Reports suggest that Solar Water Heaters in tropical countries are unreliable and prone to failure. How true?
Question:
Reasons cited for this is that solar water heaters fail within 3 years due to high humidity and other such factors and leaks develop. I find this an unlikely answer as the humidity should decrease temperature variances between night and day and protect rubber seals from drying out.
Although I don't really know better.
Any advice would be greatly appreciated as we are trying to build a home with a low energy profile. If you are a company feel free to market me your product and convince me otherwise.
Answer:
If a bucket of water is kept out in the sun it gets quite warm in a couple of hours in spite of losses. The reports are quite baseless.
All that can happen is that the efficiency may decrease a bit, and the glass requires cleaning more often.
I made a crude one for myself. Experimented witha low cost galvanized iron collector and GI tubes welded to the sheet. It was painted with ordinary matte black black board paint. The glass cracked when a stone fell on it, and rain water seeps under it. The paint has peeled off in some places. Yet, we get sufficient hot water even in the morning after a night in storage. It is six years old now. Looks ugly as sin. The point is it still works. The collector area is about 18 sq.ft. with an ordinary window glass over the plywood box. No seals worth speaking.
The latitude is 13 degrees.
Forget reports and install one.
I think that this site will help you with solar heating in tropical areas: http://www.shpegs.org/index.html#moztoci...
Here's a patent for an invention with a description: http://www.freepatentsonline.com/3989031... (Scroll down until it says "Description:" at the left.)
There are also many other ways you can conserve energy.
You should keep your house well insulated to reduce the need for air conditioning. Replace incandescent light bulbs with compact fluorescent ones.
that is more likely a problem caused by the systems being built by the lowest bidder.
if you haven't noticed, lowest bidders have a tendancy to cause problems by using substandard components.
The failure of these devices would probably have more to do with rainfall and condensation occluding the sun that the devices need to function.
Solar water heaters are highly reliable unless you use substandard components or do not have proper water supply.
Only during the monsoons when skies are totally overcast do these not work else solar heaters work very well and are much better economically.
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