Shifting Solutions

HI folks:

This next article will take me about 14 days to prepair. As always, I will post what I can get done in one day in 500 to 600 word increments. I found this a fun project and so I hope you will find it as interesting as I did. So over the next 14 or so days it will be all about ” Solar Assisted water heaters and how to install one.

The system is designed to add in to a hot water heater to reduce the energy.

Butler Sun Solutions sell a complete “Solar Wand” installation kit. The kit is unique in the solar industry in many ways – click the image at left for a complete system diagram. Most innovative is the solar wand heat exchanger that was designed and patented by Barry Butler. This device allows the most simple retrofit to an existing hot water heater – it simply drops into the tank, replacing the existing hot water outlet plumbing! The wand has about 2 square feet of surface area that contributes heat to the tank.

NOTE: I decided to install the wand in a separate 40 gallon storage tank that then feeds into the propane water heater, since this will improve the system efficiency due to the greater temperature difference between the incoming well water and the heated collector fluid.

The 4 solar collectors mount to the south side of my house, along with the 20 Watt solar panel that will power the circulation pump. This pump will be mounted above the water heater tank in the basement and will circulate solar heated water from the collectors, through an insulated umbilical of 3/8″ copper pipes to the Solar Wand in the tank.

Most solar collectors are mounted to a sloped roof that faces south to optimize performance, but my roof faces east/west. So my only option was the vertical south wall which is a slight compromise, so I added one extra collector to ensure good heat in the winter months. Solar panels and collectors need direct sun to work but collectors are more forgiving of off-axis sun light than solar electric panels.

There are many things about the design of this solar heating package that I really like:

• The Solar Wand simplifies the plumbing. It’s a “no sweat” plumbing job since no copper soldering is required. All connections are done with swage fittings and unions with nuts that tighten to make the connection.
• The automatic over temperature and pressure system is unique in the industry.
• The collector frames come in a variety of colors to match the building, the red/brown I selected matched our paint trim very closely.
• The simple structure for mounting the collectors consists of vertical mounting rails. It only took an hour to mount them – with the help of 4 friends and staging.
• The insulated umbilical that carries heated antifreeze fluid is made of flexible 3/8″ copper tubes. 2 additional wire cables are tied to that for signals and PV power.

That s it for today. Hope your enjoying your new year as I am. Lots of new intentions for me for this year, I’m batting for 3 out of 10 of them to really get done! You know how that is. However, one thing I have done already, is built my first home solar power system. I bought a kit i n the fall of ‘08 and with those easy to read diagrams, charts and videos guiding me all the way, I found it to be an fun project easily achievable over a weekend. My goal is to convert every part of my energy usage at my home in town to solar and wind. Once I get my home completed, I will begin the same at the ranch house, which will be a much bigger project! Click the link above, and find out how you too can build your own solar panels or wind generator to start reducing your share of the carbon footprint left behind by the major utilities.

Tomorrow we continue the series, check back .

1. Anneliese Goan Says:
   March 25th, 2010 at 8:36 pm

   Thank you for writing such an appealing post. Normall I see the same thing and it starts to get on my nearves. Thanks again and I’ll be back for more.