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Pretty Solar Water Heating?

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  • Pretty Solar Water Heating?

    Hey,

    I'm looking into maybe using some solar heating for a heat store and under-floor heating. I'm in the UK, so not super-hot, low sun and short days in winter etc. Additionally, I'm looking at a fairly long pipe run between panels and heat store (the store will be in the garage, which happens to be on the north-west corner of the house).

    I'm sure I could get a solar company over to give me a solution, but pretty much without exception, panels on the roof range from ugly to fugly. The best I've seen are the ones that are fitted into the roof line, but even they are pretty bad on a red tile roof (they'd be better on a slate roof, mind you). Additionally, the position of the house means a corner of it is actually the most sun-facing.

    I'm wondering why we use panels for everything? Could I/we have a pipe based solution running around the two sunny sides of my roof (perhaps just above the guttering?) instead? I figure a ~25mm thick black pipe could actually look quite nice - and since it would run around the entire length of the roof, it wouldn't look like an "exception" like panels do - you might not even notice it as such. I'm guessing the length would be something like 15-20 meters, and would coincidently mean I could have a shorter internal hot pipe run (the cold 'feed' would still be a bit long, but that doesn't matter so much).

    So my question really is... is there a reason (besides panels are easy to ship and understand) that we don't make solar heating systems a bit more 'custom fit' and pretty? Is there something in the physics of a panel that gives you a cumulative heating effect that you wouldn't get with a long pipe?

    Any insight would be much appreciated...

  • #2
    surface area exposed to the sun is what counts - your 15 to 20 meters of plastic pipe will do next to nothing for you.
    [SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]

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    • #3
      Ahh, yes, of course - how daft of me not to realise that!

      Now I look at it, http://www.yougen.co.uk/renewable-energy/Solar+Thermal/ claims a typical system is 4 square metres. That would mean the pipe (or maybe narrow panel?) would need to be 200mm wide x 20M long - which takes us back into fugly territory.

      I guess what I need to do is to work out the BTUs I need from the heating, then the BTUs that the heat store will need to store, and then the BTUs that the solar would need to produce. If that came out low (unlikely) then maybe something less fugly might be possible, but I'm starting to doubt it.

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      • #4
        I'd start by understanding the resource (solar energy), its availability and variability. I'd be skeptical of websites where there is more adverts than information.

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        • #5
          Oh definitely not taking their word as the truth, but more as a guide to some feasibility calcs. I don't suppose I'm going to get the actual calcs down to a small enough size to make the perimeter pipe to work though, so it looks like a big, square/rectangular panel or two is what I'll end up with - that being the case, I can buy that from any number of suppliers who'll do all the requisite measurements and calculations for me. Always good to have an idea yourself before they come over though, to sniff out the less scrupulous ones.

          Thanks for the pointers - much appreciated.

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