NORWAY – The Progress Center is hosting a workshop encouraging independent construction of solar water heating systems.

The workshop will take place from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Feb. 15. It will be limited to 15 people and cost $50 per person to compensate the instructor, with remaining proceeds donated to the center.

“We’ll build a solar collector in the workshop. And one of us, namely me, will get to take it home,” said Ken Hamilton, director of Healing of Persons Exceptional. HOPE has been located in the Progress Center since moving from its former Paris location.

Hamilton said he will purchase the materials necessary to construct the collector and Larry Jordan, maintenance supervisor at the Progress Center, will help him install it at his home.

Jordan said solar water heating systems preheat incoming water so that less energy is required to bring water stored in a hot water tank up to temperature.

“The community’s been very good to us,” Jordan said. “And we like to give back when he can.”

Hamilton said the workshop will be taught by an instructor from the Maine Solar Energy Association. He said he is interested in starting up other solar workshops after the one at the Progress Center.

“It’s the old surgical adage: see one, do one, teach one,” he said.

Hamilton said that while commercially installed solar systems can cost thousands of dollars, a person can make a solar collector for hundreds of dollars and be paid back in fuel savings in five years or less.

For more information on the workshop, contact Jordan at the Progress Center at 743-8049 or by cell phone at 890-6645.