My DIY Solar Hot Water Heating System in Southeastern Pennsylvania

This system is a very nicely done $1K design DIY solar water heating system in Pennsylvania.   Matt has done a great job of documenting the system -- see the pdf below for a full description of the design and all the construction details.

Matt has tried a few new things, the most significant being using a coil of copper for the domestic water heating heat exchanger.   This coil of copper is immersed in the heat storage tank, and the incoming cold water takes a single pass through the heat exchanger before going to the hot water tank.   It appears from the tank and heat exchanger output temperatures that Matt measured that the 80 ft coil of copper is doing well.  There will be a separate report on the heat exchanger performance later.

The tank is very well insulated and probably provides the lowest heat loss of any of the $1K systems described on Build-It-Solar.