Solar Hotwater system

evilgoose

I'm considering a solar hot-water system, the front of my house is south facing and gets very hot in the summer.
It's for a 2 'flat' panel system, connecting to a twin coil stainless steel tank.

Does anyone have solar hot water? How effective do you find it? Is it paying for itself?

I've had one quote so far which is £3500 (which seems a little expensive from what i've seen on the net for the flat panel system)

(its in south wales if it makes a difference).

thanks,!

ormus

you need to do the sums. its reckoned that a system at that sort of price will take 20 yrs to pay back. if at all.
the only ones ive seen that have a quick pay back time is a DIY home made system.

cheekyweegit

I'm in an area where it was fitted almost two years ago by my local council and to be honest it's nothing like it was described.

Hot water ? Nope it barely takes the chill off the water and I've had one pump on the system replaced and I'm waiting on a second as it's so noisy and I've been told this one is on it's way out.

I've got two largish panels fitted to the sunny side of my roof and the pipe work takes up a bit of the eves of my loft too, so not impressed at all.

Would I have paid for it, if I was doing it myself with the knowledge I have? Definitely not. Infact if I ever buy this house, I'd get it taken out.

Inactive

For solar to function properly, you need some " solar " you don't get a lot of that in Wales.;)

Waste of time/money and effort.

Ebe_Scrooge

We've recently moved into a house that already had solar panels on the roof. Over the 3 months that we've been here, I've been pretty impressed - on reasonably warm days it's given us enough for what we need, and on cooler days it still seems to do a pretty good job of pre-heating the water so the boiler only kicks in for 10 - 15 minutes each day to give us loads of hot water. And we're in Scotland, so not exactly tropical.

I'm fully expecting it to provide less hot water in the winter. However, it is supposed to extract what heat there is from the atmosphere, it doesn't need direct sunlight.

Now comes the crunch. From what I've been able to research - and these are VERY rough estimates - you're looking at around the £3000 mark for installation, and it reckons to save about £150 - £200 per year on your hot water bills. For us that's great, as we didn't pay for the installation, but do the sums - that's a hell of a long payback time. And my personal opinion is that it'll need replacing before it's paid for itself - I've no idea how long they're supposed to last, but 20 years seems a long time.

It's your call, but hopefully this will give you some helpful tips.

ormus

thats exactly right. say approx 20 yrs payback, and then if you take maintainance into account, say a visit every 5 yrs.
that means that years saving is lost. so its more like 24/25 yrs payback. then its maybe time to replace the whole thing. possible waste of time eh?
the only thing that you cant account for is a drastic rise in energy prices. so its really a gamble.
do you feel lucky?

evilgoose

Thanks for the replies - Well thats just plain depressing! - i'd hoped for some more positive feedback. I'd like to be green, instead of the Government doing some of the half baked schemes which they do - (you wouldnt believe the amount of disuption which has occured near me to prepare the roads for a bendybus). They should be offering grants of say 40 or 50 % to people. anyway, off my soapbox.
Its encouraging that you seem fairly happy with the system Ebe.

I'm trying to renovate the whole house at the moment so £3k is alot for me to find, but there is no better time to get it done.

I notice petrol prices are well on the rise again - so rocketing energy prices maynot be to much of a leap in possibilites - but also the fall in the supply costs for solar. But then demand goes up - so do prices! I've got to get a few more quotes and do the maths. Oh what to do!

-do I feel lucky? - hmmm - well I am watching clint eastwood at the moment.

AdrianW2

There's a long running thread over at newhousefarm.tv in which the participants record their heat gain observations, one of whom has live monitoring and historical contribution graphs.

--Tony--

The figures given above are a bit optimistic tbh.

I do EPS's and the average 3 bed house with gas heating normally gets an estimated hot water cost of £100 per year, as solar can provide 60% of your hot water needs your annual saving is going to be about £60 a year.

3,500 / 60 = 58 years.

Mind you thats based on todays gas prices and they will go up well above inflation throughout that time.

gmgmgm

evilgoose wrote: »

TThey should be offering grants of say 40 or 50 % to people.

I don't think having the taxpayer subsidize/pay for an inefficient solar water heater will make it any greener :-)

In some countries it may make sense, but in the UK it's generally ridiculous to replace or supplant a normal hot water system with a solar one.

Sadly that's the case with most so-called "green" initiatives.

--Tony--

And, in order to qualify for the grants you have to use autherised installers who are all the big comanys who charge more than double your local installer making the grants worthless.