Quote:
Originally Posted by Dr. J. B. Schwartz
I said that I would post my TIRED Hot Water System so here it is.

There's an interesting story how I built the first TIRED system. Back
in the 1980's I volunteered to go to Africa because they had a
Typhoid epidemic and they needed doctors to help out in the outlining
villages. One of the villages we went to had very little wood for
cooking, what little wood they did have they used for their huts. We
needed hot water for bathing and treating the sick but wood and other
fuel was hard to come by.

On the way to several other villages I noticed a lot of old tires
along side the road. I thought as a last resort we could cutup the
tires and use them for fuel. We stopped to load some of the tires on
our old truck we were using and I noticed that one of the tires had
some rain water in it from the night before. It doesn't rain that
much in that part of Africa so I was surprised when I found water in
a tire that was so hot it burned my hand. This gave me an idea so we
loaded all the tires we could on the truck and took them to the
village. We also found some old cars that had been striped and burned
so we took the hoods off two of the cars. That night we hammered and
chiseled two pieces of round sheet metal out of the two hoods to fit
inside one of the tires. We then melted one of the badly damaged
tires and used it to glue the piece of sheet metal in one of the
tires and to stack the tires on top of each other and glue them
together. We used the other hood to cover our home made water tank.
After the hot rubber cooled we had some of the men in the village
haul water and fill my new home made tank. I was surprised that we
had no leaks, one of our crew said that God must be looking after us.
Before the end of the next day we had plenty of hot water, in fact it
was too hot, we had to keep adding cool water. All together we built
four more TIRED systems before I left Africa and not one of them
leaked.

You must keep in mind that when you build your TIRED system it must
be able to hold water pressure but that shouldn't be a problem since
you have power tools and better building material. You will have to
use stainless or galvanized bolts, nuts, washers and good quality
rubber glue. The plate to seal the top and bottom is the hardest part
of the project. I used thin galvanized sheet metal and glued it to
some ¾ plywood that I had laying around.

When I got back to the Philippines I built my first pressurized TIRED
to preheat the water before going to the hot water tank and our
electric hot water heater almost never goes on. I also set the
thermostat to 100 and that helps save on power as well.

In over 20 years I only had one leak and I fixed it with a tubeless
tire patch.

Good luck, if you need help I'm just a post away. Don't be afraid to
use your own imagination and post the results, if it's better than
mine I'll build a new one.

Ben

The original post by Dr. Schwartz can be accessed by NARF members here:
Yahoo! Groups

And the original drawing found here:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/noahsa...t= 20&dir=asc

The Acronym for TIRED has already been specified by Dr. Schwartz, as shown in the drawing - But it could be remembered as well by:
T hermal
I nfra
R ed
E nergy
D evice

Another variant of this design could use a coil of copper tubing unraveled in the cavity which could then be connected to a clean water source. The clean water would never come in contact with the TIRED water and energy would be exchanged through the copper.

Please keep in mind that Dr. Schwartz actually constructed these and put them into use, so it is a proven process. At the very least it can be used to preheat the water supply feeding a conventional heater or geyser.

As far as aesthetics go, the stack could be housed in a greenhouse type box that allows light in but does not let IR escape (car windshields are notorious for causing this transformation - trapping heat inside the car). With a little imagination, a person could transform typical things found at a junk yard into a usable energy saving device.

Great idea.. i admire you the most. As i read the quote above, i found out that this Dr. is a Filipino. So your a great doctor huh? You think first the better solution of the problem in Africa for a little hot water. You have discovered the tires that being heat under the sun and getting the idea of solar water heating. We are very proud of you. Same Filipino here. lol!

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Solar Power Queensland