Swimming pool and solar heating thoughts
May. 19th, 2004 01:09 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
armbTook the winter cover off our pool on Saturday, and it's looking fairly clear now. It took weeks to get out of the green soup stage our first summer in the house, and several days last year.
Thinking a bit about solar heating - got a couple of paper junk mails advertising it recently (pushing the DTI Clear Skies grant scheme, and revisited some bookmarks, and reread a CAT guide to DIY systems. I have the old hot water tanks from when ours were changed. They might be usable as tanks as is, blocking off the coils that are leaking (they have two coil, one for hot water, one for underfloor heating circuit, of of which wouldn't be needed for at least some applications), or as copper sheeting to make a collector like this one. For pool heating an inefficient but cheap system might be better than a more expensive more efficient one, and a drainback system using the shed roof would probably be simplest. (On the other hand I noticed that the bathroom dormer windows have quite an expanse of house roof below them, and would probably allow a thermosiphon system to work if there was a tank in the attic above - no need for a pump or controller.)
Thinking a bit about solar heating - got a couple of paper junk mails advertising it recently (pushing the DTI Clear Skies grant scheme, and revisited some bookmarks, and reread a CAT guide to DIY systems. I have the old hot water tanks from when ours were changed. They might be usable as tanks as is, blocking off the coils that are leaking (they have two coil, one for hot water, one for underfloor heating circuit, of of which wouldn't be needed for at least some applications), or as copper sheeting to make a collector like this one. For pool heating an inefficient but cheap system might be better than a more expensive more efficient one, and a drainback system using the shed roof would probably be simplest. (On the other hand I noticed that the bathroom dormer windows have quite an expanse of house roof below them, and would probably allow a thermosiphon system to work if there was a tank in the attic above - no need for a pump or controller.)