Practical Solar?

[Bill Lewis]

Recently I read an article on solat water heating, and have always thought that this might be a relatively easy and practical application of solar energy. I've been talking about it with my wife, and with the current energy tax credits and possible incentives I have been giving it more consideration.

Has anyone done this? I'm in a zone 6 climate so I was considering a drainback, closed loop system, but I've heard that the vacuum tube collectors don't have the problem with freezing so that may be an option too and I could possibly use a simpler open loop system instead.

I've got a ton of other questions to boot, but I'll keep it short.
Cost, what can one expect to pay for a system?
Has anyone done it DIY?
Mnufacturer's? Where do I look for components?
Reliability? which components to use?
Collector positioning. I've got one side of my garage roof that seems like an almost ideal place to put collectors, but it fases mostly WSW, Is this adequate, or would I need to position the collectors on a more southerly direction (they wouldn't be able to lie flat on the roof this way).

Lastly, my wife is also wanting me to consider photovoltaic options. I haven't even begun to think about these.

[Joe Pelonio]

I did some research on this back in the late 80's, when we lived in CA and many people were doing it to heat their swimming pools. As it turned out it's a reasonable payback for a pool in a sunny climate. Here in WA it would be a big waste of money. It's really a matter of the number of sunny days you get, and the square footage of roof area that has a good exposure to the sun. Then you'll save more with a large family. In our case at the time we would not have lived there long enough to get it paid back. You may also have tax credits and utility company rebates on it, so I'd start with your gas/electric provider for info. Back there were a couple of systems in the $1500-2000 range that you could install yourself. Probably double that now.

[Rob Russell]

My aunt and uncle have a passive solar setup that preheats water going into their hot water heater. Even in CT, it makes a difference in their utility bills.

[Charles McKinley]

Hi Bill,

Gary has a really nice site. www.builditsolar.com.
This is from the MEN forum.

If you are at all interested in a simple DIY solar water heater, I just put up a great book by David Bainbrige on batch solar water heaters -- its a free download (thanks to David!):
http://www.builditsolar.com/Projects/WaterHeating/ISPWH/ispwh.htm

Gary

He post a lot on the energy forum over at motherearthnews.com.