The Hot Hose Shower:

A description of a "hot hose" shower from a letter to the

editor in HomePower Magazine:

Hot Hose Shower:
Dear Friends; Tom Brandolini's solar heated shower letter
in HP #27 moved me to try 200 ft. of 5/8" el cheapo mesh
reinforced garden hose up on my asphalt shingle roof. I'm
now down $48 (hose, adapter from an old shower head
supply to one of two "Y" connectors [with shutoff valves],
assorted hose ends). R & D cost money!
Today, early March, it's 80° in the shade, the roof shingles
are at 130°, shower water is 110°, way too hot for me.
Thanks to the "Y" connectors it's easy to blend in cold
water to suit.
At full flow, no blend, the hot water lasts 1 minute 24
seconds before you feel it cool down. Water storage is
about 3 gallons, delivery is 2.2 gallons 1 minute, full flow.
Up on the roof the ticket seems to be to lay the hose out
in back and forth straight lines, weighting the turnarounds
down with bricks or some such.

I wasn't that smart at first, so I tried laying a close-spaced
spiral out on the patio floor, fastening the coils to a 12' 2x4
with finishing nails bent over. 200' was only 4' diameter.
Second version spaced the coils 3/4" apart. One to 1 1/2"
spacing would be more like it, would let the roof recover
heat faster and there would still be enough room on the
2x4 for another 100' of hose (300' total).
Getting 200' topside is a pain. The coil spacing gets
messed up and it's a chore to recover the patio layout. I
flopped it over to put the coils in best contact with the roof.
The $48 hurts. That's a year's worth of electric water
heating at 20 minutes a day. At least I won't have to
spend it again next year, but I wonder if your readers have
cheaper solutions to the hot water heating problem.
Regards, Art Rhoads, 1321 Hollyhock Circle, East
Jacksonville, FL 32211
Well, Art, there is no really cheap DHW if you have buy
every little part you use. We must all learn to improvise
with the materials at hand, to the greatest degree. I refer
you to HP #11 page 19, for another type of passive DHW
project that gave us lots of hot water through years of use
in the non-freezing seasons. - Kathleen

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Hot Rood Shower:

I wonder how well it would work to pipe water up to the ridgeline of a dark colored roof that faces south, and let the water heat up as it flows down the roof shingles. Use a gutter at the bottom to route the hot water to your "shower"??

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And yet another hot hose shower scheme:

... But, still I
have come up with a couple of insanely simple ways to
conserve and reduce grid use. When the weather allows,
my morning shower is solar heated via the GARDEN
HOSE. I have roughly 100 feet of green and red garden

hose laid out in the back yard with a spray head on the
end and I put the end of it through the bathroom window
when I am ready for my shower.
The 100 feet of hose gives just enough water for a warm if
conservative shower. It just starts to get cool at the end.
Another 50 to 100 feet of hose would be just right.
Recovery time in full sun is amazingly fast – about 20-25
minutes – and that is with lengths of green hose and red
hose. There were a couple of days in mid summer when
the water coming out of the hose was too hot to use. If
you use black hose you'll need to be creative and hook it
up to a mixing valve to mix in cold water or you'll fry for
sure. Black hose and a mixer would also allow for a
shorter length of hose. At laundry time, I run the hose
through the basement bulkhead door and use the warm
water for the washing machine. The present length of
hose only allows for about half of the water necessary for
a load. Here, black hose would be greatly beneficial.
I recommend using high-quality hose, not the cheap
plastic stuff. Sears sells hose of varying quality. Their best
hose comes with a lifetime warranty but they caution the
user not to leave it in the sun. Who uses garden hose in
the shade, anyway? The life of the hose will be
lengthened if the user remembers to turn off the supply
valve after use. More than once I have come home to find
aneurisms in the hose where heat and constant pressure
found a weakness in the hose. The only other caveat is to
move the hose around in the yard every couple days if
you value the appearance of your lawn (assuming of
course that you have one). Failure to do so will leave
tracks of yellowed grass across your yard.