Online Solar Training - Solar Training Videos - Solar Webinars

Part 7 of the SunMaxx Commissioning Series: Commissioning Stories & Troubleshooting

admin — Mon, 02 Jul 2012 19:11:29 +0000

Part 6 of the SunMaxx Commissioning Series: Basic Controller Function

admin — Mon, 04 Jun 2012 20:43:48 +0000

Part 5 of the SunMaxx Commissioning Series: Determining & Setting Proper Flow Rate

admin — Mon, 14 May 2012 18:41:45 +0000

Part 4 of the SunMaxx Commissioning Series: Filling the System

admin — Mon, 30 Apr 2012 18:03:56 +0000

Part 3 of the SunMaxx Commissioning Series: Determining Target Pressure

admin — Mon, 16 Apr 2012 18:52:35 +0000

Part 2 of the SunMaxx Commissioning Series: Pressure Testing and Cleaning

admin — Mon, 19 Mar 2012 19:17:44 +0000

Part 1 of the SunMaxx Commissioning Series: The Thermal Filling Station

admin — Mon, 12 Mar 2012 18:39:58 +0000

Collector Orientation: Sun Paths Follow Up

admin — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 18:41:09 +0000

Sun Paths: Reasons for the Seasons Follow Up

admin — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 18:21:33 +0000

Winter Solstice Celebration: Reasons for the Seasons

admin — Wed, 21 Dec 2011 18:33:50 +0000

Data Acquisition Systems for PV with Francine Notte

admin — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 15:14:35 +0000

EVT’s Part 2 – The Science of Evacuated Tubes

admin — Mon, 28 Nov 2011 19:17:29 +0000

EVT’s Part 1 – The Science of Evacuated Tubes

admin — Tue, 22 Nov 2011 19:35:32 +0000

Micro-inverters Design and Installation

admin — Mon, 14 Nov 2011 20:14:34 +0000

Micro-inverters Design and Installation-20111114 1658-1.mp4

The TitanPower plus SU Series of Flat Plate Solar Collectors

admin — Mon, 07 Nov 2011 22:16:15 +0000

Flat Plate VS Evacuated Tubes

admin — Mon, 07 Nov 2011 21:58:10 +0000

Flat Plate VS Evacuated Tubes

The New StorMaxx PTec Version 2 Tanks

admin — Mon, 07 Nov 2011 20:01:57 +0000

How a Solar Thermal System Works

admin — Tue, 18 Oct 2011 14:07:03 +0000

NEC 2008 vs the changes reflected in NEC 2011 – Part 2

admin — Mon, 17 Oct 2011 21:08:20 +0000

Combi System

admin — Mon, 10 Oct 2011 20:57:25 +0000

Grant is going to demonstrate and explain the combi-system in this informative webinar

Installing the New UniMaxxPlus Pump Station

admin — Mon, 10 Oct 2011 18:53:24 +0000

Join SunMAxx Solar educator, John M as he explains how to install the New UniMaxxPlus Pump Station

Data Logger Part 1

admin — Fri, 30 Sep 2011 16:19:17 +0000

Data Logger Part 1 with Grant!

NEC 2008 vs the changes reflected in NEC 2011 – Part 1

admin — Mon, 29 Aug 2011 19:17:02 +0000

NEC 2008 vs the changes reflected in NEC 2011 Part 1 Join us for part 2 September 19

The SunMaxx Solar Dealer Portal

admin — Thu, 25 Aug 2011 20:59:48 +0000

A look at the huge amount of resources instantly accessible online
to SunMaxx Solar dealers and how to access them

Solar Hot Water Steamback 08.08.2011

admin — Tue, 09 Aug 2011 18:25:16 +0000

Join John as he discusses: What happens when a closed loop system stagnates and should I worry about it?

Energy Transfer 08.01.2011

admin — Tue, 09 Aug 2011 18:11:00 +0000

Join John as he discusses radiation, conduction, and convection: the science behind solar thermal systems.

Sales Strategies For The Solar Installer 07.25.2011

admin — Tue, 09 Aug 2011 18:02:48 +0000

Join Sales Specialist Adam Lee as he shares his expertise. He will be discussing sales strategies for the solar installer.

Amazing facts about the solar resource and how a solar cell works 07.18.2011

admin — Mon, 25 Jul 2011 14:51:46 +0000

Roof Orientation 07.11.2011

admin — Tue, 12 Jul 2011 13:35:12 +0000

Solar Hot Water Collector Mounting 06.27.2011

admin — Mon, 11 Jul 2011 21:35:50 +0000

SunMaxx Product Overview 06.20.2011

admin — Mon, 11 Jul 2011 20:51:05 +0000

SunMaxx has it all! Join John Maliwacki as he explains the vast SunMaxx Solar product offerings and their attributes. Storage Tanks, Evacuated Tubes and Flat Plates, oh my!

Steam, Dump or Drain 03.28.2011

admin — Tue, 05 Jul 2011 13:44:01 +0000

Pre-Packaged Solar Hot Water Kits 06.13.2011

admin — Tue, 05 Jul 2011 13:16:14 +0000

Drainback Systems 05.09.2011

admin — Mon, 13 Jun 2011 17:22:07 +0000

Flat Plate vs. Evacuated Tubes 03.21.2011

NickT — Mon, 21 Mar 2011 17:27:32 +0000

SunMaxx Solar Thermal System Accessories 03.14.2011

NickT — Mon, 14 Mar 2011 19:47:15 +0000

Solar Thermal Storage Tanks 02.28.2011

NickT — Mon, 28 Feb 2011 19:54:22 +0000

Using Retscreen 02.22.2011

NickT — Tue, 22 Feb 2011 20:26:11 +0000

A video demonstrating how to use Retscreen for efficient system sizing and design.

Solar Thermal Piping 02.07.2011

admin — Fri, 11 Feb 2011 21:10:17 +0000

Maintenance and Troubleshooting 01.31.2011

admin — Fri, 11 Feb 2011 21:04:00 +0000

Working with T*SOL Pro 4.5 01.10.2011

admin — Wed, 12 Jan 2011 15:39:28 +0000

Using Heat Exchangers 01.03.2011

admin — Wed, 12 Jan 2011 15:36:21 +0000

SUNMAXX SOLAR HOT WATER SOLUTIONS USING HEAT EXCHANGERS Date: 01/03/2011 Another edition of our SunMaxx Solar webinar series. Surprisingly in Upstate, New York, we’re having a very good solar day. Our collectors as of right now are about 150 degrees. We’re dumping into our forced air furnace, so we’ve reached our set point. Our domestic hot water tank is already maxed out at 135. So it’s one of those rare beautiful solar days in not so sunny Upstate. I want to spend the next half an hour talking about heat exchangers. Now, there’s a lot of debate now in the industry about the effectiveness of internal coils versus external heat exchangers, the pros and cons of each. And I’d like to make it clear with everyone that over the next 29 minutes now, I really can’t cover too much in too much detail but I do look at this as a good way to begin or supplement an existing learning experience. So, I’d like to welcome you to ask questions as we go through. And certainly, email me any particular questions that you have afterwards and I can turn your attention to some other resources. Okay? So, I do have a bit to cover here so I’ll get started. Please do ask me questions if you have anything you’d like to – you’d like me to cover. Can I just get a confirmation from someone that you can hear me okay? Great. Okay, super. Thank you. Alright. Now, generally there’s two types of heat exchangers. Those that are outside of the tank and those that are inside the storage tank. Now, some of you may have your preferences. Each serves different purpose. Outside of the tank, we’re generally talking about braised plates or also known as plate and frame exchangers, shell and tube heat exchangers, which tend to be stainless steel or tube within a tube heat exchangers. These require secondary pump. Internal exchangers most often are the smooth copper. They’re coils of smooth copper. Occasionally, we see a corrugated stainless steel and as well as finned copper exchangers. Now, the finned copper maximizes the space required. They have an extremely high heat exchange capacitance. Okay. Some other miscellaneous exchangers that we can talk about are the Solar Wand. I’ll go into a little bit of detail on the Butler Max Solar Wand and how effective that is at small domestic hot water systems. The Sidearm thermo-siphon, this is an old school method of heat exchange. Typically mounted on the side of a solar tank which utilizes convection and a dropping – a more dense colder fluid drops into the exchanger which causes the heat exchange from the solar loop into the tank and the colder fluid drives the convection cycle which forces the warmer fluid back to the roof to pick up – exactly. These have been gaining some attention, the Sidearm thermo-siphons. Some manufacturers are beginning to look into these and perfect the old school style. You know, as a manufacturer, SunMaxx has not quite found a particular use for them that outweighs the traditional heat exchangers that we have. But we’re still open to, you know, product updates. Another one that is actually being used right now as I speak is the water to air exchanger. This is like a car radiator. We have one right now. It’s mounted in our cold air plenum which is taking heat from our solar loop directly the glycol on one side and the air on the other side. So more specifically, our water to air heat exchanger is more appropriately the heat transfer fluid to air exchanger. Okay. Now, let’s talk about internal coils for a moment. I like internal coils. These to me are a simpler design and any time you can have a simpler design, there’s less room for failure. And not only a simpler design but it’s easy to size up an internal coil, especially when you have custom-built tanks like the non-pressure tanks from STSS. Okay. Most often, this is not always the case, but most often these coils are three-quarter-inch copper. And if I’m using a three-inch copper coil, I can size up a copper coil with the production of my solar loop per square foot equals the heat transferability of one linear foot of coil. So basically, if I have 100 square feet of collector area, I’m going to use a 100 linear feet of three-quarter-inch copper. That’s going to ensure that I never over produce. The difference in cost is minimal. It allows me for some, if I want to expand my system, if for some reason I want to increase my production with reflectors or anything like that, one foot to one foot is generally the rule of thumb that SunMaxx practices based on our experience with these non-pressure tanks. Now, Vaughn also makes these internal coils that are finned copper. And the heat exchange rate in finned copper is about ten times that of smooth cooper. So, it requires a coil ten times smaller. And this is really important when you’re trying to maximize your heat exchange in a small tank, for example, a 50-gallon tank. Traditionally, if I use a 50-gallon tank, that size tank is going to limit the size of the coil that I can choose which would in turn limit the size of the collector field. By using finned copper, these are submerged in replaceable coils from Vaughn. The heat exchange capacity is about ten times that of smooth copper. Now, when I size up internal coils for domestic hot water flow, the most important consideration there is the flow rate on the domestic side. Alright. So, each coil, assuming that it’s a three-quarter-inch copper, it’s going to accommodate about 4 to 5 gallons per minute of flow rate. That flow, 4 to 5 gallons, will allow me for just about a 90% heat exchange effectiveness across the coil assuming that my ground water is coming in at 50 and my solar loop is at 120. So, as I increase that flow rate, you obviously will decrease your heat exchange effectiveness. So, for domestic hot water loops, if my limiting factor is flow rate, I can pipe several in parallel to achieve the same results. So in this little photo you see here, we’ve got – in that total tank, there’s eight coils. So those eight coils at 5 gallons a minute allows me to preheat about 45, 40 to 45 gallons of cold water per minute. So, that’s a pretty high flow rate for larger jobs. So, for solar loop, sizing coils, one foot of coil per one foot of collector absorber. Okay, and be careful about sizing up your collector field based on gross area. Because if you size that based on gross, for example, on evacuated tube, SunMaxx 30 as an example has a gross area of 52 but an absorber area of only 30 square feet. So, you size these based on an absorber area. And for domestic hot water loop, you size that based on the required flow rate not so much the differential that you’re looking for but based on the flow rate. Okay. Here’s an example of how we use a non-pressure storage tank with the coils. So for the solar loop, the solar loop are the two loops that are tied in the pumps off from the pump stations. So, we have eight coils for the solar loop. All eight coils are tied in parallel returning back to the collector from the bottom of the tank. So if you notice, the hottest fluid should go in to the top of the coil and the coldest fluid comes out of the bottom and back to the collector. You want to remove as many BTUs from that solar loop as possible so you always go in counter-current flow relative to stratification. So, inside the storage tank, as the heat moves up, the solar loop should move in opposite direction. And then the two coils on the top are for the domestic purposes. So, we have two coils in parallel. Since we have two, you know that each is capable of 4 to 5 gallons a minute so you a total domestic flow of less than 10 gallons a minute. What’s nice about these non-pressure tanks is they are customizable. So depending on the stratification that I’m looking for or the different quality of BTUs, I can mount these coils anywhere in that tank that I wished to and I can achieve, and I can pull a high quality BTUs out of the tank or I can pull low quality BTUs depending on the level of that tank that I insert the coils. Anybody have any question at this point? Okay. Here’s an example of the internal coils. I’ll take a look at that, Drew. That’s a good point. Give me a second and I’ll take a look there. Now, the use of internal coils for solar loop, like I said, my preference is internal coils because of their simplicity. You may pay a little bit more especially for the non-pressure storage tank when you’re getting into commercial jobs. Bu they do present a much simpler approach. And in the end, and again, this is my opinion, that the simpler that we make these systems, the less points of failure that can occur. And ultimately, the more professional the installation will seem if there’s just less points that can fail. But again, that’s my opinion. Okay. So, then continuing to look at this pressurize storage tank with the internal coils. Obviously, the bottom internal coil is use for the solar loop. The top internal coil is tied in to the heating loop. Now, as I mentioned before, your solar loop should always move in counter-current flow to the direction of the heat movement inside the storage tank. So, you want the hottest to transfer with the hottest, coldest to transfer with the coldest. So, on the top coil, usually the top coils inside of the smaller pressurized storage place are not capable of delivering the maximum amount of heat that our load requires. Let me reiterate that point. Most pressurized storage tanks do not have coils that are sized large enough to handle heat loads for most residential homes. These top coils can supplement a heat load but they can’t replace the heat load. So, in this particular drawing or schematic, you see a boiler that is supplementing the storage tank. Okay? So, we have our domestic hot water load coming off of the storage tank and that domestic hot water load, the only source of energy is that storage tank. The storage tank however has two sources, the solar loop and the boiler. So, rather than letting this tank delivers the entire BTU load to the house, this tank supplements the boiler and in turn, the boiler supplements the tank. Okay? So, you could take a look at that schematic and very good. Alright. Now as I mentioned, this internal coil, internal wand exchanger, this is a pretty unique product. It comes from Barry Butler from Butler Sun Solutions and from what I understand he’s got about 4,000 wand hours as he’s calling them. Those are the customers who bought wands and accumulated the hours of use. And so, over 4,000 wand hours and he said, one return and it was under warranty. So, there is a very high degree of success with these wands. The limiting factor obviously is flow rate. Okay? He’s got a three-quarter-inch copper tubing that’s coming down off the solar return down into the bottom of the wand and then back up and out for the solar supply. So, he’s limited to relatively small systems for domestic hot water. I have sold and designed many systems that are using this wand and what I’ve seen, the thing that’s most impressive is the stratification that we’re seeing inside these tanks. It’s very adaptable for most existing hot water tanks. Let me just read this question here. That’s correct, Adam. Yes. So, one of the things as I said that’s most impressive is the stratification. So as an example, a ream Marathon hot water tank where a 36-inch wand on a normal solar day is seeing about a 50-degree differential from the top of the tank to the bottom of the tank. So, there’s no disruption in the stratification of the tank when you use this wand. In fact, the heat exchange actually starts at the top of the wand, and so the hot is always mix with the hot just like we like it and it moves in counter current to the stratification. So, I was really surprised with the stratification that we see but it really separates the quality that allows you to use just what you need and save some for later I guess. Alright. Another external heat exchangers, a lot of these stainless steel shell and tube that you see here are used for swimming pools. This is a perfect way to tie in to take a combi-system which is producing significant amount of heat in the winter time and then with a simple three port valve and a stainless steel shell and tube exchanger, we could pull heat off of the solar loop and dump it directly into our hot tub or swimming pool. One of the nice things about these shell and tube heat exchangers is they have two different flow capacities. So, for the solar loop, we’re using, there’s a one-inch port and on the pool loop, it’s up to an inch and a half port which means we can get about 60 to 70 gallons a minute on one side of the heat exchanger and maintain a flow of 5 to 10 gallons a minute on the opposite side of the heat exchanger. Let me show you a diagram here that illustrates the use of an external heat exchanger. As you notice, all we’ve done with this design is remove the coil and brought it to the outside. One of the nice things about external exchangers is they are serviceable, if need be, we have areas with a lot of mineralization, so you can remove the heat exchanger. Another nice thing is it is easy to oversize an external heat exchanger. So for example, if I have a very high load for my solar loop, a pressurized storage tank will have a fixed-sized coil, and it may not be suitable. So, the only way for me to get a larger coil is to buy a larger tank. Well I may not need a larger tank, so by using internal coils you’re really limited to the size of the heat exchanger, but by using external heat exchangers, I can go from a 10 plate and double the capacity to the 20 plate for an increase in cost of about 20 percent or less. Really in the end it only amounts to less than a $100 difference. So, in my mind, one of the best features of using external heat exchangers is your ability to scale it up at a low cost. So you can oversize heat exchangers, which we recommend over sizing them anyway. So I’ve got a couple of questions here. External heat exchangers can be dismantled easily if you use unions. Okay, so if you’re not using unions then it becomes a little bit more difficult. So you know with the additional cost, try to use unions wherever possible and valves. Then the question regarding the SunMaxx, the solar wand, that’s really rated for not so much the size of the storage tank as it is the capacity. These can transfer about 9,000 BTUs per hour. Yes, so the wand heat exchangers are capable of about 9,000 BTUs an hour heat exchange, which means they’re going to be good for about 40 to 50 square feet of collector area total. A little bit less with evacuated tubes because of their higher production per hour during peak production days. And then the use of electric elements, regarding the stratification with electric elements, that is one of the things that most often the electric element ports come in the middle of the table range. And I would like to see electric element ports be closer to the top two-third, and then set these on a timer as to not maintain your solar preheat by way of electric element during any part of the solar day. So there is some manipulation that can happen to help increase the effectiveness of electric heating elements when you’re using internal coils. Alright, now sizing up heat exchangers, Tim, shell tube heat exchanger can be adequate for radiant floor as long as it’s sized properly. So, all we need to know is the total load on that radiant floor and the flow rate, and then we can size up a shell tube. However, I would probably recommend, rather than a shell tube, I would recommend a braised plate heat for radiant floor heating. You’ll get a better heat exchange through braised plate than we do with shell tube, the only benefit to me is that the shell tube, being stainless steel…

NYSERDA Solar Thermal Incentives for New York State 12.16.2010

admin — Thu, 16 Dec 2010 20:56:06 +0000

SUNMAXX SOLAR HOT WATER SOLUTIONS NYSERDA SOLAR THERMAL INCENTIVES FOR NEW YORK STATE Date: 12/16/2010 Okay. Good morning. Charlie, I see you're the only participant this morning at this webinar. So this is good for you. I can customize it a little bit. I'm going to go over the NYSERDA PON 2149. This is an opportunity where we're going to see about a 600% growth rate in the solar thermal market that is already funded. So can you confirm that you can hear me, Charlie? You can type in the little chat box before I go too far. I just want to see that you can hear me. Great. Okay. So, basically what NYSERDA wants to see happen realized is about a 600% growth in solar thermal installations in the next five years. And they funded it with a $24 million incentive package, with the goal of installing 45 megawatts of solar thermal capacity. 45 megawatts would represent a 600% growth rate in this industry in 5 years. So that growth rate is really unparalleled in other industries. It's similar to a growth rate they saw in the European market, but over the course of 7 to 9 years. We're going to see the rate is going to be much greater here in New York State. Now, a quick overview. For residential domestic hot water consumers, they are going to cap out at $4,000. For non-residential, laundromats, hotels, and carwashes and the like, they cap out at $25,000. This funding is expected to cover at least 15 to 20% of the cost. Now, when I say "up front", it's cost paid to the installer. Part of the fund is released earlier. However, the system needs to be fully commissioned and approved prior to the installer actually getting the check from NYSERDA. And it's only for electric hot water consumers. So they have to have an electric hot water heater in operation for at least a year. So, looking ahead, if you have clients that are looking to upgrade their existing hot water system, and they install an electric hot water tank, you would not be able to take advantage of this funding for another year. So they have to have it in operation for a full year. Now the incentives do get paid to the installer. However, the benefit to the installer needs to be deducted from the invoice. So the real benefit needs to go to the end user in form of having a lower cost up front. So essentially, the installer has to ride that benefit from the time they begin installation to the time they get the check from NYSERDA. They're only available for new systems, so they've got to be new systems. They can't be upgrades to existing solar thermal systems. They have to be entirely new. And the incentive that the end user will receive is based on electrical usage displacement. So if they're consuming 3,000 kilowatts a year for hot water, the solar thermal upgrade can replace 2,000 kilowatts. And the incentive will be based on that 2,000 displaced electrical consumption. Now the solar thermal system needs to be sized by the manufacturer or the installer so that it does not exceed 80% solar fraction. Now we typically don't recommend a solar fraction any higher than this anyway. But NYSERDA will not pay for any system that exceeds an 80% solar fraction. And over time, next year for example, and in following years, the incentive, which is currently at $1.50 per kilowatt will be diminished, will be reduced so they have a certain amount of funds available. They're loading the front end of this incentive to stimulate the market. So the early adopters, the early installers, are the ones that are going to benefit the most, because next year, that incentive will be less. Now, NYSERDA is also going to benefit from this, not only be reducing their electrical consumption with their customers, but also by acquiring the renewable energy credits for all these systems. So, essentially, they're going to have renewable energy credits for 45 megawatts of solar thermal capacity. And they hold those recs for 3 years. This doesn't affect the homeowners really because there's not a lot that a homeowner can do with the rec. Commercial projects is another story. That is, one of the benefits of doing a commercial job that the building owner will hold a real body of credits. Okay, the installer, in order to be on the NYSERDA eligibility list, the scholar must meet one of these criteria: they must be either NABCEP solar thermal, they must have 18 hours of manufacturer certified training such as the SunMaxx EduPower, or they have to have accomplished 40 hours of training in a nationally recognized accreditation program or as an apprentice. Okay, so those first three options, any one of those will suffice, however after two years they have to become NABCEP certified. If they do not become NABCEP certified after two years they have to reapply for NYSERDA eligibility. Once they are accepted into the program, then they have to sign an agreement and they are on the permanent list for NYSERDA, permanent being for two years. Okay, the first step once a contract is secure, the installer must do a clipboard energy audit. Okay, that clipboard must access the building's energy consumption, paying particular attention to the electric load. So that is accomplished in two steps. First, interview the homeowner and try to understand the age of the building and the energy use, and then doing an identification and energy efficiency measures, where they can make upgrades to energy consumption and at little or no cost. And then it needs to conclude with a debriefing for the homeowner. The homeowner is not obligated to take action on any of these recommendations, but the installer is obligated to make recommendations, and then the homeowner can decide. This is something that you should do regardless of the NYSERDA incentive when you do a site survey of the building, especially for solar thermal we can have a much bigger impact on their total energy budget by incorporating other upgrades in addition to solar thermal. Here are some examples of what can be included in the energy audit. We can inspect their wiring, the timers on air conditioners and any vampire loads, we can look at the age and condition of doors and windows and weather ceilings? Are there any installation upgrades for insulation? Are the appliances energy star qualified? Okay, so some very simple, and they call it a clipboard audit because you don't have any instrumentation that you necessarily need, all you need to do is make some observations, and from those observations you make recommendations. This is customary and ultimately it's going to lead to a much larger energy reduction. Okay, the non-residential clipboard audit is a little more detailed in that besides the first two recommendations, they also have to take a look at energy star's portfolio manager as a benchmarking tool, and if they're able to create a score, and energy use index for that building. Once the energy use index is determined, then the building owner has a better understanding of what additional funds they're going to be eligible for. So NYSERDA PON 2149 is for solar thermal upgrades only, however there are other grants, many different grants that are accessible for non-residential buildings that are seeking energy upgrades. So a good installer of solar thermal will have his hand in many of those additional upgrades as a referral or a consultant, whether it's residential or commercial the installer must leave a list of certified contractors that could potentially perform these services. No in order to apply for the incentive, you can expect it to take about 20 business days. The appendix B, attached to the link that I'm going to show you in a few moments, can be filled out, it doesn't take very long at all, just a few minutes. However, one of the most important things is that the proposal, the application must include a simulated software performance assessment. This simulation can be run by RETScreen which is a public entity that can be downloaded for free from any installer, or solar pathfinder which is purchased through solar pathfinder or T*SOL. Now T*SOL is the software that SunMaxx uses, and is willing to do T*SOL reports for your system, so all you've got to do is contact your sales rep and he or she will enter the appropriate information for your system and spit out a T*SOL report for you to be able to send that off for your application. Once they've determined whether the eligibility for this system, they will notify you whether it's approved or declined. If it's declined, they'll tell you why and you can make changes. If it's approved then the funds will be set aside and the installer will be notified and the installer will be notified that the funds are set aside for that installation. Then and only then should the installer begin that installation. So knowing that the installer will not be paid until the system had been certified, the homeowner basically reaps the benefit of that NYSERDA incentive immediately but the installer will not be paid until the system has been certified after installation. Here's an example of appendix B, the application process. It is quite simple to fill out for the system, all you have to do is obviously the customer information at the top and then the type of system and then we have to look at the equipment being used. We recommend that you go with a manufacturer's prepackaged system or OG300. OG300 system does not require a performance assessment. If it's a prepackaged kit, the components must be OG100 certified, and the manufacturer must supply a performance assessment, as I spoke about before. That performance assessment is going to give us, and I'll show you here in just a moment, the performance assessment is going to give you a total annual output. Okay, now in terms of the requirements for these systems that are non-OG300 as I mentioned must come with a five-year warranty, this is a manufacturer's warranty covering performance, and after five years performance cannot fall below 10 percent of initial performance. So basically after five years the warranty needs to cover at least a 90% production as if it were new. The system must also be monitored every three months for production. Now that production monitoring can be accomplished using standard RESOL IntelliMaxx controller. That IntelliMaxx controller is going to accumulate the kilowatts produced, and every three months the installer can go and read off the controller and submit that to NYSERDA for auditing purposes. It's not real clear how that submittal process will work yet, and if they're going to be submitted at all or randomly audited. Nevertheless, we have it in place with our controllers, the IntelliMaxx that can monitor total kilowatts produced. Now once the installer is notified that the monies have been set aside, they have 120 days to complete the system. That should be ample time, but there is a deadline, and that's a 120 days. Here's an example of a T*SOL that was run for our Empire System Kit. SunMaxx has developed a new kit called the Empire System, which is designed exclusively for electric hot water heater upgrades. For this particular example we have a two-collector system, two SunMaxx TitanPowers, tied into an 80 gallon pressurized tank that is preheating cold water supply to an electric on-demand. The total production on this system is 2800-kilowatt hours. This is after losses and after system efficiency; this is what's being delivered to the storage tank, 2800 kilowatts. So if we take a look at 2800 kilowatts for this particular system, the dealer cost at $3700 allows for a pretty considerable markup for installation, and now we're looking at $8500 for total installed and user cost. Okay, with a 2800 kilowatt per year production, the rebate is going to cap out, it's just over $4000. So the end user can deduct $4000 up front for the cost, homeowner pays the installer the balance, and then the balance of $4500, then the homeowner can get a 30% tax credit on that $4500, which is $1350 and then they get a 25% state tax credit off of the balance of there, which is $787, bringing the final cost to the customer to only $2363. Now with a $2363 initial investment and savings at $532 per year, their return on investment is 22%. Now that's 22% zero risk. Now I don't know any other investment where I can get 22% with zero risk. There's plenty out there that's medium to high risk, but none that are zero risk. Now, the simple payback on 2800 kilowatt hours per year, and paying 19 cents per kilowatt hour, we're going to save $532, which means 4.4 year payback, and this is conservative and it's set at current energy cost. So as prices increase, the values of these systems are going to increase as well. Now here's a couple of action steps that I recommend are made by interested installers. First you've got to get on the NYSERDA eligible installer list. Once you're on the NYSERDA eligible installer list, then you also need to become NABCEP solar thermal certified, and there's a link at the back of this page that shows you how to begin that process. You have to sign and return the eligible installer list, find your potential clients and prequalify them because they must have electric hot water. Then the installer will work with the manufacturer and try to find the most appropriate solar thermal system. Once that is established, then the manufacturer will provide the installer with simulation software, and then the application for the incentive can begin. Once the funds are awarded, the installer begins, monitors that every three months, they pass the test for NABCEP and become permanently eligible for NYSERDA. If they do not pass the NABCEP exam, then they must reapply to become NYSERDA eligible after two years. Here's a list of links that you can learn more about this NYSERDA funding, the 2149, there's a couple of phone numbers, emails if you have any questions. As always, you can email me and here's a link to the NABCEP requirements for solar thermal certification. This is a long, drawn-out process, so I recommend that you get things started as soon as possible. Thank you very much for your attention, I hope you found it useful. Thanks again, and good luck.

