APPENDIX I Complete Solar Hot Water Systems
Cole Solar Systems 440A East St Elmos Rd. Austin, TX 78745 Warren Cole phone 512 444-2565 System Name Domestic Hot Water System 12A or 28D Columbia Chase Solar Energy Div. 55 High St Holbrook, MA 02343 Walter H. Barret phone 617 767-0513 System Names Columbia Domestic Hot Water System Columbia Direct Exchange Domestic Hot Water Kit El Camino Solar Systems 5330 Debbie Lane Santa Barbara, CA 93111 Allen K. Cooper phone 805 964-8676 System Name Sunspot Solar Water Heating System Energy...
How Should You Select a Tank
Spend some time shopping for your storage tank. They vary a lot in price, quality, and in the amount of insulation they have. Used tanks of various kinds may offer some attractive possibilities. Look for old water tanks or larger propane tanks if you can only spend a little money. The tank will need to stand a lot of pressure as much as 60 pounds per square inch psi . Sixty psi is normal in many homes and municipal systems. So check the tank's structure pretty thoroughly, particularly joints or...
How Does Sunlight Hit the Earth
One of the things you will have to consider as you make decisions about your own involvement with solar energy, is the latitude of your home. You probably don't need to be told that the farther you go from the equator that imaginary line that slicas the globe into a top half and a bottom half the weaker the sun's energy becomes. What many people don't realize is that the more horizontal lines parallels of latitude there are on the map between you and the equator, the farther sunlight has to...
What About Antifreeze
Don't use ordinary and poisonous automotive antifreeze. The very best antifreeze for solar collectors is something called non-toxic propylene glycol. You should be able to find it in any plumbing supply store. If not, order Sunsol 60 from Sunworks, Box 1004, New Haven, Connecticut 06508. Also see appendix. Five gallons should be more than enough for a two to three-collector system in a normal house. You'll need just about 1 2 gallon of unmixed propylene glycol for each 24-square-foot collec...
How Does a Solar Pool Heater Work
In a fairly sophisticated solar pool system, water is pumped out of the pool, through the strainer, and through the filter. After the filter it passes through a check valve. This check valve is more than just an option. Its purpose is to keep water that's draining out of the panels from back-washing the filter Figure 99 . Once it has passed through the one-way check, the pool water reaches a critical tee. This tee separates the upper panel loop from the ordinary circulation loop. When the pool...
What Are Focusing Solar Collectors
The Greek word for sun is Helios. As we all know, much of our English language has evolved from the ancient Greek, and many English words have Greek parts. So any word that has the prefix helio- probably has something to do with the sun. A helioelectrical process is a way of converting sunlight to electricity something we're just learning to do efficiently. Photosynthesis, mentioned in the last chapter, is an example of a Focusing collectors or solar concentrators as they're sometimes called...
APPENDIX D HeatTransfer Fluid Manufacturers
Dow Corning Corp. Solar Energy Div. Midland, Mich. 48640 Richard H. Montgomery phone 517 496-4000 Product Name Q2-1132 Silicone Heat Transfer Liquid Nuclear Technology Corp. P.O. Box 1 Amston, CT 06231 Thomas F. D'Muhala phone 203 537-2387 Product Names Nutek-800 Nutek-805 Nutek-830 Nutek-835 Nutek-876 Floyd C. Perry, Jr. phone 203 934-6301
How Should a Solar Collector Be Tilted
Supports Mylar, Tediar or Kalwall Glazing Supports Mylar, Tediar or Kalwall Glazing Don't confuse orientation with tilt Orientation describes the direction the panel faces, while tilt describes its angle of inclination. Tilt is a little more touchy. Ideally the collector should be at right angles 90 degrees to incoming solar rays, but this can't happen all the time if the panel stays in a fixed position. After all, the difference between the sun's altitude in June and its altitude in December...
How Do Thermosyphon Systems Work
A syphon, as any elementary science student and efficient gasoline thief knows, is a tube that transports liquid up and out of a container at one level to a second container at a lower level all with the help of atmospheric pressure. As kids we made syphons just by sucking air out of a piece of hose or rubber tubing to create a vacuum and get the liquid flow started Figure 77 . In the most simple thermosyphoning solar water heater, the main body of water the storage tank is always located at...
