Stuart L - Ottawa

Stuart L - Near Ottawa

I've attached some photos. One is of 2 Latitude51 panels in a neighbour's system. The others are of my system. My heat/hot water system includes a wood boiler and 600 gallon heat storage tank shown in one photo. The tank has three heat transfer coils in it. One coil transfers heat to the tank from the boiler and heat from the tank to the heating system. The second coil heats the domestic hot water. The third coil transfers heat to the tank from the solar collectors.

The system is working well. The solar system can collect up to 2 days worth of hot water on a good day. The storage tank can 'hold' about 5 days worth of hot water. Therefore, with sustained sunny weather the tank temperature gradually increases and we can sustain poor sun days without resorting to the wood backup. During the heating season, wood will be the primary fuel, however any solar heat added to the system will offset wood use.

As wood has been our only fuel before adding the solar, we had to run the wood boiler once every five or six days in the non heating season in order to provide hot water. Since adding the solar component, we have only rarely used the wood boiler in the non heating season and then only after a period of sustained cloudy weather.

Latitude51 Comment: Note this system used a Bubble Pump (see top right corner of the photo with the collectors, its an off-grid system, uses no electricity to pump the water and has no moving parts.)