Thursday, July 9, 2009

Solar Water Heaters

By Tod Clemens

These systems are able to heath water for various uses including industrial, business or home users. The most popular uses for solar water heaters are hot water heating for radiant heating in the floor and for .

A solar water heater can be the most efficient way to heat the water in your home and is easy on the environment. A solar method for heating water has solar thermal collectors that moves the heat from the thermal collector to the item where it is intended using a liquid system. Using a small amount of electricity, the method pumps the liquid and includes a tank or reservoir to store the heat to use later.

To heat the water for a residence, two models of systems are sold. The first one is a called a compact system, the second one is the pumped system. Both have to usually have another source for energy, either a heating element that is electrically-powered, or the system could be part of the central heating unit and use gas of fuel oil, this would only be used when the water cools to under 50 degrees centigrade. This way you will always have what hot water you need. A great idea would be to use a wood-burning stove along with your solar water heating system, this would work great for the colder temperature zones, and without having to involve fossil fuels or electricity.

The collectors normally are installed on a building, house roof, or a wall facing the sun. On rare occasions the collectors stand alone. The systems that are passive drives its fluid to the collector and through it, the system that is active pumps its fluid through the system.

A collector can be made easily from a box that has been properly insulated with the addition of the glass lid or top. It has a flat solar absorber which is constructed with copper pipes painted black and mounted onto sheet metal or tubes of metal inside a cylinder of glass. The sunlight is concentrated through the parabolic mirror onto the cylinder. Also many of the systems convert the collected sunlight to heat without depending on the outside temperatures.

The solar water heater is both financially sound and environmentally friendly. In the climates that are warm your backup source for energy will not have to be used much, and in the climates that tend to be colder it still will be less the using the traditional version of the hot water heaters.

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