DIY Solar Panels | Earth4energy

DIY or do it yourself is a concept most of us freely embrace nowadays considering the overpriced products available on the market and our own personal economical imbalanced budged and DIY Pool Solar Heater is no exception.

It is quite easy to construct a solar panel if you are a man who is good with his tools. If you can do the following: install your own kitchen sink, plug in your own washing machine, build up your own book case, then this project will not pose too much difficulty for you.

You can easily build up your own solar heater with simple tools and materials. You only need a simple wood saw, drill, hacksaw, hammer, nails, screwdriver, file, paintbrush and tape measure. The materials which you need to build up your own pool solar panels are: 16 swg aluminum sheets, timber for making the frames, 10mm annealed copper tube, marine-ply sheet, 4 mm glass and glass fiber wool. You will be able to find all of these items in your local hardware shop or you can order them from a specialized DIY company and have it delivered to you.

 When you want to build up your DYI Pool Solar Heater you need to take in mind 3 factors: efficiency, cost and durability. From the efficiency point of view, solar panels have in general an efficiency rate in between 30% and 60% and you should stride to accomplish an efficiency rate of 50%. From the cost point of view you need to construct solar panels at half of the price of those available on the market.  And if you consider that there are some materials which you can salvage and use in other projects, then the actual cost might end up to be even lower. Durability is also an important factor and in case of well constructed and maintained solar panels, the life expectancy is over 20 years.

To be able to heat up your pool water fast it is advisable to use several solar panels which should be placed in the vicinity of the swimming pool with direct access to the rays of sun. Each solar panel produces up to 3500 watts, so if you have a 27 feet pool in diameter, you will require a simple 6 panel solar panel system which will heat your pool water with an overall output of 6 x 3500 watts which equals 21 kW or 71,658 BTU/h.

So, save up some money and improve your skills by building up your own DIY Pool Solar Heater. You will enjoy your pool water even more than you have before.