Creating a "refugee camp ready" and "no braze" solar hot water system with compression fittings

Manifold reasons to love the Solar CITIES initiative, which always feels bathed in the light of the Creator...

In the fall of 2000, on Thanksgiving Day, as a graduate student in Urban Planning at UCLA, I and my inventor friend Colin Filko decided to see if we could build a solar hot water system based on a diagram I found in Popular Science magazine.

I had just moved into the Los Angeles Eco Village and had taken my apartment completely off-grid (except for water!), shutting off the electricity and disabling the toilet, and I needed to prepare for winter. Colin invited me and Sherry J Kerr and Emily Keaty down to his place in Palm Springs in the desert and we had some hours while they were cooking the turkey so I drove over to the nearest Loewe's out in the desert to see if I could figure out what parts to buy to match the diagram in the magazine.

The hardware superstore in the desert was deserted as most sensible people were home with their families. With no one to ask for help I set about aligning copper pipes on the floor and gathering copper T's and plumbing parts and wood and plexiglass and insulation based on what I thought I was seeing in the picture.

Suddenly I heard a calm, caring voice behind me say, "Looks like you are trying to build your own solar hot water system..."

I swung around and there, beaming with a radiant smile, stood a handsome and pleasant looking man of unmistakable indigenous heritage, down to the patterned jean jacket he was wearing.

"Yes, I am indeed" I replied, "How did you know?"

"I build them for my reservation" he said. "We're the Agua Caliente band of the Cahuilla People here in Palm Desert. Hot water is our thing. Do you know how to braze?"

"How to... I don't even know what that word means".

"Oh my"... he said. "Brazing is copper torch welding. You need it if you want to get those copper pipes to work with those T's to make the manifold. Around here the temperatures created by the sun can get so hot that if you don't braze properly you can easily spring a steam leak. You can get burned too..."

I looked crestfallen.

He smiled and said, "Tell you what... let's put all these pipes back and I'll show you how I made my first solar hot water system before I learned to braze out of a single copper coil. Got a pen?"

He grabbed a 3/8" copper coil from the shelf and went around gathering a few other parts. Then he tore the lid off of an old cardboard box and started drawing.

"So here's what you do... you build a box and put this metal sheet in it and then throw the copper coil in the box and clamp it down on the sheet and paint the whole thing black. Then you put two holes in the box and clamp these fittings on the ends of the copper pipe, cover the whole thing with this piece of plexiglass and hook it up to a water pump connected to your cold water supply on one end and an insulated tank on the other. Stick it in the sun and you are done!"

He drew a diagram on the box for me and handed it to me.

"Later, when you learn to braze, you will make them even better. But this is the best way to start, like I did. Good luck, and happy thanksgiving".

He sauntered away and I was left alone to gather the materials he'd laid out for me and trundle over to the cashier. She was the only one in the store and was just announcing that the store was closing for Thanksgiving. Her "attention shoppers" message was obviously just for me!

As we rang up the materials she asked "find everything you need?"

I said, "Actually I wouldn't have except for that incredibly nice native American gentleman."

"Who's that now?" she asked.

"Oh, that fellow who was the only other person in the store... just happened to be a solar hot water specialist!"

She shrugged, "I never saw him. Huh..."

When I got back to Colin and Rana's house I told the story and everyone mused that I had just had an encounter with the true spirit of Thanksgiving. We built the system this mysterious Cahuilla relative had blessed me with in the garage that weekend and I moved it up to the LA Ecovillage and installed it on my roof that week in time to have hot showers for Christmas.

When I moved to Egypt for five years in 2003 I learned to braze from the local "NaHass" (copper welders) in Darb al Ahmar, and Mostafa Darsh Hussein and we went on to develop ever better solar hot water systems, just as the man from the Agua Caliente band had predicted. We ended up getting a US AID small infrastructure grant with Hanna Fathy and innovated ever better systems, employing a team in both Darb Al Ahmar and Muqattam to build 30 systems, including one at the ancient Hammam (public bath) in Old Cairo.

