8307 MEN Guide to Fall Gardening

Table of Contents

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4 Creating a Sustainable Farm By growing your own food and producing your own energy, you can get closer to achieving a productive farmstead with a positive net impact on the planet.

8 Earn a Living Doing

What You Love

These backwoods breadwinners offer guidance for thinking outside the box to make a living in a rural setting or from your home.

18 Make Soap the

Old-Fashioned Way

Learn how to make your own lye from ashes, and then use it to cook up a mild, soft soap perfect for personal use.

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21 65 Self-Reliance Tips

That Will Save You Money

Apply a DIY approach to any facet of your life, and you can start saving big today.

26 Grab ‘n’ Go: Homemade

Convenience Foods

Need quick snacks and meals?

Drop processed, store-bought fare, and opt instead for these healthful edibles that work well in a pinch.

30 Make Syrup from Birch,

Walnut, and Sycamore Trees

Want to branch out from maple?

Use this guide to decide which trees to tap and learn how to process tree sap into both sweet and savory syrups.

26

34 A Plan for Food

Self-Sufficiency

Enjoy local, homegrown food year-round! Estimate how much to grow or buy, and learn how to achieve food security with these charts and guidelines.

40 Cut Your Food Bills in Half!

It’s true! You can enjoy more healthful food while spending much less to feed your family.

48 Daily Breads: Potato,

Oatmeal, White, and Rye With a Starter

Make flavorful sandwich bread out of quality ingredients to save money and warm a gathering or just your kitchen for the day.

COVER PHOTOGRAPH: LAUREL BARKLEY

Save money by baking sandwich bread. You can make a very basic sandwich bread loaf with high-quality flour for about 70 cents.

The MOTHER EARTH NEWS Guide to Living on Less

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55 Heat Your Water

With the Sun

A solar water heater is a good choice for the planet and a smart decision for your wallet.

60 Want Milk? Get Goats

A couple of dairy goats can supply your family with enough fresh milk all year long. The fun’s a bonus.

66 How to Raise

Chickens for Meat

Don’t just wing it if you’re new to raising meat chickens. Use our guide to fill your freezer with broilers in as little as six weeks from hatch to harvest.

Even with regular rainfall, crops that require a relatively large amount of water to thrive, such as beans and sweet corn, will almost always need supplemental irrigation.

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72 Pressure Canning Meat:

Master the Technique

Ease pressure on your lofty selfreliance goals by learning how to safely can beef, chicken, and more right at home.

77 Tips and Techniques for

Water-Wise Gardening

Tap these efficient gardenwatering systems to save on your water bill while still growing food despite drought and heat.

82 Cozy, Affordable, and

Inspiring Tiny Homes

Start small, and you can enjoy mortgage-free living in a handbuilt home.

93 88 Build Your Own Home

and Be Debt Free

Achieve the dream of your own home using recycled materials, the help of friends and family, and your share of sweat equity.

Hundreds of people have done it, and you can too!

93 Prune for Small-Space

Fruit Trees

This revolutionary pruning method will enable you to grow any type and variety of fruit in small spaces. Never settle for an apple you don’t adore or a peach you can’t reach.

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MAKE SOAP

the Old-Fashioned Way Learn how to make your own lye from ashes, and then use it to cook up a mild, soft soap perfect for personal use.

By Susan Verberg

S

my kitchen with weird, bubbling concoctions. And I wondered how something that seemed so simple could be so challenging.

Don’t let me discourage you. If you’re an outdoor enthusiast, you may have made soap already. Scrubbing a greasy frying pan with campfire ashes doesn’t just scour the dirt away: When rinsed with a little water, the hydroxide salts in the ashes combine with the cooking grease to form a primitive cleanser.

Understanding Soap-Making Basics To undertake the process of making soap, known as “saponification” (from sapo, the Latin word for soap), let’s first review what soap is and why it works the way it does. Because soap is made from water-soluble bases known as alkalis,

SUSAN VERBERG (7); TOP: AMANDA NAGENGAST; OPPOSITE: MATTHEW T. STALLBAUMER

oap-makers love to tell the story of how ancient Romans first “discovered” soap by burning animal sacrifices on Mount Sapo, and how the creeks at the bottom of that mythological mountain were the best places to do laundry. They’ll tell you that the water, ash, and animal fat on

those sites accidentally created the soap that filled the creeks. The reality is that the Romans didn’t actually make soap. They traded for it with the Celts, who dominated the market because of their access to abundant limestone and seashells, from which they produced slacked lime to make a caustic soda lye (sodium hydroxide).

