Solar & Gas Water Heating

baileyborough

Hi all,

Bit of an odd question.

My wife and I bought our first home last year and moved in in May.

The house has solar (rods I think) heating the water, and also has an oil boiler for rads and water.

Throughout summer and autumn, the pump worked great, we had blistering hot water and I don't recall even touching the oil.

As the winter came in the oil got a bit more use, both for heating and also for water, as we started to see things cooling a bit on the water front.

I was speaking to a friend about it today, and it got me thinking, should this be the case?

I chalked this down to winter = less sunlight, so we'd need more oil. But is anyone able to confirm whether I'm right here, or if I need to be looking at the solar for issues etc.?

Any thoughts or suggestions would be greatly appreciated, solar is a hugely new area for me.

rolion

Without pictures hard to tell...

I suggest to call a solar company and run a full "health check" on the solar tubes.
Also,ask them to introduce the system to you such as basic checks, parameters and "what if" scenarious.

Solar tubes are fine for 9 months of the year.
Dec,Jan and Feb we're getting minimum output from the Solar due to angle ,position and length of the day.Think about as a "lunch time" for nature and for your tubes. Now is the perfect time to do service on them as warmer days will make it very difficult.

You can see my system live here:
https://www.vbus.net/scheme/3a2d0feae70e6ff873aaaf72aec7fea2

Rarely reached over 15" these days.
Come March,gettting better and from end of April until end of September never have to turn on the boiler or immersion.

Enjoy it.

baileyborough

rolion wrote: »

Without pictures hard to tell...

I suggest to call a solar company and run a full "health check" on the solar tubes.
Also,ask them to introduce the system to you such as basic checks, parameters and "what if" scenarious.

Solar tubes are fine for 9 months of the year.
Dec,Jan and Feb we're getting minimum output from the Solar due to angle ,position and length of the day.Think about as a "lunch time" for nature and for your tubes. Now is the perfect time to do service on them as warmer days will make it very difficult.

You can see my system live here:
https://www.vbus.net/scheme/3a2d0feae70e6ff873aaaf72aec7fea2

Rarely reached over 15" these days.
Come March,gettting better and from end of April until end of September never have to turn on the boiler or immersion.

Enjoy it.

Thanks so much, this is really helpful.

I'll look at getting someone in to check out the overall system; it sounds like you said, that this is a side effect of the weather.

If you were eyeballing it, what pictures would you need?

rolion

baileyborough wrote: »

Thanks so much, this is really helpful.

I'll look at getting someone in to check out the overall system; it sounds like you said, that this is a side effect of the weather.

If you were eyeballing it, what pictures would you need?

Here is my tubes for the past month.
https://www.vbus.net/D1ZQ-3dQ

Red line is the most important as that is top roof colector sensor.
Green is the top of the cylinder.