Mounting Strategies 11.22.2010

admin — Fri, 26 Nov 2010 16:40:38 +0000

SUNMAXX SOLAR HOT WATER SOLUTIONS MOUNTING STRATEGIES Date: 11/22/2010 Well, welcome everyone. Good afternoon, welcome to the SunMaxx Solar webinar series. I’m going to spend the next half an hour talking about various mounting strategies and hopefully some of the information is relevant to what you’re trying to accomplish. As always the chat window is open and I encourage you to send some questions my way and I’ll try my best to answer them as they appear. So, without further ado some of you may be familiar with our webinar series. Each week we try to talk about something different and relative and updated. This particular week I’m going to talk about successful mounting strategies. Some of you may have seen a similar webinar a month or so ago and it’s similar, but with a few updates. Okay, so I’m going to get right into it. I’ve got a lot of different things to talk about in terms of mounting and every application is a little bit different. There are, you know, flat roofs, flush roof, tilt mount, ridge mount, steep slopes, shallow slopes can mount directly to the rafters on the rail systems. And neither option is better. It’s just everyone has a little bit different preferences. So, I’m going to try to present to you what SunMaxx has done to help make your job easier and give you the flexibility to install these collectors as you see fit. Okay. So, first of all let me talk for a moment about the new mounting hardware for the TitanPower Plus collector, our engineers have been hard at work and have come up with a very simple and obviously meets and exceeds code in terms of wind and strength requirements. And also, it’s extremely adaptable, very easy to install. I recently installed a system on my own home using the new mounting hardware for the TitanPower Plus and I was extremely happy with how easy it was to put together. Okay. Now, in terms of a single row of collectors versus two collectors or one collector, or multiple banks, the TitanPower Plus hardware gets assembled either a rail mount or without the rail and then the back legs mount directly to the roof. As you see in this picture, this is a photograph of the installation I did at my house. And I used the rail approach. I mounted the rails directly to the purlins off of some roof hooks, which I’ll show you in just a moment. Once the system was… Once the connect system was installed, the collectors simply sit on the rail system. And mounting the actual collectors took me and two of my friends only about 20 minutes to get all the collectors up on the roof and in place. So, once all the ground work is done in terms of mounting to the roof and setting the rails in place, putting the collectors is actually the easiest part, okay. It all starts with this roof hook and flashing. Whether you decide to go directly at point of penetration where you mount the feet directly to the roof or you use the rail, this is the first step. There are several different products out there that accomplish the same thing. Our roof hooks are adaptable for either point of penetration as in mounting the collectors directly to the roof or to the rail. The metal flashing clips sits underneath a shingle by about four inches, so, four inches of it needs to be underneath the row of shingles just above. And then we use these self threading screws to drill directly into the rafter. So, you’re not affixed to a particular rafter placement or position of your collectors, the roof hooks not to the rafters. Once you install a rail then you can slide the collectors to the left or to the right and make it symmetrical. So, these roof hooks have a very high sheer strength and they are aluminum. Now, once you install the flashing there’s absolutely no concern whatsoever for a roof leaking. In a system that I installed, I’ll go back one slide; you can tell I have a metal roof, okay. Well, what I did was use a small piece of butyl underneath the roof hook between the roof hook and the metal. And then I put a piece of butyl self adhesive butyl, on top of the roof hook. So I flashed on top of the metal and I am 100% confident for the life of this system that I will never have any roof leaks as bulk of my roofing skills, right. I know that using this roof hook with flashing will guarantee that there’s not going to be any leakage in my system. Okay. One of the next steps is the connection rail. Now, the rails are threaded to accept these Allen bolts. Okay, see the Allen bolt, those thread directly into the rail. So, once I install the rail anywhere along the roof hooks, and I have to space the roof hooks out four feet center on center. Okay, so I don’t want to put the roof hooks any more than four feet apart. The strength of the rail allows for displacement weight over four feet, but no more. Okay. So, the Allen bolts will thread directly into the rail as seen in the clip on the left. And on the right is the clip that attaches the collector to the rail. Okay, so the photo on the left is attaching the rail to the roof hook and the photo on the right is the clip that helps you attach the collector to the rail. Both of them use the self threaded Allen bolts that will thread directly into the rail, which makes it very easy and quick to install. Okay. It is a metric Allen and if memory serves me it’s nine millimeters. However, a small Allen wrench comes with your system. So, if you don’t have the Allen wrench you will have one included and shipped out to you in a little baggie. Okay. Now, in terms of creating back legs for these, there’s two pieces. Basically, one is the vertical support leg, which is made of the same rail or extrusion as the rail. So, some simple “L” brackets will connect the vertical rail to the horizontal rail and then the back leg. Now, in my case, I went with, what you see here is the hardware for a flat roof or a flat mounting install. In other words you’re either mounting them on the ground or in a flat roof. Okay, so I went with a flat roof, although my roof was not flat, I simply cut the back legs. Alright, so some simple trigonometry, which your sales rep can help you with or it’s also in our technical manual. Based on the roof pitch you will cut the back legs to achieve the desired angle, okay and then, obviously the “L” bracket on the bottom of the back leg will just slide up in the extrusion and mount directly to the rail. Okay, for long banks and collectors you have to union rails together. Okay, so there’s two rails that you’re going to use. One is the extrusion rail that mounts directly to the roof hooks, on the left. And those rail unions, along with their Allen bolts, will thread directly into the rail creating nice tight union between two rails, displacing the weight, hopefully. And on the right a “T” profile rail. Now, I’ll show you later on what a “T” profile does. That is basically the seat for the collectors. So, the “T” profile will mount to the rail and then the collectors will sit in the “T” profile and there’s small bolts that will thread into those slots that you see on the “T” profile gives at its strength. Here’s an up close picture of the “L” brackets that mount directly to the rail. Okay. So, what you’re seeing here is the vertical rail that the collectors lay onto. The “L” brackets then will mount directly to the horizontal rail that you’ve attached to the roof hook. Okay and this is all using the same Allen bolts. There’s a couple that are a different lengths, but they’re all labeled appropriately in your packaging. On the picture on the right you also see a clip. Now, that tension clip is going to accept the “T” profile. So, it makes it very adaptable by being able to adjust the back legs and front legs, to the left or to the right on the rail means they don’t necessarily need to measure exactly the length of my rail ‘cause I have flexibility laterally and as well as flexibility vertically in terms of distance because those little clips will slide up or down the rail, depending where you want your collector to be mounted. So, it makes it extremely versatile and adaptable, but also there’s a lot of wiggle room in terms of making exact penetrations into the roof. It’s not critical. There’s a lot of room for errors so to speak. We don’t particularly encourage error, but we do encourage efficiency. And this allows you to mount your collectors, err, mount your roof hooks in places where, you know, you’re going to get the tightest connection and then you have flexibility in terms of where your collectors mount relative to the roof hook. Alright, in this picture what you see is a TitanPower Plus flush mount. Now, you notice there’s two roof hooks on the bottom and two roof hooks on the top. So, that’s consistent with the recommendations that we make in terms of the number of roof hooks it is required per flat plate collector. Okay. Your sales rep will be sure to design your mounting system depending on what your considerations are. So, all that you need to know is will you put one or two collectors in series. And do you want flush mount or tilt mount? Once our sales rep has that information they’ll make sure that you have all the correct components included. Now, we do recommend that the roof hooks are placed in the middle of each adjoining collector. Okay, so whether you have two collectors or one collector it’s still going to require a total of four roof penetrations. So, four roof hooks, four flashings. Now, this is showing the tilt mount hardware. Okay, now the tilt mount would require three points of penetration as opposed to the flush mount. Flush mount tends to be less expensive because there are less components required. It’s also much easier to install. And I would like to make this recommendation now because it’s appropriate that if you have a roof that’s within 20 to 30 degrees pitch of what is the recommended, that the flat plate and the evacuated tube collectors will still perform within about five percent of their expected performance. So, when considering whether to do a flush mount as in this picture here, versus a tilt mount off the roof the to be added benefit to achieving that proper angle is really quite minimal. So, it’s important to consider obviously performance, but equally important, and in some cases even more important, it is to consider aesthetics, okay. So, I highly encourage you to consider flush mounting your collectors whenever possible. Flush mounting is going to be easier to install. It’s going to require less components and the performance sacrifices are going to be minimal. To be sure your sales rep will be happy to run a report at the various angles that you’re looking to make your installation. Okay, so again, if you have a roof pitch that is within 20 to 30 degrees of what the optimum pitch should be for your collectors you may consider just simply doing a flush mount rather than tilt mount, for three reasons, aesthetics, cost and installation time, which obviously, saves money as well. Okay, here’s another picture of the tilt mount using a rail system. Okay, now with the rail you accomplish obviously, weight disbursement, but more importantly you’re not fixed to rafter location relative to where your collectors are. And so, often, the back legs of collectors do not line up perfectly with the rafters. So, by using the rail system you can mount your roof hooks wherever your rafters are and then move your collectors laterally depending on where you’d like to see them sit on your roof, whether it’s aesthetics or performance, you have lateral movement on the rail whereas you would not have lateral movement with point of penetration mounting that is the back legs mounted directly to the roof. There are some exceptions to that, which I’ll cover in a minute, but generally you want to mount to the rafters. Okay, now here’s a tilt mount without using the rail. So, as I mentioned these points of penetration really should be at the location of the rafter. Okay, if you don’t find a rafter then we’re going to have to have access to these points of penetration underneath the roof. And we’re going to have to use toggle bolt or we’re going to have to use a spanner between the rafters, something that secures this entire collector bank to the roofing system rather than just the decking. This is even more important with flat plate collectors than with evacuated tubes, that you have your collector system mounted to the roof rather than mounted to the decking. And when I say roof, I’m talking about the structural components, that is the rafters or the trusses. Okay, so with flat plates you have a considerable amount of lift, a consistent and considerable amount of lift, on this roof system, especially if your collectors obviously, are facing to the south or in the southeast that means the back of your collectors would be facing to the southwest or the northwest where a lot of the prevailing winds come from. So, it’s important that you secure your collector system to the structural members of the roof and not just the decking. Okay, this is accomplished using a rail versus point of penetration. Okay, now in terms of roof penetrations, obviously you want to make sure that you don’t have to go back, and when you use a flashing materials such as the one shown here, this is PV quick mount that we used to use and I think it’s a very good product, you’re going to ensure that there is no roof leaking. When you do use these penetrations such as roof hook from SunMaxx or a quick mount PV, those ballasts, so to speak, should not exceed more than 48 inches apart. Okay, so if you have the wrong run, say of 10, 12, 20 feet or more, you’re going to have to use multiple rails. And I did show some connections that can be made to union the rails together to maintain a consistent strength. It’s also recommended that you pre-drill holes into your rafters, ¼ inch holes. In terms of rafter screws, we recommend that you use a three inch high sheer strength screw and that it be self threading, right, or that you pre-drill the hole. In terms of mounting these ballasts to purlins, for example, if the purlin is just an inch and a half material on its side then a three inch screw may not give you the support that you need. So, you know, you have that inch on the top of the screw where there’s no threads at all. So, you want to make sure that you know what you’re going to be screwing into and that the majority of your threads on the screw are holding the material that you are tying into. Okay, so if you do order the roof hooks from SunMaxx, you will get three inch screws, which is going to be suitable for rafter mounts, but if you did mount to purlins, for example, like I did, I had to replace my three inch screws, I went with shorter inch and ¾ screws to be sure my threads are mounted to my purlin. Now, there’s several different ways to mount to a roof. Five of which I mentioned here. This spanner method is where you have access to the rafters and below then you create a spanner between the rafters that you can mount your penetrations directly to the spanner. And this sort of serves the same purpose as mounting with a rail. It gives you horizontal flexibility to move back and forth and you’re not fixed to the location of your rafters. Another one is a lag bolt using flashing. Okay, the lag bolt, like I mentioned, should be at least three inches that’s going to all you to bolt directly to your rafters. Toggle bolts work. They are a little bit more cumbersome to work with and it works well if you have access to the roof below. The toggle bolt should be pretty big with a washer. Some guys are using a piece of plywood as a washer, so they’re using a four inch disk of plywood that acts as the washer for the toggle bolt and I do recommend that as well. “J” bolts have been used quite often in mounting to roofs. And basically, if you’re going to use a “J” bolt, you are fixed to the location of the rafter and you also need to have access to the rafter itself so that you know exactly where to drill and the “J” can then hook on to the bottom of the rafter. A pitch pan is one of the older methods that’s still being in use. Basically, you mount your lag bolt in through a pan that has a hole in the bottom that’s going to be filled with tar. So, it basically prevents any water penetration. Okay, mounting to rafters as you see here, the “J” bolt and the lag bolt detailed, “J” bolts are being used for, consistently for, but like I said, if you’re fixed to the location of the rafter, if you’re going to use a “J” bolt. As with the lag bolt, although with a lag bolt you can also mount in the case of metal loops, you can mount to the purlins if the purlins are made of a material that’s at least 2 x 4 inches. Okay. Using evacuated tubes, our hardware is universal, which is very important for those of you who are doing both tubes and flat plates. The hardware is interchangeable for either style collector. Okay, and as I mentioned, no matter what you should not exceed more than 48 inches between your standoffs. Okay, now flat plate flush mount, I think is probably the most aesthetically appealing system. Not to mention, as I said before, it’s the least expensive. It’s simplest to install, but in the end it looks very, very good. So, this roof being only at about a 35 degree slope would normally be situated at a 55 degree pitch for heating and I do remember running a report at 35 degrees versus 55 degrees and this client is sacrificing only about 7% of the total system outcome, total system output year round too, but mounting it flush rather than having it tilt mount. So, if you did a double bank of collectors, such as the one here with the tilt mount, there’d be a fairly extensive system supporting those collectors off of the roof and gaining only about 7% total output. Okay, so it is a very important consideration to make and understand what losses you’re going to incur if you go the flush mount versus tilt mount. Here’s an example of mounting the “T” profile directly to the roof. And I’ll show you a photo in just a minute of how the “T” profiles mount to the collectors, but those little clips that you see there, those tension clips, can be mounted either to a hanger bolt as you see in that photo or the tension clips can be mounted directly to the rail. Okay, so all of our components, as I said, are interchangeable and adaptable for just about any roof style. Okay the “T” profile, when used with the hanger bolt, is going to mount directly to the “T” profile and then your “T” profile, as you can see here, mounts directly to the collector. You see the bolt being inserted through the slot of the “T” profile and that connects directly to the stainless steel frame of the collectors. So, there’s no other components required once the “T” profile is installed on the roof. It makes for a very simple installation especially for flush mounting. Okay, and this is what the final product looks like when you use a “T” profile connected directly to the collector and then the “T” profiles connected to the clip, which is connected to a hanger bolt, which is bolted directly into a rafter with a piece of flashing, okay. And that is a done deal, guaranteed not to leak for the life of the system. Now, there’s several different strategies I want to go over now just in terms of using your vacuum heat pipes and increasing your performance. Underneath the collectors with a highly reflective roof surface, you can boost performance of these collectors and I’ve seen actual performance numbers increase anywhere from 20 to 30 percent, depending on the type of reflective surface. So, when you’re installing the evacuated tube system, which I know that a lot of you are, it’s very important that you increase the reflectivity behind those collectors. Now, this is something you can suggest to the homeowner or that you can include as part of the system installation, but nevertheless you can guarantee that your system will perform better for the life of the system by increasing the reflectivity behind the vacuum heat pipes. And I would also point out that there’s a highly reflective roof coating that Sherwin Williams makes for $35.00 a gallon that can be painted directly on metal or asphalt shingles. So, I highly recommend looking at increased reflectivity. In terms of some different types of mounting there’s, you know, ridge mount as with the one that you see on the right. This client, his house was facing 90 degrees in the wrong direction, so he decided to do a ridge mount. I would caution you that making this system mounted perpendicular to the plane of the house does really destruct the aesthetic appeal, if that’s consideration. And the added benefit in terms of performance from 90 degrees off of ideal may only be in the neighborhood of 20 to 25 percent increase performance. Okay, so you have to consider, very carefully, before you mount to a ridge, is it worth it. And check with your SunMaxx rep. Ask them to do a report at the various azimuth angles and then you’ll know exactly what value you’re going to sacrifice by mounting it along the same slope as the house. Moveable rays are not recommended, but they are possible. The reason they’re not recommended is because you have piping then instead of forming electrons you’re forming pressurized fluid, which tends to try to escape. And so the more often you move your array the more likely you’re going to have some leakage. And knowing that your sacrifices in performance are not nearly those sacrifices that you’ll see in PV systems, it’s not recommended that you design a moveable system. Okay, now in terms of ground mounting, a lot of systems, a lot of guys who really like the ground mount because they’re easily accessible, they’re easy to clean, any maintenance problems and they’re also not subject to the particular angle of inclination and orientation of the house. They can be put offsite somewhere. We usually recommend that these systems not be installed more than 150 feet away from the house because once you exceed 150 feet you begin to experience a tremendous amount pressure drop, which means bigger pump and perhaps bigger piping and bigger piping is going to mean more losses. Okay, so a general rule about the ground mounting is that you not put these mounts more than 150 feet from the house. Now, ground mounts can be pretty difficult, but in cases where it’s the only option it is certainly not impossible to put a collector just about anywhere you want. In this particular system that was recently commissioned near Cooperstown, New York, the installer chose to use a cleared approach to the collectors. So rather than having them manifold to manifold to manifold, with brass unions, they are union together, but with flexible ConnectMax piping. Okay, so small sections are used to join one collector to the next. There’s a little bit more added cost for installation, obviously digging the holes and pouring the concrete, but the homeowner had a nice suitable location on a hillside, and you can pretty much guarantee that they are at the proper orientation and proper inclination. Okay, so ground mounting on flat ground and also underneath ground is very doable. It just needs to be well thought out. Mounting collectors on a flat roof is important to know that the evacuated tubes have very little wind load. And if you notice the picture here on the left these collectors are mounted just through these concrete blocks that are setting on the roof and in the picture on the right these evacuator tube collectors are used for shading for a carport. So, flat roof mounting is very easily done and often does not even have to penetrate the roof in order to accomplish that. Here’s another example of ridge mounting where the back legs of the collectors are straddling the ridge, still facing the same direction as the house. So, we’re not perpendicular to the ridge, but we are ridge mounting it by straddling the ridge. Okay, another flat roof install one important thing I’d like to point out in terms of flat roof install, particularly in the northern climates, is snow and we recommend that you bring your collector feet off of the roof by at least 12 inches in areas that are prone to snow loads. This will keep your collectors out of the snow, obviously. Allow for movement underneath the collectors, but it’ll act as a snow fence because often, if they’re connected directly to the roof, with no movement underneath, then you’re going to see the collectors work as sort of a snow fence. And there’ll be big piles of snow that trap behind the collectors. So, bring them up at least 12 inches. Here’s another example where the owner had used the white roofing to increase performance of the collectors. Pole mounts, in the case of, on the right hand side, this single pole mount is actually functioning as a pass through for the supply and return piping as well as the support structure for the collector itself. So, this install was able to get away with a single point of penetration using a steel pole to which he passed a supply and return. The one on the left with the core reflectors, this particular homeowner did not want his collectors on the roof at all. So, the installer was able to accommodate by doing a pole. Obviously, it’s going to raise the cost up considerably. Using concrete standoffs is also recommended particularly for evacuated tubes, ground mounts. This entire collector field is not mounted to the ground at all. They are simply bolted to these concrete standoffs that act as concrete shoes, for example. And the wind load being less than what the collector weighs, by adding these blocks and bringing them up off the ground, these are off the ground 18 inches as opposed to a foot. So, they’ve exceeded what we recommended, but they’re insuring that there will be no snow buildup on the bottom of the feet. In terms of reducing your summertime production, successful mounting can accomplish that, for example with the one on the left, you see the roof that the collectors are sitting on is acting as a shade for the bottom row reflectors in the summertime. So, he’s got four collectors total, only two of which are really operational in the summer, and then as the sun drops in the sky the bottom row becomes functional, or façade mounts, like these “U” pipes. Flat plates and evacuated tubes, if you do evacuated tube façade mount it’s got to be direct flow or a “U” type collector. Okay, flat plate collectors can be façade mounted and these are typically used for heating systems where you’re producing excess energy or more energy in the winter and then the production actually drops in the summertime with a perfect 90 degree slope. Overheating in situations where you have access to the collectors, they can be covered up, in a ground mounts not very accessible on the roof, but by having a steep angle, just like the façade mount you can also reduce your production. Drain back systems need to be mounted at ¼ inch tilt per foot whether it’s a sloped roof like the one you see on the right, or a flat roof as in on the left, all the manifolds need to be mounted at the ¼ inch of slope per foot. Now, ballast systems for collectors can be concrete like this or, pardon me, or they can be a wood ballast and if you do a concrete ballast then you use the hanger bolt. Those hanger bolts that you saw previously that spread directly into the rafter can also be put into concrete and then use the machine threaded to bolt the collector feet together. And then again, there’s your clip with your “T” profile and the collector mounts directly to the “T” profile. Now, here’s a couple of pictures showing the point of penetration with it over the shed. And then with the green roof this client chose to use the rail system. Okay, the considerations you have to make again are what type of wind load would your collectors be under. Okay, with evacuated tubes you can get away with mounting your collectors to the roof decking with some washers and big washers underneath. So, you’re basically connecting your collectors to the plywood that is then connected to the rafters. Not recommended for flat plates however, because of the wind load. The rail system just makes installation a little bit easier because you’re not fixed to the rafter location you can mount your rails and then mount your collectors and then slide them down as you see fit. Okay, a couple of important things I’d just like to bring up in terms of mounting strategy considerations. The ConnectMaxx hardware is universal. And so it’s universal in the sense that it mounts to flat plates as well as pitched roof, sloped roof, ridge mount, façade mount, cantilever, rail system versus not rail system. There’s virtually no roof that this ConnectorMaxx hardware cannot be incorporated. And so it’s very important that you locate your sales rep and understand what you’re trying to accomplish and they will include the most appropriate ConnectMaxx hardware for whatever it is that you’re trying to accomplish. And it’s all put together with a single Allen wrench, which is included as well. I’m more than happy to respond to anybody’s questions that you have. And I encourage you to join us again next week. Okay Dave, one second I’ll answer that, one moment. So, again, feel free to email me if you have any particular questions check our solarwebinars.com for archives of all the webinars. I think we’re up to, actually I don’t even know, 16, 17, 18 webinars at this point. So, we’re giving quite a lot of information to you guys as quickly as possible. If you have any suggestions for webinar topics that you’d like to see I am definitely interested in doing that as today I’m doing another schedule for the third quarter of 11, so please do take advantage of that. Send me emails with your questions and I’ll be happy to respond. Now, in terms of wind load, before we close, the wind load for flat plate collectors, the hardware is rated for 110 mph winds. Okay, so we have passed and rated our hardware at 110 mph winds. It’s apparently in testing right now for 160 mph winds. According to the mathematics that we’ve used it will pass the 160 mph test, but we don’t have that official stamp of approval yet. But, we do have a rating at 110 mph winds for both flat plate and evacuator tube. As you know evacuator tubes suffer from much less wind load than flat plates and require less material to connect to the roof. However, since our ConnectMaxx hardware is universal we’re using both flat plate and evacuated tubes for this hardware, they are, in the case of evacuated tubes, the hardware is probably well exceeds what’s required in order to hold it down in, you know, hurricane force winds. Okay, well there you have it. I’m going to officially end the webinar. Don, I went with flat plates on my house because of a radiant floor where I needed extremely low temperature heat load and it is also a question of aesthetes in terms of my house design. And so that’s a very good question and it’s not an easy answer. I went back and forth with flat plates versus evacuated tubes and it really just came down to what is most applicable for my particular application. Okay, thank you all take care and have a great Monday and I wish you the best of all available sunshine. Take care.