After years of professionally making all-natural goat’s milk soaps to sell at our local farmers’ market, I decided to develop a self-sufficient soap-making process based on ancient techniques. My goals were to make my own lye and to turn kitchen-waste fats into soap. I finally took the plunge — and what an interesting adventure it’s been! I dug through old articles and manuscripts, learned to decipher medieval English, and filled

it neutralizes acids while retaining its ability to be dissolved in water.

More specifically, soap is a surfactant with the unusual ability to diffuse fats and oils into water, which is why it can rinse away oily stains.

Soap is made by mixing dissolved hydroxide salts, generally called “lye,” with fatty acids. To make your own lye that you can use to produce a soft soap, you leach (or drip) water through ashes to dissolve the hydroxide salts. Ashes are highly concentrated minerals of hydroxides, nitrates, carbonates, sulfites, and more. The quality of the lye produced depends on how well the plant material was burned. I’ve found that the more complete the burn (all organic material combusted), the more hydroxides will be dissolved, and the more basic (that is, higher pH) the resulting lye will be. In the case of incomplete burns, such as you’d find in fire pits and fireplaces, you can add lime to the ash to help change carbonates (charcoal) into hydroxides.

My drip lye made from ashes has a pH of about 11, while commercial lye has a pH of 14 — making it 1,000 times more basic than ash lye. This is a big reason why making drip-lye soap is so different from conventional soap making. Because of the lower pH, drip lye is a lot less dangerous to handle than modern commercial lye. As a precaution, though, you should always keep some vinegar handy during soap making because its acid will help neutralize the lye’s base.

Making soap using drip lye can be challenging because the purity, density, and consistency of homemade lye is uneven. For home soapmakers, I recommend preparing hot-process soap (which I describe below) rather than cold-process because an exact amount or specific purity of lye isn’t required for successful saponification. In hot-process soaps, saponification — the chemical reaction between lye and fat — is controlled by added heat, not by the pH.

On the other hand, I uncovered a 16th-century shampoo recipe that recommends using lye dense enough to suspend an egg in the middle of the liquid. Suspended-egg lye makes near-neutral soap, perfect for personal use because it doesn’t “bite.” This same historic recipe also confirms the 3-to-1 ratio of lye to fat that consistently works for me: “thre pottels of lye to one pot of oyl.” It’s nice to find confirmation that’s five centuries old!

Based on experience and historical research, I’ve developed these instructions for making a soft, creamy, hot-process soap from scratch — including homemade lye.

Soft Soap in 8 Steps 1

During my research, I uncovered a historic trick for checking the density of drip-ash lye using a fresh egg. Because an egg has about the same density as lye that’s the correct strength, the egg will float. Many colonial recipes for drip-ash lye recommend using homemade lye if it can float an egg with 1⁄4 of its shell showing above the liquid. This lye will produce “Black Soap,” a strong laundry soap that historical re-enactors complain is too harsh.

2

1 To make a leaching barrel, drill a small hole at the bottom of a 5-gallon bucket and stuff it with a piece of dishcloth as a filter. Fill the bucket with sieved ashes, tamping down intermittently.

Level the top, leaving about 2 inches of headroom. Slowly pour in about an inch of rainwater. When the water has absorbed, add about an inch more. Continue to slowly add water until liquid starts to drip out the hole in the bottom of the bucket — it should take about a day. Prop the ash bucket on top of a second bucket to collect this drip lye. (Or, build a setup like in the illustration at left.) You’re ready to test the strength when you’ve collected about 1 gallon.

2 If you’ve used regular ashes from a woodstove or fireplace in Step 1, the drip lye will be dark brown and probably won’t suspend an egg. Slowly heat the drip lye and allow it to evaporate until it has the desired strength, which is likely about a quarter of its original volume. Use stainless steel vessels for heating lye, never aluminum (which creates noxious gases in combination with lye) or enamel (which lye will etch). Cool down the lye WWW.MOTHEREARTHNEWS.COM

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food doesn’t have to equal junk food, and quick meals don’t have to mean a stop at a drive-thru. Some M editors, plus a few of our resourceful readers, rallied together to offer you these fresh ideas for using seasonal produce and healthful ingredients to create simple, make-ahead snack foods and meals.

