I finished the plumbing last weekend, the Solar water heater has been running for about a week now without any problems. We have had a mix of Sunny, cloudy, cold and rainy days so these variable conditions have enabled me to tweak the settings for the most efficient use.
I was initially concerned by the single inlet/outlet connection to the tank; the advantage of this setup is that you only need to run a single pipe up the roof to the tank, but I was worried that refilling would conflict with hot water use - say in the middle of a shower! In reality however this rarely happens, as the system waits a min 30mins before trying to refill once the water level drops below 25%.
As first, I set the system up to maintain a tank level of 75%, this has the advantage of introducing less cold water for each refill, but I found on non-sunny days that the frequent refills still caused the electric heating element to come on more frequently as I also have the system maintain a temperate of 60c.
After a few tests, I found it was better to simply let the system empty down to 25%, this proved to maintain a much higher daily water temperature, especially on sunny days when it would heat up to 80c+ and the refill would not even dip it below 57c which is the trigger for the electric heater.
The 1.5kw heater seems to work very well, in no time the water is back up to 60c on cold days or a refill from the 25% level.
The only real negative point about the system for me is that the water pressure is a little low (I like to shower under a waterfall :-), but adequate ... so not a show stopper, I guess in fact it saves water which is a good thing.
As first, I set the system up to maintain a tank level of 75%, this has the advantage of introducing less cold water for each refill, but I found on non-sunny days that the frequent refills still caused the electric heating element to come on more frequently as I also have the system maintain a temperate of 60c.
After a few tests, I found it was better to simply let the system empty down to 25%, this proved to maintain a much higher daily water temperature, especially on sunny days when it would heat up to 80c+ and the refill would not even dip it below 57c which is the trigger for the electric heater.
The 1.5kw heater seems to work very well, in no time the water is back up to 60c on cold days or a refill from the 25% level.
The only real negative point about the system for me is that the water pressure is a little low (I like to shower under a waterfall :-), but adequate ... so not a show stopper, I guess in fact it saves water which is a good thing.
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