Solar Hot Water
Click here to save time and money in designing your first solar
hot water
system
Thinking of doing what
I did and taking advantage of the beautiful sunlight in
your area to capture heat? Solar hot water can be your
ticket, as it is mine, to cutting your utility bills down
to 25% of what they are today, or even getting rid of them
all together.
Here's a graph I made
that comes from the energy analysis program I used on my
own home, before any improvements to renewable energy were
made. These are the uses of energy I had, and to be honest
they are surprising when you see
them together. Note that heating and cooling come up
as a rather large percentage of overall energy
use:
Before embarking on using any of the projects listed here, it is highly recommended that you perform a solar site survey to know just exactly how much solar hot water (or electricity) you can expect to reasonably get, knowing the area of the country you reside in and the solar patterns in your area. This survey is only about an hour long, but will prove invaluable.
Methods of Generating Solar Hot
Water
The two most popular, and as a result most
common types of solar hot water producing machines are the
flat-plate type of collector and the evacuated
tube.
Flat Pate
Collectors
Flat plate solar collectors are less expensive than the evacuated tube type, but you also tend to need more of them to achieve the same result. These collectors are simply plates, as their name suggests, much like a car's radiator inside.
At about 6 feet long, they have connectors on
each end to connect to the home's heat circulation
system. A "transfer fluid" that is usually alcohol is
circulated in the tubes that can generate, in some
areas, as much as 80% of a home’s
heat. Since they are glass, they are semi-fragile
when out of their mount, but once attached I have seen
them withstand very harsh hail without breaking.
Usually mounted in groups of 10, the tubes are
placed in a mount that, either as shown in the picture
here, can hover above a roof, or can be mounted
directly to it.
The heat created by your solar tubes can be used primarily in one of two ways to achieve the benefits mentioned earlier:
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