New additions to BGET office

The BGET office has had a few new additions in the last month including a solar hot water heater and a weather station. The solar hot water system is based on the design by Marcus Veerman of the Community Playground People which is an organization that designs and builds playgrounds in Burmese migrant schools in and around Mae Sot. Many hands went into the construction of this system including Marcus, Salinee, and previous volunteers Christina, Megan, and Josh. The system was installed by BGET technicians Sunti, Thai, Em, and new volunteer, Stony.

The system costs less than 1800 baht ($50 U.S.) to construct using materials available at local hardware shops and recycled materials. The collector is composed of an insulated painted black wooden box with black polyethylene collector tubes covered with glass panels. The storage tank is currently an insulated 30 gallon storage container. Currently the temperature has reached up to at least 45 degrees Celsius in the afternoon providing plenty of warm water for a shower.

BGET is continuing to work with Marcus to provide an easy to understand manual for the replication of this system and a link to this manual will be posted soon. In addition we hope to begin to monitor the temperature of this system as well as the system installed by Marcus at his home.




The "WeatherHawk" weather station on the roof of the BGET office was installed by BGET technicians and reads ambient temperature, wind speed, wind direction, rainfall, and sun insolation. The system will help to better approximate the available solar and wind resources here in Mae Sot. Future uses of this equipment may be useful in determining the feasability of small wind projects in mountainous areas in our work areas.



The following is a screenshot of the weather station program which will log data to be analyzed.