I have also make a home-built heater and camping shower. How do you keep a breeze from disturbing the burner? It looks like your valves allow cold water to bypass the heater, or if shut down a bit, more water is diverted through the htr. Is that correct? If so, since you have a set mass of water per minute, heated or not, and a set number of heat BTU's, doesn't letting twice as much cold water bypass the heater make the temp from the heater rise twice as much, keeping the final temp the same
I wanted a shower that I could customize to either pump cold water from one place to another or to use for a hot shower. It took some experimentation and disassembling the heat exchanger a few times to add more copper coiling, but what did the trick for me was a proper water saving head. I use Mapp Gas through a Coleman 10,000btu (rating for propane) single camp burner and the galvanized steel seems to overlap enough that a breeze will affect the flame, but not enough to matter.
I light the burner a few minutes before getting in and starting the shower and by the time I am ready to turn the water on, the water is boiling inside the coils and starts to create steam. I have to find a way to take up all that pressure or one day I'm going to blow a line or burn out the pump. It creates enough pressure that it will push water and steam back through the pump despite the pump being on. It's a fun toy anyway.
How much copper did you coil up inside your heat exchanger? Thanks for the great info.
jdhawk6 11 months ago
Please contact me at glynch8030@aol.com
glynch8030 1 year ago
I have also make a home-built heater and camping shower. How do you keep a breeze from disturbing the burner? It looks like your valves allow cold water to bypass the heater, or if shut down a bit, more water is diverted through the htr. Is that correct? If so, since you have a set mass of water per minute, heated or not, and a set number of heat BTU's, doesn't letting twice as much cold water bypass the heater make the temp from the heater rise twice as much, keeping the final temp the same
glynch8030 1 year ago
Hi Glynch
I wanted a shower that I could customize to either pump cold water from one place to another or to use for a hot shower. It took some experimentation and disassembling the heat exchanger a few times to add more copper coiling, but what did the trick for me was a proper water saving head. I use Mapp Gas through a Coleman 10,000btu (rating for propane) single camp burner and the galvanized steel seems to overlap enough that a breeze will affect the flame, but not enough to matter.
wierd1001 1 year ago
I light the burner a few minutes before getting in and starting the shower and by the time I am ready to turn the water on, the water is boiling inside the coils and starts to create steam. I have to find a way to take up all that pressure or one day I'm going to blow a line or burn out the pump. It creates enough pressure that it will push water and steam back through the pump despite the pump being on. It's a fun toy anyway.
wierd1001 1 year ago