.
Can I use this to heat a pond
good job on the water heater. Please put a riving knife on your table saw and never push your hand/fingers past the blade, use a push-stick
Thank you - didn’t realize how dangerous my technique was till all the comments. Appreciate it!
I'm guilty of this with some awkward cuts. Always gets me sweating.
And those gloves. 😬 Yikes!
They can suck you in.
The issue with cutting tall wood like that has more to do with some pieces that would warp due to improper drying or structural reasons. Half height cut works but you can also try what's known as a contractor's flip. Though I am not sure if you would have the clearance for a long piece like that.
@@whereswaldo5740
Yup…gloves are kinda scary using a table saw but to his defense, he did have a push stick not that you mentioned that) and his video was well thought out and the end result is awesome.
To greatly improve this, you should not use a continuous coil. You really want to use a manifold for the entrance and exit with parallel small diameter tubes connecting the manifolds. This way every tube starts with water at the current pool temp... thus the greatest heat transfer rate.
I think that makes sense? Good explanation. I never thought of that.
Do you think I will benefit by building 3 three by 4 Solar panels or should I build one 4 by six Asking this question for 2 reasons I may have To move them according to the sun due to trees is not in the same place all day unfortunately also storage?
Please share this out to the Is builder who did a good job
Also had another about a 7 ft long in a shallow three-quarter inch is this affecting the heat coming in and out
Thanks... for convincing me NOT to try this. Seriously. What a hassle.
Haha no problem! :P
Cool project. When building a heater like this to heat a pool, do not focus on maximum output temperature, but instead focus on transporting as much heat energy as you can from the sun to the pool.
Using two coils in parallel instead of one super long coil will decrease resistance and thereby increase the flow, you will heat up the pool faster, even if the temperature difference between input and output is only a few degrees. That is because more energy is transferred this way.
Also beware that this solar heater can overheat when it is not in use and the tubes might melt, depending on the materials used.
Yup! Exactly why I did 2 separate 100 ft coils on 42"x48" pc of black plywood. I'm doing it for fall swimming. Our pool is already 82-88° IN JULY SND august. Trying to extend the kids swim season up here in maskachussetts 😂
120⁰F might do some damage on the irrigation tube. Yes?
Yes - we decided to go with a different pump because the water was originally coming out too slow (which is why it got so hot). Now it is ~95 degrees and comes out faster (which in turn, heats up the jacuzzi better as well).
Thank you for not playing loud, annoying music drowning out your talk! I got it! Great!👍
I'm sorry to have to say this but, you make the most common mistakes of the DIY crowd and a lot of professionals too! You could easily but maybe not inexpensively but expensive can pay back faster, increase your efficiency and output by anywhere from 50% - ~100%. You make the same mistakes the pop-can solar air heaters do, so I'll try to explain so everyone can understand what makes a good solar collector and heater!
There are just 4 things to remember when designing and building any solar heater:
1) heat will always flow to cold, never the opposite direction
2) the colour "black" absorbs the most amount of thermal radiation
3) the thinner a material is, the faster it conducts heat from one side to the other
4) every substance has a different ability to transmit heat know as Thermal Conductivity
The biggest problem with designs for solar collectors is understand where and in what direction the heat is going to flow and trying to bare in mind where we want that heat to flow to. In this case, we want to collect solar heat radiation and transmit that heat to a volume of water.
We know that the colour black absorbs the greatest range of Infrared Radiation, so anything we want to heat up, should be painted black but only those surfaces that we want to heat up, not any surface that is not in touch with the water, because once radiation strikes a black surface other than the solar conductor, that heat is lost and can never help to heat the water. The interior and exterior of the cabinet should never be painted black because every IR photon that strikes is absorbed and can do nothing to heat the water, which is what we are trying to do here. By painting the cabinet black you are encouraging the enclosure to become heated and dried out and that is a fire hazard, under the wrong conditions. The only thing that should be painted black is the solar collector tube. The enclosure should be lined with aluminum foil to reflect any arrant heat photons and send them back to the collector and keep them bouncing back and forth until they do get absorbed where we want them to be, in the water we want to heat.
You use a PVC plastic pipe as your solar heat collector which is already black so you don't have to paint it and although it may be convenient work with, if you are doing all this work you might as well make it pay for itself, even if it cost a little bit more, you'll have the improvements forever.
