My Green Home - Solar Hot Water - Turning Snow to Steam

A lot of people ask me if heating water with solar energy is effective. This is a demo of a small collector turning snow into steam.

This demo collectors, 4 tubes are only 2 feet long and the total size is equilivant to just one 8 foot tube in a full size collector. Full size collector units usually have between 10 and 30, 8 foot long tubes.

I have measured water temps has high as 195F coming out of this little collector. Full size collectors can provide enough heat to handle your domestic hot water use and they can be grouped together to heat your home through radiant floor systems.

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• alberta
• housing
• modular
• homes
• manufactured
• green
• community
• coop
• wind
• solar
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• processing
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[TheMountiandude]

i wonder if you could make a gravity fed system so the snow will just convert to water we get almost 0 rain fall where i am at but upto 3ft of snow sometimes durring the winter

[NormanMcGregor]

@TheMountiandude - Actually I am working on a system to melt snow. I will post a video in the next few weeks.

[NormanMcGregor]

Homes using radiator hot water heating sytems could benefit from using solar as a boiler pre-heat system.

[newcaptivate]

Looks like all it needs is a bigger input to be effective

[TheDudeRulez09]

@Creepyseven it is very efficient to convert water to steam to power moving machines just not as efficient as PV panel to electricity.

[TheDudeRulez09]

@kal9001 this is very true, I have made some myself and they work very well, I dont see a need to spend thousands of dollars for a heating system that heats water to over 200 degrees, what in the hell will i do with water that hot? it requires more water to be added to cool to human use. My simple DIY panels heat to 140 degrees in the winter and 180 in the summer. I can allow that water to cool in a separate tank and use as I need.

[kal9001]

@Creepyseven

The main advantage of something like this instead of PV cells is the cost, A large PV setup could easily run into $10,000+ With a system like this it may be less efficient but could be made DIY from materials costing only 100's. Ist also important to realise that most PV cells are tuned to visable and UV, a system like this needs IR and visable light so is less suited to higher latitudes then a PV system.

[Creepyseven]

@scarlejr

i dont think this is possible. you can see that the steam doesnt have any pressure.

also getting heat from the sun then converting it to movement then converting it to electricity is very inefficient. maybe a normal solar cell fits your need as it converts the light to electricity directly.

im not an expert though so you should realy google or find and expert.

[pkarza]

I'm toying with the idea of using one of these to heat my hot tub during the day. What size should I stay under for a 4000l tub? Would one of these boil the water? Would this be unsafe?

[scarlejr]

Hey Norman! Where did you get this little hot water heater, i love it. What's the price range of this? Can you run a small steam engine to generate electricity with this steam??