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Heating water: gas vs PV panels

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  • 13-11-2020 12:58pm
    #1
    Vaso_81
    Registered Users Posts: 7 ✭


    Apologies if this is in the wrong forum and apologies for my explanation, I'm new to home ownership and feel useless in general.
    I have a quick question about heating water.
    I recently moved into a new build house and the heating system is a gas condensing boiler with 3 channels. So we can separately heat upstairs, downstairs and the water.
    However, we also have PV panels on the roof of the back of the house (west facing).
    So far, we have been heating the water using the gas but someone commented to my partner in passing recently that it must be very cheap to heat our water due to the PV panels.
    Presumably this would involve us heating water with the immersion? This is something we have never bothered with and didn't really consider as we presumed gas would be the cheaper option. We've never even switched on the immersion and we never thought about the PV panels as we don't know much about them in general, they're not even mentioned in the starter pack given to us when we moved into the house.
    Would anyone know what our best option would be for heating water in the cheapest/most efficient way? Is there even an obvious best option? Or would it be a case of trial and error? Apologies if this is a stupid question.


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    #2
    SouthWesterly
    Registered Users Posts: 6,526 ✭✭✭SouthWesterly


    As I said in plumbing, with 4 panels you won't have enough excess to heat water.


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    #3
    idc
    Registered Users Posts: 548 ✭✭✭idc


    I assume the person you spoke to was thinking solar tubes (not sure of correct name) which are used for heating water for household use (for ireland is typically just the water tank - not radiators)
    Anyone I know who is unfamiliar with Solar assume i mean the hot water panels and not solar PV!


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    #4
    Vaso_81
    Registered Users Posts: 7 ✭Vaso_81


    idc wrote: »
    I assume the person you spoke to was thinking solar tubes (not sure of correct name) which are used for heating water for household use (for ireland is typically just the water tank - not radiators)
    Anyone I know who is unfamiliar with Solar assume i mean the hot water panels and not solar PV!

    It was a plumber who said it, he was in the house at the time for a different reason and mentioned it in passing. My partner didn't question him on it at the time.
    Going by a few responses I got in the plumbing forum, I think we will continue heating water with the gas. Thanks.


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