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Jason Fitzpatrick decided to have a Solar Thermal System fitted after the steep oil price increases in 2007/08. He has a large family home with an indoor swimming pool. The house has 2 oil boilers, one for the house and another one dedicated to the swimming pool. His pool heating bill was almost £2,400 in 2007.

The only roof Jason had available had a North South ridge, so in consultation with Justin he decided to fit his collector array on both sides, giving him East and West facing collectors.  See here for information on how this will affect performance compared with due South orientation. 

He decided to split the installation into two phases, concentrating on the pool first and then linking to the DHW system. Three Eco-50-1800-30 collectors were selected,  two installed on the more open West roof and one then placed on the East facing roof. A Resol Plus controller was used for the system which would allow him to include his DHW at a later date.  

Parts used in the installation were as follows:

3 x Eco-50-1800-30 Eco-Nomical evacuated tube collectors
1 x Resol Flowcon A with BS Plus
1 x Resol SP1
Bowman pool heat exchanger
DuoSolar twin line corrugated stainless steel pipe
Inline automatic air vent with isolator

East/West configurations traditionally use a twin pump pumping station such as the D2F which use a separate circuit for each collector array.  However, we have found that connecting the two arrays in series results in minimal losses (because of the heavy thermal insulation of the collector manifolds) and lower initial costs.  The BS Plus controller reads a sensor in each array, and switches on the solar pump if either array has any usable heat.  Justin therefore suggested this technique to Jason.

After the system was installed, Jason monitored the output and calculated that rather than needing this Oil Tank filling 4 times a year that he will only need to refill once a year saving £1,800 per year. His payback time on the system will be in the region of 3 years and of course also a lot greener. Having reviewed the above results Jason decided to add an additional 30 tube collector and then have the DHW cylinder connected to the system. The following equipment was added;

1 x Eco-50-1800-30 Eco-Nomical evacuated tube collector
1 x Santon 250 Litre Unvented Solar Cylinder
1 x Resol VA32 3 port Valve

The system configuration on the controller was easily changed and with 120 tubes the array heats the water in the cylinder very fast and then switches to the swimming pool.  If he wants higher pool temperatures in the future, Jason will be able to double the size of the system simply by adding collectors to the existing setup, as and when it suits him.

 

 Thanks to Jason and Justin for this information.

 

Send mail to SW@eco-nomical.co.uk with questions or comments about this web site.
Last modified: 05-06-09