Programming IntellaMaxx Controllers 11.15.2010

admin — Wed, 24 Nov 2010 15:28:51 +0000

[iframe https://my.dimdim.com/view/reco/all/sunmaxx/default/53f813a0-afb4-4f4e-81aa-8d3f80d2c79f 650 500 ] SUNMAXX SOLAR HOT WATER SOLUTIONS PROGRAMMING INTELLIMAXX CONTROLLERS Date: 11/15/2010 Okay. I’d like to welcome everyone to our Solar Programming IntelliMaxx Controllers Webinar. I’m going to take the next thirty minutes and cover in as much detail as I can domestic hot water and IntelliMaxx controller programming. I’m going to try and answer all your questions. Please feel free to as always send me a question in the chat box. I usually do my best to answer them right away. Before I get into it can anybody confirm for me that they can actually hear me? That would be a good start. All right, perfect. Let me begin by introducing our two basic controllers that we have for here the IntelliMax-DHWBPlus and the IntelliMaxx Economy Plus. Obviously the Economy plus is a much more complicated controller. It allows you to tie into heating systems quite easily and often it can replace some of the home heating system logic. Now the IntelliMaxx-DHWBPlus which is what I’ll focus on today gives you many options for your solar system. With only two relays and as you’ll see there are many things that we can do with those two relays. We can run pumps and valves or two valves and two pumps. As well as monitor performance data and log that data we can also tie into second tank or heat dump loop and obviously the b bus data logging capabilities. Okay the DWHBPlus has a thermostatic function as well as differential function. I’ll go into more detail as far as what that means momentarily. It allows you to set certain programs to activate at pre-determined temperatures rather than pre-determined differentials. They do use the PT1000 temperature sensors. As you might be able to barely make out in this photograph there’s a black and grey sensor. Just to point out the black sensors are rated for 280 degrees Celsius. So the black sensors are always what you use in the solar collectors. The grey sensors are used for the tank. These are a good controller to use for drain back systems. There are a few important functionalities in terms of how effectively a drain back system can operate using one of these controllers. There are nine different systems that are selectable that we can pre-program settings and just choose which array is most suitable. I’ll go over those in a minute too. There are also energy metering and very simple settings that you can activate. That allows you to monitor performance without having any additional software or any other components. This will be able to monitor performance for you as along as you activate that function as with all resale controllers. Yeah, it sure does Don and I’ll discuss that momentarily. You can pre-program your controllers based on the parameters that I’m going to introduce to you in a moment. But you can also tell your controller to do anything that you need it to do. There’s software that you can purchase and it’s fairly high end. It’s in the neighborhood of $800 for the software. But it’s a one time use and that will allow you to tell your controller to do things that’s outside of the standard factory setting options. So that is always an option for you. Now let’s just get right into wiring the controller first. Right out of the box you’re going to have a pre-wired controller. This photograph here you see the wires that the lead in the neutral and the green ground. They come pre-wired with our DWHB Plus pump station. Okay so if you order the controller separately you have to wire the circuit in. Very simple the lead in the neutral go to terminals 19 and 20 and the ground to 12. But if you buy the pump station with the IntelliMaxx controller it comes pre-wired and all you have to do is plug the controller into the wall. The sensor wires on this photo I showed the brown on the left and the white on the right. However there’s no polarity to these sensors. So you can wire them which ever way you want. There’s no polarity on the sensor wires. If for some reason you don’t have the sensor wire wired properly there will be a flashing triangular sign on your controller. That indicates to you that the sensors are improperly wired. So it is relatively foolproof. The instruction manual is very detailed and laid out with troubleshooting guides in an attempt to make this what could be a complicated procedure and turn into something very simple. Often people will say “Do I need to hire an electrician?” Or “Should I get a certified or licensed electrician to do this?” And really the answer is up to the municipal code but in terms of what pre-knowledge it takes to wire these controllers is very basic. So my answer is “No, you don’t need an electrician in order to wire or program these controllers.” As you get into the economy system and tie into furnaces and boilers it does help to bring in an electrician or HVAC guy in. But this is something that you should be able to handle quite easily I believe. Okay now in terms of programming. You have only three buttons to choose from. They’re numbered one, two and three from the right to the left. My finger is on button number one. That button will forward the menu. So right now you see the photograph that says collector. That’s sensor is reading 71.9. It’s going to move forward to the next sensor. It’s going to move to all four sensors if they are installed. And then it will give you the Hp percentage the number of hours that the pump has run. Then the last option will be a time menu. Once you get to the time menu then you can begin to access the sub-menu by holding down button number one. So let me go to the next slide real quick and show you the different arrays. So these are the different options. This I took right out of the instruction manual just to remind you folks that you can go to sunmaxxsolar.com in the information section and download this controller instruction manual ahead of time. And often the manual will help you understand what type of system might work best for your application. So rather than working backwards building the system and deciding which array would work best. You may go the other way around and choose the array that best suits what you’re trying to do. Then build your system around that particular array and the functionality of the controller. So basically I have a standard solar system as array number one. Then you have a solar system with a heat exchanger. Array three is solar system with after heating. And then you have a solar system with tank charge where you’re trying to maintain stratification. We’re going to see more and more stratifying tanks and stratifying valves. They’ve been doing it for years in Europe and they really utilize and maximize tank stratification. I don’t believe the United States market has really tapped into this stratification performance yet. Now that’s a good question typically for array number seven it’s designed as an east west type of arrangement. I would recommend that you can use one pump with two valves because you don’t want to run…What you definitely need to have is two separate returns coming from the collectors. Because in the morning the east bank is obviously going to be hot. You don’t want the west bank to be circulating it all because it hasn’t picked up any heat whatsoever. So although this diagram here shows two separate pumps for the east and the west bank you could also just do one pump and one valve. It would be a little tricky for you to regulate the flow through each respective bank but it certainly is possible Joe. Then for eight the solar system with after heating by a solid fuel boiler. Number nine is solar system with heating circuit bringing the temperature from the solar tank and delivering it to the heating system. So basically array number nine is a mildly complicated copy system that you’re able to accomplish with only a basic controller. Those two relays can actually do quite a lot for you. What you won’t be able to do however is tie into the logic of your boiler with this particular controller. All right so basically what you want to do and let me remind you…Choose which array represents what you’re trying to do. I do recommend that you look at this instruction manual before you build your system and you can model your system after the functionality of the controller. Rather than trying to make the controller fit what system you have designed. Couple really basic settings before we get into it too much. You have the delta t o and the delta t f. You turn the pump on and your delta t o comes out of the factory set at 12 degrees. For northern climates we recommend you change the delta to o to 17 degrees. This gives your collectors a greater chance to heat up and really start to produce energy before your pump turns on. We’ve experienced a lot of short cycling the pump will turn on and then the fluid in the pipe will be enough to cool the collector off and then we’ll turn the pump off. Then we’ll turn the pump on and turn off and turn on and turn off. So by raising the delta t o up to 17 degrees particularly for northern climates then it reduces the short cycling of the pump. Now if your homeowner or service call for your own contract you can visit your systems twice a year. And if you did it in the spring and in the fall you would change the delta t o. Because in the summer time there’s no reason for your collectors to be seventeen degrees hotter before they turn on. So I recommend turning your delta t o down in the spring and then turning your delta t o back up in the fall. Particularly for northern climates but same is true for most of the places in the country. In the spring time you turn your delta t o down and then in the fall you turn your delta t o up. This is very simple to do and you can instruct your homeowner to do it or you can provide it as part of your service contract. The delta t f is what is going to turn the pump off. When the approach temperature or when the differential decreases and the factory setting is eight. We see in our systems we’ve turned that down as low as possible and five degrees seems to be a nice delta t f. So we recommend you change your settings down to five degrees. Okay anybody have any questions? Now in order to change those settings again there’s three buttons that you have to work with one, two and three. My finger is on button number one. Moving okay is button number two. And then button number three is the minus. I would like to point out that I do have a typo on button number three that’s actually button number one. On my screen you see array number one. Array number one that’s on the sub-menu. So you get to the sub-menu by pressing the plus button until it goes to the option called time. That’s the end of the main menu. Once you get to the end of the main menu you have to hold that button down for a few seconds. As you hold it down for a few seconds the sub-menu will appear. The sub-menu begins with your array options. So the first thing that’s going to appear in my sub-menu are the arrays. That would be array number one so I scroll through by pressing the plus button until I reach the array that is most suited for what I’m trying to do. Once I get to that array then I want to change that setting to array number two for example. So I hold the okay button down. By holding the okay button it’s going to cause the set. There’s a little icon in the screen with the word set. That set button is going to flash. As soon as that set button flashes then I can change the setting or I can push okay. If I push okay then it automatically changes to whatever appears on my screen. So I’ve gone to array number three and I like array number three. So I hold the okay button down for a few seconds. I get the word set to flash and then I press okay again one last time. I’ve automatically changed the setting to array number three. Now for each of the nine arrays factory settings will cause this controller to work. So all you have to do is change the array that you’re looking for and plug your controller in. The factory settings are pre-determined to make this controller function as recommended by the factory settings. So you really don’t have to do anything beyond choose the array. If you don’t even choose the array then the factory setting will be array number one which basically turns a single pump on. Now even though you’ve chosen the array. There’s still some functions within each array that you can activate. Many of the functions will not be active until you manually activate that function. Once you activate the function then you can change some of the parameters within that function. So I’m going to go through some of the functions here just a few technical things. This does have a built in transformer so you’ll bring a 110 volts in. This has two semi-conductor relays. So you will bring in 115 and you’ll send out 115. The display operates at 24 volts but like I said it’s got a built in transformer. So really this is fool proof. There’s no re-wiring or re-wiring of relays and switches. All you have to do is plug this controller into the wall and it will work. All right now let’s get into programming array number two. Here’s what I done is just showed you the two different arrays. Two of the nine and for instance every array has number one operates both relays. You have to enable certain functionalities. So I’m going to go through those functions now. For example there’s a table in your instruction manual that lays out the definitions of all these features. I’m going to go through some that I think are the most important and highlight why they are important. SMX is your maximum tank temperature. Now this does have a non-adjustable setting of 200 degrees. No matter what happens when your tank reaches 200 degrees Fahrenheit your entire system will shut down and it won’t be able to turn back on again until the tank drops below 200 degrees Fahrenheit. You can’t change this. You can however change your maximum tank temperature your preferred max tank temperature. We recommend that the tanks don’t exceed 180 degrees. So given a slight delay we recommend that you change your SMX function to 175 degrees. Now SMX has to be activated and you do that the same way that you choose an array. Once you’ve chosen an array then you continue through the menu until the three letters SMX appear. Once SMX appears on your screen and you hold the okay button down until you get the flashing set. Once you have the flashing set then you can adjust that temperature accordingly. And press the okay button and you’ve programmed it. So we recommend 175 for SMX. The emergency collector shut down now this is where you’re system will shut down when the collectors exceed the maximum temperature and it ranges from 170-390. We’ll 390 degrees is the stagnation temperature of the collectors. That is what they’re testing for at SRCC and Solar Key Market in Europe. Where there’s been no damage to the collectors and they’ve stagnated for thirty days at those temperatures. However right out of the factory or right out of the box these controllers are set for emergency shut down at 270 degrees. Now if you’re using type L copper or stainless steel you can handle 270 degrees. You’d certainly wouldn’t want your fluid to be circulating at 270 degrees. But if you have your pump on the return line going back to the collectors then you should be okay. So this is sort of a preference but you should not exceed what the factory setting is. You can’t turn it down but don’t turn the EM up. Again this EM is a function that you have to activate. OCC now this is going to cool your collectors down this is the heat dump loop or you have a secondary tank. OCC will be active once SMX is reached. SMX is the max tank temperature you set that at 175. Once your tank reaches 175 then OCC will be active. OCC will either trigger a second pump or it will open a normally closed valve. By opening the normally closed valve your solar pump will continue to pump even though you’ve exceeded SMX. So if OCC is not activated and you reach SMX then your solar pump will shut down. That’s okay as long as you have a second pump activated that’s going to act as your heat dump. But if you want your solar pump to continue to run even though SMX is reached then you’ve got to activate your OCC function. System cooling is another function so you have collector cooling but you also have system cooling. Now system cooling is where you want to cool your entire system down. Don, all systems don’t need a heat dump. Most often heat dumps are used in cases where you’re producing excess in the summer because you designed an economy system. Most often for hot water systems and as long as the storage tank has been designed properly. Then a separate heat dump loop is not required. There are ways such as steam back which I talked about last week. Steam back is going to allow your collectors to basically shut down their production in the case of over stagnation. So heat dumps are not always required although heat dump may not necessarily be wasteful. For example if you have a secondary tank the OCC function will activate that secondary loop. So rather than dumping into a heat dump loop you’ll dump into a secondary tank. Now system cooling function is when your entire system reaches maximum temperature but it’s less than emergency shut down. Now this OSYC function is something that you activate if you’d like your system to be able to bypass EM. In other words you’re going to exceed your maximum tank temperature that you’ve set but it’s still less than the emergency shut down then you can dump into a high temperature heat dump somewhere. I do not suggest you using OSYC with evacuated tubes. So that function is disabled the only way you can enable it is to activate it in the menu bar. For evacuated tube systems we recommend not using OSYC because the temperatures can spike so rapidly. Now the tank cooling function OSTC is a good way to cool your tank down during times of overproduction. So if you have a slightly oversized system and you’re producing a little too much everyday for the month of August. Then you can dump some of those Btu’s out at night into your collectors by activating the OSTC function. This is something that you can activate seasonally if you like. It’s very simple. It literally will take you about five seconds to turn it on or turn it off. What’s going to happen if the OSTC function is enabled it’s going to automatically adjust your SMX. It’s going to bring your SMX down to whatever you set it at let’s say 150. So it’s going to cause your OCC loop to run once your tank is above the maximum set point. So by activating OSTC and setting that temperature that will automatically replace your SMX temperature. Which will cause the collectors loop to circulate at night time. Which means that you start the day with more of a buffer before you have to begin sort a safety mechanism. There’s another long term OSTC that you can activate and that’s called OHOL. This where you are going to be producing a significant amount of energy for an extended period of time with no load. In this case you’re going to everyday your solar loop will turn on while you’re gone and it will dump heat out until your collectors are the same temperature as your tank. So at night time what you want to do is deplete your tank of as much energy as possible because there’s no load. So essentially you’re creating a load on your storage tank using the OHOL function. Another important one especially in the north is the OCM. This is going to allow you to determine the temperature setting that you don’t want your pump to turn on until that temperature has been met. For example if you have a concrete floor and you’re operating your concrete floor at 65 degrees or 70 degrees. If you have a 17 degree differential your collector may kick on when it reaches 75 degrees. But at 75 degrees you’re not producing nearly as much energy as you might be consuming by running your pump. So it really isn’t paying to run your pump because you’re really not pulling any energy in your floor. So even though you’ve met your differential you activate OCM so that your collector loop will not turn on until you exceed 85 degrees or 90 degrees. Something that is a significant amount of energy that makes it worth your while to run your pump. Another very important one that I think is going to become more and more common. Replacing the antifreeze is the OCF function. Remember these are functions of the basic domestic hot water controller. So by replacing the antifreeze they glycol in your loop with this OCF function. What this is going to do is turn your collector loop on when the heat transfer fluid drops below a certain temperature. Now we recommend starting off at 35 degrees Fahrenheit this is going to be based off sensor number one which is in your collectors. Your collectors tend to cool off at a slower rate then you’re piping will cool off because they’re very well insulated. So what you should do if you’re going to use OCF is monitor it very closely because if for some reason you haven’t programmed it properly then you’re going to have some freezing in your line. So you’re really putting a lot of weight and a lot of importance on this proper operation of OCF. But if you can get it to work and give you accurate readings of temperature then it eliminates the need for any glycol in your loop and it also increases your heat transfer. And it increases your total system efficiency by eliminating that glycol. You do however sacrifice some of the energy that you’ve captured in order to keep your loop from freezing. So I’ve heard estimates and these are estimates only. But I’ve heard by using your OCF function in place of glycol you reduce your total Btu production by three to five percent. It consumes three to five percent of those Btu’s that you produced in order to keep your loop from freezing. But to me that seems like a pretty good tradeoff particularly because think about first thing in the morning when your collector loop might be 20 degrees and it’s slushy. Your collectors are heating up and now you’ve got to spend more energy to try to bring that entire loop up to temperature. So rather than spending the two hours of morning time sun just bringing your whole loop up to temperature. You could already start your loop at ten or twenty degrees hotter from using the energy that you captured yesterday. So I like the OCF function but I caution you to be very careful about accurate readings for your sensors. You should find the coldest spot in your collector loop. You can use sensor four which is just the data acquisition sensor. Use sensor four and place it where you think is the coldest spot and correlate sensor number four with actual readings of sensor number one. If those too…Yes, you can Don. Although it’s sort of redundant to use glycol and OCF it would be a good way to practice using your antifreeze function without the risk of freezing your loop. Okay couple of other important ones before I close it up here. OHQM is an energy metering function that doesn’t require the use of any other software or equipment. What you do need to have however and it’s included in the IntelliMaxx. You need to know the flow rate in liters per minute. Open up this OHQM in your menu and press the okay button. Set button will blink. Once the set button blinks it’s going to ask for the flow. You have to enter the flow in liters per minute. And that’s the maximum flow. So you set your maximum flow and once you’ve pre-programmed your maximum flow for your system. Maximum flow is if your pump is running at a hundred percent speed what is your optimal flow rate. So once you program that it’s going to store your performance data on a daily basis. So at the end of each day you can go to your OHQM and look to see how many Btu’s have been produced by your system. It’s going to give it in kilowatt hours. But it can be easily converted to Btu’s. The manual shows the conversion chart. This is a good a way and most people don’t take advantage of OHQM. In fact most people don’t take advantage of most of the functions for this controller because they just aren’t familiar with it. But it can do a lot. OHQM is an important function especially for your clients’ ease of mind. To show them that your system is actually producing. It’s also a nice way for you to trouble shoot. Perhaps find places where you think you’re producing the energy but you’re not consuming it. So where do you have some losses. The drain back option this is going to do two things. Drain back option one will first start off your system siphoning by activating a secondary pump or ramping up the pump’s speed to a hundred percent until the siphon is achieved. That can take up to five minutes. So ODP has a time delay option that’s going send voltage to a secondary pump. That secondary pump is going to double your head which allows you to overcome that initial head from zero. Once you’ve created that siphon it might take up to five minutes then ODP will disable the secondary pump and allow the variable speed function to operate the circulator. It will also ramp up your existing circulator to a hundred percent or whatever’s required to overcome the head. So you can get away with a larger more powerful pump just for system siphoning. Once that siphon is created based on the time sequence that you’re going to pre-program. It won’t be able to read whether there’s a siphon or not. But it’s going to be based on a time sequence that you’ve pre-programmed that you’ve observed how long it takes for this siphon to yield you. Then it will ramp it back down to the optimum flow rate. Obviously you have manual one for relay and manual two. This gives you the option of turning a relay on or turning a relay off or using the auto settings for your relays. So often times you want to override the factory settings for one time shot. So you go to man one and press your okay button and then it gives you the blinking set. There’s going to be three choices for man one. It’s going to say power on or power off or auto. So you can keep your relay off. You can keep your relay on. Or you can allow the automatic settings to override. So this is an important feature especially for starting the system up and trying to play around with it. You want to make sure that you get some circulation before you put your tubes in different things that you want to be able to change. Those are some of the most important features of the DHWBPlus that I wanted to go through with you. I did run over. I try to keep it at thirty minutes. I do have more that I’m going to just quickly introduce and move on. I’m going to do another webinar for the IntelliMaxx Economy Plus. All the same functionality as the DHWBPlus however there’s many more things that we can discuss. The Economy Plus this is going to be another webinar we’re going to do in two weeks. Real quick some of the accessories that you can purchase with your IntelliMaxx are the v bus. V Bus is going to allow you to integrate into a home computer system network system wireless. The data logger is basically an external hard drive that’s going to collect data for thirty days from your DHWBPlus or the Economy Plus. You can also get a touch screen monitoring system that can be monitored remotely. You can run some cables and bring it up to your homeowner’s kitchen if they want to see what’s going on. You can also download software for the IPhone and look at the entire system monitoring anywhere in the world. There’s also flow meters that can be installed for long term system monitoring system performance. As well as flow switch that will activate other relays not based on temperature or anything just based on there’s flow. Flow switches are used more often with domestic hot water systems and external heating exchangers. And anybody with an IPhone can download this app that allows you to see what your system is doing no matter where you are in the world. You log into a URL address that you have your v bus downloading all the information to. I know thirty minutes is not enough time to do nearly as much as I’d like to do with controllers. I do encourage you to ask questions. Yes, Don both controllers will log the data with the Economy Plus and the DHWBPlus. Contact your sales rep for more information and go to sunmaxxsolar.com and download the DHWBPlus installation manual. Take a look at the arrays that are possible and start to think about designing systems and installing systems that the controllers are pre-programmed for. It’s going to make your job much easier and the performance is going to be better. So again there’s a lot more that we can talk about for controllers but I like to keep this at thirty minutes. I’ve already gone over for seven minutes. So please do email me and I’ll try my best to respond right away. Thanks a lot for taking the time to learn about the controllers and I hope to see you again next week. You can always go to solarwebinars.com and look at the archives for a review of any information that we’ve covered again. So thanks you all take care and we will see you next week.