Pantry Prep and Planning A good first step is to pack your pantry with an arsenal of ingredients you can use to make grab-and-go foods. One smart approach is to buy certain ingredients in bulk, and use large jars with screw-top lids to keep these foods at the ready. Dried beans, whole grains, nuts, dried fruits, maple syrup, and honey are a handful of items worth stocking.

Keep plenty of serving-size, freezer-safe containers around, so that when you make a big batch of a shelf-stable or freezable food, you can easily stash it. Ideally, for snacks, you’ll want the containers to be small enough so that you won’t have to reportion foods when you’re hungry or heading out the door — 4- and 8-ounce Mason jars will work well.

Don’t wait until your tummy’s grumbling, you’re leaving for an appointment, or it’s 10 minutes to dinnertime before you think about preparing something wholesome to eat. Carve out a bit of time once a month to prepare freezer-safe or pantrystable meal and snack recipes, plus a bit of time weekly to prep fridge-friendly morsels.

This weekend, make fresh, cultured yogurt and some nutty granola to pair together all week.

Grab ’n’ Go

Need quick snacks and meals? Drop processed, store-bought fare, and opt instead for these healthful edibles that work well in a pinch.

Edited by Shelley Stonebrook

P

erhaps since the era of the TV dinner, “convenience” has reigned king in food marketers’ appeals to consumers. From the overwhelming variety of store-bought snack options to instant meals in boxes and bags, food is always at the ready, and its preparation is largely outsourced. Even homesteaders and advocates of eating nourishing, local

foods may have difficulty avoiding processed, store-bought options when the goin’ gets busy.

But all of this so-called convenience comes at a cost. Additives, stabilizers, preservatives, artificial coloring, and trans fats — along with sugar-packed, sodium-stuffed, and refined-carb-loaded recipes — are part and parcel of processed food. In a nutshell, we lose control over ingredients. But convenience

pantry of whole, unprocessed ingredients to combine into whatever she desires based on her recipes, taste buds and available time. The Instant Pot speeds the process of cooking beans, rice, or even a whole chicken or roast. “I can put any of these items into the cooker, set the cook time and pressure level, and then prep the rest of the meal. Within an hour, I can have dinner on the table — even if I forgot to soak the beans!” Kongs says.

A water bath canner and pressure canner will help immensely, too. You can put up seasonal produce during summer and fall, and use any downtime (think winter, when your canner isn’t working overtime) to can beans, soups and chili.

Managing Editor Rebecca Martin cans fruits or vegetables nearly every weekend during the growing season, but never a big batch at a time.

“Smaller batches are less labor-intensive, and you can wedge them into a tight schedule more easily than larger batches that require a full day in the kitchen,” she says. She preserves salsa in her Instant Pot, which can double as a water bath canner. “I just pop in four pint jars of salsa and process them for 10 minutes.

There’s no open stockpot filled with boiling water pumping heat and humidity into the air, so the kitchen doesn’t get uncomfortable, even on the hottest days.”

Freezable Fare Savvy snackers also need to befriend their freezers. “I’m a fan of freezing because it’s fast, doesn’t require special equipment, and preserves the food’s flavor and nutrients,” Martin says. You can easily package many snacks as individual

Get Equipped

FOTOLIA/ANNAMAVRITTA; OPPOSITE: FOTOLIA/LILECHKA75

HOMEMADE CONVENIENCE FOODS

Stocking up on snacks and freezer meals made with local ingredients is self-sufficiency at its finest.

Arm yourself with a food dehydrator and a good blender or food processor, so homemade beef jerky, dried fruits and vegetables, hummus and other dips, healthy smoothies, and so much more become readily accessible.

