Dubai: When German expatriate Johannes Waimer saw an oil drum in the Bahamas, he never thought that he could re-imagine it and design it into a water heater requiring no power and one that saves tonnes of carbon emissions yearly.
Waimer, a solar consultant with Premier Solar Technologies, was sailing in the Caribbean in 1989 when he spotted a man taking a shower outdoors.
“Because I was a sailor, we sailed worldwide and I was wondering one day when I saw a man on the roof with a black oil drum, but on the oil drum were some pipes. So I called him and asked him what he was doing; he said: ‘I make my shower water by solar,’” Waimer, 77, one of the first residents to advocate solar in the UAE, told Gulf News.
