Solar Hot water systems!!

[madmat34]

Hey everyone


This is my first ever post on this web site.

BIT OF BACKGROUND!!!!

I was very interested in solar water heating and really fancied having some fitted to my house...Looked around a little and selected a company to install after a bit of hard sell from them......You know if you pay us a deposit now we'll knock off some money????? £10 950 later I was feeling as though I had booked one of the UK's best solar installers to fit my system.

WRONG!!!!!!!!!

they told me that their system would HEAT ASSIST!!!! that was the real thing for me , I have a 4 bed semi & heating bills are high.

So here's how it works

You have a panel on the roof (in my case a 2. something square meters) for 4 people , 2 bathroom. A hot water tank (in my case torrent 170) 170 litre capacity. A solar controller ( in my case re-sol B) & a pump to pump the water to the panel and back to the cylinder.


The company told me that my 4 year old combi would not work with thier system, so I had my usual plumber fit a brand new system condensing boiler £1400 later................

It all looked the part!!!


2 Days in and??????
the panel heats the water an absulute treet, the tank get up 2 60'ish degrees the sun sets at 8 'ish now we are in the summer.... by 9 o'clock the tank is down to....... 30 degrees
If we want to shower we can only have 2 of us, after that ????? no more hot water and we have to switch on the boiler to heat the tank.....

My wife likes to shower in the morning...... here we go turn on the boiler so she can have her shower/bath.

We originaly got the panel to be more enviromently freindly and its worked out that we are using more gas now than we were before..

The panel was fitted by a company by the name of solar technik.... Please be careful of solar companys as there does not seem to be any regulatory body to control the fly by nights from the real green fighters..

My advise is have a go yourself.. look around for a set of tubes...install a good solar tank NOT ONE THAT DOES YOUR HEATING!!!! and an expansion tank etc.. There are loads of places to get a plumbing diagram from...

most of all be carefull of salesmen telling you that you can save 80 percent off of your water heating bills....


any comments I'd love to know.. there are no web sites with chat for solar


thanks
Mat

 

[jobloggs]

Does your pump stop at sunset or are you now using your panel as a radiator to heat the night sky?? Water in a well insulated cylinder should not drop from 60 to 30 in an hour with no usage.

 

[cowboyplumber]

D'oh Joe! Heat is being taken for ch. Hence the lack of dhw...

 

[Gasguru]

Something seriously wrong in the installation here.

But I think you've got to be nuts to spend 11K on solar heating and a new boiler.

Assuming you save yourself a couple of hundred quid a year thats still 50 years to pay it back (assuming no maintenance).

There are far better ways to save money.

Convert your car to LPG - I did London to Interbuild (Birmingham NEC) and back to Surrey for £18.00 (280 miles) - thats a real saving - especially when you buy the car already converted.

 

[ChrisRoberts]

Ok here goes.
If you have a torrent cylinder, made be gledhills, the temperature should be set considerably higher on the controller about 85-90c. The water in the torrent heats the water as it flows through a coil of tube inside the cylinder, like a megaflow.
The reason U experience a drop in water temperature is possibly because U are using it at this time and there is not enough solar power to reheat it. I used to work for a big solar company (daft energy) and we were often getting call outs to jobs where the panels weren't working as sold. Salesmen care not a jot. 1 job I went to the customer had kept a log of times and temperatures (not a bad thing to do) but he'd taken them at all times. He was complaining that his SOLAR heating wasn't working at 2am!
I explained it was solar heating not lunar heating.
I think your problem could be either the temp needs turning up or that the cylinder is not big enough. I think on the resol U can get into the settings and adjust it. Do you have a blender valve on the hot water pipe coming out of the cylinder? If so you will have to adjust this too. Use a thermostat and measure the tap temp and adjust to suit.
I fitted a 300 litre sonnenkraft ceramic linned cylinder on the last solar job I did and all in with 3x10 tube pannels on the roof the price was £4k.
Are your panels flat plate ones or evacuated tubes?
either way at nearly 11k U've been well and truly had. For which I feel truely sorry.

If all else fails contact me, I'm in Essex, but I'll come and have a look for you. Best to get them back 1st tho.

 

[Biggles..]

Any solar company or installer worth his salt will have their name on the clear skies register, originally this was set up as a goverment grant for people wishing to have greener energy systems fitted and to get on this registered you had to have the correct qualifications. now days BPEC are offering the courses for genuine insatllers and once completed allows you to become part of this clearskies register. In around lincoln their is a company going round, wont mention name but has smart and energy somewheree in the title, they cahrge on average £7500 for an install. From what i've seen materials for their jobs come in at around £1200.

 

[ChrisRoberts]

Any solar company or installer worth his salt will have their name on the clear skies register, originally this was set up as a goverment grant for people wishing to have greener energy systems fitted and to get on this registered you had to have the correct qualifications. now days BPEC are offering the courses for genuine insatllers and once completed allows you to become part of this clearskies register. In around lincoln their is a company going round, wont mention name but has smart and energy somewheree in the title, they cahrge on average £7500 for an install. From what i've seen materials for their jobs come in at around £1200.

