I was thinking about water shortages always being publicized in the news, and also the need to establish water lines to new home constructions, and thought "What if you just reused the water and topped it off ever once in a while with rain water from the roof?" This would get rid of the need for pipes and reliance on the utility companies.
So my idea is to have a tank under ground for used shower and sink water and then have solar panels outside that turns on a heating element during the day to boil the used water. Then this steam rises to another water container on the roof of the house. This is now able to be reused and without any fear of germs.
But you may ask "What about toilet water?" Well to solve that just have a solar pasteurizing toilet that doesn't require water. And "voila" problem solved, and no more need to ever pay utility bills again for water.
And when the water heating element is not in use, you can use all of the extra solar panel energy for anything else you want.
I agree
No opinion
I disagree
Add your comment
With an unlimited supply of very cheap energy this might have some possibility although water replacement from evaporation would no doubt be a major problem. Unfortunately, solar power is not sufficient.
If you steam distill the water, even toilet water would come out clean and safe. The problems I see with this idea are:
1. Boiling water takes a lot more energy than is practical.
2. The waste from the water will collect in the boiler and will have to be removed and disposed of regularly.
Still, the idea of having your own water treatment system in your home is interesting. It probably wouldn't be as cost effective as a large central treatment plant in a city, but in rural areas it might be a reasonable option, provided it is well designed. You might want to read up on the methods used to treat water in big plants and see if they could be scaled down effectively.
and distilled water would probably be cleaner than the water in city pipes. No chemicals either. But it lacks some for taste.
But again, not an energy saver and it's pretty hard to boil water with solar unless you're in the desert or have a solar-tracking array of mirrors.
I just researched it and an electric range heating element uses roughly 1400watts and a 1000 watt solar panel array would be prohibitively expensive at $6,000 on google shopping. But the goal was to leave out batteries which die and need replacing. And filters or chlorine have to be bought for other systems also. When instead, you could clean out my system by yourself. But one other option would be to use a green house effect solar collector to distill the water. But to distill a showers worth of water would take a huge solar heat collector.
But as long as you can afford big solar arrays it may work.
actually, I suspect it would take alot smaller solar heater than it would PV solar panel. Converting the sun to electricity first, then back to heat would probably result in considerable inefficiency--I suspect greater than 50 percent.