November 2009

[StBarnabas]

Well what a difference a day makes. Today was truly horrible here in Northumberland no solar water today. The PV system finally came disgustedly to life at about 12:00 for a few hours got a few hundred Wh. The worst day before this (3rd of September) was about 1.5kWh. But oh for a wind turbine tonight!

[Ivan]

November's never full of optimistic posts! I've had a couple of days where I've seen 30C, and one day which reached 33C, but most days hit the mid-20s.

[langstroth2]

..had the odd better day amongst the rain showers.
e.g. Tuesday this week - OK the cylinder was already pretty warm middle and top, so only a smaller volume being warmed at the bottom - still, it managed 23C to 51C (blue line). Not bad for mid November!

[StBarnabas]

35 at bottom of Tank today - we missed the worst of the weather horrible further west. 5kWh of PV. Need to get a flow meter on the cold feed and rig my one wire power meter up to the ASHP. I will have a much better idea then of actual heat gains.
StB

[dhaslam]

This was the second sunny day this month and bottom of cylinder was up to 52C.  Output is falling a bit below 50% of July and August figures.  Also a good few days for the Air Source heat pump because  night time temperatures stayed up  around 13C for a while.   However 192mm of rain in the month so far  is quite exceptional.   

On the news today  is was reported that Cork University has a new (prize winning)  building  under five feet of water.   How valuable is a degree from a university that doesn't  know about climate change yet?   Nobody told Cork County Council either, they have a new €23m underwater library, supposed to open today. 

www.rte.ie/news/2009/1119/weather.html 

[Paulh_Boats]

30 tubes/120L/retro coil

Top of tank:
Morning - 31C
Late afternoon - 43C

Sunny morning but rain in afternoon, still pretty good just 4 weeks away from Winter Solstice.

-Paul

[desperate]

Hiya good clear sky till 2pm here at 08;30 s1 22, s2 14, s3 57 and at 15;55 s1 49, s2 48, s3 53 thats 60 tubes into 216 litres

Desperate

[desperate]

Another little charticle of todays harvest, pretty chuffed considering sun is only a couple of degrees from it's lowest declination.Desperate

[daftlad]

Another little charticle of todays harvest, pretty chuffed considering sun is only a couple of degrees from it's lowest declination.Desperate

ey up, r we sufitimucated ere, 2 long wurds tin t-same sentunce.
goooooooood 2 seeeeeee
ta ta

[Paulh_Boats]

30 tubes/120L/retro coil/51.8N

Yesterday, top of tank:
start: 40 something
peaked at: 60C

We rarely use the boiler and then only manually, so that 60C peak is solar powered.

Quite an amazing result barely 3 weeks from the Winter Solstice (December 21).

-Paul

[desperate]

Paul

60c in november/dec pretty good with only about 6 hours of sunup to play with.

Even today with the briefest flash of sun and lots of rain we managed to drag s2 from 12c at 08:30 to 19c at about 14:25

Desperate

[Paulh_Boats]

Desperate,

My secret is a large panel, small tank, short 10mm pipes and retro-coil that heats a small amount of water top-down. You either have a large volume of warm water or a small volume of hot water.

I'm convinced the ideal solution is retro coil in winter and bottom coil in summer.

-Paul

[Ivan]

Paul,

What temperature settings are you using (on/off)?

[Greenbeast]

I'm convinced the ideal solution is retro coil in winter and bottom coil in summer.

i've considered adding a retro coil( i spec'd an extra immersion boss for this eventuality) in addition to my bottom coil but i'm not sure it would help us with our current usage
I shower in the morning and so i've been using the immersion in the morning to give me my shower water, this means the top will be fairly warm at the start of a winters day and so won't collect any more energy than it already does.

This would change if i were to shower in the evening (something i'm not considering at the moment)

[spluger]

Paul Intresting analogy

my direct system can top load or heat from bottom due to the 10mm pipe feed into the vent pipe is nearly to the bottom of cycl and is holed with 6mm holes every 100mm

I'm using variant 3 in the speed controll on the TDC3
i run at pump on at 30% when s1 is above 40'C and a Delta t of 4'C above s2
and when s1 =60 run throttle pump to 70% on speed 1

seems to work OK as heats mainly from top down
unfortunately due to boiler being moved and plumbing, I'm having to treat the tank as a radiator, IE heated from the ch
it will be while until i can finish this off.

so the loading is dependant on tank temp


David