Solar water heating

TBH I was going to go for at least 15mm as a first choice anyway.

cheers.

Im in Worcs.

If my man insists on doing the install for the MCS (Id rather do the install myself), I may well be in touch with you….

thanks a lot.

I’ve already got a flat panel system which I’m unhappy with. I’ve got a 210 litre heatstore linked up to a 2X1 (I think) flat panel collector facing SSE.

Even on the sunniest day last year, it only managed to raise the temperature of the water in the heatstore by 10 degrees, which seems a bit pathetic to me.

Am I expecting too much, or is that similar to other peoples experiences

Something wrong there mst. I’ve got a 150l tank connected to a panel not much over a m2 and the water from the hot tap is currently 39°C with mains water at 10°C. The solar tank is feeding deirect so there’s no electrical heating and I had a shower (just about warm enough) which probably ran off about 10l two hours ago. The PV panels have so far produced 10kWh which is about 3/4 of what they’d have produced by now on a really sunny day.

40°C now, whoopee! A pleasant shower when I get back from the chaingang.

MST – Your panel definitely undersized – a 210 Litre tanke would require 4msq of flat plate to be sized for a south facing roof in england.

Smudger – I suspect that is part of the problem. I’ve heard various rumours that they don’t spec 1 panel for that size of cylinder any more, but the guy we complained to denied that.

I’m also of the opinion that it’s not working as well as it could do, but the company who supplied it just refer back to the spec they supplied on the quote and to be honest it’s pretty difficult to work out if it’s fulfilling that or not.

High: 46°C yesterday after two sunny days, low: 35°C last Sunday after two cloudy days. Still no need for the electrical heater since the end of April.