I've never been branded a spammer before! If you search through google groups you'll find I've been posting here on and off for about 8 years, and in that time probably only one other post was in connection to my solar system, and I think that was asking for advise on dual coil HW cylinder suppliers.
I'm just a happy customer of Navitron who didn't have time to DIY the solar system hence used an installer.
If anyone is interested in seeing the data recorded by the data logger to see for themselves what energy the system has delivered just let me know.
I agree with the others that the pay-back time will be considerable, but I knew that from the beginning and plan to stay in this house long enough for it to be worthwhile.
Well the technology starts with a cover which simply allows the heat in and prevents evaporative cooling. Other features which makes it attractive are: Not needed when solar less available. No need for anti freeze as the pool can be decomissioned during the winter. Can heat the pool water directly. Low tech, low cost (thermo-syphon) collectors as used in "hot countries" are suitable.
It wasn't dark until after 4 in our part of Leeds and it wasn't cold enough for the CH to come on
I assume you had the heating on in your car ... :-).
We haven't bothered measuring since the first few days after connection. That day it was 4C in the shade and at the end of the day we ended up with a large tank full of water at over 30C.
It hasn't happened to us.
Three - why?
Irrelevant. The sun provides the majority of our domestic hot water, the boiler provides the heating for the radiators - which are hardly ever been on.
Why on Earth are people so antagonistic towards something of which they have no personal experience?
I "heat" my inflatable pool with an old central heating radiator painted black in circuit in the filtration pump. It definitely raises the water temperature, although I cannot tell you how much. Frankly, it would probably be more effective to paint the base of the pool black so it absorbs the sun.
They don't do it in Florida or at least heat pumps or boilers are the usual method of choice. Swimming pools use enormous amounts of heat, it would take a large area of rather ugly solar panels and piping in the garden and the kit would probably deteriorate in the full sun of a Florida summer.
Google for swimming + pool + heater and the only solar pool heater returned on the first page is a UK advertisement.
I'd also recommend going the DIY route. The kit I have used is a heat bank from Dedicated Pressure Systems Ltd (DPS) with a Resol Controller and three 20 tube thermal solar panels bought from eBay. Sadly the supplier of the panels based in Bristol seems to have ceased trading - he's no longer registered as a trader. However the design is a common one so spare vacuum tubes are available from Navitron and other suppliers.
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is perfectly simply if you are happy with working on a roof and the DPS system comes complete with an excellent installation guide. The purchase cost was £2000. Installation took three days but I was hardly working flat out to do it. It could have been done easily within a day.
Preparation was important, the thermal store was installed in the roof void above a new bathroom constructed with block walls and a reinforced concrete roof. The heat bank also takes hot water from a log burning stove, and LPG boiler and in the near future we will probably add a boiler using chipped wood as fuel.
One potential problem for us is that on a realy good day we can collect ar more heat than we can use. So before next summer I'm going to install a heat dump of some sort. The quick and dirty solution is a radiator to dump the heat to atmosphere, a more sensible solution is to put the heat into a large store of water. I was thinking of placing a 2 tonne store into the ground and using this as a pre-heater for incoming water in winter.
Last October you did mention you would post the savings you made after one year. You may already have done so and I could have missed it but I would be interested in knowing the figure if its available.
Make that a bit not byte... Though the use of b for bit and B for byte is very open for discussion. m is definitely milli or 1/1000th rather than M for mega or 1,000,000. B-)
I've used a small black painted radiator in an aluminium box with a 4mm glazed front panel to play around with while deciding on optimum locations or solar heating. On a good day the panel (approx 1 square metre) could provide 100 litres of hot water a day. The problem is that the panel needs to be used with a primary fluid containing anti-corrosion agents and with a heat exchanger. You would also need one heck of a lot of panel to make it worthwhile.
Another unintentional experiment was the use of a solar fence. I had clipped 50 metres of black plastic tubing to a fence to supply cold water to a barn. In the summer we didn't get cold water just very, very hot water. I've considered making a solar fence which is much less obtrusive than large panels lying around the lawn. Also since the tubing is plastic, there's no problem with simply pumping the water from the swimming pool around it as the primary fluid.
Because lots of us know that in a significant number of cases solar water heating is a mechanism for transferring money from well meaning but gullible householders to smooth talking salesmen. And if they spend their commission on big cars the environmental benefit is nil.
It may make economic sense if you use a lot of hot water, can DIY, and use a fuel other than mains gas, otherwise probably not.
If you need a lot of hot water in the UK you'd need an enormous installation and it would still let you down on days like yesterday (Saturday), temp here 3C & dark at 3-00pm.
You couldn't DIY if you use a lot of hot water. Think tonnes of hot water storage.
I might have a DIY play with it, but unfortunately the area I have avaialble for Sloar Panels (where it gets the sun) is at the other end of the plot from the Kitchen/Bathroom. I'm not happy to compromise the structure of my house with panels on the roof (It's a modern trussed roof designed only to support it's own weight and the ceiling below) and pipes taken through the roof and through 40 feet of building, then to interface somehow with a 37kW Siemens combi boiler.
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