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I am new to this forum but I am fairly sure someone will be able to point me to previous discussions of my questions.
I live in a sunny bit of France, at about 45degrees north, and I have a good unobstructed south-facing aspect in my garden. I have a pool (60 cubic meters - about 15,000 gallons) that is currently unheated, and a fairly large house which has a wood-fired boiler/furnace (wood-chips automatically loaded via an archimedes screw from a big silo).
I'm right now building a shed in the garden to take solar water heating panels on its roof. The shed will be about 15 feet long, 5 feet wide, and will have a 45 degree roof facing due south. The roof area will be about 10 square meters (about 90 square feet).
I am hoping that it will be possible to put 10 m2 of solar panels on the roof, to enable me to heat the pool a little in spring and autumn, and provide domestic hot water in summer and maybe even a bit in winter. In mid-summer the pool doesn't really need heating - last year it got to 30 degrees centigrade (86 fahrenheit).
What I don't know is what will happen if I find I have installed too much heating area - what happens with the excess heat? Is it a minor problem (the hot taps get very hot indeed?) or a major one (everything melts?).
I should add that the shed and the house are not very close together - about 150 feet apart. I plan to bury the pipe run and make sure the pipes are insulated.
And this isn't entirely about economics either. The wood-chip boiler is efficient but noisy - from time to time it groans like a cow in pain - and using it less, particularly in summer - would be a benefit in itself.
I live in a sunny bit of France, at about 45degrees north, and I have a good unobstructed south-facing aspect in my garden. I have a pool (60 cubic meters - about 15,000 gallons) that is currently unheated, and a fairly large house which has a wood-fired boiler/furnace (wood-chips automatically loaded via an archimedes screw from a big silo).
I'm right now building a shed in the garden to take solar water heating panels on its roof. The shed will be about 15 feet long, 5 feet wide, and will have a 45 degree roof facing due south. The roof area will be about 10 square meters (about 90 square feet).
I am hoping that it will be possible to put 10 m2 of solar panels on the roof, to enable me to heat the pool a little in spring and autumn, and provide domestic hot water in summer and maybe even a bit in winter. In mid-summer the pool doesn't really need heating - last year it got to 30 degrees centigrade (86 fahrenheit).
What I don't know is what will happen if I find I have installed too much heating area - what happens with the excess heat? Is it a minor problem (the hot taps get very hot indeed?) or a major one (everything melts?).
I should add that the shed and the house are not very close together - about 150 feet apart. I plan to bury the pipe run and make sure the pipes are insulated.
And this isn't entirely about economics either. The wood-chip boiler is efficient but noisy - from time to time it groans like a cow in pain - and using it less, particularly in summer - would be a benefit in itself.
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