Bright Ideas

Last year I decided to make a solar pool heater. The main idea came from reading a variety of forums, old Mother Earth News articles, and checking out some old newsgroups. It seemed that others had had some success creating solar heaters in a variery of methods, from something as complex as a custom built metal heat exchanger to something as simple as a bale of irrigation hose sitting on a slope.

I decided to aim somewhat inbetween these extremes and came up with a solar "panel" consisting of a 4'x4' plywood sheet on a frame with as much irrigation hose as I could coil onto the surface

I've added a diagram to show the piping clearly, and added a bit more description at the end of the article...

DIY Pool Heater