The Thermal conductivity of PVC plastic is about 0.25 W/mK, where as the thermal conductivity of copper is about 401 W/mK, or you could say that a copper pipe would transfer heat to water, 1604 times faster than the PVC pipe you are using. Which means that with a copper pipe collector you can get 1604 times more heat and since solar energy tends to be intermittent when it is there at all, it is important to take full advantage when it is! There are various ways to build a solar collector but if you use soft copper tubing, you can probably get it already in a coil so you don't even need to fight with it.
If you made your solar collector from soft copper and painted it with a solar absorbent paint designed for maximum absorption (or just flat black works too) and lined you cabinet with aluminum foil you could produce a great deal more hot water. The temperature increase of the water is less important than the amount of water heated but bare in mind you only have about one Kilowatt of heat / square meter, at Noon, when the Sun is directly over head, on a perfectly clear day, at the Equator and only the surface of the copper pipe facing the Sun can collect heat... There really isn't much there to work with, so we have to maximize our return if it is going to be worthwhile in the long run.
Good Luck!
and I hope this will help the DIYs out there to get even more enjoyment out of their projects! Go for it!
Wondering if the acrylic has melted or warped over time?? Since it was so thin and it gets sooo hot?
Was the 80-120 increase from a. Single pass through the tubing or from running it all day?
Ive been researching to see if this is feasible for a car wash to cut down on water heating costs
pretty good and cheap approach, i did the same like 15 years ago using the black Gardena 1/2" plastic hoses from the microdrip system .. i bought 800 meters in 16 coils, i connected 4 flat coils in series and 4 of those strings in parallel to get a higher flow rate) on the roof of my garden hut, without any box around it. Unfortunately the wind fuzzed them up quite a bit when i had them emptied during the winter. I was thinking also of a boxed version, but never found the time to really build it .. i got stuck in thinking about which materials i should use, that i wanted to be waterproof but couldn't decide on the right material.
This set of uncovered coils was bringing my water from 20 to 40 degrees in full sun in summer.
Hint for creating the spiral:
The trick that i found to get the flat spiral perfect and with least effort and without making a mess is: Keep the hose in its natural spiraling when it is delivered in a coil, put it onto the surface and then just pull it ring by ring into the flat spiral you desire.
Put the roll of tubing on an office chair. The chair will spin and unroll the tubing as you pull it.
nope, you need to ride the chair with the roll around the panel then. What i did was put the roll in the middle and then start to connect the pipe to the panel little by little
and then just turn the roll with it.
I built this system for an added heat source for my electric w/heater, problems immediately showed where the kinks in the hose popped under the heat of the sun due to thermal expansion, NOTE" even copper pipe will "boiloff" if the water is not constantly modifying temp by re-circulation....expensive mistake going cheep
NICE JOB, GOOD MAN!!! It shows being determined pays off and was fun to watch too. Good editing and not showing every split second of making this. But overall you accomplished your goal.
Thanks so much! Glad you enjoyed :)
The gloss reflects light and heat you really want the top cover to be "translucent" this way it does not reflect, I built 4 by 8 foot panels back in the 1970s and got 180 degree water.
Ah good point!
@Brent Simmons Are you suggesting he use glass? The plastic is translucent. What could he have used instead?
@@daveparker839 Dave glass will reflect anybody knows in a solar water system you use translucent cover so it does not reflect rather absorb more. Translucent..difusser
Great video ! I've build something similar years ago but made one mistake. It was way too big so I couldn't handle it anymore. Eventually I had to cut it to pieces. Now, a new project similar to this is planned for the coming summer. This time much smaller individual panels that will be combined. I used garden hose (reinforced) from Gardena. After the summer you can buy these real cheap with lots of discount. It's easier to make sharp bend and it doens't fold as easy as the back tubing. With a simple microcontroller and a valve (recycled from a washing machine) you can slow down or stop the water flow when it gets late afternoon. The amount of water in the circuit will then slower get warmer and after a minute or so you can let it flow in a reservoir or so to accumulate. This worked out fine for me.
Please do a video if you do this!
While absolutely enjoying this build, I’m sitting here and wondering how much hotter this could get if you’d make it Gas tight and replace the inside air with CO2.
Ooo that's a whole 'nother level ;P
Not much. Better to put a couple of big mirrors on it
@@bren42069 Thats a great idea, but the light cant be too focused or you will melt the acryl
Use mirrors and that thing will coooooook
Love it. I’m building one myself as a preheated to a solar powered electric on demand heater
Nice!! Good luck with your build!
