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The Integral Passive Solar Water Heater Book

This book covers the design and construction of simple passive solar water heaters. In my opinion, it is easily the best book ever written on the subject. The book was published in 1981, and is now out of print and difficult to obtain.

David Bainbridge, the author, has agreed to make the book available here as a free download. Thank you David!!

For more of David's work on passive solar applications and strawbale homes see:

http://www.thelaststraw.org/history/bainbridge.html

http://www.sarep.ucdavis.edu/NEWSLTR/v5n3/sa-10.htm

David A. Bainbridge
Associate Professor, Sustainable Management
California School of Business and Organizational Studies
Alliant International University

Passive Solar Water Heaters:

The water heaters covered in this book make a great DIY solar project. For a few hundred dollars and a weekend of labor, you can build one of these solar water heaters. It will pay back its initial cost in a year or two. One of these water heaters can save about 4000 KWH in a year -- about the same amount of energy that a 1KW PV costing around $10,000 would save!

The book includes:

How to design a passive solar water heater
How to build a passive solar water heater
How to install a passive solar water heater
Examples of many types of designs that would almost any situation
Discussion of potential improvements to the design

Download "The Integral Passive Solar Water Heater Book" (an 8.2MB pdf)

A few of the figures from the book:

Gary

2/13/2006