Cape Elizabeth Solar Hot Water System
April 16, 2010
We completed this solar hot water system in Cape Elizabeth a week or so ago. The orientation is 50 degrees west of solar south. Herein lies one of the benefits of evacuated tubes. Because of the curvature of their surface the tubes are self tracking. This system starts making hot water only an hour after my system which is just about perfectly solar south. With an unobstructed western sky it really cranks out the hot water from noon until the sun sets. Paired with an 85 gallon Marathon hot water tank and a Purist pump station this system has been making amazing amounts of hot water. With active glycol cooling there is no problem with overheating and prematurely degrading the glycol and we are able to achieve a 90% solar fraction. That is to say that this system produce 9 out of every 10 gallons of hot water this household uses! That’s a lot of oil not being burned here anymore.
