Where can I find solar collectors for heating water and not spend a fortune?
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Answer:
If your handy you can make them. They are just boxes painted black covered with Plexiglas, with flexible plastic tubing. You need to feed into hot water heater and drain in winter if you have freezes.
Here's an article about a homemade one that costs under $200. Note that it's not good for areas where it freezes.
http://www.motherearthnews.com/top_artic...
I'm not sure about solar collectors, but if it is for your home, you could just build a solar hot water heater that sits outside. Basically you take the inside of a used hot water heater, and build what looks like a "breabox" for it to sit in. Paint EVERYTHING black.insulate the heck out of it, use glass for the top to expose it to the sun (place it facing south), hook up your incoming and outgoing lines, and there you go. If you live in an area that does get cold in the winter, you can still do this and have your outgoing line going into your "traditional" water heater. Your "trad" heater will not have to work as long/hard to keep the water warm. If you are handy with tools, this can done very cheap. If you are interested, here are a couple of links.
i made a solar water heater unit for my pool.what i did was take a hundred feet of 1" black nylon tubing.i then ran it around the frame of an old sattelite tv disc,one opf the big metal ones from long ago.you can find them at a junk yard for cheap.my friend let me have his as long as i took it down.i circled the tubing around the inside of the unit and fastened it in place with wire ties.i the pointed the unit to the south and wah-lah.a homemade solar water heater.good luck
try about.com for directions or ehow on google. if that dosent work try your local library
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