solar heating

I don't know what you consider a silly price but we're extremely happy with the system we installed in January and which started working from day 1.

We've hardly used any other water heating since then apart from the kettle for tea, the coffee maker once a week, the dishwasher (which draws only from the cold supply) and the shower (which heats its own water).

The pump is part of the system and is powered by the sun, there's no demand on the mains. When the water isn't being heated the pump doesn't need to work.

I don't know what you mean by controllers in this context.

The people are very helpful and courteous from start to finish. It took us six months to decide - I wish we'd done it earlier but they didn't push us at all, all approaches were from us to them.

It's the way to go, whatever system you choose. Don't be put off by know-alls.

Mary

Annoyingly, the various govenrnment schemes to give grants for this will typically give 50% grants. But, not to DIY.

having been a plumber for 20+ years and hold all my gas quals, What do the goverment need to show I am not diy? If you go most places they are so unafordablly expensive that even with the grant they are outside most peoples price.... I would like to install my own and offer that service cheaply to other enthusiasts.. like diy..ers. I just need to find the right supplier. The web offers lots of places to buy but nothing is better than other peoples expereances.

pete

Completion by a member of your company of the approved course IIRC.

If I Remember Correctly. I believe the course fees were in the region of 2000 quid.

have a look at

There was someone from government on Radio 4 today talking about this.

That's because it costs more to have them installed.

We didn't want anyone else to do it anyway.

Mary

Yes, that was daft. I think she'd got her information wrong.

There was a cash grant for the kit we installed - for professional installation - but we chose not to have it. It was a ClearSkies grant of (I think) £400 with no strings but wasn't as much as the professional installation charge anyway. I think it ran out in April, there may be new ones.

Mary>

Navitron

Out of interest, Why not have the dishwasher drawing from the hot supply? I know ours (Neff) recomended connecting to the cold supply, but did say as long as HW was less than 60 degrees then a hot water supply is fine.

It would surely be ore enviromentally friendly to use solar heated water for the dishes with electric to "top up" the heat than heating all electric from cold?

There's Navitron for vac tubes, but theyre not cheap. You might look over the thread we had about diy glass tube collectors.

Flat plate will give you more return per pound than vac tubes, and they deliver much more on overcast days. Also they wont shatter if you have a power cut on a summers day, unlike vac tubes.

Drain heat exchangers are another technology with better returns than SDHW

NT

They don't wash as well with a hot water feed, which is why most recommend you don't do it. They use rather little water anyway, and in many cases it wouldn't have even run hot by the time the dishwasher had filled, so it just goes to waste in the pipework. Only the main wash and in some cases, the final rinse heat the water anyway.

Just isn't practical. Main wash needs to start cold and gradually heat up for effective results. There are huge potential gains to be had elsewhere -- this one just isn't worth bothering with.

It doesn't.

I don't know what the maximum temperature of the solar water will be, it hasn't reached that heady level yet. I think there's some kind of thermostatic control to prevent over-heating.

I think so but Spouse won't hear of fiddling with the machine. I might find a way of suggesting it to him so that he thinks it's his idea. It's a slimline model and only used every two or three days so isn't a big drain on power.

The reason we bought one was to wash honey jars. The machine used far less water than I could by washing them in the sink, and probably far more thoroughly.

Ah yes - I remembernow, that's what Spouse has said, it's why he won't fiddle with it.

Thanks,

Mary

So that would work by:

a) turning the Sun down?

b) raising a blind over the panel? ;-)

I believe some 'issues' with these panels are because the normal liquid used to run the system is water?

I know you can add antifreeze for the winter (or use plastic pipes and let it freeze) but what can you do to prevent it boiling in the summer (on the more efficient systems) other than by increasing the pressure (or 'dumping' the heat)?

Couldn't you use a different 'liquid' (*like* silicone brake fluid maybe) that might not suffer these problems at the extremes ?

All the best

T i m

Hmm.