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pay here. I'd check out your leccy and gas bills, and factor in efficiency for each heating type. Roughly speaking leccy = 100%, gas =
80% efficient.Will do.
Sounds like that one was rock bottom stuff. Have you got a filter on it btw? I just wonder if there might be something in the pump.
You may even find 1/4hp to be more than you need, in which case you can cut energy use/noise/increase life by reducing its run speed. Whats your temp rise with the 1hp pump, with the present plumbing setup and fast flow rate? It should be poss to make rough calcs from there, if youre interested in slowing it down.
Yes, definitely. Youre losing loads as it is. I'm surprised to see you getting 50% off such a collector though, I would have expected a fair bit less. Your low water output temp will be helping a lot, but plastic pipes and no cover would generally hit efficiency quite hard.
Well I'd be curious to see what happens if you ever space the pipes out and put silvered mylar underneath, and polythene on top. I reckon you'd seriously cook.
Sounds like doing the same thing for DHW has to be on the cards, thats some heat output! If you ever do I'd efficientise it as much as poss though, since water output temp would have to be high, so all those extra tweaks would be much more important.
Regards, NT
It was OK but I was asking too much of it. I think the bearings just got knacked from all the backpressure. If they weren't already shot, it would be burbling away happily now that I've split the coil into 4 circuits.
I'm not sure... maybe with the polythene on. It's just that when I first measured it, I got 5 litres in 35 seconds with 7degrees rise. When I split the coil into 4 circuits, I got the same temp rise but with 5 litres in only 15 seconds. Admittedly the first measurements were taken in less good conditions but I reckon that the black pipe will only work efficiently up to a certain temperature - ie: not much above ambient. So perhaps when I get my slower pump, I won't be seeing
10kw any more (although probably getting a better efficiency in terms of electricity used / heat output).I'll try the polythene at the weekend and post the before/after measurements. :)
This is effectively increasing the collector size so I would imagine I would get a large improvement.
I should imagine you'd definately need much better insulation underneath, say polystyrene and maybe polycarbonate sheets over the top (3m x 0.6m sheets can be had for about a tenner). I don't even know if you'd be able to get DHW temperatures with MDPE pipe though.
I just bought 50m x 10mm copper oil pipe for about 60 quid (not for a solar project!). You could use this on a black corrugated metal collector surface - it could be well spaced out due to the high conductance of metal.
Cheers
Nick.
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