How is the water flowing through the hose? Is there a pump that pumps water from the pool through hose? If so, what kind of pump did you use? Thank you
I've done several of these panels for my pool. Best thing I've found is a lazy suzan that I put right in the middle and just uncoil the tubbing from there. As you get close to the center you can unspool some extra pull the lazy suzan out of the middle.
Video
I love how he included all the mistakes he made so that we can all avoid from And learn from those! A lot of people just want to ‘look cool’ on youtube! Thanks so much for keepin it real!!!!
Thanks so much! Appreciate you takin' the time to watch and comment!
@@nwkwok Thank YOU! We are going to build one like this onnoir zinc roof!!!! :)
you could have just put the tube coil through a pole and pulled sufficient amount of tube gradually and you went on working.
Hm interesting idea. I can't quite imagine how that would work but I'm probably not understanding what you're meaning. But yes, there were probably a million ways I could have uncoiled the tubing better hah.
@@nwkwok Just like is working with thick cables or optic fibre street installation,yo need to pass an horizontal pole or thick metal tube thru the coil as an axle in order to revolve the coil as you pull the end ,so the plastic tube will not twist.
Great build. I'd love to know how this is going 6 months later. Any gotchas or things you'd have done differently? I expect there may be some issues, do you get condensation on the blocking sunlight?
Oh I built this for a friend so I'm not quite sure actually. His name Is Jim Lee and he was one of the first comments on this post if you want to ask him :)
if you still look for an answer about the performance, check the comment i just wrote seconds ago :)
@@nwkwok I'm now watching your video for the 3rd time, and I'm very impressed. I'm thinking about building something like this. Your opensource idea is cutting edge stuff!
@@jameshart678 Thanks so much! I really cant take credit for it though - lots of people have built these before me and I'm grateful for the content they created I was able to learn from as well :)
Could you have used a heat gun to soften up the piping for the bends to get a few more turns in...
Hi... great stuff! Any chance you know you approximate square foot surface area of the pipe in enclosure that is exposed to the sun?
I'm not entirely sure of the 500 foot coil that I bought I'm pretty sure I used around 400 of it? I'm 70% confident about that answer haha
good job. but what is the pool water temp. after one day of running the heater for a day
Thank you!
I don't recall hearing what the rate of flow was in GPM or GPH, which is important when trying to get a grasp of available BTUs for heat transfer.
You'd be recalling correctly ;P I wasn't able to test this prior to delivering this to my friend. He did do some testing of his own but unfortunately do have these #s. I do know that he needed to get a little bit of a stronger pump, which reduced the temperature of the output by 10ish degrees but it worked plenty good for the size of their jacuzzi! :]
Pretty cool. Wonder what would happen if it was lined mylar and used clear tubing.
Question, would it be better to use a 4' x 8' board of 2" foam insulation instead of the plywood?
Possibly! That'd be an interesting experiment.
Awesome work there Nick! Subscribed now my friend 😀
Thanks for all the encouragement through the whole process and helping to answer all my questions! There were some moments where I had some serious doubts and was grateful for your support in the process :).
Very impressive. The most impressive part was how it got hooked up to pumps in the end and it all worked.
I would have set the whole stack of tubing on top of the it, then cut it. It was already round.
How much more effective would it be to use 1" tubing?
Higher GPM will affect Exit Temperatures wouldn’t be 120 for sure
for the sake of your fingers and hands ditch the gloves at the table saw, a friend of mine who was a woodworker for years wore gloves only once and now he lost 2 fingers and the use of his hand otherwise nice job on project
I don't get why so many people build these without at least R10 or something
I built three of them about 14 years ago for an inside swimming pool
showing all your mistakes will help so many people attempting this - kudos!
Nice video. Working with this irrigation tubing can be frustrating. I've not used it for this purpose, but for actual irrigation, but you run into the same problem (kinks especially as you try to unfurl from a large roll). A good approach is to unfurl the whole roll across a wide open space (backyard), carefully pulling loops off the coil as you unfurl the whole thing. Then run down the length of the tubing to untwist/unfurl some "memory" from your coil. If I were doing it now, I'd use smaller lengths of tubing in the first place rather a full 500' length. Buy the 500' roll for the price, but then unfurl as described previously and cut it to more manageable sections (maybe 100'), then use common irrigation tubing couplings to attach your sections to create your desired full length. The couplings might slow down your water flow a *little* (if you use the inside-tube/barbed ones) and would make your final coil less "clean" looking, but for me those would be acceptable trade-offs for the reduced frustration of trying to work with/lay down a single 500' tubing length :)
This is great advice. After going through that debacle, I would gladly trade the 'clean' look if it saved me the frustration of dealing with that 500' length... without hesitation haha. Thanks for the input!
