Solar water heating

The sun can help supply the energy for heating the water you use for bathing and washing. Solar energy can be harnessed to supply all your energy needs for you home. Solar water heating is very simple. If your garden hose has ever sat in the sun you will experience solar water heating when you turn on the faucet. That first bit of water that comes out has been heated by the sun. This article will tell about the different solar heating options and how they work.

A home can have a solar heating system and you may not even know it. The home can look completely conventional and be very functional even when it is very different in it’s energy options. The only clue that you may have that a home is solar heated is the panels on the roof and a tank in the basement, garage or laundry room.

When something is passive it is inactive, yet it is receptive to the external forces around it. In a passive solar heating home the external force is the sun’s energy and the heat flow takes place by nature. Conduction, radiation and convection are used in the design of the home. When a house is built it should be designed to trap the heat of the sun in a greenhouse effect. A home that is built from concrete will hold more heat than a home built with bricks. Using the highest rated insulation in a frame home will save money over the life of the home. Thick adobe walls hold the most heat in the house. If you are serious about passive heating, the walls of the home should be up to two feet thick. The house should be situated length wise on an east west axis. To collect the sun’s energy the house should have the most windows on the south walls and a minimum amount of windows on the north walls. The windows on the north side of the house should have a moveable source of insulation for the winter. A series of skylights on the south portion of a roof can also let in the sun’s heat. A system of fans can be placed to move the warm air to cooler parts of the house, creating a hybrid of the passive and active systems of solar heating.

A home that incorporates the active solar heating system consists of mechanical components. It uses panels of metal, glass and plastic to trap the suns heat energy. The home will need a water tank or a rock bin to store the warm water and pipes and ducts to transport the heated water to parts of the house. The first part of the active solar heating system involve collection of the sun’s energy. The collectors are panels mounted

in rows on the roof of the home or somewhere in the back yard. The panels should be facing within 20 degrees of true south to maximize the amount of the sun’s rays that hit them. There should be no shade from trees or buildings that is blocking exposure to the sun. The number of panels that your house will need for heat is a complex calculation. It will be accomplished through figuring out the size of the house, the total heat loss of the house and the local climate conditions and how much sun your home will be exposed to.

There are two types of collector panels. One is used to collect heated water and the other to collect heated energy. The panels to collect heated energy are made of metal to absorb the sunlight and convert it to heat. The types of metal will be aluminum, copper, steel and is painted in flat black. Even on a freezing winter day with moderate sunlight the plate can collect air that is up to 200 degrees Fahrenheit, in the summer it can be 400 degrees. The roof of the home will need to be reinforced to protect it from the high heat resting on it. The hot air is then moved through ducts into the house by fans.

Solar water heating can save up to 40 percent of your heating bill. The average family uses 80 gallons of hot water a day. A solar water heating system usually only needs about 4 panels to collect the water and is much smaller than energy heating systems. The heated water is pumped down into the house through valves and pipes from the panels on the roof that collected it.

You can also use solar heating to heat your swimming pool. It is extremely costly to heat a swimming pool using electricity or gas and most people don’t even consider it. The first aspect to keep your swimming pool warm using solar energy, is heat conservation. You need a pool cover that fits snugly and completely on the pool and holds in the heat at night. A clear plastic cover will allow the sun to heat the water during the day and prevent the heat loss at night and on cloudy days. A pool cover alone can extend your swimming season by a couple of months each year. You can install solar heating panels on a south facing roof of the house, shed, patio, garage or next to the pool in a south facing location. To heat the pool, a pump cycles water from the pool into the panels and then back into the pool again. Since the pool’s water goes through the panels the PH level and chlorine level needs to be constantly monitored to prevent corrosion of the system. The cheapest system for pool heating is usually made of black plastic and will last about 5 years.