Thursday, July 21, 2011

Solar Magic

A summer heat wave...high humidity too...today is a good day to enjoy a solar shower.  Solar clothes dryer too, for that matter.

Sunshine lights the water droplets
 into blazing rainbow colors

The cool stone floor provides
a grounding connection to the Earth.


2 comments:

Anonymous said...

How does it work?

Jane said...

The water source is a garden hose providing water from the house. The water enters the collector and is heated by the sun, then goes into the holding tank (an old hot water heater) in the second story of the structure. From there it feeds down to the shower, where both hot and cold water are available to the shower head.

The collector, designed by Jack and built by Jack and our son Evan, consists of copper tubing coursing back and forth against a black background, with a fiberglass panel on top.