Are you looking to save money on your electricity bills AND have hot water all year round?
Solar hot water systems harness the power of the sun, converting it into electrical energy to heat up the water.
There are many types of solar hot waters systems available. Our choice is SolarArk evacuated tube solar hot water systems. Check out the SolarArk Solar Hot Water System brochure.
What is an evacuated tube hot water system?
The concept is similar to traditional solar pool heating. Except instead of the really long black plastic tubing that snakes across the roof for solar pool heating, there are usually 15-30 glass tubes on the roof and the storage tank sits on the ground.
How does it work?
There are 2 glass tubes, an inner and an outer with a vacuum in between. In a nutshell, sunlight passes through the outer glass layer through the vacuum, and onto the coating of the inner glass layer. The heat gets trapped within the evacuated tube. Heat is transferred to the copper heat exchanger within the manifold at the top of the tubes, via heat pipe. A pump circulates the water to the heat exchanger where it is solar heated as it passes across the heat pipes. The heated water is then returned to the storage cylinder.
What space does the system take up on the roof?
The tubes are around 10 cm diameter and 2m in length and site around 16cm above the surface of the roof. The width depends on how many tubes you have. A 20 tube system is just over 1.5m wide. A 20 tube system weights 78kg empty – spread over a large surface area that is very little additional weight on a roof.
Why we prefer evacuated tube systems
First and foremost, evacuated tube systems are MUCH more efficient than the flat plate solar hot water systems.
There is very little water on the roof at any one time and is NOT stored on the roof. There is not a lot of extra weight on the roof which makes the chance of leaks much lower than with traditional systems that have the tank on the roof.
