re: Rooftop solar water heaters

[Robert W Tom <archilogic@juno.com>]

stafford@olypen.com wrote:

>	When I was in Greece every house seemed to 
>	have one on its roof  ...white water tank, 
>	approx 20 gals, coupled with a small solar collector.

>	how to find them in the US. 

Chris;

The Oikos /REDI catalogue has a fairly large listing
of suppliers. 

	http://data.oikos.com/products/FMPro

Since  solar DHWH panels aren't all that complicated, 
you might consider having them made up locally, rather than 
importing them from hundreds or thousands of miles away.

Many of the comercial ones use plastic for the glazing which
IMO,  is a practise that can be improved upon.

I think that salvaged-from-the-wastestream tempered patio 
door IGU ( lites separated & cleaned) would be put to good 
use in such an application.

The collector surface could be made from (high-temp) black-painted
sheet metal to which loops of flexible copper tubing (to minimise
soldered joints) would be soldered (to increase the contact area) 
and enclosed in a simple sheet metal insulated (on 5 sides) box.

I'm fairly certain that the cost would be only a fraction of that of 
the store-bought kind and even less if the homeowner did the 
fabrication herself.

In the PNW, I don't think that I'd want to imitate the 
Greek practise of keeping the storage outdoors.

In all likelihood, in the PNW, the solar system would serve only 
as a  preheater for a standard DHWH system.

                 ===    *     ===
Robert  W. Tom          Kanata, Ontario, Canada       
Rob_Tom@ErehwonDesignGroup.intranets.com 

please visit:  http://www.theHungerSite.com daily

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