Solar hot water - New, bigger corflute collector

It's still a test, but I've started making my new, bigger corflute collector.

This time I'm using my new glue gun to make everything stick, and I'll be using two sheets of corflute glued on to the back of the collector as the insulation. By doing so I can make it a bit bigger than the first test, and make better use of my glass. I will glue the entire thing to the glass to give it some structure.

At the moment it's upright, full of water, and leaking all over my front steps.

It turns out making a solar hot water service involves an awful lot of water leaking out of stuff. In fact, generally speaking, I've noticed that a lot of my projects involve leaks.

This time I anticipated my poor craftsmanship, and held off on painting it until I had repaired the inevitable leaks. I've marked where the leaks are so it should be easy enough to fix them.

And I forgot to sand the surfaces so the glue would stick better. The hot glue gun glue sticks well to the corflute but does't seem to like the black hose. I suspect roughing up the surface a little will make it stick better.

Solar hot water - Pre-heater

I have a perfectly good hot water service at home so I wont be throwing it away just yet. But I think I've decided on what I'll do instead. My plan is to make a pre-heater to heat the water that goes into my hot water service, so less energy is required to get my water up to temperature.

I already have a working understanding of heat exchange principles, so I'll leverage my new knowledge and attempt to apply it to pre-heating my hot water inlet. By doing so I'll avoid having to make a solar collector that is capable of taking mains (in in my house mains-like) water pressure.

Currently my hot water service takes delivery of its water at around 13 deg C and then uses fossil fuel to heat it to something like 65 deg C. If I can collect some heat and store it in an insulated container, I should be able to make a simple heat exchange device to transfer that heat to the inlet water of my hot water service. If I can spare my hot water service the trouble of even a few degrees It will have been worth it. But I'm hoping to contribute more like half the energy required to make my showers hot. If I can do that I can feel a bit more confident that I can make a replacement hot water service when my existing one gives up one day.

I guess that means my official target for my inlet water temperature is a 26 deg C increase from 13 deg C to 39 deg C.

That should be easy enough in summer but it's moving towards mid-winter here so I will be very pleased if I can get even close.