Do-It-Yourself solar collector

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The parabolic solar collector can be built at home, with ordinary off-the-shelf materials, using only a saw and a drill. Download the instructions: diy-en.pdf

Depending on how you buy the materials, the cost of a home built collector will go around 100€/m2. If used to heat water, this is almost 20 times cheaper than buying evacuated tube water heaters of the same capacity.

Pictures of home-built solar collectors: (click on an image to see a bigger one)

My own realisation: plastic box, area 0.84m2, ratio 85.6 times, optical efficiency 70%, collector heat loss <0.6W/K, total weight 13kg.
Note: this one uses low-quality plates.

To be continued: you can send me pictures of your realisations to be included here.

A discussion forum is here.


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