Fundamentals in Steamback Design 11.08.2010

admin — Mon, 08 Nov 2010 20:16:29 +0000

[iframe https://my.dimdim.com/view/reco/all/sunmaxx/default/c09829d0-a52e-4625-acd5-67a75f18f1bd 650 500 ] SUNMAXX SOLAR HOT WATER SOLUTIONS FUNDAMENTALS IN STEAMBACK DESIGN Date: 11/08/2010 Ok, Good Afternoon everybody. This is another one of our Sunmaxx Solar webinar series. Today I’d like to talk about the fundamentals in steamback design. This is a relatively new concept for the most part in the U.S., although there are many installers that have been doing it for quite a while. It’s much more common and useful in European solar thermal systems. So, I want to touch base a little bit on some of these design strategies, to introduce it to you, for those of you who are not familiar with steamback design. I think it’s going to become much more common in the U.S. as an alternative to drainbacks. Ok, so as always I’d like to encourage you to ask me questions in the chat box. We do have a relatively small class, small group today, so it makes it a little bit easier to address questions immediately. Ok, I’ll get right into it now. So, generally when you design a combisystem, you’re going to produce more energy than you need in the summertime. So, the options are really to either, traditional options are to, reduce the production, or to dump your heat. Heat dumps are very, very common in the U.S. market. In the European market, dumps are relatively strange. They don’t design too many systems using a heat dump, instead they use the steamback designs. Now, not to say that they never design systems, and when I say they I mean the European installers, heat dumps are really only designed when steamback system will be limited. There are long runs of copper, convoluted runs, but I’ll get into that in a minute. So traditionally we either don’t make it or we have to do something with it. Now with a steamback, looking at this simple design here, what I want you to focus on is the location of the expansion tank. So, in most pump stations, the expansion tanks are located above the pump, ok. The location of that is critical in allowing for steambacks to occur. So, for those of you in attendance that have installed systems, you probably have allowed for steamback to occur without even knowing it. So, steamback is, essentially, a time during stagnation when the pump is off and the collectors begin to overheat and boil the heat transcript fluid. Now, the heat transcript fluid in a closed loop system is usually 50% glycol and 50% water. Water has a lower boiling point than glycol okay. SRCC shows us that most collectors can stagnate at upper 300s low 400 degrees Fahrenheit with no danger. So, stagnation is not really a problem for collectors, stagnation is a problem for glycol. Much of the glycol in the market has a buffer and those buffers will break down when they approach temperatures of usually 250 and upwards of 360. So some of the best glycols on the market are going to be able to stagnate up to 360 without turning acidic. But we can’t rely on that alone. We have to allow for this condition we call stagnation. So, when the pumps shut off and the collectors stagnate during the solar day the boiling points of the two fluids is going to cause water to boil, creating the steam, and that steam pressure is going to force the remaining fluid, or the remaining solution which would be mostly glycol, into the expansion tank. Okay, so imagine collectors at high noon stagnating, alright and they’re producing temperatures exceeding 390 degrees. There’s no danger to the collectors, remember, the only danger is to the glycol. So if the water boils at a lower temperature and forces the glycol out of the collectors, then what remains is a collector full of water steam. Which we know from SRCC that that presents no danger to system life or longevity. So simply not necessarily creating a steamback system or designing a steamback system but small differences in installation allow us to allow for steambacks to occur. So steamback, basically the laws of physics tell us that water will boil and increase the pressure and that pressure will be used to force the remaining solution out of the collector. Now steamback happens in five phases. I would like to remind you we’ve been 6 minutes so far and I haven’t had a question so far. For those of you who know me, I do enjoy questions. So get your thinking caps on and see if you can ask me some questions. So there’s five phases to steambacks, okay. As I just described to you, the whole process. The first thing that’s going to happen is the liquid, the heat transfer fluid, is going to expand. And that expansion increases the pressure. What we don’t want to have happen is our safety valve to open, okay. Most safety valves in pump stations, I know for the Unimaxx pump station, it’s 87 psi. So, we want to be sure that we do not approach that pressure. So the first thing that happens is the liquid is going to expand, and once the fluid, the water, reaches the boiling point, the expansion is going to increase by a factor of 240. Okay, so that increasing in pressure is going to push the liquid out of the collector, and this is when we enter phase two. This can happen in a matter of 3 to 4 minutes, it might take up to an hour to work all of the remaining fluid out of the collector, and as you know the remaining fluid should be close to 100% glycol. Now, the third phase is when the collectors will push the remainder of the fluid out and the water will boil and this boiling of the water, as I mentioned, can increase the volume by 240%. So, it’s going to push every last bit of glycol out of the collectors. Now we have super saturated steam, or super heated steam. Again we are still less than 87 psi, but it’s extremely saturated water steam. Finally, once the solar day ends collectors cool down, pressure drops, and the expansion tank will refill the collector with the, not only the condensate from the steam, but also from the glycol that had been separated. And then that solution will very easily be mixed again and we have a 50% glycol concentration at the end of the day, and we haven’t boiled our glycol. So this steamback happens during stagnation, and it’s going to happen whether you like it or not. So what you really have to do is consider what types of design, and what types of collectors, will more easily allow for steamback to happen, because steamback is a physical process and it essentially protects your glycol. So by allowing for steamback, you have an added insurance. So the last step, to address the question, as the solar day ends the production by the collectors decreases, the steam is going to obviously condensate. As it condensates, it reduces the pressure inside the collectors. That pressure inside the collectors, once it reaches a point less than the pressure of the expansion tank, well then the expansion tank is going to force the glycol back into solution, back into the collectors. This happens just as a natural process. In order for these five phases to occur, I’m going to go over a couple of points here on system design. Now this graph shows the different pressures at the expansion vessel, depending on the quality of the design and the quality of the collectors. Now if the ability of the collectors to effectively steam back. Now, the red line is a poor emptying behavior collector. So, what you see there, is during phase two, the transition between phase two and three, when the super heated steam is emptying the collector, it creates more steam power. So it takes more steam to force the remainder of the fluid out of the collector. So, although this does work, it takes longer for that steam to force the glycol out. Some of you may know that glycol buffers that protect the pH of the solution, they don’t break down immediately, once they – okay Nathan, good question I’m going to actually address that in just a couple of slides. So as I was saying, the pressure inside the collector doesn’t necessarily have to climb to four to four and half bars. One bar is one atmosphere by the way. If the, and I’m going to discuss the perimeters of the collector that allow for steamback to occur, there’s a couple of design strategies, not only in the collector but also in the piping. So what we want to have happen, as you can see the green line shows once we enter phase two, phase three occurs without any added pressure at all. So in other words, once we begin to empty the collector in phase two, phase three, the steaming of the water doesn’t do anything to increasing pressure because it is easy to empty the collector into the expansion tank, and I’m going to show you a couple of designs that will allow us to do that. So what you see here, these four would not have very good steamback characteristics. In other words, these would take more steam pressure to remove the fluid from the collectors, than it would – if I go back for a moment, this green line is what we’re really after. We want to design a system with collectors that allows for the transition from phase two to phase four with no added pressure. These systems would represent the blue and the red line, because as you can see, if we are coming in on the left hand side, in order for the steam to force the fluid out it’s got to overcome a pressure rise and push it all the way down and then back up and out. And the second one, we’re basically moving in one direction, so the amount of pressure, these are actually in parallel but in an unbalanced, parallel arrangement. And the third one, this is very typical of a U-pipe evacuated tube system. You essentially have reverse return piping folded in half, so the third one is not effective in removing. Now bear in mind all four of these styles will allow for steamback, just being very particular now as to which style requires less steam in order to steamback. Now the answer to that question is here, so this style piping arrangement allows for steamback to occur very easily because it can happen in two directions. So for example, the serpentine style on the left. The serpentine style that you see on the left-hand side is the single best design for steamback. Now when I say best, again I mean it requires less pressure to empty the collector. What we’re really after is emptying the collector of glycol. Most collectors are rated for about 10 bars, they are pressure tested for 10 bars. And if I go back up here, even the worst ones, so poor, good, and very good are just relative, so even the ones that say poor emptying behavior, that pressure that’s required of them to eliminate the glycol from the collector is still about half of the pressure the system can take. So most collectors are rated, and you should check with your manufacturer, speaking for SunMaxx the collectors are rated at 10 bars, that’s what they’re pressure tested to. So even though I say poor emptying behavior, it’s still less than the maximum allowable pressure of the collector. I hope that answers your pressure there, Nathan, in terms of parameters of collector that affect the performance. And this design, take a look at the third one, the third one is a harp-style or header riser style collector, and it does show arrow coming in, the supply to the collectors coming in on the bottom right, and it’s moving up and out to the top left. So, it’s coming in on the bottom right and it’s leaving on the top right. But this arrow very easily, in normal design we would have the supply going to the tank opposite the return coming from the collectors. So if you look at this third one, this arrow can just as well be over on the opposite side as it might be piped in for a reverse return method. The fourth diagram shows how easy it is to remove the glycol solution from this system because I have two possible exits. Now, location of the expansion vessel is probably the single most important thing in allowing for steamback. I did mention the design of collectors will affect performance, however, even some of the worse poorly designed collectors still can empty the collector with less pressure than is allowed in the collector. But, if you do not install the expansion tank in the proper location, then regardless of your collector’s ability to create steam power, it’s simply not going to work. So, if you take a look at the design that’s in place, it says poor location of the check valve. Now many pumps Taco, for example, that has check valves that are integrated into the pump. It’s not a very strong check valve but it’s strong enough that it will slow down the movement of steam into the expansion tank. So if you take a look at the placement of the expansion tank in the diagram labeled poor location, why is it a poor location to put the expansion tank below the pump? If we read textbooks on hydraulics and pump performance, we talk to Taco and we talk to Vilo about the placement of the expansion tank relative to the pump, it’s often been argued that expansion tanks should go behind the pump so that the pump doesn’t have increased pressure that it has to overcome. If we put the expansion tank in front of the pump, while the pump turns on, the required pressure may be taken in by the expansion tank and the pump is just pumping and pumping and pumping but it’s not going anywhere because of the positive pressure on the push side of the pump is being taken in by the expansion tank and the column of water doesn’t get moving. So, I have been involved in a system where we had the expansion tank behind the pump like this, the pump did not have enough head to move the fluid, so we had to move the expansion tank behind the pump, and the pump then was able to move the fluid. Now, as you know, if you put the expansion tank behind the check valve, it’s really not a question as to where the expansion tank should go in relation to the pump, it’s a question as to where the expansion tank should go in relation to the check valve. So, the check valve is not going to allow for movement in the opposite direction. So, it’s going to actually block the expansion tank’s ability to take in any of the super heated fluid coming off the collectors. So, just to the left of this, this is the good location of the check valve. So, if we put the expansion tank in front of the check valve, but behind the pump, now what we’ve done is we’ve eliminated the need for increased pressure by the pump because the expansion tank is behind the pump, but we’ve also increased the system’s ability to allow for steamback because we’ve put the check valve behind the expansion vessel. There is another consideration to make, however, most pumps and I know that Taco and Grundfos are rated at about 250 degrees Fahrenheit. So if we put the expansion tank behind the pump such as this, but in front of the check valve, which is what we recommend, then we also run a risk of overheating the pump, because if the collectors are stagnating and producing temperatures that are boiling, and we might have a 250 degree boiling point for water. If your system’s operating at 30 psi, for example you have 2 bars, the required temperature in order to boil the water may approach 250 or more, 260, so once that temperature is reached, then we have some steam production and we’re into phase three. Well phase three is going to send that glycol back down into the expansion tank, that’s exactly what we want, but it has to go through the pump before it gets to the expansion tank. So you do run a risk of endangering the pump, so you want to check what the high temperature limits of your pumps are, and I can tell you that the Taco 00 series, I believe it’s a 256 degree Fahrenheit number, I may be off by a little bit, but not much. So I’ve got poor, good, and I might recommend better. Better would be where we put the expansion tank in front of the pump altogether. Another thing I’d like to point out is very simply that the bladder, or diaphragm, in your expansion tank should always be wet. We don’t want to have 250 or 270 degree water or glycol or steam or anything slamming down into our epdm lining, most bladders are made out of epdm rubber, and that does have a melting point. So, if we flip our expansion tank upside down, which I’ve seen some installers do, then it’s going to cause the bladder to be dry. That would be a situation where we have 260 degree water being forced onto the collectors and strikes the epdm lining on the membrane directly, and if this happens everyday, all summer-long, you’re definitely going to have a short-lived expansion tank. So please be sure that your expansion vessel is always wet. Now location of the expansion tank is one thing, but size of the expansion tank is another. Now before I go over this formula, which I’m not going to do in too much detail, I want you to understand that SunMaxx sales reps, engineers will size your expansion tank for you. All we need to know from you is the size of your collector field, the pressure rating on your pressure relief valve, the target pressure (what you hope to be operating your system at) and that target pressure can be anywhere from 1 bar to 3 bars, generally anywhere from 15 to 50 psi. Now, the side note here, system pressure does not affect performance. So if you’re used to operating and you want to operate your system at a higher pressure, that’s not going to affect performance. It will, however, dramatically increase the size of the expansion tank required because you’ve increased the boiling point of both the water and the glycol, which means you’re going to have hotter fluid which will have expanded, as temperatures increase so does expansion and you’re going to be able to allow for an increased temperature because of an increased pressure. So although I make a recommendation of setting your target pressure anywhere between 15 and 50, I would recommend you set your target pressure in the low end of that range, as system pressure does not affect performance. Okay, so the size of the expansion vessel, as we have very poignantly learned over the last 3 or 4 years, systems have been exploding, pressure relief valves are opening, customers have been scared. They see steam shooting out of their basement, they don’t know what’s going on and they think it’s dangerous. So we have to take it very seriously, this steamback phenomena. Steamback will happen, our job is to let it happen. And without a properly sized expansion vessel, we’re not going to let it happen. So it’s not as simple as saying, “well expansion vessel should be 20% of the system volume or 30%, or even 60% of the system volume.” We have to look every case by case, and what we need from you is the volume of the volume of fluid in your piping, total volume of fluid in the piping, and we can help calculate that if we know pipameter. We also need to know the target pressure of your system, the maximum rating of your safety valve, and the concentration of the glycol that you’re using. And if you’re using 50% glycol – ah yes, Vince, what we recommend is that you actually charge your expansion vessel at 5 psi greater. So as you take your expansion tank out of your kit, I believe they are charged at 37 psi, I’m pretty sure that’s what they are. So what you want to do, just like a tire tube, you can have a straighter valve, take a look at your needle get a tire gauge in there, see what the pressure of the tank is and charge that up to 5 psi greater than what your target pressure is. So sizing up your expansion tank is something. Well Carl that’s a good question - expelling steam means a loss of water, how often do you need to replenish? You’re not really expelling the steam, this is a closed loop. So when you create the steam, the steam actually gets trapped inside your collectors, and it’s that steam pressure that forces the fluid out of the collectors. So there may be some losses if you have an air vent that might be open a little bit, but generally, there should be no losses of steam because if you’re losing the water, you’re not increasing the pressure, and it’s that pressure increase that we need to force the glycol out of the manifolds. So it is a closed loop and you will not be expelling the steam, rather you’re going to trap the steam, and that steam gets trapped inside the collectors. Okay, so for those of you who are interested in sizing your expansion tanks by yourself, then this would be the formula to use. It’s very straightforward, I’m not going to take the time right now to go over each particular, I’m sure there’s a name, a step and process in algebra, but I don’t remember the steps involved. However, I’m not going to go over each variable, but you should know this, you need to know the volume of fluid, the concentration of fluid, the collector field, your target pressure and your maximum pressure rating for your pressure relief valve. Those factors we will use to size up your expansion vessel and you can have relatively quick turnaround. If you have systems out there that are about to enter their first winter, you probably don’t need to worry about it too much because stagnation rarely occurs in the winter time. Stagnation generally occurs in the summer, so if you had just installed a system and you want us to double-check the size of your expansion tank, get a hold of your sales rep and we can do that for you too. It’s better to be safe than surprised. Clients can be very surprised if steamback happens without a properly sized expansion tank. If they happen to be home during the time, it will scare them, I’ve seen it happen, so this is the number one thing we’ve got to be sure of, is the expansion tank properly sized. A couple of other considerations as we wrap it up, the position and size of the expansion tank, and proper concentration of glycol. I just want to point out that although some of you look at glycol as an antifreeze, that is what it is, it’s not necessarily any more or less of an antifreeze at 40% or 50% or 60% or 70% or 80%, the magic number for most places in the U.S. is 50%, and you can go down to 30%. However, please remember this, if I have 60% glycol or 70% glycol or 80% glycol, as I increase the concentration of glycol, water and glycol have different densities, so I’m going to encourage the separation of that solution. So, even though I have an 80% glycol, water is not going to be mixed in solution as it would be with a 50% glycol, so the water comes out of solution, and at night if the water comes out of solution then we have pockets of solution that are vulnerable to freezing and they’re going to end up in that collector manifolds. So 50% is actually better than 60%. There are lots of other fluids that are used, oils and ethylene, there are a lot of different heat transfer fluids and we’re playing around with some materials now, but currently for closed loop systems that need antifreeze protection, the best approach is to use a propane glycol because it is safer for the environment, it’s readily available, it does have some drawbacks with viscosity and the like, but for the most part, for the next couple of years anyway, propane glycol will be the heat transfer fluid of choice. Nathan, the webinar slides will be posted on the site. As soon as I’m done here you’ll see a pdf on solar webinars that you can download and use that formula, that probably would appear in a pdf form much clearer than it has here. For references use Siegenthaler and Hausner and Fink. So to wrap it up, I’d like to thank you for your attention once again. Stay tuned for next week, take a look at our schedule. If you have any suggestions or things that you’d like to see covered please don’t hesitate to send an email to me with that suggestion. I do encourage feedback, both positive and negative. Amy, you want to position, normal installation of expansion tank is going to cause the bladder to do what? The point is don’t turn it on it’s side or flip it upside down because what’s going to happen is the steam is going to rise and come right up in direct contact with the bladder, so we generally recommend taking a look at the stickers on the expansion tank and installing them so you can read them like you normally would. If there are not stickers for proper orientation, then look at the installation manual and just be sure that any of the fluid that’s trapped in your expansion tank is resting on the membrane, so that in order for any steam to touch the membrane, it’s got to pass through fluid. That’s cooling it down, reducing the temperature and likelihood of melting. Yeah, it is a problem, Dave, and what it is, is little micro-explosions of steam that, the banging of pipes happens in situations that don’t have good emptying behavior. If you have convolutions in your pipe where you might get pockets of condensate, that condensate is going to be introduced to steam and you get little micro-explosions and those are the bangings that you hear. So, not only the collector requires good emptying behavior, but the entire pipe run requires good emptying behavior. So, in a sense, just as we have limitations for drainback systems, everyone of our pipes needs to be sloped down in order to drain. Steambacks require the same type of attention, we don’t want to have places where there are pockets of water before the expansion vessel. Not that it’s a problem, but you will end up with the interface of steam and condensate and little micro-explosions, and there’s not a whole lot you can do to reduce that at this point. Well I do want to formally end it, and I’m happy to – okay I got another question… No, you don’t need a specific steam condenser, and I would be interested in email to speak with you more about that to see. I’m not exactly sure what you’re referring to, but as I mentioned before, steamback will happen whether we want it to happen or not, it’s going to happen it’s just a matter of have we designed it so that we allow for steamback to occur, is the expansion tank properly sized, does our piping represent proper emptying behavior, and do the collectors represent proper emptying behavior, and is our expansion tank located in the correct spot relative to the check valve. If those measures are in place, then we’re in good shape. Again, email me any questions, this is just the beginning of our interactions and hopefully we’ll see you next week. Have a great solar day, as I look out my window here I don’t see the sun, but that’s not surprising, again we’re in upstate New York, hopefully we’ll see it here in the next couple of days. Okay, take care everybody, bye bye.

