Am I heating our water right (inc. solar)?

[garmcqui]

Our new house has a rather complicated looking system in the airing cupboard, along with an ordinary condensing boiler in the utility room but it also has a Kingspan solar water heating system installed.

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• garmcqui
• 19 Aug 2014
• 3

Untitled

• garmcqui
• 19 Aug 2014
• 1

Untitled

• garmcqui
• 19 Aug 2014
• 1

There doesn't seem to be much I can do with the SC400 solar control panel, except check the temperatures at different parts of the system. However, I was wondering what the different backlight colours mean. It's Orange 99% of the time, but I pressed something and it changed to red once, and I'm 99.99% sure I opened the door and saw it was green once, but I'm not sure. What do the colours mean?

Also, at the minute I have the boiler set to come on for 30mins every morning at 6am to provide enough hot water for showers. Sometimes it runs out, so I may need to increase this time... Is this the best/most efficient way to have the system set, or is it better to have it on automatic (where, I presume, it keeps the water in the tank above a certain temperature automatically)?

 

[RigidRaider]

Have you tried Googling for the pdf with the operating instructions for the controller?

Here, I did it for you: http://www.kingspansolar.co.uk/DatabaseDocs/doc_8311951_sc400_manual_en.pdf

 

[garmcqui]

Yup, been through that (thanks though) but it doesn't mention anything about a green backlight (which I'm sure I've seen), or how the system actually works...

 

[dcawkwell]

Ideally you want the hot water nearly exhausted when you leave the house for the day in the morning so the solar has chance to heat it up during the day.

You'll nead to read the manual for your particular solar system.

Generally the saving with solar hot water is minimal so it isn't anything but an ornament.