I'm trying to collect materials to build a solar hot water heater. I have a few questions for the initiated. I have been thinking that my most affordable way to go would be to use abandoned sliding glass doors (double pane of course) for my glazing. I can't imagine that there would be any problems with this approach unless they were tinted. Obviously, I would avoid that.
Does some smart individual have a recommendation for the copper tubing diameter within the collector? Also, all of the designs that I see incorporate a single serpentine or two manifolds at either end of the collector connected by a series of parellel smaller diameter tubes. I wonder if I could create a hybrid of this design using multiple overlapping serpentines connected by two manifolds. This is hard for me to descibe. I envision the individual tubes making contact somewhere near the bends. My thoughts are:
1. This idea would work quite well
2. There wouldn't be enough heat produced to sufficiently heat the water.
3. This could be just riddled with leaks
4 Both 2 and 3.
Does the bulk of the heat produced come from the Sun's radiation or convection within the collector?
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