Troubleshooting and Maintenance II 11.01.2010

admin — Mon, 01 Nov 2010 17:45:47 +0000

[iframe https://my.dimdim.com/view/reco/all/sunmaxx/default/d27eca2d-7489-4a4f-b311-06f1032f2a48 650 500] SUNMAXX SOLAR HOT WATER SOLUTIONS TROUBLESHOOTING AND MAINTENANCE II Date: 11/01/2010 Okay, well I’d like to welcome you to the SunMaxx Series Solar Hot Water Webinar: Maintenance and Troubleshooting. I’d like to spend the next half an hour speaking with you about different maintenance and troubleshooting techniques that we find very successful. As always, I’d like to remind you to type a question in the chat box. Since we have a relatively small group, this might lend itself well to discussion-based webinar. Without further ado, I’d like to get right into our first slide. And I see, can somebody confirm I’ve got a little graffiti it appears on my screen, is this the case with everyone’s? Some stars, some scribbles, and a few good mornings, or is the screen clear? Okay, now one of the most important things in terms of troubleshooting and maintenance – sorry Jess, I’m not sure who or what was responsible for this. Oh it’s no problem Tim, we’ll just have to see right through it. We’ll see if I can. Well, a little technical glitch I’ll work out later on. In order to properly troubleshoot and maintain a system, system commissioning is most important. In proper system commissioning you can avoid many of the problems associated with solar thermal systems. A lot of times they do fail because of installation errors or they fail due to neglect. So I’d like to go over four basic considerations that should be made in proper system commissioning. I also want to remind you that you download this pdf form of the webinar, and here you have a link to our brochures resource center through SunMaxx website. So when I say refer to the technical manual and other SunMaxx resources, you should be able to simply click on that and it takes you to our information center, or you can visit sunmaxxsolar.com and go right to the information center where you can download our technical manual. In the technical manual, you will find a troubleshooting and maintenance system commissioning guide. So the four things that I want to specify regarding system commissioning are pressurizing the closed loop, purging the air, getting the air out of the system is probably one of the most important steps in making sure that early on your system is operating properly. And over the course of the first couple of weeks you may have some pump trouble if your air is not completely purged. Another one that we get a lot of technical calls on is programming the controller and then, obviously, mixing the glycol. So one of the first things in terms of pressurizing the closed loop is that you’ve got to use a pump that’s capable of building up enough pressure to ensure that there are no leaks in the system, and our SunMaxx filling station can do that. There are other ways, you can buy at least a half horsepower sump pump from one of Home Depot or Lowe's. And you can do it this way. Our pump's filling station not only has the appropriate size pump to build up to roughly, depending on the vertical height, it can build up to 50 or 60 psi, but that also has a filter, and the filter with the aperture allows you to clean all the debris out of the loop. So, what we like to recommend is that you first pressurize your system with air. Using a modified trader valve, you can build the pressure in your system up prior to purging and flooding your system. Pressurize it with air and you can pressurize it up to 75 or 85 psi. And be sure that it holds the pressure for several hours; so this might be something where you do it at the end of the day and you pressurize it, mark your pressure, and come back the following day. This'll be a first step in making sure that your system is nice and tight with no leaks and no places for air or water to escape. Another thing that you have to do before you pressurize and commission your system is determine what your system pressure will be. What would you like system to operate at? Now, we recommend that you choose a pressure that is most appropriate to the vertical height. And simple calculation would take the vertical height, divide that by 2.31, and then add 1 atmosphere to that. That would give you what your target pressure should be. I do want to point out that pressure in a system does not affect system performance. So, if you end up with your system charging pump being capable of 20 psi, but you estimate that you should have 30 psi, you can rest assured that 20 psi will offer no difference whatsoever in system performance. So, you want to make sure that your at least higher than 1 atmosphere and not to exceed 90 psi. The relief valves on our pump stations are set at 87 psi. So you want between 70 and 90; it's going to give you the same system performance. It's really a question of liability. How much pressure do you want in your system continually? Often, the lower the pressure, the less liability. Now, one reason why determining your system pressure ahead of time is important, that target pressure, is so that we can properly assess what size expansion tank you should use. So, for example, if we determine that your system pressure should be at 35 or 40 psi, that number is what we're going to use to help establish the size of your expansion tank. And should you realize that your pump is only capable of bringing your system up to 20 psi, that in itself is not a problem. The problem lies in the fact that the smaller or the lower the pressure, the larger the expansion tank will need to be. So, knowing your target pressure and shooting for that target pressure is important. But ultimately, determining what your pressure is ahead of time allows us to accurately size the expansion tank. Now once we've determined this and we've commissioned the system or purged it, we have to get all of the air out of the system. There are some built-in mechanisms. The air purger in the pump station is a manual air purger. There's the built-in air scoop that will build a pocket of air bubbles. Then we recommend that you shut this air purger down with a ball valve. You can see a ball valve on that nipple coming off of the supply. That air purger outside should really only be used during system startup. This is not necessary. However, with drainback systems, as you will be maintaining a bubble of air in a drainback system and you don't want to remove all the air. In fact, it would be impossible to remove all of the air with a drainback. So, purging systems may take several days. For those of you who are doing a job an hour or two hours away, several days of purging air is not really something you want to look forward to. However, it is essential, because if you purge the system, you commission the system, and you think you've got all the air out, as temperatures increase, the ability to store dissolved oxygen decreases. And it may seem like you have all of the air out. In just a couple of days, there will be another pocket. So please remember that in the SunMaxx pump station, there is a automatic air scoop. And this air scoops will build up a pocket of air. It will take all of the air out the loop. And it will prevent it from cavitating the pump, but that air still will be trapped inside of the pump station and will need to be manually bled, and we recommend that you do this once a day for the first week. This may be something that if you have a long distance installation you can train your homeowner to do this. What this will do, by getting rid of all of the air, is increase the likelihood of total system success. So purging air is extremely important. Now, in terms of programming the controller, if you use a SunMaxx IntelliMaxx controller, regardless of the model, all you have to do is plug that controller in and bring 120 volts to the controller. Automatically the default settings will allow that controller to operate your system. There are delta T on and delta T off settings preprogrammed, and they will work, however, for climates such as the one that I'm currently in in the Northeast and even in the Northwest, we recommend that you adjust the delta TO so that your pump 1 turns on at a differential of 15 degrees. In the middle of winter, we often recommend that that delta TO is turned up to even in the neighborhood of 21 degrees. This will decrease the pump turn-on, turn-off cycles. The max temp should turn the pump off when it reaches 175. There is a default setting programmed for the maximum temperature, however, you need to activate that setting. So, the default settings on your controller will simply turn the pump on and turn the pump off based on the differential. But there are many other parameters that you can allow your controller to do as long as you activate that particular setting. And the max temperature setting is one that needs to be activated. Your second array, usually tied into a recirculation pump or a three-way valve, can also be adjusted. If you choose the array, for example with the IntelliMaxx DHW plus, there are several arrays you can choose from. You have to find the array that best suits what it is you are trying to accomplish. And just visually, looking at the location of the pumps and the location of the exchangers, and then go to that section in the manual. It will describe exactly what you need to do for array number 2 in order to activate all of the functionality and to adjust the delta T. So once this is done, you should have virtually a maintenance free system. And if you have any trouble programming your controller for the exact option you are trying to activate, as always you call the 1-877-SunMaxx and dial into the extension for technical support. There are several, one of them is extension 229, we can help you program your controller when you get to that point. Okay, so like I mentioned, each controller comes with several different arrays. In our CombiPlus controller there are 11 or 12 different arrays. Now, one thing you can do if you do not find the array that most suits what you are trying to do, we can use these arrays and modify them slightly. So if we know that, for example, array number 1 has pump number 1 and has recirc pump number 2, well that recirc pump number 2 is visually depicted as being a recirculation loop that is bringing heat from the first tank and dumping it into the second tank. What we can do is, if you prefer to have a valve in place of that second pump we can help adjust those delta T or thermostatic set-point. I'd like to also point out, one nice feature to these controllers is they allow for both thermostatic control and differential control. That is, they will send voltage from a relay, for example pump number 1, the standard is that it is based on the differential between sensor 1 and sensor 2, however, given the right array, you can activate a pump not based on the differential but based on the exact set-point. So if I know if I want to replace, in this diagram, pump number two with a valve, I can program the controller to make sure that that valve opens, if it's a normal closed valve, it will open at a very specific set point temperature. So that's a thermostatic option. So each of these relays for all of the arrays has what's called a thermostatic option. And that is, it will activate and energize based on a specific set point rather than a differential. Should you buy your glycol from SunMaxx, you will find that it is premixed. It is premixed at 50% concentration. What this means is all you have to know is the total volume that your system's going to hold. You do not have to mix your glycol. However, it's extremely important. And I know many of you will try to shop around and find value in the different components, which is perfectly fine. But I would caution you that different manufacturers sell different concentrations, if they are already premixed at all. So be sure that you know exactly what the concentration is before you begin to do your mix. Along that same line, when you do your mixing, you must be sure that you have accurate volume for your whole system. And so what we recommend is that you fill your entire system and then you drain your entire system. What this will do is accomplish two things. One is that, first, it identifies exactly what volume of fluid you have in your system, so we know how much glycol to use, how much water. But secondly, it essentially filters your system out by cleaning out the pipes. It removes any shavings or debris that might be left inside the pipes that would normally get caught in the pump or valves, slowly degrading the system. So filling your system and then flooding it and purging it will first allow you to identify exactly what volume you have but also it will help clean your system out. Now, in terms of system maintenance and yearly maintenance, one of the most important things you can do for a closed-loop system is be sure that the pH never falls below 7. Yeah, Don, I think that by filling your system with plain tap water, it's most cost effective. You don't have to do any trial and error with your glycol, but if you measure what leaves your system or what you put into the system, that gives you an exact number to go with in terms of system volume. And then you can just flush that water right back out and down the drain. So, in terms of maintenance, one of the very tricky things is to be sure is that the pH never falls below 7. And with glycol, there can be some indication that you're losing acidity and a very slight drop in pH. But it could happen overnight, after the course of two hours and your system stagnates, if there are collectors, if there's glycol that is still in your collector, that it will turn acidic. And what could happen to the pH is that it will literally drop off logarithmically. It won't just go from 8.3 to 8.2 to 8.1. It could drop from 8.2 down to 7 and then down to 6.5. So you have to very close attention to the pH and also the system concentration. One big mistake I'd like to point out is that a lot of boiler and HVAC guys who install cold water makeup valves to their heating loops, which is standard. However, when installing a solar thermal loop, the last thing we want in that line is a cold water makeup valve. And I have seen a couple of cases where a cold water makeup valve line has been installed with a leak. So there's a small leak in the glycol bay system, which introduces 100% water back in, reducing the concentration of the glycol, causing it to freeze. So make sure you have the proper concentration and that your system pressure is maintaining +/- 5 psi year round. Also measuring performance is something that a lot of guys will overlook. There's some very simple ways to measure performance, all of which are laid out in our technical manual, and I'm going to go over it in just a moment. But being sure that you're setting up a baseline performance data, so for the first week or the first month or the first year, it's important that you and/or your client have a very good handle on how well the system's performing and what can I expect out of it. And should you see a decrease in performance from one year to the next. Then you should begin to look at what would cause such a decrease. But the bottom line is that you need to have a baseline, and system performance can be measured analytically or anecdotally. I'll present to you a very simple way to do that in just a moment, and obviously the mechanical integrity. Now making sure the pH is accurate, you can use one of many different tools: a digital pH meter or a little pool kit or you can use a pH testing probe for example. These can be purchased from different companies. The easiest which would be to purchase a pH kit from a pool company. And with simple litmus paper, this would be a good indicator. Obviously, if you're going to get into the business and become more professional at solar thermal, you're going to want to get a nice digital pH tester. What can cause pH to go down is consistent and excessive temperatures that exceed the manufacturer's recommendation of the glycol. So as a manufacturer ourselves, we have two grades of glycol. We have what we call the low temp glycol which is rated for about 250 degrees Fahrenheit, at which temperature it begins to break down and turn acidic. We also have a high grade, high temperature glycol, which is rated for somewhere in the neighborhood of 360 degrees. So, personally I highly recommend investing a little bit more money in a high temperature glycol, that way you can be sure that even in the worse case scenario, during system stagnation and you do overheat your glycol, the buffers in that glycol do not break down and do not cause the pH to become acidic. Now measuring concentration can also be done with some very simple tools. Many of you look at the concentration of your anti-freeze in your car radiator from a tool that you buy at NAPA. That same tool will suffice, a simple hydrometer will allow you to maintain the concentration. Perhaps it is something you can include as part of your maintenance and service contract with the homeowner. You buy a pH test kit and you buy them a hydrometer and say this is included, this is something that I would like you to look at each year, and if we have any indication that concentration is dropping or pH is dropping then you can make the drive out to his house. Perhaps that's something they can do. Either way, whether you do it or they do it, you've got to be sure that at least once a year of the proper concentration of your glycols, especially going into the winter, it would be something you would do as a normal boiler service call from a fuel company each fall, they would come out and check the boiler. You should do the same with a solar thermal. Coming into the winter, the most important thing you can check is the concentration of glycol. Now, you really have to shoot for a concentration between 35 and 55%, depending on your location. The further north, the closer you would need to be to 50%. But one thing that many people don't realize is that as you exceed 55% and into 60-65% glycol, that's going to change the solution or the makeup of that solution and cause the water to separate from the glycol. We don't want the water to separate from the glycol because then the water will freeze on it's own. So you want to have a nice solution and maintain that solution, and a good solution is mixed to maintain between 35 and 55%. So, I've heard people throw around the idea that 'oh I’m just going to use 70% or 80% glycol.' That would lower the freeze protection, but it would also encourage the separation of glycol and the water. So, more is not better in terms of concentration of your glycol. Now maintaining your pressure, most pressure gauges have a little red dial that can be moved and set as your target pressure, well this needs to be marked during system commissioning so that you've identified what your starting with and you can easily correlate any fluctuations from this standard. We'll also to identify your target pressure, so before you even commission your system, use the little red dial and set it at whatever pressure you're trying to achieve, get your system up to that pressure, close it off and come back the next day and be sure that you haven't lost any pressure. And then fill your system up and put the tubes in or get your pump running and you should be fine. Make sure that that mark stays in place, and you can even use a permanent red marker to help you be sure. That's a great question, how do you extract any glycol without introducing air back into the system? What it really just takes is a very, very small amount. You should have a small drain cock in your filling station as well as any drain of your pump station is going to let you drain just a little bit out. You really just need a few drops, so by removing some of this glycol you will drop pressure but it's going to be a very, very, very, very small amount, minute amounts. So what you want to do is use the fill ports, the fill drain port on your pump station to extract several milliliters of glycol, no more than that. And by removing just that small amount you shouldn't have any problems with getting air back into the system. But, if you do have air back in the system, the pump has a manual air bleeder and so in a very short period, in a matter of just a few minutes, you should be able to get that air right back out if you did get some in. Okay, now measuring performance. This text that you see here on the slide is all laid out in the technical manual, and you can find a section in the technical manual of measuring performance. Basically what you want to do is look at the amount of energy that is brought into the solar thermal storage tank on any given day. By looking at the amount of energy or temperature gain of a fixed volume of fluid, that can correlate directly to the number of BTUs because we know it takes 8.3 BTUs to raise one gallon of water one degree Fahrenheit. So if I know for a fact that I have an 80 gallon storage tank, I'd look at that 80 gallons and multiply that by the number of degrees rise throughout one day and then multiply again by 8.3 and that should be equal to the total number of BTUs that my system was able to produce and deliver to my storage tank on any given day. I want to choose a day that I don't have a load. It becomes a little bit more difficult to calculate production and subtract load in looking at the storage tank. So try to find a day when there is no load and every BTU that we produce goes into the storage tank, and that number is a direct result of gallons times 8.3 times rise in temperature. That's going to equal your BT production. And from that number then you can look at the SRCC report and see what they would expect you to produce, you can look at the TSol that you should have gotten with a quote or you can call your sales rep or call myself, for example, and say 'I've got a 40 square foot system up in Seattle, Washington and I produced 4-7,000 BTUs today, is that appropriate?' and we'll be able to tell you pretty quickly whether we think you're right in line or not, but it's important to have that done and have that in place so that you know exactly what your system is producing. It's also important for the homeowner, to educate them how they can measure their performance because, from experience, homeowners really like to know how their system is doing and will go out of their way to make their own calculations and perhaps keep a log, and that log can be invaluable for troubleshooting. So it's important that you do educate your homeowner. Now making sure that all the mechanicals are intact, a couple key things that you sure of that the bolts are secure and the fasteners are secure, there's no leaks or tears. With flat plates you want to be sure that the underside of it is cleaned of any debris, there's no leaves, no buildup, no squirrel nests. With tubes, you want to make sure the caps on the bottom of the tubes are snug, preventing them from falling down out of the manifold, and that your controller wiring is tightly sealed, there's no penetration into your wiring because that's going to increase the resistance and change your readings slightly. Now moving forward, this troubleshooting maintenance table again has been taken right out of our technical manual, so this is a very good first step line of defense, so to speak, so that if you have any trouble you can work through this and if this doesn't help you then call the SunMaxx tech support line, and that's where we can step in and be of good value. So, I'm not going to go through this troubleshooting chart, just to point out that you do have this available to you through sunmaxxsolar.com. Different situations where the pump won't run, or the pump runs continuously, or there's no circulation in the system, or you've experienced a large pressure drop. These are all the different causes of those effects, and some recommended actions that you might take to prevent that from happening in the future. You might be experiencing overheating, or based on your baseline data you're seeing some performance loss over the first month or the first year or first two years. And if that is the case, and you do have good baseline data then you can start to look at what would cause performance losses. Okay, as promised I kept it to 30 minutes, and I would like to thank you all for your attention. I encourage you to continue to visit us every Monday at noon. We would like to encourage you to take your time, do the systems as per our recommendations. Let me go back real quick, Don's got a question. I'm going to stop the recording now for those of you who are going to archive, and if you'll hang on Don I'll answer your question momentarily. So thanks again, take care.

Drainback Systems 10.18.2010

admin — Mon, 01 Nov 2010 15:49:57 +0000

[iframe https://my.dimdim.com/view/reco/all/sunmaxx/default/ee08c153-a181-4823-900b-43734dba62f7 650 500] SUNMAXX SOLAR HOT WATER SOLUTIONS DRAINBACK SYSTEMS Date: 10/18/2010 Good morning. Welcome to the next addition of our SunMaxx Solar hot water series webinar. Today I’d like to discuss drainback systems and how to optimize the performance for both flat plates and evacuated tubes. As always I welcome you to type any questions you have in the chat window. I can try to respond to those immediately. For those of you who are having trouble with audio just please refresh your screen. You might be able to eliminate any problems that you have. I’d like to talk about the basics and we can get into some more complex topics. Although a half an hour is very short period of time to discuss too much. I’ll try my best to cover as much detail as I can in those next thirty minutes. So essentially drainbacks are a closed loop system. There’s different style drainback. You can do an open loop or direct and indirect. What I’m going to talk about today is a closed loop drainback that is indirect heat source. So we’re going to use a heat exchanger to dump into both heating system and hot water. Essentially drainbacks flood the collectors when the pump is on and when the pump is off for different reasons. When the pump is off the collectors will drain. Draining allows the fluid to leave the collectors preventing any overheating situation and also preventing any freezing situation. So drainbacks are relatively unique to the United States for them most part. In other parts of Europe and Asia most of the systems there are closed loop glycol systems. Drainbacks have been around for quite some time over thirty years. Particularly down in the Florida and the southern areas. But they’ve slowly made there way up north for heating systems. Particularly for systems that are sized for large heat loads in the wintertime and zero heat loads in the summer time. So drainback systems as you’ll see have several different merits. Obviously the first one is there’s’ no need for glycol. So as this picture depicts when the pump is off the collectors and the piping outside are drained. When the pump is on then the water in the loop displaces any of the air that is trapped in the collectors and in the tubing outside. Couple of the benefits of drainbacks it really in the function of anti-freeze. So from experience the only good thing about anti-freeze is that it doesn’t freeze. So with a system that doesn’t require anti-freeze. You don’t have all of the other drawbacks that anti-freeze is associated with more viscosity and heat transfer. Cost is another one. Drainback systems additionally have no need for an expansion tank. Presumably the volume of air that’s trapped inside the tank when the pump is on will suffice for any expansion that occurs during the heating up of the system. There’s also it’s an added safety for when the power fails or there’s a brown out or black out. The worst case scenario is the pump will shut off and if that happens then the system is protected if it’s designed properly. As opposed to a closed loop glycol system when the pump shuts off there have to be measures built into the system design that protect from overheating. Additionally there’s less annual maintenance. If they system is designed and installed properly there should essentially be no maintenance each year. Maintenance that would typically coincide with checking glycol acidity, maintaining system pressure and measuring the concentration of the glycol that can all be eliminated. Also there’s less oxidation of the system because presumably all of the oxygen will be used up during the system’s initial commissioning. In very short period of time the oxygen is consumed and what’s left behind would be the atmospheric nitrogen. So this will occur if the systems are installed properly and are tight. That way we don’t’ have any new oxygen gain or any pressure losses. A couple of drawbacks and the one that’s most apparent to me is that the collectors need to be mounted at a slope. So when you have a collector run of ten to twenty feet. What would be required is a drop in elevation from the high side of the collector to the low side of the collector of anywhere from four to eight inches. Now when mounted on a house that has straight lines the aesthetic appeal really drops. Here’s a perfect example although this collector system is probably working perfectly well dumping a lot of heat into the house. It is crooked and so as people drive by or notice the system on the roof that is crooked. They don’t’ realize the functionality of that slope so they might pass judgment. So you have to be very considerate of what the collector field will look like. In some cases aesthetic is paramount. Also if the system is not installed properly it can lead to lots of things that will go wrong for instance freezing pipes. All of the external piping needs to be mounted at a quarter inch to a foot of slope. With the drainback system it typically requires a larger pumps or secondary pump which I’ll show you in just a few moments. That secondary pump can be used to overcome the initial head that’s required from system startup or when the pump initially kicks on. The second pump needs to be used to help overcome gravity. Once you create a siphon in the system gravity no longer plays a role. Another drawback is that there have been some complaints that drainback piping tends to be noisy. There can be some air entrained in the line that causes mini-explosions when high temperature meets low temperature. There can be some knocking in the pipe. So if you have piping that’s installed in the house. Clients will hear it when they first kick on their system until they get that nice siphoning going. So in most cases if it’s installed properly and out of sight. Then the first two drawbacks are irrelevant. Now with our newest controllers that offer variable speed function the third drawback can also be irrelevant. Because we can use a large pump to overcome that initial head and then the controller will throttle back the pump power. So that we’re consuming just what’s needed and nothing more. Obviously if you have pipes that are installed outside then the noise is also irrelevant. So there are many important benefits to drainbacks but it becomes more and more important that you consider some of the drawbacks before you make your final decision. Now let me get into a little bit of fundamental here. One of the benefits to drainbacks is it reduces the need for extra heat exchangers. Every time you go through a heat exchanger you undergo what’s called a performance penalty. Performance penalties can be removed from systems that are well designed. But regardless when you have a heat exchanger very rarely will you get a hundred percent heat exchange. For example this heat exchanger operating at fifty percent effectiveness. In other words the amount of energy that a heat exchanger can transfer across a heat exchanger is typically between fifty to eight percent effectiveness. So this means that if a collector is yielding a ninety four percent….They only yield ninety four percent of what they are expected to yield because of the fifty percent heat exchanger effectiveness. By looking at this graph there’s a diminishing return as you increase the performance penalties. So by eliminating this heat exchanger you essentially increase the system performance by six percent. So you have to be careful not to assume that just because the heat exchanger is operating at seventy five percent effectiveness. Doesn’t mean that you’re losing twenty five percent of the energy because it’ll just take more cycles to work through. However six percent losses can be pretty substantial. And why would you suffer six percent loss if you didn’t need to. So drainbacks eliminate that need to suffer from performance penalty because of this heat exchanger effectiveness versus quicker performance graph. Okay so here we have two drainbacks. We have an open loop and a closed loop drainback system. The open loop drainbacks which you see on the left are typically used with non-pressurized tanks. Non-pressure tanks are very popular with Combi Systems where you have a large reservoir of energy two, four, five, six hundred gallons storage tanks. These are very simple to design because being that the tank is not pressurized. All we’re going to do is pull fluid from the tank up to the collectors when the collectors are producing energy and dump back down into that non pressure tank. So we’re literally pulling the water from the tank to the collectors. Now it does require a system on the left like an open loop…It does require a separate exchanger because typically heating systems and certainly domestic hot water systems maintain an existing pressure. So we can’t introduce a pressurized system into a non-pressure system without the use of a heat exchanger. So although that system on the left the open loop drainback systems perform quite well and are very easy to tie into heating systems we do need to add a heat exchanger. The system on the right the closed loop drainback system where we’re maintaining a certain pressure. Now this system can be tied directly into heating systems. For example we can tie that storage tank being pressurized into pressurized floor, into pressurized baseboard or into a pressurized domestic hot water line. So first you decide whether you’re going to do pressurized or non-pressurized. One of the considerations of a non-pressure tank is the availability of large high volume storage tanks. For example if you designed a system that had a five hundred gallon storage tank. It becomes quite costly to have a five hundred gallon pressurized system. So non-pressure systems tend to be more cost effective when you’re talking about large Combi System designs. With closed loop they’re typically reserved for smaller systems they’re much easier to tie into because there’s no need for heat exchanger between the storage tank and the heating system. However there’s a limitation to the size of the pressurized vessel. I have seen three, four, five thousand gallon pressurized tanks but the cost is sometimes two to three fold that of the non-pressure tank of the same size. Okay here’s an example of a Combi System design that uses a pressurized tank and as you notice the fluid that’s passing through the collectors is the same fluid that’s delivered to the heating system. Whether it’s the heat dissipaters there…Whether the heat dissipaters are radiant floor or tubing or baseboard. It can also be forced hot air. The fluid from the collectors and the tank and the heating system are all the same. So there’s no performance penalty loss there. The only exchanger that you see in the middle of this tank is the domestic hot water exchanger. So when the tank calls for heat the boiler will add heat to the tank if the solar is not producing any energy. So the only time the boiler will dump heat into the storage tank is when the solar is not active. Now in this case the cold water comes into the bottom of the tank and works it way up and out through that coil. So the only heat exchanger is for domestic hot water. Typically heat exchangers on domestic hot water lines have a higher heat exchanger effectiveness or heat exchange capacity. Because of the larger delta t. The incoming cold water temperature versus tank temperature tends to be higher. Therefore we get a greater heat exchange rate and losses are much less. So the design that you see here is probably one of the best ones out there for domestic hot water heating system solar collector tie a pressurized drainback closed loop. You can also have a drainback system like this that does not use a heat exchanger. In this case the storage is the pressurized drainback tank in the case of the one before Don there is no storage for hot water per see. The storage is actually in the drainback tank so presumably we are getting a full recovery of cold water coming into the coil and leaving at the temperature of the tank. Okay. So we’re getting a large delta t from the cold water supply that comes in at fifty and leaves at a hundred and five or whatever you have it set for. At night our storage tank is going to be maintained by the boiler if the solar hasn’t been able to take care of it. So all day long the solar collectors bring the storage tank up to temperature. At the end of day if the storage tank is not up to temperature then the boiler will add heat to that storage tank maintaining that storage tank at a hundred fifteen or a hundred twenty all the time. Now with this one the difference is the drainback tank that is located outside of the storage tank. This small drainback tank only has to store the volume of fluid required to flood the collectors and the piping outside of the house. So in most cases this is a small ten or twenty drainback tank. By mounting it up towards the roof it eliminates the need for a larger pump or a second pump. Because you only have to overcome the vertical height that’s associated with the distance between the top of the water in the drainback tank and the top of the collectors. So the smaller that height the less pump powered required. Here’s a picture I have right out of Tom’s Lane lesson learned book of a drainback system that uses a pressurized drainback tank and a coil. Now this system is used mostly for domestic hot water system. The water in the storage tank is used for domestic purposes. Here is a diagram of a larger commercial pressurized drainback system that uses three tanks in parallel. Each of these tanks would ideally be the same temperature. And there is a larger drainback tank that will allow for any of the fluid in the collectors to drain into. Like I said before those separate drainback tanks can be anywhere from ten, twenty, forty and even eighty gallon drainback tanks outside of the normal storage. Now mounting flat plates to allow them for drainback as I mentioned it usually requires a slope of a quarter inch per foot. Now that slope can be apparent in the installation of the collectors or that slope can be taken care of in simply the piping. You only need stainless steel pumps for lines that are associated with domestic hot water or oxygenated loops. So for any system that’s a closed loop that has a pump cast iron will be sufficient. If the system is open that is with domestic hot water or a non-pressure tank then stainless steel or bronze pump should be used. In fact if it’s domestic hot water then stainless steel or bronze is code. So as I mentioned the flat plates don’t always have to be mounted crooked. But the piping will need to be mounted crooked. It depends what style. On the top you see the header riser style where we have all four panels are essentially piped in parallel. At the bottom we have serpentine. Now there are two different types of serpentine. This is a horizontal serpentine where the pipes are moving back and forth left and right. Horizontal serpentine collectors with a port on the top and a port on the bottom can in fact be used for drainbacks. However vertical serpentine where the manners go from top to bottom they can not be used in a drainback because it won’t drain. Typically flat plates have a header riser style internal piping. And most of those header riser style that have four ports can be used in drainback when they’re mounted properly. In terms of the mounting of the heat pipes there’s much less consideration it’s very straight forward. There’s a single pipe running through the manifold. That pipe like any other drain pipe needs to be mounted a quarter inch tilt per foot. Now that tilt can be accomplished in many ways by…For instance mounting it flush on the roof and rotating the entire piping at a quarter foot. Or mounting it on a flat roof like you see in this picture with one side proportionally higher than the other which allows for the drainage from left to right. But again when designing systems you have to consider what the aesthetics will be like. When you have a long run of forty or fifty feet. For example a four foot run will see just about an inch and a half of elevation change. So one flat plate will need to be tilted at about one point five inches. But for four flat plates now we’re up to six inches. So that slope becomes pretty noticeable as your runs become longer and longer. Now in order to overcome the initial vertical head we use a double pump system or a single pump that has a variable speed function. When you put two pumps in series you essentially double the head. Not double the flow but you double the head. That’s what the issue is with breaking gravity getting the flow from the drainback tank all the way to the collectors is like turning on a fountain pump. So it has to be able to overcome that vertical head. Now once the siphon is created so once we’re able to flow the fluid across the collectors and then fall back down. Then you count on the effect of gravity and that second pump can then go offline. Or a single larger pump would be throttled back. Now like I mentioned by taking the drainback reservoir and mounting it as high as possible you will loose some of the friction head because there’s a much shorter flow path. So if you have the opportunity to raise your drainback tank up to in an insulated space up to the point where just before it becomes non-insulated then you can dramatically reduce the amount of friction you have to overcome and take out the effected gravity. There are many questions about how to pressurize drainback systems. It’s got to have at least fifteen PSI in the system in order for the siphon to take effect. What’s going to happen if you start off with just fifteen pressure at the pump by the time you move to the top of the system the pressure will decrease. If it drops below atmospheric pressure then the boiling point is going to drop as well. It’s going to begin disassociate the… Yes, that is correct. So anytime you are introducing air into the system. You have to use stainless steel or bronze pumps. Now proper sizing for drainbacks in order to maintain a two foot per second of velocity in some cases a larger diameter pipe although it will reduce your friction will prevent siphoning from happening. So you have to be able to maintain a minimum velocity in your system. And velocity is going to be directly related to the volume and your pump speed. The volume is related to obviously to the diameter of the pipe that you choose. So for systems that require for example one point six gallons per minute we can go down to half inch type m copper or type l and that’s going to maintain two foot per second. If we need a gallon and a half a minute and we use three quarter inch copper then our velocity is going to be less than two feet per second. Which means you’re going to have a hard time maintaining that siphon. So the rule of thumb is you want to try to have the smallest diameter pipe possible while still maintaining a certain velocity. That minimum velocity is two per feet per second and the maximum velocity is five feet per second. So we want to try to maintain at least two feet per second in the lines and not to exceed five feet per second. So again by reducing the velocity you put more stress on the pump to maintain that siphon. So you have a better opportunity to create that siphon if your velocity is above two feet per second. You can use this chart to help guide what volume of piping I should use while maintaining two feet and not to exceed five feet per second. There’s many different options for drainback storage. There are ten, twenty, forty and eighty gallon tanks often they need to be mounted on top of an existing top. Or they can be mounted as I said in a larger space up in the attic. Some manufacturers have large eighty gallon tanks that eliminate the need for a separate tank all together. So most often is the case that the installers will choose a separate drainback storage tank that may or may not include a coil heat exchanger. Many times when a coiled heat exchanger is included in a drainback tank since it’s such a small volume. They increase the surface area by using thinned copper or dimpled copper to help increase the heat exchange capacity through a smaller coil. The UniMaxx drain back is ten gallon tank that uses a double pump. So we’re pumping through the collectors and a separate pump is going to re-circulate from the drainback tank into an existing tank with the use of a raised plate as opposed to an internal coil. There are many manufactures of stand alone units. We are just now bringing one to market that includes all of the components built in. Similar to a pump station but as you see on the left here it’s a pump station that stands up on it’s own with a separate drainback reservoir that re-circulates into an existing tank. A couple very important considerations before I close here. Is that all horizontal piping must be sloped and one of the challenges for many installers is to design a system that is both aesthetically appealing and can drain properly. So by looking at the lay out of the roof and the runs of the pipe. You have to be able to visualize every single horizontal of pipe needs to be sloped. In some cases it just doesn’t fit the aesthetics of the house so installers will choose to go with a closed loop glycol. Another important factor to remember is velocity must be two feet per second. Also often pumps come with check valves built in. I know Takeo and Burnfoss the standard pumps that might come with a pump station. Whether you get a pump station from SunMaxx or whom ever else often they have check valves built in. Now Takeo check valves are very easily removed with a pair of needle nose pliers. Never the less you need to be sure that your system does not have a check valve that’s going to prevent the fluid from draining back effectively. Many of the controllers now have a high limit shut off. Not only do they shut it off but they will keep it off. Now make sure your controller has this function enabled especially with evacuated tube drainback systems. Because as your pump shuts off because the tank reached a high temperature. If there’s a load on your storage tank causing the storage tank temperature to drop maintaining a delta t between the collectors and the tank. The pump is going to want to turn back on again. If this happens if your collector field is in excess of two hundred and fifty degrees you’re going to get some flash steam. Which isn’t necessarily a problem but it’s something you want to avoid having happen consistently every single day. It’s going to put undue stress on your piping and fitting and valves. So the controllers are designed now a days for drain back functionality where it will turn off the pump when the tank reaches maximum temperature. It will keep your pump off regardless of your tank temperature if the collectors exceed a temperature it’s typically set at about two hundred and thirty five degrees. Which in the case of evacuated tubes and flat plates as well…. When the pump shuts off in full sun those collector temperatures can climb up to two hundred thirty or two hundred forty degrees in a matter of minutes. So that’s a very important function to make sure is enabled. Also you need to maintain a minimum pressure inside the system to help enable that siphon. With lower pressure in the system you’re going to increase the siphon requirements. In other words you’re going to lower the vertical height that siphon can still occur at. So the more pressure in your system the higher the total vertical head can be while maintaining that siphon. And you don’t need an air vent. In fact you don’t want an air vent in the system. Obviously drain backs have no need for expanse state. Hi Pete. Just wrapping it up here. I am actually going to be done. I’ve gone two minutes over. If anyone has any questions I welcome you to bring them to me now. Otherwise I’d like to conclude and I hope to see you again perhaps next week. I’m glad Pete joined us maybe….Now would be a good time to bring it up Pete. To clarify the pressure I’m certain that you have something to say. But from my understanding the lower the pressure the lower the total vertical head that we can accomplish and still maintain a siphon. So I believe at one atmospheric pressure in the system we’re only going to be able to get about thirty to thirty five feet of head before the boiling point is so low. That we begin to break the siphon as the water moves over the top of the system. So by increasing that pressure it allows us to attain a higher vertical head and maintain that siphon. Okay. Well if anybody else has any questions I’d be happy to answer them now. And otherwise I wish you a happy solar day and hope to see you again. Take care. Bye.

