solar hot water panel construction ideas needed

[lastgoodusername]

wondering about constructing some solar hot water panels for domestic and pool water heating. anyone tackled this? thanks for the input

[Pat]

LastGood, Since it got real quiet for a long time, I will comment. I looked into this a couple times a while back and decided it was not a good idea unless you have excellent insolation (NOT insulation but you will need that too) and the use is not critical nor does your system have to be really efficient.

A friend put a coil of black plastic hose on his garage roof and recirculated his swiming pool water through it. This was In Poway, CA, in summer, and it helped reduce his energy costs. He had to shut it down later in the season to avoid overheating the pool. Of course he was also getting direct gains from sun on the pool.

The best solar collectors I have seen for DHW (and most likely hydronic heat) are cylindrical glass vacuum bottle units that would be difficult for the average guy to try to dupliicate unless you are skilled at glass blowing and several other not particularly common skills.

If you don't mind the tradeoff between low tech and efficiency and have a huge space available (to compensate for low efficiency) AND you like to experiment AND you have lots of discretionary time and $ then go for it.

Not to be discouraging but for me scratch building solar collectors is right up there with scratch building my own AA or AAA cells. Not likely to be economical. Now if you buy the components and take on the job of integrator/systems designer then you will still have a good sized job ahead but it is much more likely to succeed.

I have seen a large number of professionally prolduced roof mounted DHW units FAIL after a few to several years, often without having amortized the purchase price and installation. SoCal was a BIG solar water area for a long time. There are oodles of non-unctioning units there that have been bypassed and or replaced with gas or electric DHW heaters.

Good luck with your investigation and efforts.

[img]/forums/images/icons/smile.gif[/img] Pat [img]/forums/images/icons/smile.gif[/img]

[hvac1]

Check out the book Sunshine to dollars. It has some neat ideas on solar power. I don't know how many are practicle but it's fun making something out of nothing. Go to www.knowledgepublications.com to check out this book.