July 2009 - not been a good month

[Dan]

Today i had to switch on the central heating as at the end of the day the water temp top to bottom of a 172L tank was 26C ( sprogs drained it at night and my better haslf and i had showers before work.
THis is only the second time or since march I have had to turn the heating. Didn't expect July to be such a bad month. Over the last couple of weeks its been struggling to get to 50C at the bottom the tank at the end of the solar day.

Has it been like this for others ?

[guydewdney]

sitting here with wood burner fired up, burning some 100+ year old oak....

yeah - pretty pants year

[heatherw]

Well we have the hottest July for at least 10 years.

On the news yesterday there was an item about a guy who died of sunstroke after having fitted solar panels on a roof at 46ºC.  The panels apparently added another 6ºC to this already frightening figure.  Hope there are no lasting effects from this bad publicity.......

[Flamethrower_]

heatherw,

Your obviously not in the UK, I have had to light the woodburner for the third time this month (July) solar has just about kept 50C most days, a bit different to June when most of the month the cylinder was hitting 90C+

[Justme]

I have been very very tempted to light the wood stove the last two nights.

[Jonathan]

And I was beginning to worry that I've got something totally wrong in my DIY install. It's sort of re-assuring to know that others are having a bad month. Let's hope the Met office have got it wrong about August

[Flamethrower_]

I hope so, I have two weeks planned in the north of Scotland in the 2nd half of August 

[Greenbeast]

i've managed to scrape through without the boiler since my panels went up in the middle of june.

each day that has started badly has cleared for a few hours at some point and done some topping up.

I'm well pleased with my setup

[emacinty]

I'm in central Scotland, with 30 47mm tubes mostly facing west, 160l cylinder.

I've had to suppliment with gas quite a few times this month.

However, WBS back boiler now hooked up to give hot water (was just radiators before), so gas probably won't be required again for another month or so.

Ewan

[renewablejohn]

Excellent month have just  purchased 2 pairs of Khaki ducks plus 8 assorted ducklings looking nice on the pond but I will have to make it bigger.

[dhaslam]

How do you protect the ducks from foxes?

[langstroth2]

I've been pleasantly surprised with performance this month - despite the cloud and rain. The average tank temp has been over 50C on 14 days, and over 45 on 3 days.

We've not had the over 70C tank temperatures of June, however the boiler's only been on twice this month so far. I think this is partly because we;ve had alternating sunny and cloudy days, so even on the cloudy days the system at least warms the bottom of the tank enough to slow down overall heat loss - from the previous days decent solar input.

e.g: yesterday was a pretty rubbish day, but atleast the bottom of the tank was warmed:

[langstroth2]

...spot the time when the sun finally came out from hiding for a decent period, looks like we might scrape to the end of the month with no boiler:

[Flamethrower_]

Well today has been a good day solar wise for us cylinder reading 62C.....at last

[Justme]

Been a good day here too. Have gained about 27c (at 70c now & still slightly rising) since this morning on 220L & the sun dint come out till midday. The PV has done the most its ever done as well.