Mounting Strategies 10.04.2010

admin — Mon, 01 Nov 2010 15:36:45 +0000

[iframe https://my.dimdim.com/view/reco/all/sunmaxx/default/5ed032bf-624a-417f-9334-0b3bbb130433 650 500] SUNMAXX SOLAR HOT WATER SOLUTIONS MOUNTING STRATEGIES Date: 10/04/2010 I’d like to welcome you again to another edition of our SunMaxx Solar Hot Water Solutions webinar series. Today we’re going to be talking about mounting strategies for both flat plates and evacuated tube collectors using some of the best practices that we’ve seen. And I’d also like to introduce our new set of mounting hardware solutions that I think you’ll find very effective in both structurally, but also cost. Can anyone confirm for me please that they can hear me? Okay good. Alright, so as always you have a chat box and I welcome you to type in any questions that you have since it’s a small group with us today. I can very easily respond to your questions, try to do it immediately. So, without further ado we have just a half an hour and I try to be punctual. The new mounting hardware that is included with our collectors is really its custom designed for each job. We designed it so that it was universal. Okay, so as you can see the same hardware used at a very large job that was recently installed in hardware with 150 flat plates, uses the same hardware in a slightly different configuration. So, what we have to offer you is a customized solution based on a universal set of materials, hardware. Alright, as you can see in the picture, the rails that were used in a harder job run from the top of the collector down to the bottom of the collectors and with smaller residential jobs, as you see in the picture photo on the right, that the rail is used horizontally, okay. So let me go through each of these components piece by piece. It really begins with our roof penetrations; this roof hook system that we’ve developed. I think you’ll find there are similar products available, but at a much higher cost. So a couple of things I’d like to point out about this roof hook with flashing is that you don’t need to pre-drill any holes that the screws, the lag screws that are included are self tapping or self drilling screws. So, once you’re able to find the rafter, then all you’ve got to do is center your roof hook over the rafter and drill those two lag screws and those are high sheer strength lag screws, directly into the rafter itself. We don’t recommend that you need any other waterproofing sealant. Some installers prefer to use tar or rubber with every penetration, but this is designed so you don’t need that extra barrier, okay. So, you see a flashing that’s going to slip…your gridlines represent your shingle patterns, the flashing will slip up underneath the shingle on top of your roof hook and bolts. So, the strength that comes with this system like this, I believe it can support 400 pounds of uplift and 400 pounds of down pressure as well as 120 mph winds and 180 pounds of sheer strength. So, it’s an extremely strong roofing strategy. Now, from this main roof hook we’re gong to attach a rail. The rail, as you can see in two different depictions here, is threaded. So, you notice the Allen bolt gets threaded directly into the rod. So, what you’re seeing in the picture on your left is that roof hook gets bolted directly into the side of the rail, okay. And that can be mounted anywhere along the rail. We recommend that you don’t space those roof hooks more than 48 inches apart, okay. So, you’re not limited to the location of your rafters, really, if they’re not perfectly two or 16 inch on center, you can mount your roof hooks anywhere along that rail. And then all you need is an Allen screw and you can connect the bolt directly to the rail. On the picture to the right is the clip that’s going to be fastened to the rail to mount, eventually, to your collector, okay. So, with the titan power plus collectors you have a threaded well that will accept your Allen bolt in that slot on the top of that clip, okay. So again, it gives you a lot of flexibility in lateral movement of your collectors and you can be symmetrical. You can line it up perfectly in the center of the roof if you like. You can move it to the left or to the right. Now, these rails come in five, seven and eight foot lengths, okay, and all of which we have in stock ready to ship. So, I would recommend that you converse with your sales rep. Your sales rep has a software that’s going to design the components required to accomplish what it is that you’re trying to do in terms of your mounting. Now, should you need to put several rails together, we do sell two different style rail. The one on the left is the newer rail that has the threaded channel. And that union has four, all the bolts are included, it has four Allen bolts that will thread directly into the rail. And then on the right the “T” profile, this is a rendering of the “T” rail, there’s a simple clip that will secure with ridges and pinch down and fasten the two rails together, okay. So again, regardless of your placement, we recommend that you don’t space the roof hooks more than 48 inches apart. Now for back legged frames, for if you’re going to do a tilt mount or on a flat roof, you’re going to connect the rail to the back leg using these simple clips, now again, with the stainless steel Allen bolts, will thread directly into the collector frame. Now, in terms of the feet for… Why I get a “no” from you is you’re having trouble hearing, I presume? Maybe you can work that out, try to refresh. Now, the feet will again, mount anywhere along the back leg. So depending on, if I go backwards for a minute, depending on the length of the back leg required, all you have to do is cut the back leg to your designed length and the foot of that rail can move up the back leg to the desired, so that you can set the desired angle, okay. So as you notice, there are the threaded receptacle always goes on the outside to accept that bolt and then you install this stopper that will allow your collector to sit right in place and fasten at the bottom of the frame, okay. Now, for flush mounts, what you see here are a total of four roof hooks with their associated flashing, and you see how the rail connects to the roof hook with the clip that I showed you before and then the collectors mount to the rail with the collector clip. Now, that collector clip has got to only be spaced the appropriate distance to meet the threaded well to accept the Allen bolt, okay. The only consideration you have to make when setting your roof hooks is the height of the collector, okay, not necessarily the distance between. So, you set your roof hooks at 48 inches and you have your height, which should be pre-determined. Okay, can anyone else hear me? There appears to be a little difficulty, so if you wouldn’t mind just confirming if someone can still hear me. It never fails there always a bit of technical difficulty when trying to pull this off, but I think we should be all set. Okay, thanks Dennis. Alright, well, okay well, in terms of quality of audio I can make some adjustments after the fact, but now we’ll just have to run with it. So, for the flush mount you’re going two rails. You get two rails and four roof hooks with the flashing and then you mount the rails directly to the collector. It makes it very nice, clean look. These rails are aluminum all the other hardware, the bolts are stainless steel, so there shouldn’t be any corrosion issues. The collectors, as you might remember, are also stainless steel framed so you have stainless steel mounting directly to the stainless steel. The space underneath the collectors is about only two to 2 ½ inches between the bottom of the collector and the roof. The space between the collectors is going to be about 1.5 inches, okay. So you do get, with a flush mount flat plates, you get a real nice clean look, almost like a skylight. Now, in terms of a flat roof mount, like I showed you before, you’re going to have these feet in place of the rail. Now, there’s two ways to use the back rail. One would be using the back rail for your feet now unfortunately the location of these feet, as they move down toward the roof, do not align themselves perfectly with the rafters. So, if you would like to have that added precaution, where your collector leg is mounted to a rail rather than the roof, you’re going to use, obviously, this rail again, with a four foot roof hook spacing and then you can move your rail laterally. You can also mount these directly to the roof with other methods, for instance, and I’ll talk about them in a minute, a spanner method. So, whereas you know, you can find your outside legs can certainly mount directly to a rafter, but then the other two legs will have to be mounted to the roof decking with a toggle bolt, with a block between the rafters or with a spanner rod that’s going to connect right up through your roof hook, okay. So, in this case you have six roof penetrations as opposed to four roof penetrations. So, going back to the rail we’ve got the same square footage of collector, but we’re using only two roof penetrations for the bottom rail and only two roof penetrations for the top. And should you decide to not use a rail you would save yourself a bit of money, probably less than $50.00 savings because you’re going to have to buy two additional roof hooks, but now you have six roof penetrations, okay. So, you really want to try to minimize the number of roof penetrations. In the end it’s going to pay for itself. Okay, now there are several different ways to penetrate the roof, all of which should include a flashing. And the flashings can be made for asphalt shingles as well as cedar shake shingles, or ceramic tile shingles. Unfortunately, there’s no real good flashing for metal roof, but in the case of metal roofs, we use a rubber washer similar to the way the fasteners connect the roof to the rafters. The fasteners are designed to withstand the weather using the rubber washer on the top. So, we can recommend that same. When you use this type of system, where you have a flashing, you’ve got to be sure that your flashing extends up into the shingles at least four inches, okay. So, the only recommendation is that you choose your movement, your vertical movement, the location of your point of penetration, should allow for four inches of penetration up underneath the row of shingles above it, okay. Okay, now there’s five general methods that are tried and true for connecting directly to the roof, right. These have been in practice for quite some time. A spanner method with a threaded rod, this allows you to locate your points of penetration, regardless of location of the rafter. Okay, so the only draw back is you have to have access to the rafters, so for method number one, using a spanner will allow you to locate your point of penetration anywhere on the roof, but you have to have access to those rafters and you can simply put a block between the rafters and then drill up from the bottom, through the roof. That’s going to be your point of penetration. And rather than using a lag bolt you’ll use a threaded rod, okay. Now, in terms of a lag bolt with flashing, I’ve already spoke about that, but you do need to find the rafter, the exact location of the rafter because you’re going to want to split the rafter. Bosch makes a very nice rafter binder and I believe the cost is somewhere around $200.00, but that’s going to give you a very nice image with the exact locations of the rafters so that you can split and so you don’t jeopardize the integrity of the rafter. Another one is the “J” bolt. “J” bolt does the same as a lag bolt would do it’s just that the “J” bolt is to the side of the rafter rather than in the center of the rafter. Now, you still need to use a rafter finder or you can have access to the rafters and drill up from the bottom. Now, in terms of using this on a metal roof, these will all work on a metal roof, and metal roof manufacturers now recommend that you do not drill through the ridges, rather that you drill through the valleys of the middle roof and you use a rubber neoprene washer between the metal roof and your metal washer on the lag bolt. Okay, so you can in fact, use these with metal roofs, but as I mentioned, it’s very difficult to flash unless you build your roof around those. So, rather than using flashing, you’ll use a rubber washer that comes with our lag bolts, okay. So we sell separate lag bolts, they’re about 10 inches long, and they have the lag threads, wood threads, on the bottom with a double nut on the top separated by a rubber washer. So, you can fasten them directly down through the valley of your metal roofing as you would your fasteners. Greg that’s a great question. I’m not positive that the Bosch rafter finder works on metal roofs. I would have to guess that it would, although I cannot confirm that. Okay, now moving on to give you an idea of the “J” bolt detail, the “J” bolt, like I said, you have to locate your points of penetration directly next to the rafter and you have to be able to find the rafter. You’re going to drill from the bottom up through the roof rather than drilling from the top. This allows you to insert your “J” bolt up from the bottom and in the “J”. Part of that bolt will connect it with the rafter, okay. Now, when it comes to mounting the vacuum tubes to the roof, just like the flat plates, they don’t align themselves perfectly with the rafters. The points of penetration should really align themselves with the rafters. So, in this case its better that you use the rail system, okay. The rail will allow you to mount directly to the rafter and then if you see this photograph here, the feet of the evacuated tube collector, which are included, alright, so with a vacuum tube collector, you get the entire collector frame, some of which you may not need, but the details from the rail down will be the same for flat plates and evacuated tubes. The only difference is the connection between the vacuum tube collector and the rail will be accomplished by the feet of the collector, whereas the connection between a flat plate and the rail will be accomplished by a separate clip that comes with your mounting hardware, okay. Now, flat plate flush mounts are probably the most aesthetically appealing. And for those of you who have been through our level one training, you do recognize and you should remember that the performance losses from a decreased angle, are really quite minimal, okay. And so it’s hard to be exact without using a specific example, but for example, we have a roof pitch here that appears to be about 30 degrees. So, these collectors are mounted at 30. Knowing the location, presumably in Upstate New York, just I recognize this install in Syracuse, the angle, the optimum angle for this installation would be 42. So, they’ve lost 12 degrees in their angle by mounting them flush. What does 12 degrees do to the loss in performance? It turns out that they should have expected loss and performance of less than 6%, okay. And so what is the payback on that 6% in terms of aesthetics and also ease of installation? Flush mounts are much easier to install and they look much nicer, okay. So, please remember that many of your future jobs will be referral based, and most referrals, whether we like it or not, will be based on the aesthetic appeal, not only internally of the piping and tank and pump station arrangement, but also on the aesthetic appeal of the mounting, even more so because people will see those a lot more readily than they’ll see the internal guts of the system. So, please do consult with your sales rep or if you have specific questions you can email me regarding your losses and from, you know, a 30degree angle versus a 42 degree angle, would have a significant difference on aesthetic appeal. Okay, now in terms of mounting “T” profiles to the roof, the “T” profile is another option for using the rail system. This is a more cost effective approach, but the strength of these rails and versatility of the rails are less. So, SunMaxx has decided to go with a much more universal and versatile system, but we do still offer this “T” profile as they’re very cost effective solution for flush mount systems, okay. And what you see here is a photo of our hanger bolts that are mounted directly into a rafter with a piece of flashing and you see the black rubber gasket. Okay, the “T” profile is going to mount directly to the collector. You see the bolt being inserted into the manifold, err, I’m sorry, into the collector frame. This piece that you see on the roof here, it would be the top. And then for the bottom rail the orientation would be the opposite. So, most of the weight of that collector would mount on the bottom rail. Using the hanger bolt you can see a nice clean look. The rubber washer that you see here, in the case of a metal roof, would sit directly on that metal flashing or directly on the roof, okay. And these little clips secure the “T” rail to the hanger bolt. So, the amount of installation time required for this new system and the difference between the “T” rail is minimal. Both the roof hooks and the hanger bolt option is going to take you, honestly less than two minutes per penetration. Okay, so once you find the rafters, the penetration is securing the roof hook or the hanger bolt is less than two minutes. So, it’s quite easy to do. I want to point out a couple of variations in collector mounting, especially for the vacuum tubes; you can see a high degree of reflectivity is going to increase the performance upwards of ten to fifteen percent. And I’ve even seen collectors that are performing 20% more than what we would anticipate because of that reflectivity, okay. With a flush mount system reflectivity is very easy. You can simply paint the roof. One thing that we discourage is by adding too much behind the collector on a tilt mount because you’ll increase the wind load. Okay, SunMaxx has decided that the value in reflectivity, by including a reflective surface on the collector itself, reflectivity does decrease dramatically. And so you’re better by increasing the reflectivity of the roof rather than increasing the reflectivity by adding a structure to the collector because you do add a significant amount of wind load. Sherwin Williams, for example, makes a highly reflective roof paint that is sold at $30.00 a gallon and you can simply paint your roof as this photo on the top portrays here. With those three collector in series the roof has been updated to become highly reflective. Another consideration is mounting these collectors miscellaneous in moveable array, although in theory, may provide an added benefit by decreasing the production in the summer and increasing it in the winter, which is what you’d like to see for systems. It takes a very, very special design and in some cases may not be worth the cost because as you know, angle of inclination there’s a high degree, about a 30 degree window before you begin to suffer any serious losses. When mounting this system on a ridge, as you see here, will increase the performance because if the house if oriented from north to south with the ridge line, then your options, other than doing it on a ridge would be to face the collectors to the east or facing the collectors to the west. And again, if the house is oriented magnetically north and south, that doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re going to be that far off when you compensate for the magnetic declamation. So, you might not lose as much as you think by mounting them to the east or to the west. Richard, we don’t have a solution for ridge mount systems. A lot of it is going to be custom design. Now, I can tell you this, the hardware that is included with both the flat plates and the vacuum tubes, is universal and fully adjustable. So, with the additional purchase of a few extra rails and clips they can all be interconnected so that you can custom design a ridge mount. I will probably not recommend the ridge mount for flat plate collectors due to the significant wind load that would be involved there, okay. This is some examples of ground mount systems. Alright, the hardware that is included with the vacuum heat pipes, can be fully adjustable for ridge mount for ground mount. So, you notice the back legs are used to cantilever the bottom off. Okay, again, there’s very little wind load. So the frame that’s used to hold these collectors up really just needs to be designed to support the weight, okay. And the weight is only about 7 pounds per square foot, 5 pounds per square foot for flat plates. Flat roof installs with vacuum tubes are very easy to do. In this case we have very low wind load. So, these collectors are simply mounted or ballasted onto the roof with concrete pads, little concrete pavers to be exact and tapcons that are screwed. So, there’s no roof penetration. So, this is a gravel roof and basically the collectors are setting on the gravel roof with no penetrations at all. In the case… You have a little bit of shading. So, collectors can be used on apartment garages for shading. Richard, all of our mounting hardware is up to U.S. building code standards. So they are suitable for engineer stamps. Every piece that we use in our system has ratings that exceed required values. So, you could very easily get the engineered stamp with the hardware that’s included. Okay, and here’s another example of ridge mount rather than mounting it transverse along the ridge, it’s mounted parallel with the ridge, but the back legs are on the north face of the ridge and the front legs are on the south face of the ridge. Okay, this allows you to get a steep angle and disperse the weight of collector back on to both sides of the ridge. Again, you can do this effectively with vacuum heat pipes because of their low wind load. Okay, another example flat roof installs we do recommend that you bring the collectors up off the roof a minimum of one foot. No, I really don’t have anything at this point for awning mounts, although if Richard, if you email me I can give you a couple of examples. Okay, so we recommend that you bring your collectors up off the roof a minimum of 12 inches to get them out of the snow if you’re in snowy climates. And if you’re not in snowy climates then congratulations to you, although you probably do miss, or you would miss the snow, I think I would for all of its drawbacks. Okay, you can always increase performance easily with vacuum tubes as I mentioned by increasing the reflectivity and also by allowing any of that diffused radiation to strike the collectors on the back. Pole mounts are also a very good solution and… Okay, good thanks Richard. Pole mounts in some cases might be cost prohibitive. The photo on the left probably cost a considerable amount of money to get that south facing slope whereas if they had mounted on the east or the west they might not have lost as much as they think. In this case the collector, that single collector unit, is supported by a pole that houses the supply and the return. Concrete standoffs can be used on ground mount or roof mount. The picture on the left shows the concrete standoff being used on a gravel roof. And this is the Wallkill Prison job that has recently been completed, which is 18 inches up off the ground. Okay, and these are glued together. And then you fasten the feet or fasten to the concrete directly. I’d also like to point out summertime production can be decreased by mounting vacuum direct flow vertically, which gives you a lot of wintertime gain and then the photo with this installation where the gentleman built a roof so that both his rows of collectors are getting the wintertime gain, but the bottom row loses the summertime production because of the high angle of the sun. Ground mounts are easy to work with. If you decide to go with a ground mount you will have an easier time at washing your collectors, maintaining your collectors and also covering your collectors should you experience overheating system. Okay, drain backs to remind you, need to be mounted at a ¼ inch a tilt per foot. Both are flat plate titan power plus. And our vacuum tubes are suitable for drain back. Okay, in this case we have a rail mount using hanger bolts and the threaded rods; the double nut system is just used to create that angle on both the front and the back. Okay, to wrap it up a couple of important considerations that I want you to remember, that the universal mounting hardware is designed for any type of roof, not just any type of roof, but you can use them with any of our collectors, flush mount, tilt mount, flat roof mount, ground mount, ridge mount. It’s designed to be very customizable. And when you do decide to place an order with your sales rep be sure you know how you’d like to mount these collectors so they can very easily customize your mounting solution. Also, to remind you that our hardware does meet all the U.S. building codes, so you will be able to get engineered stamps with the use of our system. And not to preach to the choir, ‘cause I’m sure you know this, but it’s very important that you make every precaution to be sure there’s not going to be any water penetrations on your roof, okay. Your system will speak for itself and in performance and so will the lack of phone calls for service speak at your ability to install a system. So, please do make precautions that you don’t get a phone call during a rainy storm in the middle of the night. And also, know your local building codes. Your sales rep can forward to you our technical data sheets for all of our collectors that will include the information that might be required. Some building codes do require a very significant amount of detail for every single component and some don’t. So, you have to look at your own building codes. Okay, now, with that I’d like to thank you for joining us for this short discussion on mounting strategies. I welcome you to continue to join us. Hopefully you were able to pick up on some information. Stay tuned for next weeks solar webinar series and give us feedback, if you have any. I wish you all a great day and I thank you for your attention.

