Home made Part time solar hot water

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Originally Posted by Blknight.aus

if you can get a clean one....

put an lpg tank horizontally on the roof.

set it up like a convection tank with your coil of copper or mains rated poly pipe.

Feed the cold water in at the bottom and the hot water out at the top of the tank.

Or just install a solar hot water system.

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Half the fun is the thinking, debating the pro's and con's of such a thing and then if able to build it, doing it.
The thing I dont want to get away from is mains pressure (town supply with good pressure), So without some type of valving to stop the mains pressure backfeeding into a low pressure reticulation system I think I would blow something up.
cheers
blaze
ps
thanks for imput and ideas thus far
cheers
blaze

My Dad has a Solahart and there is a mod that may interest you is, the HWS is a thermo siphon unit with the tank above the panels. He has put a tee on both the lines between the tank and the panels and run a ½ inch copper pipe around the chimney for the fireplace just under ceiling height.. This line thermo siphens just like the panels when the fire is going so on a cold and rainy day (like today) his solahart is boiling, and it’s so simple.

Many years ago on a farm we lived on we had the hot water going through the combustion stove in winter and a gal pipe grid on the roof in summer.

It was switched over with a 3 way ball valve located at the side of the electric hot water/storage unit.

The water used to get so hot in both winter and summer that you could make a cup of coffee straight out of the tap.

I cant remember specifics as I was only a kid but I know it worked and we rarely ran the electric element.

My Dad used to switch it onto boost every now and then when the fire was warming up just to make sure it worked properly.

reported.

beat me to it