@@nwkwok I always leave the tubing out in the sun for about an hour before working with it. This softens it up and lets you shape it to your requirements after which it "sets" in the new shape you have laid it out.
At least, this works in the Australian sun. Not sure about other climates.
@@lukedudney4462 Ah yes - good advice. That might've made the job much easier since we were coiling the tubing in the cold of night... 🤦🏻♂️
I've built one of these.The easiest way to get the roll unrolled is to put the new roll in the box,THEN cut the ties that hold it together.Then you are working "with" the natural curves of the pipe and not fighting them.With my first roll i tried running it out over a distance and uncurling it as it was fed into the box.This was frustrating and i still kinked it a few times.With the next roll i did as i said before and it was done in five minutes with no kinks and no swearing:-)
How to stop it from over heating my hot tub? I made one and it got my sauna (hot tub) up from 53 degrees to over 105 and the weather is still only 75 degrees outside. I can manually watch and turn the pump off when the weather gets really hot, but will the water boil in the solar collector? Should I let the water drain out of the tubes when I turn it off? Do you know an inexpensive sensor that will turn the pump off when the tub gets to a certain temperature? Thanks.
Great job. I just completed 80 % of 1 i am making. I didnt make it as big as my yard wont allow that. But i am going to make 2 smaller ones each with 200 hundred feet of irrigation tubing. I was surprised at how easily it kinks to. So i put it on the table next to my project and spun it out. I had to pick it up 3 times to spin it around as well. The stuff is a nightmare. But i am going to add a valve on the feed side of mine to slow the water down. This will give the water more time to absorb the suns energy and come out hotter. I am allso going to use a submersible pump. That way Its independent of the pool filter and much more cost affective. Dont put valve on return side it will pressurize the tubing and cause it to pop. Love your work shop. Are you thinking about selling these ?
How did it turn out!?
Henry. Can you tell me more about your pump. Are you going to put it directly into the pool.
Is everyone using 1/2”tubing? Thoughts on 1/4”? And any recommendations on a pump?
Very nice video I build one and added a piece of zinc sheet beneath the hose in order to created more heat
Thanks and very clever idea!
Good job buddy. You work too hard. You cut 2X4s in half? Frame on both sides? Do you really need that? Oh my God. Tiewraps? X4 on each loop? There has to be a better way.
Yea… haha there’s a lot I would do differently if I would do it again.
more expensive but glass is much better for trapping the IR inside, also use insulation on the bottom and sides ?
So many mistakes, basic mistakes, I can't even comment on that content. You should not consider yourself as a carpenter.
Is there anyway you could build this and connect it to your pool pump and equipment? So that you don’t have hoses all along your pool deck?
Nice one. I love your honesty of all the mistakes.
everyone shows this same method of build, but NO ONE shows the pump connection and flow rate defined
Ah - it's a good point. I would probably do something more in depth and thorough if I had access to it myself but I didn't think of these suggestions in the comments until after I delivered it to my friend (who's a little ways out).
I think RC Insiders (who has a fantastic build of this video), has some pretty good footage of the pump connection and water flow -- I don't remember if he has exact #s but might be closer to what you're looking for?
If you research enough, I do remember watching one made by an engineer who showed all of the data but... twas a little beyond me 😅
@@nwkwok yeah. its hard to see what's what without info.
Water came out at 120f. is that constant water going through, what rate? or is it with it sitting on the sun all day, then turn it on and for 1 min you get 120F then goes down to 90? thats the point
You should have put an empty bucket in the middle of it he pulled it around and just kept spinning the bucket that's what I did
You should try and connect this in line with you homes water heater.. It will save on your gas bill some.
Hello i want to do a pook heather like you .i just dont know where each ends go too ? And what items i need to buy? Howes, wood...? What else .Thanks
What volume pump were you using? IE, how many GPM?
I coiled 1000ft on my roof on a 15 minute timer, 1/2 poly pipe . 140 degrees for 15 minutes, then off for 15
Nice! I’ll have to learn your ways ;p
Everyone makes the same mistake by not allowing spacing between the tubes
I like that you have also videoed the problems that you faced while working it out
Worked great until temps reached the 100’s + and melted the tubing
Wonder if adding insolation to the back would improve the out put?
yes it would.
i wonder if 2 circular sections of tubing would be 1000x easier to lay out? you waste some area with both but man that seems like one Hercules tasks!