Solar Thermal System Commissioning 9.20.2010

admin — Tue, 21 Sep 2010 16:14:36 +0000

[iframe https://my.dimdim.com/view/reco/all/sunmaxx/default/e8508d96-b090-45ec-a34d-832ca85d1bb5 650 500] SUNMAXX SOLAR HOT WATER SOLUTIONS SOLAR THERMAL SYSTEM COMMISSIONING Date: 09/20/2010 Okay. Well I’d like to welcome you all to another installment of our SunMaxx solar hot water solutions webinar series. Today I’d like to talk briefly about solar thermal system commissioning for pressurized glycol systems. This is a really a much longer detailed process. But I will try to cover as much as possible within the next half an hour. Likely to go a little bit longer. I’d like to remind you if you have any questions. Please feel free to type a question in the chat box. And I will do my best to answer them accordingly. So as we go through this I would like to point out that all of these files have been archived and you will see some links. Hyper links to some of the texts. Which means that if you want to learn more about that particular topic. You download the PDF file from solarwebinars.com. Which is going to be newly updated probably by the end of the day. So download the archive and then you’ll have those links available to you. So the first thing I liked to discuss real quick is just the basic procedures for system commissioning. I’m going to go into a little bit more detail on all of the following mounting the collectors, setting the pipe runs, installing your storage tank, placement of the storage tank, piping of storage tank, pump station connections, mounting the pump station properly, expansion tank and then the controller. Programming the controller to do what you need it to do. Many of the controllers these days particularly the IntelliMaxx series of controllers allows a lot of flexibility in your system design. So it’s really a matter of choosing which array works best for your particular needs. Also pressurizing the system setting the line set and pressurizing that system. Flooding the system with water. Filtering it and purging it. Making sure there’s no air and no leaks. And then proper performance assessment. I know that many people will install a system and then move onto the next. But one of the most important things that most people forget is how to educate your client or at least see for yourself how we can do a performance assessment just using the gauges and a simple calculator. Then I’ll talk about some of the operations and maintenance things that should happen over the next few years to maintain a long system life. And prevent any future failures because as you know your success in this industry is going to be referral based. So you want to pay particular attention to the details surrounding operations and maintenance. Now safety is…There’s a few things that you’ve got to be sure of. I just highlighted a couple here for example. But just to remind you OSHA Standards must be observed and practiced. If you download the archive this will take your right to the OSHA website where those standards are in place. So this is an example when you see a light colored purple word with underlines that’s a hyperlink. All you have to do in the PDF is click on it and it will take you to the information to learn more. So the US solar code as well as OSHA states that you must wear gloves when handling non-tempered glass. So the evacuated tubes are non-tempered so therefore anytime you have those in your hand you have to have gloves on. Also harnesses are required any time your six feet off the ground. This is just an example of practices you must follow. But please look at the OSHA website for further clarification. Now when it comes to mounting the collectors. This is really just system commissioning. We’re not going to talk about sizing and orientation. But both of these links the technical manual. The technical manual lays out in very good detail proper orientation and inclination and shading and different roofing strategies. So I strongly encourage you to download the SunMaxx technical manual linked here for both the titan power and thermal power. Now with the flat plates for proper ventilation they really need to be mounted between thirty five and ninety degrees off of the horizon. For those of you who are in latitudes less then thirty five degrees there will be a very slight performance penalty less then five percent. If you are fifteen degrees off of that. But for good ventilation that is you want to remove all the moisture that might build up on the inside. The design of our titan powers is such that it eliminates any of that calcium build up you’ve seen on some of the other flat plate collectors. So our ventilation system works really well but they need to be mounted between thirty five and ninety. There’s such a low pressure drop between the collectors because they’re internally piped in parallel. That we can put ten of these in series. The installation time is minimal. You use compression fittings and the space that you can count on between one flat panel and the next is about an inch and a half. Now we have two different types of mounting hardware for the titan power. You have to decide whether it’s going to be a flush mount or a tilt mount. So for example a flat roof installation at thirty five degrees will be a tilt mount hardware. So your sales rep will be sure to have all the necessary components. And it is a very, very slick mounting hardware. But you have to make it clear with your sales rep whether you’re going to do flush or tilt. I’ll go over some of the details about that a little bit later. Thermal power again download the technical manual. These have to be mounted for performance wise between fifteen and seventy five. As some of you might remember the convection and the buoyancy of steam relies on a angle of fifteen degrees but no more than seventy five. In order for that steam to work it’s way all the way into the condenser ball. There is a significant amount of pressure drop in these evacuated tube collectors because there’s a lot of turbulence. And turbulence is good for heat exchange inside the manifold. But it limits the number that we can put in series. So two hundred and ten is the maximum number. There are always exceptions but as a good rule of thumb you don’t want to go more than two hundred ten. One for pressure drop reasons but also because you’re going to reduce your delta t between the heat transfer fluid and the manifold and thus reducing your heat exchange. Typical space between the collectors should be about six inches. That accounts for the one inch brass nipple and the one inch brass union. Between one manifold and the next. The hardware that is included with your thermal power is fully adjustable. So whether you’re going to do flush mount or tilt mount or compound or straddle the ridge. The hardware is included. So unlike the titan power the hardware for the thermal power are included. Titan power you need to clarify with your sales rep whether you want to do flush mount or tilt mount. Can I have a confirmation that someone can hear me? It’s coming through on my side. Now the titan power it includes a quick connect…Thanks Kevin. The titan power includes a quick connect adapter set that is required for each array that you have in series. So for example if you order one flat plate like this. You’re going to get this kit which includes all these brass components that you see. If you order two or three or five up to ten you’re still going to get that one brass connection set. Okay so you need one brass connection set for every row that you have in series. Now breaking down this brass connection set. You have your return side on the bottom left or the anatomical right with a plug on the top and bottom of the elbow. Your quick connect fittings the flexible stainless steel will connect right to the three quarter inch. The fittings that labeled return on the bottom left. That’s a three quarter inch mpt. A compression fit will fit right down on that. On the supply side on the top right there’s a manual air bleeder. So during system purging someone will be up there with a small wrench opening up the manual air vent. Allowing for the release and purging of air. Then there’s a sensor port that’s a dry well. So it’s a tube that the sensor will fit into which essentially creates a direct contact with the internal manifold. The heat transfer fluid will flow across that sensor port. You see a discolored fitting that screws into the sensor port. There’s a rubber washer in that. So as you tighten down that sensor port it secures it grip on the sensor cable. Then just like the return three quarter inch mpt the supply will also connect directly to your pipe threads. So on the top left you have a plug and on the bottom right you have a cap. So the fittings are included with the collector. Just to point out and remember you need one connection set. This isn’t really a decision that you have to make your sales rep will do it for you. Just so you know you only need one of these connection sets for every row that you have in series. All right now setting the pipe fronts. We strongly recommend if possible that you use a flexible stainless steel. It cuts down on your installation time. Its pressure and temperature ratings are equivalent to that of a type l copper. It comes pre-insulated with your sensor wire included. So you want to be sure one of the most important things that you can do in your system design is that the return side. The side that’s going back to the collectors is the longest side. The supply side should be the shorter side. As soon as you collect and gather the Btu’s from your collectors you want them in your tank as quickly as possible. So that’s a very simple a single decision design that you have to make. The return side is the one that’s going to extend the furtherest on the roof. Now with the flexible stuff you can manipulate the angle and the direction.

IntellaMaxx Solar Controllers 9.17.2010

admin — Tue, 21 Sep 2010 16:13:26 +0000

[iframe https://my.dimdim.com/view/reco/all/sunmaxx/default/e96d8610-03d9-468b-8ec2-492f55706256 650 500] SUNMAXX SOLAR HOT WATER SOLUTIONS INTELLAMAXX SOLAR CONTROLLERS Date: 9/17/2010 Folks, welcome to the SunMaxx series Solar Hot Water webinars. Today we’re talking about IntellaMaxx controllers. I’d like to speak with you about the different functionality of the controllers, programming and troubleshooting, as well as installation techniques. And as always, if you have any questions, I encourage you to type it in the chat box and we can try to address it right away. Ok, now SunMaxx offers two basic types of IntellaMaxx controllers and the functionality between these two basically covers just about everything we have been trying to do. Over the last few years, we’ve looked around and tried to design controllers and functions that don’t offer too much but at least the minimum capabilities. So, we’ve broken up into two classes: the domestic hot water and the combination system. A combisystem is one that does heat and hot water, okay. The IntellaMaxx-DHW processes two relays. Those two relays can be used for anything from valves to pumps or other switches for that matter. Both controllers, the IntellaMaxx and CombiPlus, take in 110 volts. They have an internal transformer so we can run a low voltage actuator if we need to off of that or we can run a high voltage pump higher than 110. So, there are four sensors on the basic hot water system. Those four sensors can be used for the collectors for the top of the storage tank, for the bottom of the storage tank, for a second storage tank altogether. You can also use one of the relays as a second recirculation pump. It gives you the opportunity to begin dumping heat from the solar tank into an existing tank when the conditions are right and it optimizes the collector’s efficiency. With the IntellaMaxx CombiPlus controller there are seven relays. Now this gives you a really broad range of types of capabilities. We can run multiple pumps using the pump logic, or we can run multiple valves, which is most optimally with a combination of both valve and pump logic. This has twelve sensors. Now, although you have twelve sensors, there are only seven of those that are going to be able to operate as a differential. And you have monitoring sensors that you will be able to plug in a VBus or data logging capability so that you can find what the temperature gain is across the collector. You can look at temperature losses from one section of run to the other. You can also input radiation. You can input flow meter data to measure the total of BTU output. CombiPlus will allow you to have up to five different storage tanks. Those five storage tanks give you the opportunity to regulate your storage capacity relative to production. And as many of you know, from one day to the next production may be cut in half or cut in a third. So, you try to size up your storage tank relative to the production. With production changes all the time, what we’re finding is that some of these systems that use multiple tank strategies are getting a higher efficiency therefore a higher output over the course of the season. So CombiPlus allows you to do that relatively easy. The DHWB Plus, domestic hot water basic plus, like I said it has two relays. There’s a thermostat function which means that one relay can be based on the differential which will turn on the pump based on the differential between the collector and the storage tank. The other rely can be used as a thermostatic function where we can execute a function based on a set temperature, not a differential but a set temperature, okay. We can install up to four PT1000 sensors. There are two relays, both are speed controlled. There’s a variable speed control associated with those relays. There is also a drainback option. The drainback option allows you to send 110 volts to a second pump to boost the head in that line until you get a siphoning effect at which point the second pump would shut off. That’s the booster function. Another drainback function is that if the collector temperature exceeds a set temperature that you can program in at 250 degrees, the pump will not kick on if the collectors are at that temperature, that prevents the flash steaming and basically little micro explosions of water losing pressure and reaching its boiling point instantaneously. Okay, so these controllers have that functionality and also have an anti-freeze function that is if you choose to use just water. It allows you the ability to begin transferring heat from your storage tank into the solar loop to prevent freezing and it can operate intermittently depending on the temperature of the line. You can also plug in the VBus. The VBus gives you the data logging capability and you can do some energy metering with a VT meter and flow meter. We can also program the system through RESOL and design this to transfer data through a service center that can be downloadable remotely. Okay, so there’s a lot of functionality built into this simple controller. Simple is a relative word in many areas and differential controllers such as the SunMaxx and IntellaMaxx controller is no exception. Its simple controllers, relative to the more complicated CombiPlus. This is our basic inexpensive controller that is suitable for 75 to 80 percent of the systems out there. Okay, some technical data, we won’t go over too much of it but just so you have it in reference. There are semiconductor relays, there’s three push buttons that mount on the wall, also can mount into a patch panel, and has four PT1000 sensors, and its 110-115 volt semiconductor relay. Just to remind you what I’ve just gone over, the number of collectors that are capable, and just to point out that it is not really collectors but rather the number of arrays, this is the number of return pipes that it can have. Each array in parallel would have its own return pipe with a separate pump and this gives you the ability to have two separate arrays. For example, if you had one array facing east and one array facing west, this control would allow you to operate two separate pumps independently of one another depending on the temperature. Now the CombiPlus controller has seven basic systems that are possible with this. And as I mentioned before, there are 13 sensor inputs, there’s a heating circuit and the control of three additional weather-compensated heating circuits by additional modules. So, this can be designed as a full house heating controller that you can monitor remotely using the VBus and it’s very easy to understand. This is a home heating controller that does solar in conjunction with a boiler, or furnace, a wood boiler, steam boiler, propane, that does not matter. It can control or tie into the thermostats of your house. The CombiPlus controller uses 100-240 volts. There’s standard push buttons on the front and twelve sensor inputs. There is a remote control input where you can have a remote temperature sensor, and it controls or you can add to it a sensor. There are thirteen relays, twelve of them are semiconductors, one is a free relay. You can tie into different boilers, outdoor ambient resets, flow control regulators. Some more of the technical information, what I’d like to do is forward to you the manual if you’d like to have it or you can go to sunmaxxsolar.com where you can download a copy of this manual. By downloading a copy and getting an idea of what systems you’d like to integrate there are different arrays. All you really need to do is click on the array that you think is most suitable and we can help you design it from there. By choosing the controller first, then all the system components will fall into place. A lot of guys will buy the system and then try to decide what kind of controller they want. We’ve already done a lot of that for you. We’ve offered two that cover every possible system that we’ve installed so far. The IntellaMaxx CombiPlus is going to give you a lot of versatility, slightly more expensive cost up front, but in the end it’s going to be able to do your heating system, you can tie a boiler and a furnace and a fan into this controller so it will take care of your heating system for you. Some of the accessories you can buy, one is the VBus also a data logger, and a VBus monitoring system. You can also get a system alarm so that if anything goes wrong with the perimeters that you’ve predetermined such as temperature or pressure then the alarm will be sent. It will either be activated directly or a message will be sent to your computer or flow switch. A flow switch is a very important device. In order to turn on the circulation between the tank and the external exchanger when there’s presence of domestic hot water flow. A flow switch allows you to bring the exchanger out of the tank, mount it externally, and when somebody pours hot water through the system that flow switch is automatically going to trigger a circulator to turn on to exchange heat from the tank into the exchanger, from the exchanger into the cold water supply. Another accessory is the VBus touch for iPhones. The iPhone gives you a pretty unique ability. As long as you have wireless capability, from your home you can log into your home’s network and open up the screen that shows the collector temperature. So as you see here, you have the temperature of the tank, the temperature of the top, the bottom, the flow, the temperature of the supply and return of the collectors, and you have the heat requirement, you have the radiation sensor you can read, you can look at the temperature or you can include a calorimeter. There are a lot of opportunities in using a VBus touch, especially with the iPhone. There is an application I believe for the Blackberry but I know the iPhone we have several dealers that use this and it’s neat to show off. On a good sunny day when you’re meeting with a client somewhere else you can simply pull this up and show them that the system is cranking out at 140 degrees now as we speak and it can be very impressive. Okay, as always I want to thank you for your time. Thank you for joining us. But, most importantly thank you for getting a hold of SunMaxx. One way or another, contact us again. Contact your sales rep, contact me if you’d like, and ask us what we can do for you. We want to help you. We want to train you. We want to make you more knowledgeable. We want to make sure you’re installing these right so we’re doing a lot of the homework for you by picking up the parts for your system. I would recommend buying a prepackaged system before anything else. But, once you begin to think out of the box it’s going to be important that you have a very good handle on what controller you need in order to get the job done that you would like to do. Nothing is impossible. Everything is possible. Turn to SunMaxx so we can help you figure out what is feasible and make sure you do it right. Thanks again. Get a hold of me and I’ll make sure you get in touch with the right person. Thanks again and have a super solar day. Take care.

Combi Heating System Design 9.13.2010

admin — Tue, 21 Sep 2010 16:11:46 +0000

[iframe https://my.dimdim.com/view/reco/all/sunmaxx/default/964aedc9-1668-4367-8bb4-0f3f25df5a97 650 500] SUNMAXX SOLAR HOT WATER SOLUTIONS COMBI HEATING SYSTEM DESIGN Date: 09/13/2010 Well I’d like to welcome everyone to Monday’s solar webinar series. Good morning everyone or good afternoon where ever you are in the country. Today I’d like to talk about Combi System designs. The Combi Systems are becoming more and more popular these days. Especially when the quality of the collector increases such that you can really harness a considerable amount of energy in the winter time. So again I’d like to welcome everybody and remind you if you have any questions please feel free to type them in the chat box there. I’ll try my best to get to them. I actually have a lot to talk about today. Any of you that know me realize there’s always a lot to talk about in solar. So I’ll try to keep it to thirty minutes. This is really just an ongoing conversation and this thirty minutes is devoted to Combi System design. Without further adieu…Over the years these are a few things that we’ve realized are most important to consider. In terms of the solar fraction often a higher solar fraction of the Combi Systems and the end result is a much longer payback. So thirty to sixty percent…And sixty is a really high solar fraction for Combi System. Generally the solar fractions that are working the best are in the neighborhood of thirty to forty percent are usually the greatest return. As you may know the reason for that is you produce a considerable amount of Btu’s in the summer time that you can not use. So now that thirty to sixty percent is pretty typical. You can get a higher solar fraction. But there really needs to be a way for you to utilize rather than just dump. But utilize that extra energy that you produce in the summer time. So right off the bat you should always realize and consider that a Combi System is a supplement. It’s just a solar supplementation to your existing fuel source. It supplements it usually in the neighborhood at thirty and at the very high end sixty percent. Another very important consideration is that there has to be a heat dump or a way to get rid of the excess energy. And I know that many of you know this already. Yet there’s still some systems that are over heating. Although you’ve installed a heat dump has it been designed properly? Is it capable of dissipating the appropriate amount of heat? Fluctuating production levels in some cases I know for New York State for example. We might be producing four times or five times the amount of energy in June then we do in December. So it’s very important that we look at the production not the average production or year round production but the production during the summer months. Also roof size is usually the limiting factor for heating systems. So when you’re talking to clients about designing a supplementation solar system. You really have to understand how much solar potential they have on the roof because often for residential systems the roof size is the limiting factor. When you design these systems or choose from some existing designs the ones that are giving us the highest utilization, greatest solar gain are the ones that eliminate as many heat exchanges as possible. I’m going to go through several different design strategies in just a few minutes. And you’ll realize that every time we have a heat exchanger we suffer a performance penalty. Storage volume is probably one of the most important things that you need to properly design. Although your storage is just going to store Btu’s that you can dump into your house. It’s not as straight forward as that because in many different temperature. Ambient temperatures require different quality Btu’s in order to heat your house. So what we’re really after is a balance between creating that quality Btu that you need for your heat dissipaters. But also being able to maximize collector efficiency. So traditionally what happens is the higher the quality the lower the collector efficiencies. So we want to try to identify exactly what that quality Btu is. When I say quality I’m referring to the temperature of the water. Also heat exchangers it can be….You try to design a very simple Combi System using one of the SunMaxx tanks or another type of tank. And you think well I can just add a three way valve and dump it into the house. But the fact is that many heat exchangers inside the storage tanks aren’t necessarily large enough to maintain a temperature in your house. Because the Btu load in your house is greater than the heat exchange capacity of that coil. So you have to understand what the heat exchange capacity is and also the flow rate. I just realized I’ve been talking for five minutes and haven’t had any confirmation. Would somebody please just confirm that they can hear me talk? Now another consideration is the angle…Okay good. Thanks Jamie. Now when you install the collectors you can fluctuate the performance directly by changing the angle. But unlike PV we typically set the angle once at a fixed angle. So you have to realize what it is that you’re trying to do. If you’re trying to create heat in the winter time then you really should set your angle at latitude plus fifteen degrees. The difference in performance although it’s relatively small every little bit helps. So for example if I have a angle my roof at forty five degrees and I want a nice flush mount for aesthetic appeal versus a fifty seven degree pitch. I can expect to lose less than ten percent performance. Probably even closer to five percent loss. But five percent loss might mean several hundred dollars a year. So you have to consider the aesthetic appeal but also the losses in efficiency. And your sales rep can help you determine what those losses will be. And exactly how many Btu’s are you sacrificing for the aesthetic appeal. Lastly and probably the thing that’s going to thread this entire next twenty three minutes together is that low temperature systems have the highest solar yield. Hands down. So there’s a few things that you can do to lower that temperature requirement beyond replacing your entire heating system. But whenever you have the situation that requires low temperature you can get in the neighborhood of forty to fifty percent more energy out of you collectors over the course of the winter with such a system. Okay just to do a quick little review the types of heating systems. You have radiant, the forced hot air and radiant base board. Radiant in floor heat is the lowest temperature of those three. So we see a higher utilization from our solar collectors when we have in floor radiant or sub floor radiant. I’ll talk about that in a few minutes too. Sub floor and in floor are both low temperature. In some cases with a concrete floor we can do ninety to ninety five degrees perhaps even less in the floor to maintain temperature. Where as radiant baseboard often needs one hundred forty and one hundred sixty degree temperature and even higher. So radiant baseboard although very popular in the US and relatively efficient becomes one of the least heating systems for solar tie in. Forced hot air works well although it’s a very inefficient way to heat your house because of the expansion and contraction of the air inside the house. It does have a quick recovery rate so the furnace turns on and the house can heat up in five minutes. Well what happens there is the house will expand. Then as it cools off it’s going to contract and naturally contraction is going to create a low pressure and it’s going to pull cold air in from the environment. Which causes the furnace to kick back on. One good thing about forced hot air with solar is that if you can adjust the fan speed it gives us a much larger degree of temperature range that we can tie into. We can blow a hundred degree air on the house as long as it’s not going to high above the speed. So that gives a lower temperature which means higher utilization on the solar. Just real quick as far as storage capacity. Okay just to throw it out there some of you maybe familiar already. But we typically size up our storage volume anywhere from one to three gallons per foot squared. But in order to determine what ratio we’re shooting for we have to know what the temperature requirement is. So storage capacity is completely dependent on first the temperature requirement. Secondly it’s dependent on the size of the collector array. So for high temperature also means high quality Btu we tend to be on the low end of that ratio. And lower temperature on the higher end. Now with baseboards the efficiency of the baseboard makes all the difference in the world. You can get some standard thin copper but what happens with this is it works very well at high temperatures but it doesn’t work well at all at low temperature. In fact if I send a hundred and twenty degrees through my thin copper. I’m only going to be able to dump thirty percent of the Btu’s into my house then I would if I was sending two hundred degree Fahrenheit water through the thin copper. This is a standard single thin copper run. There’s several different styles of baseboard and obviously the style that works the best with the solar is the one that operates at a lower temperature. You can see the Btu output of per foot with a sixty five degree air temperature. As the temperature increases we get exponential increase in our Btu output. One thing that you can do with regard to an existing non-modulating boiler is you can add…For example Techmar makes an outdoor ambient reset boiler control 256. What this is going to do is compare the outdoor ambient temperature relative to the necessary temperature indoors. And it’s going to re-adjust through some logarithms the necessary temperature of the fluid in the heat dissipaters. So as temperature decreases outdoors the solar utilization increases. And conversely as temperature decreases outdoor the solar utilization decreases. So what this will do is look and see outdoors if the temperature is say forty degrees well if a boiler is normally set at a hundred and seventy degrees. Then the boiler’s going to kick on at a hundred and seventy regardless of the outdoor temperature. An outdoor ambient reset is going to allow you to utilize your solar field for a much longer period of time. Especially during those shoulder seasons at the end of fall and the beginning of spring. Because without a modulating boiler or without an outdoor ambient reset the solar will not work unless it meets the set point of the boiler. What this does is it automatically adjusts the set point of the boiler relative to outdoor air temperature. So this is one of those holistic approaches to reducing and conserving your energy load. This is one of those components that can really save a homeowner the payback on one of these the installation might be one winter season. So it not only does it by itself independently reduce their fuel bill. But it also in conjunction with the solar field it increases utilization. So you get a positive feedback mechanism with an outdoor ambient reset. There’s a lot more I can go into it but I’m really just trying to shoot for a half hour discussion. Just to remind you if you have any questions I’m happy to help you out afterwards or point you in the right direction for some more resources. Heat emitters most radiant heat emitters operate at low temperature. Relatively low temperatures especially the newer ones. The ones we’re bringing over from Germany and Austria. They’ve been operating at lower temperatures for quite some time. They tend to be a bit more expensive. In floor heated slab with a low resistant covering or no covering at all is going to give you the lowest temperature. So you get the same amount of heat delivered into the house at a lower temperature. So the low quality Btu is less expensive. A thin slab on a floor is the next second best thing. I’m getting a message that the video is frozen. I can’t really….I’m going to have to continue because I don’t know if that is the case for everybody. But if for some of you that have technical difficulties this is being recorded so you can always access it again as it is being presented now. One thing we discovered is when it comes to in floor radiant systems. For example concrete the concrete is your thermal mass. And it’s your battery in a sense. So a six inch slab of concrete compared to water it takes about seven square feet. Seven square feet of six inch concrete to store the same amount of energy as six gallons of water. So if we’re designing a heating system and I look at the storage volume. Say I have a storage volume of four hundred gallons. Well four hundred gallons what that really means is that same amount of energy can be stored in seven hundred square feet of concrete slab. Which is a pretty small space. In that same line of thinking we realize that with concrete radiant floor the storage tank really only serves as a buffer. It doesn’t do much for storing energy because all the energy we produce can be stored directly in the floor. So often in knowing that you can get a higher utilization from your collectors with low temperature heat emitters. And some cases it may make sense to replace or supplement your existing heat emitters with low temperature heat emitters. And when done in conjunction with a solar array there’s other tax breaks that you maybe eligible for as well by replacing your heat emitters. Let’s take a look at a couple of examples of Combi System design. This first one is forced hot air. Most people maybe not you folks that are listening now. But most people don’t realize that we can take solar energy in liquid form off of the roof and dump it in through the air with a forced hot air furnace. Now one important note is that on the return plenum or the cold air return comes into the furnace is open and in this case we put the hydronic coil on the supply plenum. You can also put the hydronic coil on the return plenum. Some people have their cooling coil or their AC coil that’s taking up the space. So if you need to this hydronic coil can also go on the return. The only drawback is you’re going to be running hot air across your fan. There’s some speculation as to the longevity of your fan as it relates to having hot air rather than cold air move across it. Just looking at this real quick what we have is two heat exchangers on that solar tank. One heat exchanger on the bottom solar loop then the top coil is tied into the hydronic coil. That circulator between the tank and the hydronic coil will only activate when the set point. The set point of our…This thermostat right here if you can see this top thermistor on the solar tank. When that registers a temperature above the set point of the blower. Then this circulator will kick on if there’s a load. So all we have to do is re-wire the contacts in the furnace. So that when the thermostat calls for heat this takes priority. The solar tank takes priority and the circulator kicks on. When this circulator is on then the fan is one. So the fan actually receives a current from two relays. One relay is in parallel with this pump so that when the pump is one then the fan is on. The second relay is the same relay that fires the furnace. So when the solar tank is not up to temperature the circulator is off which causes the burner to kick on. Which will in turn cause the blower to kick on. Notice where you’re also using the storage tank as a hot and cold water. So the cold water comes into the bottom and as it passes through here to the diverting valve. This is an on demand modulating water heater. As the water passes into this diverting valve if the water is up to temperature already then the water continues on its normal path up to the load. As it reaches the diverting valve and it’s less than desired temperature then the hot water is diverted up into this on demand modulating boiler. Which picks up the slack and then dumps it out to the load. So from a single storage tank we’re tying in a furnace and a modulating boiler. I do realize that I’m going to go through these diagrams pretty quickly. Please remember to always access these they’re available to you and we can help you afterwards. Here’s another example where we have some space heating circuits that are zoned off. There’s a manifold valve actuators on each of the zones. In this case we brought the exchanger outside…External heat exchangers do have a higher efficiency of heat transfer then internal heat exchangers. The drawback is that they do require a second pump. Now there is occasionally some mineralization in on demand and other types of heat sources. So if you have a particularly hard water one of the first things if you haven’t done already is you want to try to treat that water. Many people for example Peter uses a primary secondary piping to prevent mineralization of the on demand. Now that’s a whole other topic all together. Perhaps I can do a webinar on secondary primary piping to avoid mineralization. I want to get through this real quick. Now this external heat exchanger requires that second pump. This is pump is going to be tied in parallel with this pump. So when this pump is on P1 then P3 is going to be on pulling heat out of the top of the tank through the heat exchanger. Just like the diverting valve in the previous diagram. As the return passes through this heat exchanger to the diverting valve if it’s up to temperature then its gong to send the flow back out to the zones. Okay which is going to be delivered by this pressure regulating circulator and these actuators will open to their corresponding zones. If the temperature at this point after the heat exchanger is not up to temp it’s going to run up into the boiler. Where the boiler will pick up the slack and then dump it out. Notice the close spaced tees. These basically promotes a hydraulic separation as it appears this pump one and pump two appear to be in series. But they don’t work against each other nor do they work with each other. Because of these closely spaced tees separate hydraulically these two pumps. So one of the common things that you’re going to see in all of these are a three way diverting valve. Three way diverting valves are easy to use. They run off a simple relay in most of the controllers. Certainly the controllers that SunMaxx offers. Now this next diagram is similar to the one I just showed you. The only difference is if we go back real quickly. In this case we’re using a heat exchanger between our solar tank and our heat zones. In this picture in this diagram we’re using a heat exchanger between our domestic hot water and a solar tank. Now this is very effective way to tie your domestic hot water into a storage tank. This storage tank contains the fluid that’s being delivered to the heat zones. Okay in this case we’re using low temperature panel radiators with thermostatic mixing valves in each room. So the difference just to repeat myself is that in the previous slide we have a heat exchanger externally that separates the heat load with the solar tank. In this diagram we’re using the entire volume of fluid in the tank being delivered to the heat load. Basically you suffer less performance penalty because the differential between the heat load and the solar tank is much less then the differential between the cold water supply and the solar tank. So in a sense you get a better heat transfer through this heat exchanger on the domestic side then you do in this previous picture using the brace plate to separate the solar and the heat. Now this diagram is probably the single best way because we see one heat exchanger here and that’s for your domestic supply. This is a drain back system. Yes, in the previous slide Don just to go back real quick. This heat exchanger is used for the domestic supply. One thing I didn’t mention is there needs to be a flow switch if you’re going to use a heat exchanger on the domestic side. Because this flow switch will activate the circulator that’s going to pull this circulator here…Pulls out of the storage tank under two conditions. One if there’s a load and the tank is up to temperature. The second condition is when there’s flow on this cold water side as indicated by the flow switch. Now back to the drain back system. If you notice the fluid that we’re sending through the collectors in this schematic is being delivered to the house. So the energy that we make is being swept away through the heat transfer fluid. Being stored temporarily in a buffer tank. Then being delivered to the zones. This situation is very similar to what I showed you before. We’re pulling off the top of the tank using a three way diverter valve. If the temperature meets the requirement then the flow continues out to the zones and is delivered by this pressure regulator circulator. If the temperature is not up to the set point then the three way valve will send the return up into the boiler. The boiler being modulating will pick up what it needs to and dump ten, twelve, twenty degrees back into the loop. Then it will send if off into the zones. Well I just had a comment regarding air pads. So regarding this particular set up here perhaps you could elaborate the…I’m not familiar with an air pad. But what we do have here is the drainage of this because of this air pressure control valve. So when these circulators shut off the air is going to rise up the small narrow diameter tube into the collectors. Which is going to cause all the fluid to drain into this pressurized storage tank. Now the coil inside the storage tank is transferring the heat into the domestic supply. So just based on flow no need for a flow switch. As the fluid enters the coils it’s being delivered right out of the tanks. So the only exchange that we have in this setup is the coil. Yeah, I just did have a note regarding air pads. So if anybody would like to comment on an air pad. More than happy to take a moment. Otherwise we’re going to keep on moving forward here. Now heat dumps you definitely need to have some type of a heat dump. If you have a pool you’re in good shape. Good so this air will not leak out of the drain back system. This is a closed loop drain back. There’s no where for air to escape. This bubble of air right here is essentially going to be nitrogen. If it is nitrogen then we know we have a closed loop drain back. The reason its nitrogen is because any of the oxygen that’s been in the system will be oxidized and the remainder of that air will be nitrogen. So with a closed loop system this air bubble is trapped by the force of those pumps right there. Those pumps are trapping the air in here. Once those pumps shut off then the air can escape back up into the collectors. But there’s no where for the air to go. This air is going to be in the tank or it’s going to be in the collectors. PSI is entirely dependent on the head that you have in the system. It’s dependent on the flow. It’s dependent on the pressure drop. PSI is not to exceed ninety. In a situation like this you’re going to need at least one atmosphere. So anywhere to fifteen to ninety PSI. In the event that leaks occur somewhere and you have some problem. Then hopefully this little air release will allow for any of the extra air that was…Eventually when the air comes into the system it’s going to work its way into this bubble. This bubble will displace any of the fluid that’s left up in the collectors as long as they’ve been pitched properly. But that’s a whole other discussion. In fact I think we’re going to do a drain back webinar soon. So I’m definitely going to make note of that and discuss the air elimination strategy. Now sizing heat dump real quick. You have to understand what the maximum production is going to be. The magic number for maximum production per square foot of standard thermal collectors both flat plates and evacuated tubes is 300 Btu’s per hour. So knowing that I have three hundred Btu’s per hour maximum production in June. You size up a heat dump relative to the square footage of your collector. For example if I have a hundred and twenty square feet times three hundred Btu’s an hour I need a heat dump that’s capable of the thirty six thousand Btu’s an hour. Now that’s not a very big heat dump. Most heat dumps in standard hydronic coils like this are going to be good for. Even a small one is forty to fifty thousand Btu’s an hour. I want to show you the picture maybe you’re familiar with a butler max over temperature unit. These are not recommended for Combi Systems as they aren’t as much a heat dump as they are a heat dissipater. Now let me just clarify the difference. A heat dump is something that’s going to actively dump excessive amount of energy out of the loop. These are a very effective insurance in any event that your pump shuts off and it protects your glycol from burning and turning acidic. But it’s not an operational component you should rely on to dump excessive amounts of energy out of your system. Now here’s another example of a heat dump the swimming pool. As you notice on this diagram we’re using again a three way diverting valve. Now this three way diverting valve is going to be drawn off of a relay from the controller. And it essentially heat exchanger is in parallel with your solar storage tank. So when your solar storage tank is up to temperature as indicated by the differential controller. The three way valve will automatically open. Now many of your controllers have thermostatic functions as well as differential functions. So in this case you’re going to use your differential controller’s thermostatic function. That is once this sensor at the top of the tank reaches one hundred and seventy five degrees. Whether the solar loop is running or not it’s automatically going to send voltage to this valve. Which is going to open it towards the shallow tube heat exchanger side. What that’s going to do if your solar circulator is still running. Your supply side of the collector is going to pass through the shallow tube and you’re going to bypass the storage tank. Now pools take a tremendous amount of Btu’s. So rarely is a pool unable to handle the Btu load produced. But to play it safe you should still understand the maximum production. Another way to size up a pool in terms of a heat dump is you want a one square foot of pool for every square foot of collector. If you’re less than that then you’re good to go. If you’re more than that then you should consider an extra heat dump. So one square foot of surface area to one square foot of area for the pool collector to pool 1:1 you should be good or less. Now in terms of storage tank. One thing I want you to notice here is that the solar fraction begins to drop off as you increase your storage tank size. So the recommendations that we make in terms of storage tank size relative to your collector field. Is completely dependent on your temperature requirement. As I mentioned before the lower the temperature requirement the larger the storage tank volume. But you reach a point where the storage tank volume becomes a hindrance to your total system efficiency because of all the losses. The thermal losses through conduction and radiation out of your storage tank become a hindrance to your total system efficiency. Although there’s a lot of different ideas and schools of thought in terms of storage tank. One thing’s for sure as you approach four to five gallons of storage per square foot of collector. The system efficiency will begin to drop. Solar fraction will also drop. It won’t continue to increase like this and you do see the relationship. So what you need to do is try to find and pinpoint where that intercept is. And that intercept is dependent on your temperature requirement. Another consideration is that your storage capacity can fluctuate. So we try to design systems that have fluctuating storage capacities whether we use two tanks or we maximize the stratification of one tank. And play with the stratifications so that in a sense we can have two storage tanks inside one storage. Because your production changes all the time as does your consumption. It’s not as straight forward relationship. So most heat exchangers are going to operate at about fifty percent for external heat exchangers and internal heat exchangers often times or even less than that. So here’s an example where you can design a system with two storage tanks to fluctuate the volume. These are in parallel off of the same solar loop. With a Combi System controller you have the ability to not only energize your solar loop and your re-circulation loop and have a high temperature shut off. You can have freeze protection and a Btu meter and variable speed drive. But you also want to be able to control your diverting valves. Those diverting valves not only tie into heating systems effectively but they can also be tied to multiple tanks. So whether you do multiple tanks in series or in parallel as shown here. So we have tank prioritization going on where the domestic hot water is taken care of for. The tank to your left or anatomical right is the domestic hot water tank. Once that tank is up to temperature the diverting valve will automatically send the solar fluid into the bottom coil of the second tank. Any surplus energy is then used to tie into heating system using the conventional method that I showed you before. The controllers that are used for Combi Systems are slightly more complex then your standard domestic hot water controller. Well, Don this would be an example where you’re not using glycol. Some systems are just using water and they’re circulating from the storage tank up to the roof at night when the temperature drops below thirty five. Its sacrifices estimated of ten to fifteen percent of your annual production. But some places some clients don’t want to use glycol at all. That gives you an ability to do that. The IntellaMaxx Combi Plus has twelve sensors. It allows you to tie into nine different. I has nine different functionalities. So it has pump logic and also valve logic. So we can control several different heating system, domestic hot water system, pumps and dump loops. So here’s an example I know you can’t see this. I took it right out of the manual for the IntellaMaxx Combi Plus. Just to point out though the important take away here is there’s several different arrays that you choose from. When you’re designing your Combi System try to stick with what we know works. So you might download our Combi Plus manual just to get an idea of what types of strategies you can use for a heating system. So I think that’s an important point and I’m going to repeat it. If you go to sunmaxxsolar.com you can find this manual. Download the Combi Plus manual just to see what the possibilities are so you have a framework that you’re working within. And try to design systems based on what works and what already works. I know many of you like to think out of the box which is a great thing. If you do come up with a great idea that you want to try out. Please consult one of your SunMaxx representatives or our engineering design team. Just to get a feel for how well we think it’s going to work and if there’s any drawbacks to it. So basically for Combi System you want to pick one of these arrays that seems to represent what you’re trying to do. It can be tweaked and modified a little bit. But you want to stick with… These systems have been proven and tested for many years in Europe. That’s how the controllers have been designed around systems that were working properly. So the functionality of the Combi Plus represents tried and true methods of Combi System layouts in Europe. I want to leave you with this website if you download the pdf it’s hyperlinked. The website is solarage. It’s www/solarage.com. What solarage is it’s basically case studies of European Combi Systems and there are hundreds of large scale, small scale, residential and commercial Combi System designs. Solar fractions detailed at post installation analysis and a lot of software was used to describe the performance of these. Your clients might want to see it as well. So I strongly encourage you to check out solarge if you are inclined for some case studies, analysis of these systems having been installed and maintained in Europe for a long time. I’ve gone over a little bit. But I would like to thank you for your attention. I want to remind you to visit solarwebinars.com for any archives. I did go a little bit fast. This Combi System is really a day or two or three days of discussion and training. The solar webinar series is designed to really just help you out and answer some questions that you have. To stimulate thought and really get you thinking. Really bring everyone together on the same page and be a resource for everyone. I’m always open for future suggestions for future webinars. I’m doing one today on drain back systems. So thanks Pete for those recommendations. I’m interested to learn more from you about the side arm heat analysis. So thanks again everyone I hope you have a great solar day. The weather is turning a little bit maybe that’s the best for some of you. But here in upstate New York it typically means low solar production and cold weather. So I’m trying to make the most of it. Have a great solar day everyone. Take care.

