Solar Mike, Thanks. I figured that when white things in my room never got warm that it was heat that wasn't absorbed, does that just mean that this was light reflected to another spot in the room and that got light got other things darker instead?
With that out of the way, I suppose we can have some topic drift in the thread.
AC_Hacker, the design of my house would make a hot water(or air) panel mounted on the side of the house look bad as there is no shrubbery or trees to hide it and in order to try and hide it I would have to have trees on my neighbors lot as the line of sight of the curving road I live on draws peoples eyes directly to the south side of my house. I'm also a bit nervous about making penetrations in the side of my house and being sure everything is well sealed. Also I'm not sure how much benefit I would get from HW or HA in a Minnesota December and January when I really need it but we only have 3.5 hours of sun on a clear day limiting what heat can actually be created. Then I've got to figure out to efficiently distribute the heat of hot water into the air while not creating leaks and causing water damage. Water damage and condensation are major homeownership fears of mine. I think I might have better benefit from solar PV if I went the solar route as I think I'd get the most benefit from that. As far as my basement hot water tank, my methane gas bill was for 4 therms/CCF the past two months so there really is very little standby loss there and I manage hot water usage well too so I'd probably overkill the tank in the summer as I think 400,000BTU or so(actually less as my stove/oven runs on the methane gas too) would be fairly easy to produce over the period of a month. For awhile I wished I could use a timer on my water heater but it seems there is no need for it when you've got a tank that supposedly has R20 insulation built-in. Either that or poking the gas meter outside with a pointy stick has been working wonders.
...on a serious note after I moved into this place someone in a gas company truck come out at the end of February and looked at the meter, probably a red flag to have a yearly meter spin of just over 300 ccf a year when the previous owners were in the high 150's last January, huh? Properly used spray foam, ductwork that handles the pressure, efficient furnace cycling protocol, and not setting the thermostat to Tahiti mode apparently does wonders.
While we're on the topic of heating, I've considered going the heat pump route to reduce the energy usage of my old inefficient air conditioner and hopefully squeezing more time out of a 28 year old 76% efficient furnace but when I do the math it seems that in my climate even with some of the most efficient equipment I don't stand to benefit on the cost and if I replace equipment for something like a cracked heat exchanger than I'd be getting an efficient A/C anyway and central heat pumps aren't efficient enough to make sense here with our super cheap methane gas, especially if I junk the 76% efficient furnace for a 95%, I've been told by a bunch of HVAC guys to skip the 95% and go with a new 80% because it'll never pay off. I don't share their point of view though, it might take a long time but there is lots of savings to be had for piping my outside air into the combustion chamber rather than sucking it through as negative pressure infiltration.