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Old 12-15-2009, 10:55 PM   #32 (permalink)
Christ
Moderate your Moderation.
 
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Quote:
Originally Posted by OffGridKindaGuy View Post
Thanks for the welcome!

If you could raise the input water temperature 10-20 degrees above the ground temperature, it would work well. I even pondered having another water tank without the covering on it setting next to the actual heating tank for a buffer to increase the temperature with the ambient room temperature.
So here's what I'm thinking:

My Father, as I noted above, has an electric water heater. I want to add in solar directly from the well pump's input to the tank to preheat the water some.

So the rough and dirty of it is me unscrewing the hose from the well to the water input, and coiling up a garden hose (that's OK for drinking water and extreme heat) and tossing it up on the roof, then connecting the other end back to the inlet of the tank.

During a Pennsylvania winter, would there be any positive effect? (There are often days with little or no sun at all. To intensify this effect, he lives in a valley with limited sunlight. We lose about 2-3 hours of direct sunlight a day due to the proximity of the hills, but there is still light just like anywhere else.
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