It took a while to decode the email I received from Carroll Hampleman (you can see why below), but his home made water heater is worth the bother. Mirrors are arranged to reflect and concentrate the ...

A solar-powered air conditioner doesn't do one much good during a Vermont winter, but rather than cranking on the heater (or huddling under the heated Hello Kitty mat) just to heat things up in a ...

Q: Based on our water bills, my family uses lots of water and much of it is probably hot water. Is there a simple solar hot water system design that I could build myself? A: Heating water can account ...

Do you enjoy coming home to a warm home in the dead of winter? Do you leave your furnace running in cold weather even if no one’s home? If you want to keep the house warm for when you return later in ...

We recently featured one way to heat your house with the sun, but DIYer Daniel Strohl has spent three years perfecting his homemade solar garage heater, made out of a wooden box, some vacuum parts, ...

Alex Davies is a technology journalist and the author of "Driven," an upcoming book about the self-driving car industry. Well it's that time of the year again here in Southern California time to fill ...

Solar water heaters work by absorbing sunlight in solar collectors and saving the heated water in a storage tank. Both active and passive solar water heaters are available. Active systems are ...

Jeff Somers is a freelancer who has been writing about writing, books, personal finance, and home maintenance since 2012. When not writing, Jeff spends his free time fixing up his old house. He has ...

The days are getting longer, and I’m thinking I ought to make use of those extra rays to help the environment. The big decision seems to be between a solar electric system and a solar water heater.