Solar for Heat... Ouch!

they will have to put electric heaters up there to melt the snow

This is where all those promised "Green Jobs" come in.
Instead of using electric heaters to melt the snow there will be a new job called "Panel Wiper", they will brush the snow off in the winter and clean the dust off in the summer.

I wonder if that panel wiper position will get you into the teachers union pension plan?

for heat option - evacuated solar hot water tubes with "large" super insulated hot water storage

I have been getting "Mother Earth News" magazine off and on for years, the hippies there usually spend $50k on there solar system that is not big enough for hvac, and still use alot of metered electric, generators, massive battery banks etc.
I think it's fine for someone with too much money that needs a cool hobby. But this has little practical purpose. I think if they took the total pollution genereted in the panels, batteries, generator, supplemental electric, etc., coal would look pretty green. For the Government to force such nonsense is treasonous.
Josh

Josh H wrote:I think if they took the total pollution genereted in the panels, batteries,

That was one concern I read about gasoline vs battery lawnmower. The battery one had less pollution and they were considering the power source however the lead batteries in their estimate was of greater concern than the emissions.

Josh! Who you call hippies I call yuppies but what ever they are called its not about the enviorment or being green, its just Hey! look what I just had installed don`t you wish you had been the first one in our gated community to have one. They have the money to blow (theirs or their parents or worse yet ours) they have a solar panel installed, don`t even know how to tell if its hooked up. Then they jump into their beemer or hummer or the like & run out to starbucks for their morning whatever is the in drink now.

samhill wrote: They have the money to blow (theirs or their parents or worse yet ours) .

California give like 50% rebate on solar system. Then they wonder why they are broke, that's some major cash.

samhill wrote:Josh! Who you call hippies I call yuppies but what ever they are called its not about the enviorment or being green, its just Hey! look what I just had installed don`t you wish you had been the first one in our gated community to have one. They have the money to blow (theirs or their parents or worse yet ours) they have a solar panel installed, don`t even know how to tell if its hooked up. Then they jump into their beemer or hummer or the like & run out to starbucks for their morning whatever is the in drink now.

What you are describing is a yuppie, not a hippie. The hippie wouldn't install solar panels since he isn't going to spend a whole lot of money that could be put to better use buying weed, uppers, downs, etc. The stereotype vehicle was a beat up VW microbus with flowers painted all over it. As often as not that would be the closest thing they had to a home. More often they would just drive a beater or catch a ride with someone else. Main occupation was having a good time, which doesn't pay much, so they would sponge off others. Some actually did the back to nature thing, but in a much more traditional way then a yuppie would do. The yuppy would need to have his sattelite link to the net and live within reasonable commuting distance to a city.

I sum it up this way: Solar power.... make hot air, OK idea. Make domestic hot water, pretty good idea. Make electricity, dumb idea.

I think its pretty much the same rule of thumb as realestate, location-location-location.

Freddy wrote:I sum it up this way: Solar power.... make hot air, OK idea. Make domestic hot water, pretty good idea. Make electricity, dumb idea.

If I was going to try to heat with solar I would go with evacuated tube collectors like they use for DHW. The vacume tubes allow them to produce 180* hot water even on a -20* day. Radiant floor heating works with 120* water as opposed to 180* for baseboard hot water. Put a 1500 gallon water tank down cellar and heat it to 180 degrees during the day. That's 12,000 lbs of water. It would give off 12,000 x 60 = 720,000 BTU when cooling from 180 to 120. That is equivelent to 5 gallons of oil which is enough to heat my house on an average winter day. A 20 tube collector is supposed to provide 40,000 BTU per day, so I would need 720/40=18 collectors to heat the water at $1000 per collector. By the time everything was installed I would be looking at around $30,000.

I would still need to keep my current heating system in place to cover cloudy days or extreamly cold weather. It would still cost something to run the circulator pumps. Assuming it saved 600 gallons of oil a year it would pay for itself in about 30 years if oil prices stay the same. Of course in the real world oil prices are going to go up, as will other energy costs, so the payback time will be less. But even with rising energy costs I don't see that system paying for itself in what's left of my life time.

For someone younger with a long future of rising energy costs to look forward to it would be worth considering, especially as the costs for building a system decline. Up till now the tubes have been pricey but that is changing. Might be worth it to go with a smaller system that could cover all heating till it got down to 30* and then just suplimented my coal heat below that temp. That would allow me to fully utilize my investment over a larger portion of the year.

I know there is no love lost between us folks that are just trying to get by and the save the world greentards, but there is nothing wrong with saving resources if it saves you money too. I drive a Prius, not because it's going to save the world, but because 50 mpg saves me money. It also does ok hauling coal

Bruce

The vacuum tube collectors are nice. I've looked into them a bit. There's some controversy though. The flat panel people will tell you that at the end of the year a flat panel will produce just as many BTUs and do it much cheaper. They claim the heat loss of the flat panels keeps the snow off them. They say the tubes collect snow under certain conditions and either you manually remove the snow, or wait until nature does it. The tube people say hogwash. I'd like to see two identical BTU systems side by side & see how they actually do.

A divorced buddy of mine lived on his sailboat for about 5 years. He heated it with solar. He sailed it to Florida every fall and stayed there until Spring. Worked great.