$150 4'x8' Solar Panel

[algernon]

Originally Posted by Daox

The panel heats up a tank of water. You draw on that water just like you would a conventional water heater.

Hi everybody!

This is my first post, so go easy on me.<EDIT>: it looks like Gary updated the original link June 11 '09, about five days after the last post in this thread.

I'm pretty sure the panel keeps draining back into a (thermal) storage tank, that has a 300' coil of PEX pipe submersed in it. The PEX coil is plumbed inline between the supply service and the hot water tank. When the collector is warming the water in it, it travels through in to the storage tank, and the seperate coil (with potable water) takes on heat from the storage tank, on it's way to the HWT.

I'm not sure if that's right, or makes sense, but here are a couple of pics from a link on the site mentioned above;


PEX coil not to scale, lol. P is for pump and V is for Valve. The valves are there should he need to by-pass the solar collector.

The PEX in the tank with it's inlet and outlet connected to house plumbing.

You can see the white drain pipe in the middle of the picture, at the corner of the storage tank. The (cooler)water gets pumped from the tank bottom up into the collector, then drains (warm) into the top of the tank.

http://builditsolar.com/Experimental/PEXColDHW/Overview.htm

Thanks for the in-depth tour Gary. If I get some time in the Spring, I'll take a crack at this!

alg