Reader Jennifer Kongs says the two biggest players in her kitchen are her Vitamix blender and Instant Pot electric pressure cooker. Even if you don’t buy these brands, a food processor and a pressure cooker can make any meal more convenient. Kongs grinds grains into fresh flours, makes nut butters, and purées dips, soups and smoothies in her Vitamix. This allows her to keep a

Nutty Energy Bites

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Ingredients

Associate Editor Amanda Sorell adores these • 3 cups tahini energy bites for after-work snacks and pre- or • 1 cup nut butter post-exercise nourishment. A pared-down ver• 2 cups honey sion of Rosemary Gladstar’s “Zoom Balls” recipe • 1 cup dark chocolate (available in her book Rosemary Gladstar’s Herbal chips, optional Recipes for Vibrant Health; bit.ly/1pdB6Om), • 8 ounces shredded coconut they’re easy to make and store well in the freezer.

• 1 cup chopped almonds or Yield: about 30 snack balls. nuts of your choice Directions: Combine all ingredients in a large bowl and mix well. Roll mixture into 1-inch balls (make smaller or larger if desired). Try rolling the balls in cocoa powder, or extra chopped nuts or coconut, if you’d like. Store balls in the fridge or freezer. If frozen, pull out a handful and let thaw for just a few minutes, and they’ll be ready to pop in your mouth!

WWW.MOTHEREARTHNEWS.COM

Nut balls: Fotolia/annamavritta

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What to Tap A walk through your backyard or woodlot will give you a good idea of your sugaring possibilities and limitations. While paper birch (Betula papyrifera) is the most commonly tapped birch, all birches in the Betula genus will work. On my property, I happen to have mostly gray birch (Betula populifolia), which is small and short-lived but makes wonderful syrup.

If you’re in the Midwest, Northeast, or Southeast, chances are good that you have walnut (Juglans spp.) or sycamore (Platanus occidentalis) trees nearby. Regardless of the species you choose, realize that making syrup requires a significant time investment. To get just one gallon of syrup, you’ll have to process about 40 gallons of sugar maple or walnut sap, or as many as 100 gallons of birch or sycamore sap!

Also, be mindful that tapping creates a wound that may harm the tree and render it less valuable for other purposes, such as lumber production. This is particularly true for walnut because it’s a high-value wood. You could tap only those trees that have poor form and aren’t likely to be used for lumber.

Another approach is to tap a few dedicated sap trees, knowing they won’t yield commercial lumber but will make great syrup.

How many taps can you put into a tree without hurting it?

Relatively little research has addressed this question for nonmaple species, but commercial producers have erred on the side of caution. Most recommend a minimum 8-inch diameter tap at 41⁄2 feet above the ground and just a single tap for all but the largest trees. An exception would be birch trees, such as gray birch, which are naturally small and short-lived. My tap for these trees may be as small as 5 inches in diameter, and then I’ll cut the stem under a coppice regeneration system.

MAKE SYRUP

from Birch, Walnut, and Sycamore Trees

When to Tap

Want to branch out from maple? Use this guide to decide which trees to tap and learn how to process tree sap into both sweet and savory syrups.

P

erhaps the greatest disappointment when first exploring my woodlot was the realization that not a single sugar maple tree exists on the entire homestead. While I’m fortunate enough to have a neighbor who allows me to tap his sugar maple trees, I found myself looking for other opportunities to produce more food from the forest. I began to explore birch syrup production, which I first encountered when I lived in Southeast Alaska.

After birch syrup, I quickly discovered an entire world of saps and syrups derived from more than 50 tree species around the world.

30 THE MOTHER EARTH NEWS GUIDE TO LIVING ON LESS

opener: istock/showcake; right: Brett McLeod (3)

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Sweet or Savory?

As you explore syrups, you’ll see that they’re subject to just as much enthusiasm as craft beer, with styles varying by region and maker. You’ll also find that while we use the term “syrup” to describe any tree sap that’s condensed, not all syrups are sweet. Birch syrup, for example, has a savory and almost spicy flavor, well-suited for use as a demi-glace over wild game or for a salad dressing.

Walnut, however, has a sweet, nutty taste, and the flavor becomes stronger later in the tapping season. The first run of sycamore syrup is usually very light, resembling honey in both appearance and taste. Late-season sycamore syrup has a distinct butterscotch flavor.

BRETT MCLEOD; OPPOSITE: ISTOCK/SHOWCAKE

By Brett McLeod

Drill at a 15-degree, upward angle to allow sap to flow more easily.

Before inserting taps, sterilize the taps and drill bit by boiling them in water.