Yeah... probably haha. Another idea that came to my mind is cutting the irrigation tubing the length of the frame (minus an inch or two) and use 90 U-connectors. I feel like that'd be 50x faster. The U connectors might waste some space in between but you also wouldn't have to waste empty space in the middle.
Add a reflective vertical panel on the wall over the heater and get 60% more heat in the water.
as its been 3 years, how long did this last before the tubes broke down by UV?
seeing as its only the tubing that needs to soak up the sun I would have thought that the internals should be painted white
Worked great until the summer heat got to be in the 100's plus and it melted the tubing
I think 2 panels at 250 feet each would be more efficient. Water travel 500 feet won’t be getting any hotter after a certain distance. Also the bottom should be insulated.
Hm that's a good point. And yeah definitely should've thought about insulting the bottom
You must live somewhere really hott for that kind of temp increase
For my research it best video I found, must of ppl doing small size, this is excellent size, I need probably 4x of this for my pool, 800cm x 800cm x 1400 cm (deep). Thumbs up, keep doing, GOOD JOB !!!
Thanks so much :)
Nice. Could you provide a feedback on how the system is holding out after 11 months of operation? I am curious
Hello Nick Thank you for the viedo. I want to do this but the hardest part for me would be building a box. Could I use an aluminum water heater 30" pan? This set up is fantastic. I bet someone could build them and sell them and make a nice profit. Also I want to put the solar pannel on my flat roof patio cover will any pump work? We live in California and limited on space the pool will go between pato and fence with inches to spare. Thank you in advance...
Wow sorry for the delayed response! I don't have the insight to speak to the aluminum water heater 30" pan (though I don't see why not?) but I have seen a couple of videos of people not even using a frame and just mounting it to their roof with good results. The things to consider would be the how powerful the pump is and angles the tubing would be inclined / declined but otherwise, I'd imagine it's doable? What did you end up going with?
You need to put silicone under the perimeter of the plastic. Valuable heat is escaping through the air gaps.
Oh -- that's a great point. Though, I'm having a hard time figuring out how I would apply silicone to it since I screwed it in from the top...? Maybe I could have used the silicon as glue as I placed it on top. Hm good to think about for the future.
@@nwkwok Unscrew the screws, remove the plastic, apply a thick bead of silicone, and then replace the plastic cover. Shouldn't be a problem.
Mounted right above the exhaust vent of the Pentair gas heater ?
Would a black garden hose not be easier to use? I suppose it would break down faster... but easier to work with?
I’d imagine much more expensive
You used a vaccuum? LOLOL just get a leaf blower man and blow that crap into the lawn ;) in fact it'd keep your workshop dust free also if done regularly!
Haha yeah - if I kept up a clean environment that be great. A blower or air hose on my compressor would kick up a bunch of dust and settle in the frame. Good apologetic for a cleaner space tho!
You could have bought a single solar panel from facebook marketplace for about $100 used and it would have done the same thing. So much labor wasted for this.
Yeah but... where's the fun in that!? ;P
id be interested to know whether it's better to paint the frame black, or white/reflective. My thought being that if the frame is black, it's absorbing heat, but you really want the hose to be the hottest part. a reflective enclosure might help the hose absorb reflected heat/light. just a hypothesis, well done!
Yeah it’s a good question. A few comments suggested the reflected light is better but not totally sure.
It is really great job. I wonder have you connected it to your existing pool pump. How that part works?
Ah we didn't exist it to the existing pool pump. There is a pump in the jacuzzi that pumps water out of the jacuzzi, through the water heater and back into the jacuzzi. The water heater is just resting on top of all the pool pump stuff.
👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👌🏻👌🏻👌🏻👌🏻👌🏻 excellent job!!!. Thank you
How much did all of the materials cost in total?
Do you know how he powered the pump, and what side of the house it was facing? I’m thinking of building one, but my backyard on the southeast side.