APPENDIX B Pipe Insulation Manufacturers
Product Name Armaflex Pipe Insulation Owens Corning Fiberglas Corporation 18 Midland St Windsor, CT 06095 Michael Smith phone 203 249-9358 Product Name Fiberglas Pipe Insulation Product Name SR6421 Pipe Insulation
How Much Do Swimming Pool Covers Help
An opaque or transparent swimming pool cover which will transmit solar radiation to the water can give your pool another 10 degrees of natural storage capacity. This means that if a free-floating cover with pockets of trapped air is stretched over the pool at night and whenever no one is swimming , we can expect tbe water temperature to stay at up to 20 degrees above the surrounding air Figure 94 . Insulating pool blankets, as they're called, pass about 85 percent of the light that hits them...
APPENDIX G Control System Manufacturers
Product Name Solar Controls AD-101 and AD-102 Aqueduct Component Group 1537 Pontius Ave. Los Angeles, CA 90025 Herman Wertheimer phone 213 479-3911 Product Name Automatic Row Control Valve UP-050 through UP-200 Contemporary Systems, Inc. 68 Charlonne St Jaffrey, NH 03452 John Christopher phone 603 532-7972 Product Name LCU-110 Digital Logic Control Unit Donald F. Dekold phone 904 372-6009 Product Name Solar Differential Controllers del sol Control Corp. 11914 U.S. 1 Juno, FL 33408 Rodney E....
APPENDIX F Liquid Flat Plate Collector Manufacturers
Acorn Structures, Inc. P.O. Box 250 Concord, MA 01742 Stephen V. Santoro phone 617 369-4111 Product Name Sunwave 420 Solar Collector All Sunpower, Inc. 10400 S.W. 187th SL Miami, FL 33157 E.M. Kramer phone 305 233-2224 Product Name All Sunpower 3784 Product Name Solar Collector Panels 200G Ametek, Inc., Power Systems Group 1 Spring Ave. Hatfield, PA 19440 Frank W. Gilleland phone 215 822-2971 Product Name Copper Solar Collector Burton Z. Chertok phone 516 643-6660 Product Name Burton Solar...
Info Ktv
Table 9. Architects, contractors and solar engineers sometimes express roof pitch differently. Instead of stating the pitch in degrees they often think in terms of inches per foot. A three-on-twelve pitch means that the roof rises 3 inches for every 12 inches of horizontal distance. This table can help you make conversions from one to the other. A 2-on-12 pitch is roughly equivalent to 10 degrees of steepness, while a 12-on-12 pitch is equal to 45 degrees. On some solar homes roof pitch may be...
How Do the Seasons Affect Insolation
explained was that the earth moves around the sun at an average speed of about 18.5 miles a second, and that on December 21 we are about 89.8 million miles from the sun, but 95.9 million miles from the sun on June 21. This is because the sun isn't always in the exact center of our orbit. Our childish logic might have told us that it should be the other way around if we were closer in December, it should be warmer then summer What we also may not have understood as very young children, but could...
How Should You Select Glazing
An absorber plate, no matter how good it is, can't make use of any radiation that doesn't get to it. So a glazing's ability to let light through is of number-one importance. To be really effective, a glazing material should be at least 88 to 92 translucent Most plastic glazings don't have the transmit-tance or heat-enduring properties of glass. In some cases, they get destroyed because ultraviolet rays break them down in a relatively short time. Others seem to hold up well enough, but certain...
How Much Do Solar Reflectors Help 1
Reflector panels which bounce rays back onto a collector should reduce the amount of collector surface you need. In fact, a small collector can receive more radiation than a much bigger one if it's helped by properly arranged reflection surfaces. Good reflectors should boost the performance of any flat plate collector by at least 25 Figure 44 . Figure 44. Sometimes banks of solar collectors and reflector panels can be made to work in combination. Reflectors can increase the performance of flat...
What About Painting the Absorber Plate
The absorber plate needs to be black to absorb much solar radiation, as you already know. There are special selective paints developed specifically for solar systems. These are expensive because they're so special, but they allow shortwave radiation to be absorbed by the plate, and at the same time retard re radiation of longer wave-length rays. Unfortunately some of these selective paints can't be easily applied at home, so we have to find substitutes. Shiny black paint, of course, reflects...
How Can You Build Your Own Absorber Plate
Some ambitious and highly-skilled types will surely choose to build their own absorbers. Several good plans have been published lately, and even though they require a lot of picky labor, the final products work pretty well. One detailed set of instructions is put out by the Brace Research Institute near Montreal, the world-renowned center for studying intermediate technology. Their plans call for a sheet of galvanized corrugated steel roofing riveted to a flat sheet that is slightly larger. The...