Go Solar for Free Hot Water
(Page 2 of 6)
February/March 2007
By Bob Ramlow
It’s cheaper to conserve energy than to purchase it, so the first thing you’ll want to do is reduce your hot water needs to the minimum. Start by reducing waste; then minimize consumption. Reducing your usage ensures that your solar heating system will provide the maximum possible portion of your hot water. Even if you don’t go solar, using the minimum necessary hot water is good for your wallet and good for the environment.
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The next step is to choose a solar water heater to supplement your fossil-fueled heater. Here are the first things you need to consider about a solar water heater:
Siting. Solar collectors must be in full or nearly full sunlight all year, so have a solar professional assess your site to find the best location for the collector. The optimum collector mounting angle, measured from horizontal, equals the latitude of the collector location. Ideal direction is true south, but in most cases, solar collectors for water heating can be mounted within 30 degrees of true south and will tolerate a small amount of shading.
Collectors are typically mounted on roofs, but also can be mounted on the ground near homes. Wind can create strong lift under collectors, so they must be securely fastened to the building or to the ground. They’re not heavy, even when filled with fluid, but make sure the roof structure is in good shape.
Sizing. Solar water heaters are rarely designed to provide 100 percent of your hot water — there are just too many cloudy days over the course of a year. Nevertheless, a typical solar water heater will provide between 50 percent and 75 percent of your annual load. In hot climates or during the sunniest times of the year, you can expect to get nearly 100 percent of your hot water from solar. During the cloudiest periods you may only get 50 percent, depending on your climate.
In cool climates, a system is sized with 20 square feet of collector and 20 gallons of storage capacity for each person in the household. For large families, this can be reduced by 10 percent for each person over four members in the household. In warm climates, a system is sized with 15 square feet of collector and 25 gallons of storage for each person in the household, with the same reductions for larger families. These sizing methods will give the best return on investment. Systems smaller than these certainly will work well, but your savings will be less.
Solar Hot Water: Warm Climates
The choice of the right type of solar water-heating system depends primarily on the climate where you live. The crucial fact is that if a water-filled pipe is exposed to freezing conditions, the water inside the pipe will freeze and the pipe will burst. In any climate that experiences freezing temperatures, some precautions must be taken to prevent pipes from freezing.
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