Birch. Tapping birch is popular partly because tapping season immediately follows maple sugaring season. In maples, freeze-thaw cycles produce stem pressure, causing sap to flow, but birches pump sap based on root pressure after most of the snow has melted and the soil has adequately warmed. This allows commercial producers to extend the season by up to six weeks. In most parts of the country, this means birch sugaring season extends from mid-March to the end of April.

Walnut and sycamore. Like sugar maples, both walnut and sycamore trees rely on nighttime temperatures below freezing and daytime temperatures above freezing for sap to flow.

These temperature swings create pressure in the trunk of the tree, thereby causing the sap to “run.” In most parts of the Mid-Atlantic and Midwest, this process begins in early to mid-February.

Tapping and Harvesting Tapping. The basic process for tapping birch, walnut, and sycamore trees is the same as it is for maple trees. Select a healthy tree with a large crown. Avoid old wounds and signs of decay, such as mushrooms or conks growing on the tree.

Because tapping the tree will create a new wound, make sure your drill bit and taps are clean to avoid introducing bacteria

Each stem of this paper birch tree is capable of supporting one tap.

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Eat mostly plants: A diet rich in vegetables, fruits, and grains typically costs 20 percent less than a diet that revolves around meat. From a practical point of view, a thrifty veg-first strategy will take you into a wonderland of inexpensive, protein-rich, and easy-to-store dry beans and peas. If you cook a batch of beans a week, you’ll have the makings for burritos, veggie burgers, salads, and soups, all for pennies a serving. Try different kinds: Beans and peas come in a huge range of shapes, colors, sizes, and textures. When you find beans you love, set some aside to grow in your garden.

Before you cook them, soak beans in water for eight to 24 hours (larger beans can soak longer), as soaking will cut down on cooking time. Then drain and rinse. To finish cooking, simmer beans on the stove or in a slow cooker until tender. Or, cook them (efficiently!) in a pressure cooker in 15 to 30 minutes. You don’t even have to soak the beans if you use a pressure cooker: If you start with dry beans, a pressure cooker can have them ready to eat in 30 minutes to an hour.

Choose pastured meat, dairy and eggs: Pastured products are not only more nutritious than industrial meat, but also more eco-friendly. (You can read several articles about this at 42 THE MOTHER EARTH NEWS GUIDE TO LIVING ON LESS

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If you purchase eggs and other animal products, opt for those that come from humanely raised, pastured animals.

BOTTOM: DAVID CAVAGNARO; TOP CENTER: RICK WETHERBEE; TOP RIGHT: ISTOCK; OPPOSITE: ISTOCK; PAGE 40: ISTOCK/PEOPLEIMAGES

Follow a Food-Efficient Diet

www.motherearthnews.com/ safemeat. — Mother) At stores or direct from farmers, organic and free-range eggs, dairy products, and meat do cost more than their conventional counterparts, but keep an eye on those prices — the gap is closing significantly as mainstream food costs surge upward.

Foods derived from healthy, humanely raised animals that enjoy sunshine and exercise are worth the extra cost, as they provide added benefits when it comes to nutrition, food safety, and basic morality. And if you buy locally, you can add the environment and your local economy to the list of beneficiaries.

For all these reasons, I gladly paid $2.55 a pound for the turkeys that a local organic farmer raised for me last year. The freshly harvested birds came with a hidden bonus: Simply having this caliber of meat in the house made it hard to make a case for a budget-busting lunch or dinner elsewhere.

Also consider that many homesteads can easily support a few dairy or meat animals, making laying hens, poultry, dairy goats, or a family milk cow well worth their upkeep. The trick to producing your own eggs, dairy, or meat economically is simple: Stick with animals that earn a food profit versus adopting too many as pets.

Improve your snacking smarts: In defense of snacking, it is possible that grazing one’s way through the day is more natural, biologically speaking, than sitting down to ceremonial meals three times a day. We were hunter-gatherers not so long ago, which is fine if you’re picking blueberries or eating fresh snap peas off the vine. But when the hunter compulsion has you tiptoeing through a dark kitchen to harvest a bag of chips, you may have a costly problem, in terms of both calories and cash.

