Water bottle batch water heater.

So here's the plan. As you all know, we try to re-use everything instead of buying new. Using materials that we have sitting around, we're planning on making a small batch water heater. A batch water heater takes a finite amount of water (in this case 4 gallons) and heats it. Because there's no intake water source you have to refill it from time to time, thus it heats batches of water.

To make this, we're going to use some old wood we have lying around, aluminum foil, a black plastic garbage bag, a piece of Plexiglas and 4 1 gallon water bottles connected by aquarium tubing. Here is a diagram of what it should look like.

Click on this diagram for a larger version. Here's how it should work. First, we make the box out of 5/8 inch plywood. The sides will be angled 20 degrees. On the bottom, we're going to put a black plastic garbage bag. On the sides, using spray adhesive, we attach aluminum foil. Next, we mount the plastic bottles, spray painted black to absorb sunlight. The bottles have been connected together with aquarium tubing (1/2 inch). Over the top we put a piece of Plexiglas. Now here's the beauty part. The box will be angled toward the sunlight on the roof. The water will drain from the highest bottle down towards the lower bottle. That way, all we have to do is fill the upper bottle and it will gravity feed the other three, so we only need one air hole in the upper bottle. We'll have a video of the thing soon.

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