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:
- 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.
- 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.
