Solar Hot Water Workshop

With the coming autumn, and winter not far behind, having hot water is going to be a very big concern; one that many people just don’t think about.  Hot water is a luxury that many people take for granted.  They may be completely unaware of how much heating water with a standard electric water heater is costing them.  It may not be until they have to boil water on a stove while they are out at the fishing camp or the off-grid cabin that they fully appreciate the convenience of having hot at the turn of a tap.

Falls Brook Centre teamed up with Woody Thompson from Fundy Solar to present a solar hot water workshop that gave the participants an introduction to an accessible, affordable and, most importantly, an environmentally friendly way to heat water. 

This is a perfect system to install on that summer cottage that is already off-grid where hot water would be an added bonus, but the system cannot produce the power to keep hot water in a tank.  A passive solar hot water system simply uses the energy of the sun to heat water.  Water from the source is run through a solar collector system that is filled with copper pipes and aluminum fins which gather heat from the sun and transfer it to the water. 

The heated water in the pipes and tank moves around through simple thermo-siphoning (the automatic movement of heat upwards).  The only electricity in the system is for a small pump to aid in the movement of the water through the pipes.  This requires only a small photovoltaic (PV) solar module.

Everyone in the workshop had an opportunity to try their hand at pipe cleaning, cutting and fitting.  There were many who learned how to solder copper pipes, under the excellent tutelage of fellow participants.  The first collector was built by the beginning of the second day, half a day ahead of schedule.  However that was only the easy part.  Next was the point of no return.

The collector was to be installed on one of the buildings at Falls Brook Centre to off-set the electric hot water system.  With the collector finished, the next step was to begin drilling holes through the roof and walls to run the copper pipe line-sets into the house and tap them into the water lines for the hot water tank. 

Even with our visiting expert Woody, the workshop could not have gotten the job done without the above and beyond effort and hands on experience of Troy Holmes from Perth-Andover.  John Moore also donated some super-insulation to keep the water in the line-set warm (a very important consideration for efficiency in an off-grid system such as this).

With all the generosity and helping hands we had the collector installed on the roof, connected to the system and solar heated hot water running out of our taps by Sunday afternoon!