Trickle to Death

Yesterday the modified trickle down thing looked fine. I didn't expect much since all I was using was a screen sandwiched between two clear polyethylene films as well as clear polyethylene glazing. I was mostly interested in the uniformity of water flowing between the screen sandwich. The flow looked good and the heat harvest seemed reasonable considering there was no attempt made to apply a dark inner film and a glass based outer glazing. 

Anyhow to make the story even longer I used a cheapo bilge pump to pump water from a bucket to the top trickle down PVC pipe with the holes in it. In this picture you see Mel holding up the top glazing flap

Anyhow, to make a story longer I decided to do some heavy duty testing today March 11 by using a 3 ml black plastic construction bag to convert the sunlight to heat and Kalwall for the outer glazing. The Kalwall is not seen here since the test fixture was dismantled before taking a picture.  

The cross supports made from 3/4 inch PVC were only intended to hold the black inner plastic in place. The test fixture was left in bright sunlight for an hour before pumping water to the top trickle-ator pipe. During this one hour interval I had a melt down. The inner plastic film puckered and the PVC cross supports got as soft as silly putty and became distorted under the heat. By the time I switched the pump on it was too late

 Got a few more experiments in to run before before putting this mess on the side of the road, but I haven't given up yet.

 Thank's for your suggestions. Would like to use an alternative to tar on the Al flashing. Is there some chemical that will react with Al like aniline dye or something? Might use PEX plastics trickle-ator and  Aluminum flashing on top of the screen sandwich. This would protect the plastic from UV degradation but the heat may still kill it. Teflon is too expensive but maybe...

keep on trucking Don't you hate it when the sun is out and your test fixture melts.

There's got to be a better way...

John