solar hot water with superstor water tank

[wannabegreener]

After burning wood for the first time this winter, I have been able to save about 250 gal of oil over this winter and I have been thinking of how to get my oil bill even lower. In my calculations, I burn between .75 and 1 gal per day in the summer for hot water. I have been thinking about adding some kind of solar hot water heater and really like the pages I have seen on how to do this for less than $1000.

I currently have a energy kinetics boiler with a superstor water tank for domestic hot water. I may be able to get another slightly used superstor tank and I was wondering if I could use it for a solar heat exchanger. (I think that is what it is called.)

What I would do is hook up the domestic hot water output of the solar superstor to the cold water input of the boiler superstor. This way, when hot water is drawn from the boiler hot water tank, it is being replace with hot water from the solar tank. If the solar tank hot water is warm enough - no oil needed to heat the incoming water. If it is not warm enough, hopefully it will be close so the boiler would only have to heat the water a few degrees.

Since the superstor would be free, all I would have to buy is the rest of the system. The bigger parts I would have to get would be the panels, the pump(s), and some sensors.

My questions are:

1. do you think this is possible/good idea
2. I live in the north east and if I wanted to run this in the winter, I would have to put antifreeze in the heat exchange loop. (Is this a good idea/possible?)
3. is it worth it to run it in the winter - temp on the cold days gets down to -10 (usually)
4. Any other parts (other than minor stuff) I would need.

The house is a straight face colonial with the south side of the house being the left side of the house. It has no windows on the first floor and I was thinking of putting the panels there. Minimally I would think that I could raise my well water from ~50 deg F to something a lot closer to what is in the boiler superstor - at least in the summer months and possibly in the spring/fall.

Thanks for any inputs.

 

[steam man]

Nothing time and money can't solve. I do precisely what you are thinking of doing by using a solar hot water system with a superstor tank to "preheat" my domestic hot water in the northern half of Maine. Its the most efficient way of using solar by using the sun to heat at the lowest temps possible. Combination tanks which use one tank for multiheat source sort of compromise solar heat collection. Its a little early for serious number crunching but using a gallon of oil per day in the summer seems to be about 200 gallons of hot water useage. Considering the sun's heat is free solar will work all year round. After installing my solar evacuated tubes and before the dump zone was installed (which heats my basement) my tank reached the shutdown temp of about 175F and the solar header hit 285F at the beginning of February. Everything held tight with no problems. Cold days have nothing to do with heat gain. You just need some sun to shine-the more the better. I use antifreeze and only advocate that as oppose to a drain down system in extreme cold climates. The one problem is I don't see a decent system being installed for a $1000, at least one that performs well and will last a long time. Bite the bullet and consider the investment with tax credits to get it done right.

 

[wannabegreener]

steam man,

I am such a newbie at this that it would be nice to see pictures or diagrams of a working system. Do you have any pictures of your system. I would like to see what I'm getting into before I start this project.

Thanks

 

[steam man]

This forum is probably the wrong place for an extensive solar discussion. I pm'd you so check your messages.

Mike