Ideally this should have been a summer project to take advantage of the hot temperatures .... anyway, I finally purchased the components on a recent trip to La Serena. The kit comprises of a ~300 litre tank, 24 vacuum tubes, support frame, backup 1.5kw electrical heating element and micro control unit. It sells for approx. $600 USD. Our gas cost per month to just heat water is around $40USD, so the system should pay for itself in less that 2 years.
I assembled the support frame on the ground and hoisted it up to the roof. Next came the tank, which when empty is not that heavy, but very bulky and difficult to handle . The project almost ended in disaster when the tank toppled off its support before I was able to secure it properly, but the hoist rope was still attached and I was able to grab it before it bounced off the roof! A few scratches, but fortunately no serious damage.
The next steps are to plumb in the tank, add the temp/water level sensor and electrical heating element. The glass vacuum tubes will be installed last to protect them from possible damage. Care will have to be taken for example to prevent thermal shock. The system operates at atmospheric pressure, thus the tank must be mounted as high as possible, else an additional pump is required to increase the water pressure, which I wanted to avoid so that hot water is available even during a power-outage which occurs quite frequently at this location.
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