When it was found the propane for my house was alledgedly leaking we decided to put in a solar hot water system. We had a Thermosiphon system put in outside with two panels and a ~90 gallon tank behind our house in Texas since we had concerns with the weight on the old roof. It is similar to these http://www.solahart.com.au/products/...d-systems.aspx
Worked great for 8 years however we are selling the house and one concern for the house being long term vacant and consistently short term vacant is "Turning Off" the water heater so it doesn't constantly overheat and wear out or fail to fully close the pressure/temp valve and continuously slowly drain out.
I'm hoping I'm missing something obvious that doesn't require draining the system unfortunately right now my thoughts to make something nice and long term are:
Building a 5 sided cover with cutouts for the pipes for each panel out of foam insulation and painting it to blend in that one could put on and remove easily.
Building some kind of roller shade mounted to the top of the panels that could be pulled down to cover the panels.
We currently either stop by every other day and run the hot water (sometimes steaming) or leave a tap running so it uses about 20-30+ gallons of water which goes into the anerobic septic and used as greywater to tease the lawn with a tiny bit of water through sprinklers. We might just tell the new owners that is the best thing to do and if they don't remember it has an overtemp valve however that the overtemp valve is a fail safe not really meant for everyday use.
Worked great for 8 years however we are selling the house and one concern for the house being long term vacant and consistently short term vacant is "Turning Off" the water heater so it doesn't constantly overheat and wear out or fail to fully close the pressure/temp valve and continuously slowly drain out.
I'm hoping I'm missing something obvious that doesn't require draining the system unfortunately right now my thoughts to make something nice and long term are:
Building a 5 sided cover with cutouts for the pipes for each panel out of foam insulation and painting it to blend in that one could put on and remove easily.
Building some kind of roller shade mounted to the top of the panels that could be pulled down to cover the panels.
We currently either stop by every other day and run the hot water (sometimes steaming) or leave a tap running so it uses about 20-30+ gallons of water which goes into the anerobic septic and used as greywater to tease the lawn with a tiny bit of water through sprinklers. We might just tell the new owners that is the best thing to do and if they don't remember it has an overtemp valve however that the overtemp valve is a fail safe not really meant for everyday use.
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