I am quite familiar with this syndrome, which is why I have learned to turn the most affordable and humble of ingredients — flour, water and salt — into otherwise pricey snack foods such as pita chips, pretzels, or toasted bagel slices. I dry lots of seasonal fruits, too, so even after adding purchased nuts, my ever-changing snack mixes cost 70 percent less than the storebought versions. And then there are popcorn, parching corn, and several millets and amaranths known for their roasting qualities — any of which may be a perfect fit for your garden and your favorite TV chair. You really can do better than chips

How to Run a Food-Efficient Kitchen made hundreds or thousands of miles away that cost $3 or more a bag.

Cook and eat at home: Numbers from the U.S. Department Learn to use locally abundant foods: These include wildof Labor’s 2005 Consumer Expenditure Survey showed that gathered mushrooms, nuts, and berries. Often these can be Americans spent about half of their food dollars away from had for the harvesting (check to see if you need a permit to home — a figure that began to decline in 2008 as food prices gather on public land), or you might find them as great seawent up. Still, it’s a no-brainer that homemade food is cheaper sonal deals at farmers’ markets. The price usually drops when than eating out, even if you must buy all of the ingredients, or the crop comes in, so buy when the supply is at its peak to get you are just learning to cook. You will not be alone. Restaurant excellent quality at a good price. From pecans in the Southeast revenues are down, but sales of cookware and cookbooks are on to wild Maine blueberries to the Pacific Northwest’s bounty of the rise. And few things are as enjoyable as savoring fresh and mushrooms, every area has its riches, and often you can pluck fragrant dishes that come from your own kitchen. a free harvest yourself.

Make big batches: Consider a pot of split peas, simmered Eat whole, eat plain: Whole grains are super-nutritious, tasty with onions, celery, and carrots (and, some would insist, good and cheap. Whole oat grains, which are called groats, cook into a truly satisfying breakfast for about 25 cents per serving, and a $2 bag of gourmet brown rice can anchor many meals for the whole family. After they’re cooked, whole grains can go into spicy stir-fries, pair with roasted meats, or be taken in a sweeter direction with diced apples, cinnamon, and brown sugar. The important thing is to have them around, ready to eat. Whole grains such as wheat berries, groats, hulled barley, or brown rice take about an hour to cook on the stove, or 15 to 20 minutes in a pressure cooker. (Some grains, such as quinoa and millet, cook even faster. You can learn more about these grains by searching www.motherearthnews.com for each grain type.) By cooking two batches per week, you’ll have inexpensive, ready-to-eat whole Freeze or dry your own foods for healthy and inexpensive snacks. grains available at all times. www.MotherEarthNews.com

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You can easily incorporate solar into your existing residential structure and design. The fittings, pump, storage tank, and expansion tank for a small drainback system take up minimal space (left). Attractive solar PV and thermal collectors make use of otherwise wasted roof space (right).

Whenever the sun shines on the collectors in my closed-loop systems, it also activates a small photovoltaic (PV) panel that’s directly wired to a 12-volt, direct-current (DC) pump. That pump will circulate the solar fluid throughout the closed loop until the sun stops shining on the solar collector and PV panel.

In part because of their simplicity, DCpowered systems are quickly becoming a popular closed-loop option on the market. As the solar fluid gets hot in-

side the collectors, it travels through the piping to the heat exchanger. The heat exchanger transfers the heat from the solar fluid to the water inside the solar storage tank, which stores the solar-heated water for your use at a later time. When the sun isn’t shining, the circulating pump simply turns off and the solar fluid stops circulating.

Popular in moderate and hot climates, drainback systems are very similar to closed-loop systems. The big

Drainback Drainback tanks replace the expansion tank in closed-loop systems to protect solar fluid in warmer climates.

Solar thermal panel

Hot water load Heat exchanger

Drainback tank

Thermometer Check valve Tempering valve

Cold water supply

Boiler drain

Backup water heater

Solar storage tank

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Temperature & pressure relief valve Flow meter Differential temperature control

Pump Sensor

difference is that these systems have a drainback tank instead of an expansion tank. The solar fluid in these systems can be distilled water or a diluted water and nontoxic antifreeze solution. When the sun isn’t shining on drainback systems, the solar fluid is stored in the drainback tank, leaving the pipes and collectors empty. Like a closed-loop system, the pump comes on when the sun warms the collectors and circulates solar fluid throughout the system. A heat exchanger transfers the heat from the solar fluid into the solar storage tank in the same way as in the antifreeze system. Drainback systems are also attractive because they eliminate the expansion tank and therefore have fewer valves and gauges than closedloop antifreeze systems.

