Solar Hot Water

[KathyLauren]

We are about one hour away from having solar hot water. Well, okay, we are about one hour away from having a functioning solar hot water system. The actual solar hot water will have to wait for a sunny day. The installers mounted the collector on the roof yesterday. This morning, they installed the storage tank, and right now, they are installing the heat exchanger.

I don't know yet what the "payback time" is for the system. I can only estimate how much of our electricity usage has been for hot water. I'm guessing the payback time will be about 10 or 12 years.

I have heard people say that they need a shorter payback time to make it worthwhile. Maybe so, if all you think about is money. But I am saving all that electricity. The nay-sayers then say what's the point, since our electricity here is 90% hydro. But I'm saving the 10% that is fossil-fuel-generated directly. Indirectly, the remaining 90% that comes from hydro is now available for someone else to use, replacing their fossil fuel power. So, whatever sunlight I collect is fossil fuel that someone somewhere doesn't have to burn.

It feels right.

[Green Aura]

Great stuff, Keith.

We've, finally, managed to come up with a reasonable system for heating and hot water. We're having a thermal store fed by solar PV and the Rayburn, with an immersion heater as last resort, but hopefully we'll rarely need that.

Just need to get rid of the money pit (the gal's house) and then we should be able to get it installed.

[demi]

we're getting our soler pannel put in for hot water very shrotly too :)

[tammylopez]

It's nice to know you're saving energy and furthering energy conservation when you do things like add insulation to your attic, air seal heating ducts and plug off the fireplace chimney that you haven't used in four years anyway. These things do indeed save energy and lower your power bill, but you really can't see them and measure their benefits in comfort and coziness on a daily bases.

[demi]

It's nice to know you're saving energy and furthering energy conservation when you do things like add insulation to your attic, air seal heating ducts and plug off the fireplace chimney that you haven't used in four years anyway. These things do indeed save energy and lower your power bill, but you really can't see them and measure their benefits in comfort and coziness on a daily bases.

I desagree. Before we got the hot water soler pannels installed we had an electric boiler with took 2 hours to heat up properly, then once someone had a shower there was no hot water left. It was expencive to run and as a conciquence we were only using it once or twice a week.
Now we have the soler pannels and we have constant boiling hot water all day and it even stays hot enough into the night and even till the morning if no one had a shower before bed. And as a concicuence of that I'm sticking the baby in the shower sevral times a day, im jumping in the shower everyday, am my family are on holiday staying with us just now and they are all having showers every day too. That's 4 adults and 2 kids all having showers eevery day, throught the day, from free hot water!
I think at this rate the pay off will be much sooner than 10 years.
I can definetly measure the comfort and cozziness our soler pannels bring on a daily basis.

[merv]

We had hot water panel installed 4 years ago. Cost 4000 euros. Cut our bill from 2000 euros/year to 1000. OK, in winter we sometimes have to put immersion heater on.

Installed photoelectric 2 years ago. cost 10 000 euros. FIT gave us 1000 euros last year so effective electric bill ZERO. Hot water paid back in 4 years. PhotoV will be ten years if no price rises. (hohoho)

Central heating is 100% wood stove with back boiler to radiators, 450 euros for 15 cubic meters. Thought about cross connecting the two systems so that wood stove heated hot water but decided there was no decent cost benefit. Anyway, when we have to put the immersion heater on over night it stays ok for two or three days if not too many showers.

Do you have to be grubby to be green ? Discuss.

Merv

[demi]

We are getting a new wood burning cooking stove in the kitchen with a back boiler to heat the hot water in winter, and 2 radiators in the bedroom and en suite in the next room. My husband thinks the house is too big to heat every room by radiators from the central heating from the wood stove, so we have other indevidual wood burning stoves in the other rooms.

Electricity here is really expencive and there is no mains gas in this contry, so the majority of people burn wood to cook and heat their homes. For us its definetly more cost effective to heat our water, cook and heat the house with wood rather than electricity, especially seeing as we have an orchard providing a sustainable wood supply. We still buy in some big logs to top up the prunings from the orchard, but it still works out way cheaper than having everything running on electricity.

Just to clarify, we were never grubby. Before we got the hot water pannels we would put the electric boiler on and all have a bath 1-2 times a week, and just get washed in the sink with cold water the days in between.