Solar camp hot water ideas.

Ok idea , but you definitely need to use a the water early, before it cools down. Which it will soon as it hasn't got got sun on it!

A large Hills pressurised garden sprayer painted black works fine - it is pressurised and has a tap and spray nozzle inbuilt all for $20 to $50 depending on size..

Yep... Mounted on my roof rack but never got warm! Use it for drinking water storage. I now use a 10l stainless steel pump up shower that I warm next to the camp fire. Looks like a silver fire extinguisher and works great.

A true solar hot water
I guy I travelled with, made one that worked really well but was a bit of mucking about, but not hard, he had a black PVC tarp that was about 2 x1mtr in area, he sewed elastic eyes to it & then fed clear 6mm? plastic tubing thru the eyes up & down about 25mm apart & connected it to a wiper washer motor & timer & to a 20ltr insulated container by the end of the day the water was hot, it worked well I don't know how much power it used but was never a problem, I think the motor went on every 15mins for about 30 seconds. At the end of he day the container was just hoisted up & drained down thru a shower rose, often you would have to wait for it to cool down before showering

Excellent feed back, folks. I think I might go for the pressurised one from Snowy's. I can use heat beads as fuel.

Can't go past a Glind for mine. You've always got a hot engine, why not utilise that engine heat?
Admittedly, the solar versions are cheaper, but I was happy to fork out the extra for the Glind.

The problem with simple solar setups is that when you really want hot water - on cold days - they are struggling. To get the maximum benefit from a solar setup, they need an arrangement that concentrates the sun's rays.
Maybe a silver-coated reflector surrounding the PVC, at a small distance from it, would help?

I can remember the brother and SIL leaving a stainless steel bowl on the back seat of the Holden during Summer sometime in the early 70's - with some paperwork placed inside the bowl.

When they came back to the parked car after 45 mins, the paperwork was smouldering!
It didn't take long to figure out that the rounded bowl had concentrated the suns rays on the paper, like a magnifying glass.

The locked car helped too, closing up something prevents the heat getting away.

The latest solar HWS's for houses use evacuated (vacuum) tubes that essentially long thermos flasks.
These are very effective at collecting heat from the sun, and a couple of these would probably work better than the black-painted PVC.

I see where sellers on eBay are now selling solar stoves based on the same principle.
Not sure how effective they would be at getting you a cooked meal on a cold, cloudy, sunless day - but on an average sunny day, I'd expect they'd be quite effective.

Cheers, Ron.

It should work well and absorb the heat. I put some 150mm pvc pipe on the draw bar of my last van held just over 30lts painted it matt black and it warmed up while traveling around. I also cut out a piece of thin metal and bolted it inside with stainless screws to act as a baffle to reduce the sloshing sideways effect as I didn't know if it would be a problem or not when travelling.

I didn't leave it sealed so the pressure built up I fitted a diff breather so it gradually released 1 - 2 litres of water while heating up during the day. I didn't want it pressured because my daughter was 3yrs old and didn't want her or any other kid getting sprayed with potentially hot water if they started playing with the tap. I used a cheapo 12v shower which I put a stainless screw in the van so I could use it while hanging up or just hold it by hand. I made an anderson plug to 12v lighter socket adaptor and plugged it into the anderson plug on front of the van to use power from the van dual batteries.

All up it was a cheap an effective way of having a shower plus it was an extra supply of drinking when the main tank ran empty on a trip from Perth to Broome we found it developed a hole but it was nearly 20yrs old.