Finding Solar Hot Water

I just found this at newenergytips.com.  It’s not bad: Are you looking for solutions for converting your home to provide you with solar hot water?  Solar hot water is an easy thing to come by , if you know how to harness it.

 

There are several reasons you might be looking to harness solar hot water. Top reasons are:

 

Generating space heat or cooling

Actively heating air

Passive space heating

Heating a pool

 

Before you try to embark on any solar hot water projects, it is recommended 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 assessment is only about an hour long, but will prove invaluable.

 

Methods of Generating Heat from Solar Hot Water

The two most easily found, 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 evacuated tubes, but you also tend to have to have a greater number of them to get the same result .These collectors are simply plates, as their name suggests, much like a car’s radiator inside.

 

 

Evacuated Tube Collectors

Maybe one of the easiest methods to generate solar hot water that is becoming even more popular today is to use evacuated tubes (or “collectors”). These are relatively new devices , and are glass tubes, removed of all air (a vacuum is a poor insulator , and will allow heat to flow freely from the outside to the inside metal plates than if there were air were inside ).

 

They contain tiny metal pipes that run from top to bottom of the tube with what are actually heat fins attached. At approximately 6 ft in length, they have connectors on the ends to connect to your house’s heat pumping system.

A “transfer fluid” that is usually alcohol is circulated inside the tubes that can create , in some areas , as much as 80% of a house’s heat .  Since they are constructed of glass, they are semi-fragile when out of their mounts, but once attached I have seen them withstand very extreme wind and even hail without breaking .

Normally found together in groups of ten, these evacuated tubes are positioned in a mount that, as shown in the picture here, can be affixed a few inches above a roof, or can be mounted directly to it.

 

 

The heat produced by your solar tubes can be used primarily in one of two ways to achieve the payoff mentioned earlier:

 

1. Feeding the hot water produced back into a water heater. This greatly reduces the load on the heater, giving maximum efficiency and minimal load when the water heater is called on to do its job. This way, instead of heating up incoming water from supply temperature (usually around 48 to 55 degrees Fahrenheit), it might only have to take the intake water from 100 degrees to 120, or maybe not even heat it at all.
2. The heated water/glycol mix can then be circulated into tubes incorporated in a radiant in-floor heating system. This heats the floor of a house using simple copper tubing routed just underneath the flooring itself. The change this can make on a cold winter day is many times simply amazing.

 

As a matter of fact , this may be a good oportunity to mention that a water heater blanket (for sale at most building supply houses) can save a great deal of energy when tucked around your heater.  Check out newenergytips.com for more info on this.

Energy from Solar Systems

If you’re building a new place to live, or just adding to an existing one, if you calculate your layout properly , you can gain hours of free energy otherwise neglected every year anyway, pouring in all around from the sun.

According to an article at newenergytips.com, Correct features , including properly laid walls, windows and other simple furnishings and trim can make a huge difference in the amount of passive heat a home can absorb. If you’re ready to capture a much larger piece of this energy for free, you might be thinking of utilizing active solar heating. 

These solar energy systems capture the sun’s rays and convert them to heat that freely flows throughout a medium, usually referred to as the heat “transfer fluid”, into solar water heaters and other storgage devices, to be used to heat and to provide hot water well into the cold evening .  You can see the guide from an experienced author here for more info: newenergytips.com

 

A word about economics:  When you’re NOT off the grid, remember this:  It is actually much more to your benefit when you find ways to conserve, and make your home more energy efficient than to find ways to generate more power.

 

The power that comes from power companies is actually much less expensive than the power you will be able to generate yourself at first, when you account for the cost of the new equipment.Of course this doesn’t apply to the cost of incoming power so much to a system that is completely off-grid, since they don’t have the option on power company power anyway, but ANY systems can benefit from better efficiency.

   

This means that easy steps, such as using insulation, if you do it properly, can save you a truckload that will likely be more valuable in the long run than purchasing  specialized equipment and systems that will only be venting their valuable products (hot water and air) out the window…and under the doors …and through electrical sockets.

  

    Here are some of the solar energy systems we go over on this site:    

• Solar Water Heaters

Heating water from the sun is one of the oldest and best methods to further your quest for renewable energy.Just using these tips by themselves can easily save you half of your energy bill .  Some methods include:  

 

• Flat panel collectors – these are simply boxes with windows to the sun that let a heat transfer fluid flow through them.They have been around the longest , and have improved exceptionally since their birth .

 

• Evacuated tube collectors - more efficient thanks to a vacuum and alcohol heat transfer fluid rather than water, these tubes are quite an advancement in solar collector technology.

 

• Photovoltaic (“PV”) panels

There are the blue panels you see on every one’s roof these days.  Getting more efficient and less costly by the day, these panels can help you produce the power needed to run the pumps in your solar water heater, as well as power to convert to AC from the PV’s DC, that can run your household appliances.

 

There’s actually a bunch much more information on the subject from: newenergytips.com