Solar hot water - Corflute

Just as there is for most things in life, there is a product that seems to be perfect for collecting solar hot water. Luckily it's something people throw out because its also good for advertising.

Corflute is a plastic product that we in the western world need a surprisingly large amount of. This is odd because we dont really use the corflute. We use it to make us want to use other things. Different things. Things other than corflute. We use corflute to make advertising signs. These signs are rarely, if ever, trying to sell us corflute. More often than not these signs are trying to sell us real estate.

A few days ago, when doing some research, a found a website where someone very clever had used corflute as a solar collector. Painted black, insulated, and covered with glass, this should make a very useful solar collector. I cant remember the website and have been trying to discover it again. If you know it, or you made it, please let me know and I'll link to it. The genius behind using this is in the plumbing. It seems a lot of people have made solar collectors from copper pipe. This involves a stack of soldering and a stack of time, money, and skill. I have time, but no skill and no money. Corflute is just what the doctor ordered. The secret is to cut some plastic hose lengthways, and slot this onto a sheet of corflute top and bottom. Silicone it all up and you are now the proud owner of a few hundred pipes all plumbed together. It should only take a few minutes and even fewer skills.

The plastic that corflute is made of doesn't conduct heat very well but its thin, and because each tube is square, and has a huge surface area of water carrying pipes that we can expose to the sun, it should work well.

If you need some corflute and don't want to pay for it, you could try putting your house on the market and stealing your own real estate sign from your front lawn.

Re-reading this post makes me wish I had arranged some sponsorship from whoever makes corflute.

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