I believe his pump was powered by plugging it into an electrical outlet. He was able to get one long that was able to weave around the perimeter of his backyard so it wasn't intrusive. This was placed on the west side of his house
I made a very similar Solar Water Heater for my in ground plunge pool, but I used Toughened Glass and put my Solar Heater on my Kennel Block angled at 45° Degrees , and the Temperature 🌡 reaches 122°F = 50°C and thats on a Sun/Cloudy ⛅ day, on a Cloud Free day the Temperature reaches 165°/175° and best ever was 192° F 🥵🌡 i use BBQ Thermometer pushed through the wooden frame, works a treat 😉👍I used 25mm black water pipe, which tends too kink/bend less ? I would recommend any small pool users to make a Solar Powered Pool Heater, 🏊♂️🤽♂️ ☀️🌡👍
Never understood why clueless people .make diy videos as if they are helping anyone. Awesome job making a shit ton of mistakes bro. Lol
True! I mean, your video about your wife being a chipmunk helped me so much! Stellar content! Saved my life, bro!
/s
Great video. Only suggestion, spray a UV coat on all the plastics to stop deteriorating of the plastics by the sun.
Can I pay you to build me one for summerlin NV?
83 degrees outside and water in jacuzzi 82? That’s what it would be without solar heater.
What about on a cold day?
What is the rational or proof this design works?
Hahah TBH, it's really piggy packing off of the other great DIYers / content creators who have made this. So it was inquiring / learning from their experiences and having a friend who trusted me enough to build it for him :)
I built one with landscape style tubing...just be sure to keep water and circulation during sun hours or you will melt it down...
I also used steel studs vs. wood. Made it lighter.
Ah good point. Thanks for the tip!
Hi nice work man. Inspiring. What was the original temp of the water in the jacuzzi? You mention the temp that it got to during the day, 82, but not the temp before. Thanks a ton.
Use a heat gun to blow hot air on the tubes to make it soft and pliable.
Please don't wear gloves when using a table saw. All it takes is one tooth to catch on the glove and instead of losing part of a finger you lose your entire hand.
Oh -- haven't thought about that. Thanks for the input!
Good info for me to start building one as well. One side note, you probably want to stop wearing gloves when using a table saw.
Yeah - this is probably the one biggest thing I've taken away from all the feedback in the comments. Good tip!
Awesome job! Did you use the whole 500' of tubing? I'm about to build something similar. Again, nice job.
Thanks! No. I used around 400' of it. Definitely lost some feet on my first pass throughs haha.
Hello i would like to make a pool heather .i just dont understand the end part .where to put the howes .can you please let me know .maybe send me pictures .thanks
There’s a pump in the pool. There’s one hose that pushes pool water into the unit by a hose connected for the in-feed of the unit. The out-feed had another hose connector that goes from the unit back into the pump.
Nice work next time hang the pipe on a rotating jig so the pipe uncoils as you use it. It will make it easier too handle
Thanks for the suggestion!
cubicle (space aboce air conditioner) with solar water heater. how many feet or meters of hoses and the size of collector boxes. thank you.
I was convinced by seeing how important friends are in your life😁 . Great job done 👌
Would've failed at this one miserably without their help!! 😅
Hi from Fiji.
Just a small comment. Do you know how mosquito coils fit together?
When making the coils, run two pipes together. Run one of the pipes an extra half circumference so that it ends up 180 degrees away ie 6 clock and 12 Oclock. On the end of each pipe put an elbow.
Across the centre, use a short piece of pipe to join the two. This way the water comes in one direction and out in the other. This keeps your pipes all in the one plane, and you dont have a messy tail crossing from the centre.
I suggest to start with the centre piece with the elbows facing opposite directions and clamp it down with saddles.
Then start winding the two pipes together. Using saddles as you go will make the job a lot easier. You will end up with two pipes coming out of your frame. If you are careful, you can make one come out on one side on the top and the other on the bottom. This way if you angle the frame, and it is below your tank or pool, it does not need a pump.
Haven't heard of mosquito coils before thanks for the tip!
@@nwkwok they are spmething you burn to keep mosquitos away.
They are packed in pairs hence the refere nce. Bit like yin and yan- both tails cam eventually coil in the same direction.
Dude!!!! The way you used that table saw made me CRINGE!!!! Keep your hands away from the blade and never lean over it… YEIKS!!!
I just kept my 500' roll of tubing under some double pane used glass windows and made sure that the low emission side was facing the hose inside. Done. Puts out lots of heat, went from 78 degrees f. to 92 f. in 2 days in a 20,000 gallon pool. I can't even touch the water at the outlet, Temp outside was 88 f. But the heat output is so hot that I often put a towel over it to minimize the heat. It's like an oven.
Awesome! Well done :)
Are you saying you basically use a box the size of the roll with a glass top? I want to make one myself but I like simplicity