solar water heat

[ColorMeGreen]

Since recently it seems that most of my new knowledge is from this board I have to ask: Any knowledge/experience with solar water heating for a house/shop? Our home is being built and the plumber says that his suppliers think they aren't any good (the heating that is). I'm just interested in adding to the gas water heater. BTW, I'm in the Utah desert...Orem.
Thanks
Jeanne

 

[RanchMan]

/w3tcompact/icons/hmm.gif Hmmm. That seems like a pretty poor argument - "They aren't any good." I have no idea personally, but I think if he's gonna make a statement like that, he should at least have some evidence to support it. Then again, maybe I'm just a bit harsh....

 

[s1120]

Well, I had tryed to post a long reply and my computer crashed,/w3tcompact/icons/frown.gif so here is a quick run down.

Had one..
Did not work well..
Stoped using it...
Bills did not change...
I hope they improved the system..
I like solar...

That about covers it./w3tcompact/icons/smile.gif

 

[RobertN]

My wife had solar water heating before we met. She said it worked really well. This was in Placerville Calif, at about 1750' elevation. Her system had electric backup, but she said it seldom came on.

I have been looking a little bit. I found this page, which has systems that can work with an existing water heater, or a complete system replacement. They are local, so I want to check out thier operation.

<A target="_blank" HREF=http://www.solarroofs.com/technical/index.html#q-a>http://www.solarroofs.com/technical/index.html#q-a</A>

 

[PhilNH5]

Jeanne,
Real Goods is an alternate energy supplier. They have lots of info on their website. They can supply anything from books and knowhow to complete systems.

Here is a link to their solar water heating page.

<A target="_blank" HREF=http://www.realgoods.com/renew/shop/list.cfm?dp=2200&sd=2202>http://www.realgoods.com/renew/shop/list.cfm?dp=2200&sd=2202</A>

Phil

 

[njrqs]

Jeanne

Smokey from Oz posted something similar a few weeks ago and I was the only response. I hope he is still looking around for one.

I had one here and it worked fine, but we have a lot of sun and not much cloud.

In summer the water gets extremely hot as it is not thermostatically controlled. In winter the water not so hot. My unit was almost 20 years old and that is about the longest you could expect out of one.

We are about 27 degrees south I think. Any lower latitudes, their effectiveness drops off a bit.

Solahart are our biggest supplier over here.

Cheers

 

[dmccarty]

ColorMeGreen,

I don't have a solar water heater but we are designing our house to use
Passive Solar heating and radient flooring using solar heated water.

NCSU has a Solar House that we toured at the end of December. The
temps had been in the 20-30s for a couple of weeks and they day we
went the temps where in the 20s. The solar space in the house was
a tad over 90 degrees. It was a clear day and the temp on the water
from the solar heater was 140 degrees. The living space was at 70.

We had been looking at some solar houses which we did not like for
various reasons. I have been reading up on passive/active solar houses
for awhile but the tour of the NCSU solar house sold us. We still are
going to have a heat pump and at least one wood stove in the house but
we figure the solar aspects on the house ain't gonna really cost us that
much and should take much of the chill out of the air. The wood stove
will take care of the rest.... I got so much wood to burn I don't know
what to do with it......

AND, NC does provide some tax incentives to put in solar features.

So check you local tax laws and universities. They might have a demo
house for you to visit and/or info on solar heaters. You might be
very suprised with what you find.

Hope this helps...
Dan McCarty

 

[DavidInNH]

We built a fairly large passive solar house in '93. It has oil-fired radiant heat in all of the floors. The south side has a large thermal mass in the floor and chimney. The guy that developed our subdivision is a solar nut and layed out all of the lots with solar easements and put deed restrictions limiting use of fossil fuel (we just overturned those - bad for property value). He has a 12,000 sq.ft. passive solar castle (that is a whole 'nuther story).

Based on the advice of our builder, we skipped the active solar - not enough sun up here in New England. If the sun is out on a winter day, the heat doesn't run at all... The radiant heated floors are the best thing since (fill in the blank).

Another point that wasn't obvious to me is that a properly designed passive solar house stays much cooler in the summer time. When the south eaves are done right, you get lots of light on the floor on winter deys and almost none in the summer.

-david

 

[dmccarty]

DavidInNH,

What got us started down the Solar Home was an episode of Extreme
Homes. They had a wood cabin type of house that was totally solar.
No heat or air needed except for wood heat if you wanted it. We liked
the idea and liked the exterior looks of the home but the interior was
icky due to the requirements they guy had to circulate air. Basically
you had to have three floors and even large 3000 square foot homes
had two large usable rooms on each floor with a central stair and
circulation system. To get the room sizes and the number of rooms
we would have had to build a 4000-5000 sf house! WAY to expensive.
Our current house design is a tad under 3000 sf and its a dream house
for us.

Its just stupid money wise to have to build a house that has an extra
1000 to 2000 sf to save a few bucks on the utility bill......

And his wood was treated with CCA which has just been banned....

NC has some pretty strict design rules to qualify for passive or
active tax credits. These include a proper ratio to window square
footage to heated floor space, proper eave designs to keep out
the solar gain in the summer, etc.

Our house design calls for a few "compromises" to get the solar
gain but they pretty simple. The west view from the house site
is the least desirable. But any other direction has its good points.
So having the house have the majority of its windows to the south
is not a big deal for us. We have a good view. And the house
could have a much different floor plan without solar considerations
but the plan required to get the solar gain actually fits our house
site nicely....

Later...
Dan

 

[DavidInNH]

That matches what we found. A passive solar house required very few compromises, didn't add a lot of cost and improved livability year-round.

<font color=blue>Its just stupid money wise to have to build a house that has an extra 1000 to 2000 sf to save a few bucks on the utility bill......</font color=blue>.
How about a $30K auger-fed wood chip boiler with a separate storage building so you can buy wood-chips in bulk. Let your helper uses the JD to load wood-chips into the 1 ton dump, drive up the hill and dump them into the feed chamber. If the moisture content isn't just right, the thing jambs up. You can deal with this by installing a propane backup system...

-david