solar hot water

T

tullfan

Member
2018 Sabbatical
Joined
Mar 2, 2015
Location
Sydney
I am moving from gas to solar water,and am looking for any experienced people to share their knowledge or experience with solar water,particularly what brands to use or avoid.
Many thanks in advance.
P.S. I am in the Blue Mountains outside Sydney,2 people,no frost and rather mild weather in Winter but warm to hot Summers
 
I do solar hot water (in summer) and solar power, and I guess my environmental conditions are a bit cooler than yours. Talk to Wise Living, they've got lots of experience and know-how and won't feed you any bullshit, and they deliver good products are a competitive price.
 
I have solar hot water. I find it's great until you get a few overcast days. Then you seem to run out of hot water pretty quickly of an evening.

250Lt tank is about the largest you can go so it's not ideal for large families.
 
Nanook said:
I have solar hot water. I find it's great until you get a few overcast days. Then you seem to run out of hot water pretty quickly of an evening.

250Lt tank is about the largest you can go so it's not ideal for large families.
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When we were building this place, our setup was designed for the slow-combustion wood stove to heat a 310 litre tank (which in our case just happened to come from Wise Living, the one good decision made by our plumber, so all the connections were already in place for solar). Our main concern turned out to be limiting the heat input so that the water doesn't just end up boiling through the pressure relief valve and flowing down the mountain.

This setup possibly is not enough for big families, but for a couple it's fine.
 
Mine was already installed when I bought the place but despite it's limitations I'll replace it with another.

The panel is quite old now and I've since installed a 6kW system for power.

When the tank needs replacing I'll see about getting it hooked up to the 6kW panels as they are a far better panel. They were designed for Canada and low light so they still produce when the sun goes down and there's very little light.
 
tullfan said:
I am moving from gas to solar water,and am looking for any experienced people to share their knowledge or experience with solar water,particularly what brands to use or avoid.
Many thanks in advance.
P.S. I am in the Blue Mountains outside Sydney,2 people,no frost and rather mild weather in Winter but warm to hot Summers
Click to expand...

Nanook said:
Mine was already installed when I bought the place but despite it's limitations I'll replace it with another.

The panel is quite old now and I've since installed a 6kW system for power.

When the tank needs replacing I'll see about getting it hooked up to the 6kW panels as they are a far better panel. They were designed for Canada and low light so they still produce when the sun goes down and there's very little light.
Click to expand...
What brand are they?
 
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