Siting Your Solar Water Heater Unit

Prior to you purchase and set up a solar water heating unit, you first need to take into account your location’s solar supply, and also the most favorable orientation & tilt of your solar collector. The design and efficiency of a solar water heating unit relies upon how much sun’s energy reaches your building location.

 

Solar water heaters employ both direct & distributed solar radiation. Even though you are not living in a climate that is sunny and warm, most of the time your location still might have sufficient solar supply. If your building location feature unshaded areas and usually south-faced, it is a great candidate for solar water heaters. Your local solar system installer or provider can do solar site investigation.

Both the orientation & tilt of the collector will have an effect on the performance of your solar water heating system. Your contractor must take into account both the aspects while assessing your site’s solar supply & sizing your system.

Collector Orientation:

Solar hot water collectors or panels must be geographically oriented to exploit the amount of regular & seasonal solar power that they get. Usually, the most favorable orientation for a solar-panel in the northern geographic region is true south. Nevertheless, latest studies have established that, relying on your site & collector tilt, your panel can face about 90º west or east of true south with no significant decreasing in its performance.

You will also wish to take into account aspects like roof orientation, local climate conditions and local landscape features that shade the panel regularly or seasonally, as these aspects may have an impact on your collector’s optimum orientation.

 

Collector Tilt:

These days, a majority of solar water-heating collectors are ascended flat on the roof. This’s more visually pleasing compared to rack-mounted collectors, which stick on the roof at very odd angles. Therefore, most collectors feature the same tilt as the roof.

Though the most favorable tilt angle for your solar collector is an angle equal to your latitude, fitting your collector flat on an angled roof won’t upshot in a considerable reduction in terms of system performance. However, you will wish to consider roof angle into account while sizing your system.

 

Buy solar water heaters and supplies from Northern Lights and enjoy considerable saving. For more information, don’t be hesitated to call us 1 -800 -317 -9054 or e-mail us at info@solartubs.com.