Solar Water Heating and savings???

Bob-Dubery · 2011-01-03T07:23:05+00:00

Let me nail my colours to the mast before I go any further. I think SWH is a very good idea and I want it to work - for reduction of CO2 emissions and for re...

Solar Water Heating and savings???

Bob-Dubery

Solar heating IS making use of a nuclear reaction, and a rather large one at that.

Bob-Dubery

I feel the need to post an update here because I have some new information.

There's a leak somewhere in the system.

Thursday last week I noticed that my water meter runs all the time. I ran around looking for dripping taps etc. I found that I turned off a certain stopcock/valve thingy then the meter stops spinning. This kills the water supply to the bathrooms and the geyser. Further poking around has revealed a stopcock up in the roof that controls the supply to the geyser. Turn that off and the meter stops spinning. So the leak is either
1) In the geyser
2) In the feed to the geyser
3) A hot water tap

One of these plumbing sniffer type crews came along. They couldn't find a leak, but they did say that they can go to a higher pressure but that that may cause damage elsewhere. Hmmm.....

It's not a BIG leak, but by rough calculation it's costing me about 1/2 kilolitre a day, which I'm not thrilled about. Also if there's a constant flow out of the geyser then that will slow down heating (electrical or solar).

So investigations continue. In the meantime I turn off the water and the electrical supply to the geyser when we're at work or when we go to bed.

Ray

X-rated Bob wrote: 1) In the geyser
2) In the feed to the geyser
3) A hot water tap

Could it be at a junction somewhere out of sight in a wall in which case you are going to get some serious damp problem? I had that pretty recently (no solar heating involved though) but it caused me a bit of expense to get the damp problem sorted out.

RobK

X-rated Bob wrote:
It's not a BIG leak, but by rough calculation it's costing me about 1/2 kilolitre a day, which I'm not thrilled about.

15000 litres/month is a damn big leak, I'd say, and they couldn't find it? They had the proper acoustic and gas leak finding equipment? I had a leak recently that was nowhere near 500 litres per day and they found it without a hassle. Didn't even need to gas the system, used some sonic (I think that's the word) gadget to locate it.

Bob-Dubery

Ray wrote:
X-rated Bob wrote: 1) In the geyser
2) In the feed to the geyser
3) A hot water tap
Could it be at a junction somewhere out of sight in a wall in which case you are going to get some serious damp problem? I had that pretty recently (no solar heating involved though) but it caused me a bit of expense to get the damp problem sorted out.

Ja. I can't see any damp, can't find any drips. I wish I'd find one or the other.

But now we know where the heat is going. Yesterday we kept things on during the day, turned it all off at night. This morning there was loads of hot water. So the hot water has been leaking away at night.

Bob-Dubery

Looks like it's under the kitchen floor ☹ This morning is quite cool, and there's a spot of the kitchen floor, just in front of the sink, that is warm underfoot.

I can hear the cash register ringing....

Ray

X-rated Bob wrote: Looks like it's under the kitchen floor ☹ This morning is quite cool, and there's a spot of the kitchen floor, just in front of the sink, that is warm underfoot.

I can hear the cash register ringing....

Just a thought is that you may want to contact your homeowners insurer. Shit do you have to do the dishes in the AM?

Bob-Dubery

Ray wrote:
X-rated Bob wrote: Looks like it's under the kitchen floor ☹ This morning is quite cool, and there's a spot of the kitchen floor, just in front of the sink, that is warm underfoot.

I can hear the cash register ringing....
Just a thought is that you may want to contact your homeowners insurer. Shit do you have to do the dishes in the AM?

Thanks, Ray. I actually did that a while back. They will pay for 3m2 of patching but NOT for the pipes and the exposing thereof ☹ In this case there is a good chance that kitchen cupboards may have to be removed so I need to have a further chat with them.

flatfourfan

I thought that I'd add my 2c in here as I've been through a few options.

We had a SWH that was using our existing geyser as a storage unit and then would pump the cooler water back up the system when it's warm ( 6 hour cycles if need be). Our geyser is a 1960's 150 gallon unit that is super well insulated and holds hot water for a good 2-3 days with constant use.......

I wasn't that impressed with the saving on this, I think our power bill dropped maybe R50 if that. We were lucky in a way to have the SWH set up damaged in a storm and we opted to go the heat pump option when the insurance paid out.

First month.................our elec bill was down by R300.00 and now that I have the set up dialed in, I'm down by about R340.00 a month. My water and lights as well as rates costs me now about R1300-00 a month for a family of four and I have a pool.

I'd love to be off the grid totally............but yeah, R300 000 to do a basic set up with banks of batteries..........no thanks.

Bob-Dubery

X-rated Bob wrote:
Ray wrote:
X-rated Bob wrote: Looks like it's under the kitchen floor ☹ This morning is quite cool, and there's a spot of the kitchen floor, just in front of the sink, that is warm underfoot.

I can hear the cash register ringing....
Just a thought is that you may want to contact your homeowners insurer. Shit do you have to do the dishes in the AM?
Thanks, Ray. I actually did that a while back. They will pay for 3m2 of patching but NOT for the pipes and the exposing thereof ☹ In this case there is a good chance that kitchen cupboards may have to be removed so I need to have a further chat with them.

OK.... so what happened next was
1) leak tracing guys came and couldn't find anything in the pipes but proved that the loss of water was happening either on the geyser or something that the geyser supplies (since they couldn't find anything between the roof and the hotwater taps this pointed to the geyser)
2) The solar heating guys came out (I have a maintenance contract on the geyser) and said they checked it all out, it all looks fine and they didn't change anything
3) the constantly running meter stopped
4) my municipal water bill dropped down by hundreds of rand
5) We now have lots of very hot water

So a bit frustrating that nobody will 'fess up to finding and fixing anything, but the system is now working very well.

flatfourfan

X-rated Bob wrote:
So a bit frustrating that nobody will 'fess up to finding and fixing anything, but the system is now working very well.

at the end of the day, I guess that's all that counts.................good stuff.