Solar Hot Water ?

If you just willy nilly replacing your hot water to "save" money it may not necessarily be the case

I could not get the return on investment to work well to install an apricus how water, unless I could calculate in replacement costs of my exisitng hot water service, ground mount electric unit

Apricus do an excellent job, far better in lower latitudes of aus, if I was to live in the northern end of the country I would simply use a flat panel system, as the abundance of sunlight year round makes up for the lack of efficiency, down south, evacuated tube ONLY

Keep in mind, azimuth/inclination of installation is a big factor in performance, especially the further south you are

Personally I am waiting for 2 things to hit the market to trial run, 1 is an immersion controller from wattson and another from immersun, both currently available in the UK, this units monitor your import/export and as oppsoed to exporting will use your solar to heat water, this I will trial on a few exisitng customers places and I think will be a real set and forget winner

Others on exisitng feed in tariffs, or small install capacity area's there is another unit coming from NZ that is a stand alone inverter for your hot water unit, which comes with auzillary contact setup that allows night/day rate boost if required

I believe there is great merits in keeping a ground mount tank as opposed to a unit with sensors and pumps and even more so, heat pump systems with a compressor unit atop, as there is only 3 failure points on the standard hotty....thermostat....element....tank, even the most basic of electricians can fix 2 and will usually stock the parts in their van, so this saves alot on future repairs, whereas the other units will take more knowledge, time and effort to diagnose (and most likely wont carry the spares), which means dollars in the future, this soon blows your return on investment out

Although, again if in the northern end, flat panel system with rooftop tank also eliminates all these parts and makes for a simple reliable system

Bottled gas is silly, I sell them aswell, now $143 a bottle, gas prices have reason $20 a bottle since i took over the bottles maybe a year and a bit ago and I'm tipping they wont ever get that low again:D

So if you really insist on quality unit and not up the north of the country, buy an apricus system, just make sure to get it installed to the correct azimuth and inclination as per the apricus manual, for best effect in winter

I cannot comment on the required system but there is one aspect I have experience with and that is the booster on the solar system. Most are auto so come on if the water temp gets a bit low but the water temp is still Ok for most uses for a little while and often the sun comes back before the temp gets too low so the electricity/gas used in heating the water is wasted.

The system I had years ago had a switch in the house for the booster, off, one and auto. I had it always set to off and 99.9% of the time the water was always hot enough and it was only after a few cold rainy days did I have to turn it on. You soon learn when to turn it on.

Now you can leave it on auto but I found having it off and turning it on manually only when required saved even more energy.

Cheers

Garry

Def leaning toward a evac tube system with ground mount tank. The question is which particular make / model to go for.

As far as our existing system is concerned - its 20 years old and on the way out according the bloke who did the pre-purchase inspection. Now is a good time for me to buy as I have a few $ left from the settlement of teh previous house (should go on teh mortgage but I do like hot water... :lol: )

If you have a system that uses an electric boost, then how you use that boost and when you use your hot water makes an enormous difference to how much benefit you get from the solar heating.

When I lived in Yass, we installed a Solarhart and while it was a good unit, I was never able to persuade SWMBO to use it to best advantage. The ideal way to use it is to use most of your hot water in the morning so that there are plenty of hours of sunshine to bring the water back up to temperature for evening hot water use. If the day doesn't provide enough sunshine, then judicious use of the boost can bring the temperature up enough for a hot shower before bedtime.

No matter how many times I tried to explain that, SWMBO did everything in reverse. She used a lot of hot water late in the day and then ran the booster all night so that there would be hot water for the morning. By the time the sun came up, the water was already heated, so the solar contribution was minimal.

In some circumstances, it can be a bit inconvenient to regulate the way hot water is used, but if you can get it right, it makes a big difference with that sort of setup. With the heat pump HWS, that is less of an issue.

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Originally Posted by vnx205

If you have a system that uses an electric boost, then how you use that boost and when you use your hot water makes an enormous difference to how much benefit you get from the solar heating.

When I lived in Yass, we installed a Solarhart and while it was a good unit, I was never able to persuade SWMBO to use it to best advantage. The ideal way to use it is to use most of your hot water in the morning so that there are plenty of hours of sunshine to bring the water back up to temperature for evening hot water use. If the day doesn't provide enough sunshine, then judicious use of the boost can bring the temperature up enough for a hot shower before bedtime.

No matter how many times I tried to explain that, SWMBO did everything in reverse. She used a lot of hot water late in the day and then ran the booster all night so that there would be hot water for the morning. By the time the sun came up, the water was already heated, so the solar contribution was minimal.

In some circumstances, it can be a bit inconvenient to regulate the way hot water is used, but if you can get it right, it makes a big difference with that sort of setup. With the heat pump HWS, that is less of an issue.

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Trying to convince your wife to alter her complete lifestyle is not a smart idea :D

What you would be best of doing was switching the electric boost off until your were running out of hot water, matter of fact this is a must when it comes to manageing your system and actually saving money

vnx, I feeeel your pain...:( - have similar in our household...usual sin is running the dishwasher (complete cycle including "drying") in the daytime, -when our PV array is doing it's best to earn 47 cents per unit. Night time we buy it back at 22cents.

Our SHWS system runs with the booster switched OFF for 99%. Winter time we go back to the gas instant for showers, and leave the solar to build up heat over several days.

My wife defers everything until the night so we get the full solar rebate during the day.

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Originally Posted by rovercare

Trying to convince your wife to alter her complete lifestyle is not a smart idea :D
Yes, I learned that it was quite unproductive and quite inadvisable to even try. :)
What you would be best of doing was switching the electric boost off until your were running out of hot water, matter of fact this is a must when it comes to manageing your system and actually saving money

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I tried that, but she knew where the switch was and it just seemed to be part of her evening routine to switch the booster on even if I had previously switched it off. :D

Put a big hairy spider in the meter box....:twisted::twisted::twisted:

We replaced our off peak electric storage 20 gallon Rheem with another similar size. Cant see the point in spending $5000 or more to replace a $1,000 system that costs very little to run now there are only the two of us here. Our total electricity bill is under $180 a quarter.