I built variations in Essen Germany and in New York, and finally, when I moved to Florida in 2016 we started thinking of ways to make this part of our sustainability education portfolio. In 2017, we brazed a system together at Rosebud Continuum with Jerry John Comellas and Brian Bishop and and other PCGS students and high school student Kylen Newcomb and I, and we refurbished it in 2021 with more innovations from students and allies like @Michael Anders Whitehead, Jeff Myron and Elizabeth Myron.

An old facebook post says, "Today Kylen Newcomb and fellow documentary film-maker joined me as we shopped for materials to build our first solar hot water panel. The plans are below.

We now have many of the parts (I purchased all the copper and plumbing pieces and some of the wood and tubes today) but there are still a couple of items we need to be able to complete the materials list and be able to schedule the build:

1) A tempered glass plate (or two) totaling in surface area approximately 5 feet long by 3 feet wide.

2) a 2 inch thick piece of rigid foam insulation approximately 5 feet long by 3 feet wide.

3) Copper brazing equipment (welding torch with oxyacetyln bottles, flux and rods)

4) Black high temperature spray paint (approximately 4 cans, usually used for spray painting barbecue grills)

5) High temperature silicone sealant

6) Four 2 x 4 pieces of wood, two of them 5 feet length, 2 of them 3 foot length, with wood screws

7) 4 thin boards or plywood about 3 feet long (to be back of box and hold foam insulation in place

Window gutter pieces to hold glass in place (two 5 feet long, two 3 feet long)." Still we wanted to make it as easy as possible. so easy my five year old daughter Ava Luna could participate. And of course the one thing she couldn't do safely, was "braze".

Recently PCGS students Zaid Al Khairi and @Chelsea Mandrigues and I revived the original system and put it on display as an exhibit in the solar area and Zaid began talking about ways we could get systems into refugee camps in his native Jordan and elsewhere in regions suffering the tragedies of war and deprivation.

We determined that most people will be like I was on that cold Thanksgiving Day in Palm Desert -- completely clueless when it comes to "brazing".

Worse, using a single coil of copper needs a pump and many areas suffering from infrastructure loss and economic and resource disparities often have no electricity, so having a straight manifold for thermosiphoning is mandatory.

Worse still, it is often impossible to get the MAP torches and acetylene and other combustible gases and hazardous materials into war torn or economically deprived and hegemonically controlled areas, so brazing wouldn't even be possible if there were qualified torch welders.

Thus, we needed to think of a way to make reliable braze free copper manifolds.

That's when Paco Amram from Landmark Solutions Engineering appeared with the gifts of his knowledge and investment in our students. Paco happened to come by Rosebud when Monick held a PCGS student visit day and immediately saw the need for an innovation refinement targeted at solving the skills and materials and free trade deficits often plaguing refugee camps. He came to our PCGS Navigating the FEW Nexus course with all sorts of parts and design ideas and led an iterative design workshop with our students.

Through experimentation we hit upon brass compression T's as the most robust solution (only needing two wrenches to complete in the field) and conceived of creating precut kits that could be sent to a refugee camp and assembled with an instruction manual and video in the field.

The circle became somewhat complete yesterday during the Indigenous Heritage Festival that Maryann Bishop and Stacy Bishop and Brian Bishop and Ericka Leigh and Michaela McMahon and the Rosebud team held at Rosebud -- after the prayer and Tee Pee raising ceremony, backed by the incredible sounds of native American voices singing and creating inspiring drumbeat rhythms and dances, conducting beautiful bead and dreamcatcher workshops, we returned to the original fall harvest season celebration of indigenous and post-modern wisdom, art and science, and PCGS students Zaid Al Khairi and Nathan LaFata and online student @Logan Rance (who came all the way down from Ohio to participate) and Paco and high school volunteer Devon and his Dad Sean assembled our latest innovation on site.

The intent is to field test the system in the off grid cabin where our Lakota relatives stay when they come to Rosebud.

By the end of the day we had a working, leak-free prototype, ready for the next phase of iterative design.

We are ready for a great Thanksgiving and give great thanks to the people who have always kept sustainability in their hearts and practices, with the aim of true liberty and justice for ALL!