Solar Heating Plan for Any Home
(Page 4 of 8)
December 2007/January 2008
By Gary Reysa
The Storage Tank
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The tank is large enough to hold about one sunny day’s worth of collected sunshine. On a sunny day, the tank can hold enough energy to heat the house through the night and part of the next day if it’s cloudy. A general rule of thumb is to have about 1 1/2 to 2 gallons of water storage per square foot of collector.
The waterline of the tank must be several inches below the lower manifold of the collectors in order to allow the collectors to fully drain back into the tank. In our case, the 3-foot-high tank is sunk into the ground about 2 feet so the collectors could be mounted just over a foot above the bottom of the south wall.
We chose to build a tank that uses plywood walls lined with an ethylene propylene diene monomer (EPDM) rubber membrane (pond liner). The tank bottom and walls are three-quarter-inch exterior plywood. The plywood is supported by a 2-by-4 frame around the base of the walls and a second 2-by-4 frame around the top of the walls. A single 2-by-4 vertical stiffener is used in the center of the long walls. A beveled vertical 2-by-3 is used in each corner of the tank to tie the end walls and side walls together. A metal tension tie extends across the top of the tank at the midpoint of the long walls and ties the top of the long walls together. This tension tie is necessary to keep the long walls of the tank from failing due to outward water pressure.
The tank construction is important; it will be holding about 4,000 pounds of water! All joints should be carefully glued and screwed together. The tank must sit on a level and solid surface. We placed the tank on about 3 inches of washed gravel, which had been leveled and tamped.
When the tank plywood shell is completed, cut a piece of EPDM pond lining material large enough to line the entire tank with no seams. Lay the liner over the top of the tank and carefully work it down into the tank. After the liner touches the bottom of the tank, take off your shoes and work from inside the tank. Continue working the liner into the tank until it is against the walls. Work all the extra material in each corner into a single, neat fold. Then secure the liner to the top frame with silicone caulk held in place with some staples and trim off the excess.
The tank lid is made from two layers of 2-inch-thick rigid foam board glued to a sheet of hard board. The bottom is covered with a layer of EPDM. The lid must be firmly held to the tank to prevent water vapor from escaping — we used lag screws.
Be sure to mount the pump and controller where they are protected from low temperatures. We did this by positioning both in a compartment close to the storage tank, with most of the insulation detouring around the outside of it so the compartment is kept warm by heat from the tank.
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