While drainback systems’ direct plumbing is attractive, many installers bemoan their lack of flexibility.

Collectors must be mounted above the drainback tank (see bottom photo, Page 56), limiting placement options, and piping installation must maintain at least a 10-degree slope from collector to tank for drainage. Finally, drainback systems always use a 120-volt AC controller and a high-pressure pump.

This “high-head” pump differs from the closed-loop system’s circulation pump, because a drainback pump’s

LEFT TO RIGHT: GARY REYSA; A. OHL; OPPOSITE: MATTHEW T. STALLBAUMER; TOP, FROM LEFT: BOB RAMLOW; JASON KALMBACH

higher pressure allows it to completely fill the piping and collectors every time the system turns on.

Then, when conditions dip below freezing, the solar fluid drains from the collector again.

Step 4: Choose a Collector Collectors absorb the sun’s rays and convert them to heat energy.

In an ICS system, a collector can be as simple as a water tank. However, high-efficiency and freeze-proof units incorporate two popular collector options: flat-plate and evacuatedtube collectors. Each technology has its pros and cons, including price differences, and there’s plenty of information and strong opinions on the subject.

Once again, before making your final decision, get your local solar installation technicians’ advice for your roof,

System Summaries Advantages of ICS systems: • No solar fluid, pumps, or additional tanks • Simple designs • Cheapest option

Advantages of closed-loop antifreeze systems: • Extreme freeze protection • Flexible installation Advantages of drainback systems: • Moderate freeze protection • Long-lasting solar solution

your expected usage, and your region’s weather patterns.

Flat-plate collectors use an absorber plate — usually copper painted black — to heat a series of pipes, which contain the solar-transfer fluid. The pipes and plate are contained within an insulated

DIY Solar Water Heaters

Contributing Editor Gary Reysa installed an attractive DIY drainback system on the side of his Montana home (bottom, left). Reysa uses a drainback tank to support his hot water and radiant flooring systems. For more information on this project, visit www.builditsolar.com.

West Texas reader A. Ohl built an ICS batch heater to regularly supply 100 percent of household needs. For this simple design (bottom, right), Ohl plumbed the unit’s outflow pipe directly into the house hot water, and brought cold water directly to the intake. For the coldest months, Ohl installed a point-of-use electric hot water heater under the kitchen sink. Even that’s powered by the sun! (See PV panels in background.)

The DIY option is the perfect challenge for a creative builder with plumbing and wiring skills.

frame that’s mounted with a sheet of tempered glass that faces the sun.

Flat-plate collectors are by far the most popular kind of collector because they work well in all climates.

Furthermore, they’ve been around longest, are very efficient, and are the cheapest option. Because they lose some of their heat to the surrounding environment, welldesigned and well-maintained flatplate collectors rarely overheat, and during winter months they’ll melt any snow or ice buildup.

Evacuated-tube technology appeared in the late 1970s and, despite some early missteps, has continued to develop. Like flat-plate collectors, evacuated-tube collectors place a series of tubes on an absorber plate. However, evacuated-tubes are airless, which allows for a more efficient transfer of heat from plate to solar fluid. This added efficiency means that evacuated-tube collectors must be designed to handle higher internal temperatures than flat-plate collectors.

Take particular care to never oversize the collectors or undersize the storage tank. Finally, while prices continue to fall, evacuated-tube collectors tend to cost more than flat-plate collectors for an equivalent heating capacity.

Choose Wisely, Choose Once Solar water heaters can last a lifetime when skilled technicians use high-quality materials to install the best system for a given climate, roof site, and particular demand. If you find a system that’s substantially cheaper than the rest, there’s probably a reason, such as lower-quality components. There’s a lot of information out there on solar thermal, and, frankly, the sheer volume of variables can dissuade people from making a significant financial and environmental choice. Before making any decisions, remember this advice: Reduce consumption; identify the appropriate size and site for your system; plan for freeze protection; choose your collector; and, above all, choose quality parts and labor.

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8/21/18 11:22 AM