Solar Heating Systems

The solar system is made up of three main parts:

Vacuum tubes & manifold to form the solar panel
Solar twin coil hot water cylinder
Solar controller

The Solar System
The solar panel is usually mounted on the roof in south facing direction, when there is sufficient light the vacuum tubes convert this to heat. The system controller detects the solar panel heating up and starts the solar pump. This circulates the water round a closed loop through the lower coil in the hot water cylinder. The heat is transferred to the hot water cylinder via the lower coil. During the summer months the solar system will provide most of your hot water requirement, with only occasional top ups from your boiler. For the rest of the year the solar system pre-heats your hot water, with your boiler making up the difference.

The twin coil solar cylinder, is usually 50% larger than your existing hot water cylinder, this gives it the same capacity of hot water from your boiler. The central heating system uses the upper heat exchanger coil and solar system the larger lower heat exchanger coil. The larger coil gives greater heat transfer.

The solar controller keeps the system working automatically and allows you to monitor the actual temperature of the hot water, and at glance see what the temperature is. It’s easy to decide if the hot water needs to be topped up via boiler or emersion heater. It can record kW generated and keeps a running total of kW generated.