LOL. Daft Energy are not on the clear skies register. Their material cost is about £1500. They pay their fitters £250 and roofers the same. The CEO drives a shiney new Bentley! That's why they have such a quick turn-over of staff........

 

[madmat34]

I have tryed to get them back...... But no chance there!!!
My post was more as a warning to others don't get cought out as I have done.

in answer to some questions :
Today again a lovely hot sunny day, all my rads would be hot from the solar if I didn't have trv's fitted. In winter the heating only gets hot when I've got the bolier running. POINTLESS!!! heat assist my arse

The cylinder is a 170 litre which is a fair size , our bath is 300 ish litres but we can only fill it about one sixth full after this no more hot water.
So we get about 40 - 50 litres at a max from it which means that we get 1 and a half showers from it.

The big problem is that when the sun sets within 1 hour the bottom of cylinder is down to 30 degrees with out drawing any hot water off of the system.
So where is the heat going..... the pump to the solar panel is only running when the tubes are 5 degree higher than the bottom of tank. so not there??? there is a little valve/air thingy to stop heat bleed to the Tubes at night (highest point and all that).


So essex bloke , Your saying that we should only use hot water during daylight hours or stick the bolier on to keep the tank toped up?
can you tell me how to turn the tank temp right up so that the tank gets as hot as can be, which should give me more hot water??

Some good replies on this topic keep 'em comming guys!!!

 

[madmat34]

It is summer and I don't have the heating on..
So go on where's it going????

Lol

 

[Nigelo]

Mat
There are several aspects that don't make sense.
1 - The huge price paid (Chris has dealt with that)
2 - Only 2point something M2 area collector fitted but you expect that to heat your DHW and your heating???? It won't. DHW alone needs about 1m2 per 100 litres stored and 70-100 litres per person.
3 - You assume that with system switched off (not pumping) , there is no way that heat can be lost. Wrong - Thermo syphon perhaps?

So, is solar system connected to your heating rads or not?
Have you tried carefully touching the pipes leading to and from your DHW cylinder after say 30 mins following Solar shutdown? This could give a clue as to where heat is going.
Do you have a HW leak somewhere?
Are you sure that the User controls are set correctly?

 

[madmat34]

The price was reduced to this by the salesman as a special offer....
I got suckered into his sales pitch at how wonderfull his system was etc..
He told me that these tubes were more than enough to do both for a family of 4 with 2 bathrooms & our heating as well!!!!
they are part of the damiler benz group which really sold it for me..
Then I was told that my combi bolier wouldn't work with their system and I needed to get a system bolier fitted. they wanted a further £2000 for this, I have a friend who is a corgi guy so he fitted me a new system bolier for a fraction of that price.

Sun is just setting now and it's 7:09 and the temp is down to 52.4 degrees at the top of tank we haven't used any hot water yet!!

the bottom of the bolier is connected into the central heating system via a three port valve and yes the heating feed pipe is still hot (don't think that it should be hot at all unless I actually have the heating on or being called for by my room stat, the room stat is off!!)

the pipes to the tubes are now cold... So no heat bleed there....
What can I do??
Can I add something to the system to make it work properly and get some of my £10950 back??

Feeling very ripped off and angry...But what can I do, there's a sucker born evry minute?????

 

[madmat34]

It's now 8:22 and the top of tank temp is............. 41 degrees..... better put on the bolier for a shower.......

By the way I didn't install the solar to save money but wanted to do something for the enviroment & future of the planet.....only I seem to be using more fossil fuel now than ever before.

p.s I'm looking at geting a wind turbine next!!!!!!!

This could be really bad????? Lol

 

[ChrisRoberts]

U really need to badger them into returning. Try threatening them with watchdog. Always worked for daft energy. Or if they are clear skies registered contact them. If not get an independant firm to data log the system and take them to court with the evidence.
Something sounds very wrong. Daft never sold a system to back up the heating, they ain't that daft, U mostly need heating on when it's dark and cold right when solar don't work. The thermal store needed to utilise for heating would be huge. (cue someone clever than me to work it out. I'm looking at U agile. lol)
I do feel for U as I know how frustrating it can be, that's why I left Daft. But when it's working fully/properly U will swear by it. Although I think U maybe swearing at it a lot more before then.
Whereabouts in kent are you? If you'd like me to visit with a data logging machine I'm sure it could be arranged.

 

[Gasguru]

Hey madmat I've got a perpetual energy machine for sale - solve all your problems - only £5000 or this weeks managers offer of £2500

Seriously though the heats going somewhere - you sure your corgi mate has'nt screwed up the wiring and the pumps coming on and sending heat through the boiler heat exchanger. Perhaps the boiler fan comes on as part of the overun and blows it out the flue - that would be a novel system. or perhaps not.

 

[Agile]

I think that he has said that he has a total of TWO panels and their combined area is less than THREE square meters.

Now I dont have the exact figures to hand and all the variables are very variable, mostly downwards. The received heat intput during a clear blue sky at noon is a peak of about 1.0 kW per m² in southern England. Allowing for say 15% losses thats 0.85 kW per m²

So he has LESS than 3 kW of heating ! Well thats almost enough to heat up his 170 li cylinder if its clear blue sky all day!

No point in adding a heat store for central heating if there is not enough input power.

Tony Glazier