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...
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...
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