Solar Water Heating Projects

Latitude51Solar a division of Northern Lights Solar Solutions were chosen to supply the City of Calgary’s Zoo with 16 high performance SunRain TZ58 1800 30R solar vacuum tube collectors. These high performance evacuated tubes were ideal for the water and space heating requirements for the newly renovated ENMAX conservatory. This modern facility houses a complete tropical eco environment complete with Canada’s largest butterfly pavilion.

This article is describing a large outdoor solar heated swimming pool. As you can read from this story a single 30 tube solar collector is helping maintain the pools heating at a very nice 86 Degree F temperature. If you are heating a swimming pool with gas / propane or electricity you should seriously start thinking about heating the pool with solar. The payback on solar pool heating is the best you will get.

Good afternoon,
Our very simple solar water system has been up and running since the end of March. Even on cloudy days it provides more than enough hot water for our needs. We had no previous experience with solar water heating, so put this together in the simplest way.

You supplied the IT300-HP-HX, we hooked up its internal heat exchanger to our existing electric water heater by removing the electric heating elements and adding a manually switched circulating pump.

From Wayne Larsen - Big Bar Lake, BC
System: 4 x 30 evacuated tube solar collectors. The owner built his own house incorporating energy efficient designs and right from the beginning the plan was to incorporate solar hot water space heating into the design.

"Overall I am very pleased with the components supplied by your company and I have to comment on the level of service provided by Peter Ferlow in Vancouver, Peter went above and beyond any level of customer support I expected.. You may use me as a reference and I will be pleased to show off the system to yourself or your clients."

 Terry Fenwick, Harwood, Ontario
 
I installed my two 30 tube collector system in late November 2010.

My design goal was to maximize the winter heat gain to help heat water used for radiant floors and my domestic hot water. I have started with two 30 tube collectors set at a 60 degree slope and plan to add two more collectors later this summer. I enlarged and converted an old cedar hot tub into a 220 gallon storage tank with 4 copper heat exchanger coils in it. The tank water is heated by the solar glycol loop and by my ground source heat pump. The other exchanger coils in the tank are for domestic hot water, radiant floor heating and a heat dump coil which will send excess summer heat to my outdoor hot tub. I am using very basic ETCs (Electronic Temperature Controllers) to operate the solar loop pump, domestic hot water recirculation pump and activate the heat pump when the storage tank temperature falls below the required level.

Stuart L - Near Ottawa

I've attached some photos. One is of 2 Latitude51 panels in a neighbour's system. The others are of my system. My heat/hot water system includes a wood boiler and 600 gallon heat storage tank shown in one photo. The tank has three heat transfer coils in it. One coil transfers heat to the tank from the boiler and heat from the tank to the heating system. The second coil heats the domestic hot water. The third coil transfers heat to the tank from the solar collectors.

I purchased a system last fall from Latitude51 Solar, originally thought I would need a 60 tube setup
but have found the 30 tube works just fine for me and my wife even though we have a tree shading
problem around our yard.
 
I have an on demand modulating Electric water heater tied into the water coming from
a 40 gallon tank heated by the Sun.

 From Mike Holden, Ontario
System: 2 x 30 tube collectors, custom install for DHW and space heating.
 
"The great thing about solar energy, is that it is "free", the downside of solar energy, is that YOU must make a commitment, both financially and in a visionary sense, to make "free" work for you!
Before purchasing 2 systems from Latitude51 Solar, I too, had reservations, about the costs associated with "free", and I too, was unsure about whom to trust and whom to believe, in the event that I chose to foray ahead into the field of capturing the sun's rays, for practical purposes.

From George Skeet - High River Alberta.

System: 2 x 30 tube collectors, 2 x 70 gallon tanks.

Just a quick note to show we did put the panels we bought from you to work. To date the controller says we have produced 2200 kwh of energy. The controller and panels are working great and the controller made it easy to hook into our floor heating system. If our heat management procedures survives the summer successfully, we will probably be looking at 2 more panels this fall. To that end, do you normally stock the 25 degree panels or would you need lead time to bring some in?

From Doug S. - SE Calgary

System: 3 x 30 tube collectors, 80 Gallon Tank
 
For the last 3 and a half weeks (May 2011) we have had the panels run the tank up to 75 C but usually average 50-60 Deg C- range.

One of the reasons for this we have 2 adult children with us and the 2 washers and 2 dishwashers are set on hot water, and for this reason the tank is getting a lot of use.......I am sure when the kids leave we will have a huge surplus of hot water.

I have also lowered my on demand hot water heater to 110 Fahrenheit from 120 which it was set at all winter
because it doesn’t make sense for it to kick in so often ...until the hot water gets from the tank to the heater
We are still experimenting as you can see...but the gas consumption has dropped 66% with this system.....pretty cool.......
 
My gas bill this May (May 2011) ---used 4 GJ Gas, last month total bill 55 dollars. Last May ( May 2010) we used 9 gigs-----same furnaces.

Doug