This hot water system belongs to my neighbor, and now we see how I transformed his system over the past 2 years to improve its efficiency and compactness. Our system consists only of this set of solar heaters and this hot water tank which is surrounded by thermal insulation with a thickness of 5 centimeters. So, the system does not have a pump, automatics or other equipment, and for example now the water of the tank is already heated by the solar heaters to a temperature of almost 55 ºC. These solar heaters are also interesting for heating water of a pool, but an ordinary pool requires several tens of times more heaters than we see now.
So, this hot water system was part of my research on the idea of combining solar heaters with traditional coatings of a house or building, similar to this idea of installing solar panels instead of traditional roofing. For example, a similar set of solar heaters can replace such external wood blinds. Or we can use our heaters instead of similar structures which are designed to protect from the sun. In addition, our heaters can replace such transparent walls. Also our set of heaters can be used instead of similar fences.
Now I am showing one of our solar heaters, and this is a thin steel sheet which will be coated with cheap black paint. Therefore the sun heats the sheet, and it transfers the heat to the water which moves through these pipes. Of course, we can use some other type of solar heaters, and now I show several alternatives which have already been tested by me, and I will describe them in my future videos.
This is my experiments with addition of a cheap transparent film, and it increased efficiency of the solar heaters and the temperature of the water heating, but only by a few degrees. However it is obvious that the improvement in efficiency will be greater if the film is installed more carefully, or we use not the film, but glass or cellular polycarbonate.
Now I show other methods of improving the efficiency of the heaters, and this is an extra layer of thermal insulation on their hoses. This is a sheet of expanded polystyrene under the heater, and this is a cheap reflective film which gives extra solar radiation to the black surface of the heaters. The reflective film may be interesting if we correctly choose the tilt angle of the heaters and the height of the interval between them.
Of course, this option of solar heaters with these mirrors increases the efficiency and the heating temperature radically more, and this curved mirror option is even more efficient. However, I will describe these two mirror options in my future videos, and the topic of this video is such set of the heaters without the mirrors.
It is obvious that the south must be there, and now I am showing the recommended tilt of the solar heaters for 50 degrees north latitude if our season of operating the system is from April to September. The height of the interval between the heaters depends on this shadow from the upper heater, and this is the shadow in July, but then it rises, and now we see the shadows in October. It is obvious that other geographic latitude and other season of operating require different recommendations for the tilt and the interval.
If the equipment is located farther south than 45 degrees north latitude, it might be better to tilt the system this way. Otherwise, the heat production in summer months can decrease, although the remaining months of the year will not lose anything.
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