I was just about to make lunch and call it an afternoon when it occurred to me that I probably did have the fitting I was lacking – just not in the bag of PVC fittings where it belonged. I had a small leak in the yard spigot over the winter and bought a new one plus the fitting I needed to cement it to the PVC coming out of the ground – but then the leak mysteriously went away and I never got around to it. But it meant I had everything I needed for completion except brackets to hold the pipe to the wall. And I really wanted to see how well this contraption worked. So…
I brought a couple of wrenches and the pipe up the ladder. Carefully went over every hose fitting for tightness. Connected the pipe to the hose. Fiddled about until all was ready, opened the new … thing … to pressure. Waited. And in much less time than anticipated…
The water that first hit the bucket was almost scalding, it had picked up that much heat from the black hose that had been in the sun for some hours. Temperature quickly settled down to no more than tepid, as expected, but I’ll bet in less than an hour I get some seriously hot water out of it. Then I want to know how much, but it’s surely going to be more than a bucket-full.
I went around to climb the ladder to check for leaks in the box, and found myself in a shower…
I had forgotten about that join. I bought a 25′ hose to run water up to the box, but found this morning that it was just that much too short. So I added my newest yard hose to the length, most of which is now in the box. But when going around tightening things I forgot all about that unplanned connection, which I hadn’t even snugged…
Anyway. No drips, probably hot water for this evening’s shower. 🙂
Next post: the sinfully decadent desert hot tub!
This will be an incremental process, but a few months from now you will have the finest off-the-grid shower in the desert. Plus hot water for dishes, etc.
Then you’ll wonder why you didn’t do it 10 years ago.
You have hot water and I am still jumping in the pond.
It’s ok until winter when my neighbor ask me why he hears me screaming every morning.
Random thought: Smaller diameter (black) tubing has a higher surface area-to-internal volume ratio, allowing more transfer fo heat to the water as it passes through. But, larger diameter tubing allows slower travel of the same volume of water so the water, theoretically, could pick up more heat. Then again, smaller diameter tubing allows for more tubing in the same space, exposing a greater amount of water to solar heating.
There’s a “tubing diameter sweet spot” somewhere in all that but I don’t know what it is. I’m sure someone has researched it and created a formula.
i suspect the answer, or maybe just an answer, takes us back to the insulated reservoir model where solar, being a lower intensity heat source than, say, propane or electricity, requires circulating water constantly to gain a little heat with each pass though the collector and storing the accumulated BTUs.