Evacuated tube solar collectors ?s
shellbuilder
| Posted in Energy, Heating & Insulation on
I recently bought 4 of these collectors used (glass in glass type). They are Sunpak Owens Illinois. Anyone know much about these. I have 4 of them and plan on heating my domestic water. I’m in s.e Virginia with 3 16 SEER heat pumps, so i only want these for water heating. Looks like a closed loop is the way to go to prevent freezing and boiling. Comments wanted !!
Edited 3/16/2008 10:11 pm ET by shellbuilder
Replies
Did you get four arrays with the brackets and headers or just four tubes?
------------------
"You cannot work hard enough to make up for a sloppy estimate."
Yes, it has the manifolds and mount brackets.
Hi,
This is a pretty big subject.
I'd suggest you read the material in the "Basics" section here:
http://www.builditsolar.com/Projects/WaterHeating/water_heating.htm
and, come back with specific questions.
Gary
Gary,
I have been inspired by your site and have read through most of the site over the last couple years. In fact, I have incorporated the rain barrel system with multiple barrels with the botton fill and have set up the power strips. Even built 3 food dryers last year. My question about these evacuated tubes was more about the reliability of the glass on glass type and if anyone had premature failure. I was a second recipient of these from a NASA project and very little is on the web about this brand or performance. I also was curious about a vertical installation instead of roof mounting. I folowed your shed colector system with great interest. Your suggestion was those collectors would have worked as well vertically. Would you feel the same about the evacuated tubes?
Hi,
Glad the site is keeping someone else up late at night :)The only thing that I can contribute is that some of the evacuated tube brands say not to mount them vertically, while with others its OK. I gather it has to do with how they transfer the heat up the tube.For space heating, I think that vertical mounting has a lot going for it. Much less tendency to overheat in the summer, less or no tendency to collect snow, and added solar input from the ground reflection.
Reflection of sunlight off a snow field can add as much as 30% to the heat input.But, vertical is not good for year round water heating.Gary
I thought that that's how they are typically used...glycol solution for a closed-loop system.
Nothing I have experience with, though I'm interested in how they work out for you.