NABCEP Certification 9.7.2010

admin — Tue, 21 Sep 2010 16:10:30 +0000

[iframe https://my.dimdim.com/view/reco/all/sunmaxx/default/8dbc0793-9706-41f6-a347-4a90a493cd1f 650 500] SUNMAXX SOLAR HOT WATER SOLUTIONS NABCEP CERTIFICATION Date: 09/07/2010 Okay ladies and gentlemen, I’d like to welcome you to our next in series of our SunMaxx webinar, something we try to do every week. I’d like to spend about 30 minutes talking about NABCEP Certification. So I’d like to welcome you again and to remind all of you there that if you have any questions that you’d like me to cover I really do appreciate questions and I try to take the time to answer them. I also like tangents, although I try to stay focused. If there is a question you have please type it in the chat box and I’ll try my best to address it right away. Now, can I get a confirmation please from someone that you can hear and see me? Most importantly hear me? I’m sure you can but I just want to be sure. Great, thanks. Okay, so NABCEP some of you may be familiar with. NABCEP is the North American Board of Certified Energy Practitioners. NABCEP has been around for quite some time and originally they started as a certified body for PB installers and they have stuck with these three goals, and obviously you can see. The goals of NABCEP are really they benefit solar thermal and PB industries in general because they try to unify a standard and NABCEP is being considered by some as the gold standard for certification to ensure proper installation and maintenance and maximization of both PB and thermal. So right now, we’re really going to be talking about Thermal. NABCEP has seen a tremendous amount of growth over the last few years, and particularly in thermal. Part of the reason is with PB installers, the market is more mature I would say than the thermal market, and so the number of NABCEP installers sort of paralyzes the market penetration in PB. With thermal, the number of certified thermal installers is very, very low. So now is a very good time to begin the process for those of you who haven’t already. One thing I like about NABCEP is it really does give you a way to separate yourselves from local competition. Being able to say that you are NABCEP certified really turns the perception of your clients to you as being somebody that has met the gold standard and encourage your clients to perhaps look around locally for other thermal NABCEP certified installers. Since, right now, the list is so small you are very likely to separate yourselves from your competition. Ultimately, by improving the quality of the installation, it improves the public perception. So for those of you who know solar thermal well, our greatest competitor is public awareness and public perception. So by standardizing installation procedures and best practices and disseminating those best practices we are much more likely to create a sustainable, long-lasting growth market in solar thermal. So what are some benefits of being NABCEP certified for PB and thermal? These four bullets came right off the NABCEP site but they identify you as a professional and it instills the confidence. Many clients want to have case studies and they want to see examples – okay, well very good comment Steve. “No one knows who NABCEP is”. Now it’s not important, I don’t think, that you explain to your clients who NABCEP is. More importantly I think is that they understand that NABCEP is the gold standard. Sort of like a UL or Energy Star. There has to be some certifying body of not only the collectors, now SRCC, but also the installation. NABCEP isn’t going to certify the installation but that might be, as far as the public awareness, they may not know what NABCEP is, but it’s important that they know that there is a certifying body and that that gold standard is NABCEP and that you have met that. I think that there will be a shift. More and more people will understand what NABCEP is. Also it allows for mobility from state to state and being behind the scenes, personally, with different state and local governments, I do know that New York state, for example, is very likely to adopt a NABCEP certification as a requirement for a large body of funding that will be available for the thermal market. So NABCEP is one of those ways that allows for installers to move from region to region by having a broader certification. This is the mode of audio, so unfortunately, Theresa if you can’t hear me I’m going to have to move forward, and I’ll be happy to speak with you on the phone afterwards. Another thing is it allows you to distinguish your skills and experience. The criteria for NABCEP which I’ll cover shortly, is it’s not that easy to be certified. In fact, it has posed what some have called a “bottle neck” to becoming certified because it is so rigorous and time consuming. But ultimately, I feel very strongly that those criteria are in place for a good reason and that it allows you to maintain that distinguish. Now the solar thermal task analysis was written by experts in the field, people with a lot of experience. And it basically outlines the proper way to go about designing, sizing, adaptizing diagrams, commissioning, trouble-shooting, maintenance, roof mounting. Any course work that you’ve taken that is eligible for NABCEP continuing education credits has met the solar thermal task analysis, as SunMaxx’s course was really written around the solar thermal task analysis. So this is a very important body of text if you, for one thing, can just learn some tips or trade secrets that you weren’t familiar with. But also it brings all the thermal knowledge together in a cohesive form. So as you access this webinar after for a resource on SolarWebinars.com, I have hyperlinked many documents in this PowerPoint. So I really do encourage you to go back to SolarWebinars.com – look at the archives. In those archives you’ll see this NABCEP webinar which has many documents and references and resources that are hyperlinked so it gives you easy access to many of the things. So the solar thermal task analysis is one. I’m not going to take the time to go through each particular step. I just wanted to point out that this task analysis has been developed over a long period of time and it really represents a solid body of knowledge for solar thermal in the U.S. Now first of all NABCEP eligibility starts by, you have to be 18 years of age, which is pretty easy I think everybody meets that so far. Then you have to meet a pre-requisite of related experience or education. Now this second bullet is relatively loose. There is no predetermined that I have been able to find easily identified pre-requisite of related experience. So based on an application by application basis, they are going to look at what you’ve done previously or what experience you have educationally to determine whether you’re even eligible. This allows them to disclude certain people who have absolutely no hydronic or plumbing or HVAC experience and have no education. So if you’ve done any work in the field and you’ve gone to a community college or university it’s very likely that you meet that second one. You also have to complete an application as you noticed this is also hyperlinked so you can very easily click on the application for the exam. In order for you to sit for the exam, it is considered by some an honor to even sit for the exam, and so you have to complete the application. They’re going to determine, based on the above two criteria whether you’re eligible to sit for the exam or not. Then there is the online application that is hyperlinked that you can also apply for. There is a code of ethics, very standard in many contracting businesses. The fees can be up to $500.00 depending whether you’re seeking re-certification, if you’ve perhaps failed the first test, and you want to re-take the exam. I’ve identified at least $100.00 and up to $450.00 in fees that you plan on, each case is a little different. And then once you have applied to sit for the exam and you take and pass that written exam, there is a new schedule out for the spring I believe the next thermal exam is going to be offered in March of 2011. So once you pass the exam, now it’s time to meet the criteria. There is a whole list of criteria that you will have to meet. You actually have to meet one of these eight. So it’s like a boy scout getting a merit badge. You could do options a, b, c, or d; or if you do c then you don’t have to do e. But generally if you just follow along real quick, option 1a or b, you don’t have to do both. You can become certified if you pass the exam and if you have four years of experience installing solar hot water systems. Now some of these unknowns I’m going to identify for you in just a few moments. For example: What is experience? How do you classify experience? Or if you have two years of experience installing solar pool heating in addition to a board recognized training program. SunMaxx is a board recognized training program. So one of the 1a or 1b or option 2: Has two years experience in addition to 40 hours of accumulative continuing education training. Again I’ll identify what experience means in just a few moments. Or if you’re an existing licensed contractor in good standing in a solar related area with one year of solar thermal system installation. Another one, you could have four years of HVAC experience as a pipefitter, a mechanical, installing boilers, working for an oil company, servicing boilers, with one year of solar thermal experience. Three years of experience in a government or trade-union approved apprentice program, plus one year of experience installing solar thermal systems. Also two years of construction, engineering technology, or renewable energy with one year of solar thermal system experience. Or four years of engineering degree, plus one year of installing solar thermal systems. So someone who has an engineering degree can work in a solar thermal field for one year and be eligible. The last bullet is for solar PB installer certification to have to have 16 hours of board recognized training and installation of two solar hot water systems. That is a typo for #8 - Solar Thermal Installer Certification. If they have PB already plus 16 board recognized training hours and they’ve installed at least two solar hot water systems. So it’s very easy for someone to transfer over from being PB certified to thermal. John, you don’t have to have this experience before they will let you sit for the test. I highly recommend that you take the next available test and they’ll let you know whether you will be eligible to take it. But the eligibility for the test is really based on a very limited experience in HVAC or plumbing and/or college experience. So you can sit for the exam prior to meeting this requirement. System Installation. Part of the criteria was you have to have a system installed. It’s very important that if you claim credit for a particular system installation you have to have your name on either the permit or the inspection certificate. It’s important that you were one of the primaries in this installation as either the foreman or the project manager. You also have to have the system owner contact information and obviously the job site, some photographs, the county, the lot number, physical address. So if you have this information readily available it’s going to make your certification much easier. Now this isn’t something that you’re going to run out and try to take care of immediately. But it’s something that you should all be ready and expect that NABCEP is going to become more and more prevalent and more common for tax incentives or other thermal incentives that are available. Even private funding, energy companies, utility companies will adapt the NABCEP certification as really the gold standard, like I mentioned before. So it’s important that you get the ball rolling early. So what’s criteria for continuing education? In order to meet those 40 hours for one of the criteria, continuing education has to be accredited, not certified, but accredited by NABCEP. NABCEP adopts the ISO/ISPQ standard which is used by IREC, the interstate renewable energy counsel. IREC is what accredits continuing education courses. There’s really not a long list of accredited courses – you can find one. SunMaxx is 22.5 hours for our courses, levels I – III. So for those of you who have taken our levels I – III, we can resubmit a certificate for you to submit to NABCEP. I’ve hyperlinked the solar thermal task analysis because this is where, any courses that you have taken, if they meet the task analysis and they’ve been registered through NABCEP they can count towards that 40 hours. Here is an example of what you might expect - a certification. When we say you receive 22.5 credit hours for NABCEP, it’s really only useful when you apply for NABCEP. So you take your test, you pass the exam, and then you fill out the application. This certificate will be one of those things that you need to submit. They have on record the number of hours that, for example, level I solar hot water training, will be good for. So if you have any questions regarding this please let us know and we can be sure to send you out another copy if you don’t have yours. What is professional experience? Many of the criteria identified one year of professional experience. If you’ve worked in a trade-union plumbers union for two years, then you only need one year of professional experience. It says very clearly: One year of experience must include service, repair, installation of solar thermal systems and it must include a responsible role. What is this responsible role? A foreman, supervisor, site manager, or the experienced worker that has performed the installation that did the sweating, and installed the tank, and installed the collectors. But you must have been working without direct supervision. I’m not exactly sure how you define direct supervision. If you’re in the field alone and if you’re making decision on your own then your boss or superior should be able to certify that in a letter form that says “Joe, or John installed this system on his own and made his own decisions”. The professional experience is two solar hot water systems. So you have to have professional experience for one year. That one year of professional experience means you have to have installed two solar hot water systems. Those systems do require permitting. You want to try to be sure that your name is on the permit. That’s the sure way of guaranteeing that you will get credit. So one full year with two systems each will count towards one year of professional experience. Many people have asked when you do a hands-on training with SunMaxx, do those installations count towards professional experience? The answer is no. Unfortunately, you are not working without direct supervision. However, we do have opportunities for many of you who are having trouble becoming certified because you can’t get that professional experience. We do have opportunities that you can inquire about whereby we can put you in the field doing a system without direct supervision and help coordinate some of those efforts. Please do contact me if you have any questions about that. Lastly, I wanted to show you – yes, Steve if you go to SolarWebinars.com after this webinar you will be able to open up the PDF which will have these hyperlinks all downloadable and it’s especially important for this slide that we’re on here. What I’ve done is put together some of the most useful resources that I think will help you get your certification. Obviously the solar thermal study guide was developed by NABCEP so it would be in a sense the Bible of solar thermal NABCEP accreditation. It defines step-by-step – it’s a good study guide. For those of you who study for tests, this would be the thing that you want to download. Also the copper hand book - this is a pretty big document but it helps in design of systems and flow-rates and pressure drops and there is a lot of useful information. Probably not something you’re going to read cover to cover but it’s a good resource to have, especially when you’re trying to determine pressure drops, and volumes and piping and what not. Obviously the NABCEP application is downloadable right there. The exam scheduling form – in order for you to sit for an exam, like I mentioned before, you have to apply for that. This is the form that you would apply to in order to sit for the exam, and just to remind you the next exam I believe is going to be in March of 2011. There is also a nice article from Renewable Energy World describing NABCEPs growth and experience in the field over the last couple years. It gives you some good background information. Solar Thermal Incentives – many of you are familiar with DesireUSA.org but what you’ll see when you go to Desire is that more states are turning towards NABCEP certification in order to receive those incentives. Many of you may know that the PB incentives are driven based on the certified installers. It is very important for you to begin the process of becoming NABCEP certified because I anticipate many more states adopting that same requirement where the installers must be NABCEP certified as a general rule. There will be some incentives that are not installation driven, rather they are system certification. For instances, OG300. For systems that are OG300 it may not require that NABCEP certified installer put the system on the roof. But for systems that are not OG300, for example New York State, is likely to adopt the initiative where any system that’s not OG300 must be installed by a NABCEP solar thermal installer as one of the requirements. That would immediately give you and your company a huge advantage because there’s going to be a lot of funding coming down, as an example New York state, for this type of program - either OG300 or NABCEP. There is another resource guide I’d like to share with you for local requirements and you can see that NABCEP is becoming more and more common, not just for local utility programs but also state and federal level. The US Solar Codes is another very good resource, Uniform Plumbing Code. NABCEP certification handbook – this shows step-by-step what you need to do. It lays out what I’ve just discussed over the last few minutes. It lays out what you need to do in order to acquire that certification. It also gives you a nice time-line to work with and sort of keeps you on track. I would like to open it up to any questions if you have. I’d like to thank you first of all for joining me. NABCEP, in closing, is probably the single most important certification, I think, that you can get as a professional solar thermal installer. It’s early enough now that you can still use it to your advantage. It separates yourself from your clients, and it separates your business. Someone mentioned that NABCEP is not very well known, particularly with home-owners, but what is important is that they recognize that you have acquired the gold standard certification for installations. Anything short of that would be a huge portfolio with case studies and testimonies from all of your home-owners. They’re probably going to want to see existing installations. So if you can show them that you’ve taken the initiative to become NABCEP certified, I think it’s probably the single more important thing that you can do to create a sustainable business for yourself. As always, I like to keep it short, and I would like to thank you for your attention. Please join us again next week. We have a pretty good schedule over the next couple months in place, always open to new ideas. Tim, the references I just listed are probably the best ones that I found: the solar thermal task analysis, the study guide. I don’t have any others that I can recommend right now other than what I’ve put there. Here is the weblink: SolarWebinars.com. If you go to www.solarwebinars.com, give our IT department just a few minutes and they will upload this and you should be able to download the PDF where all of the hyperlinks. That website, I think it’s SolarABCs Theresa. Check it out, open up all those hyperlinks and I think you’ll find they’re pretty worth while. It has been a whole year, what would that be one year requirement? So if you have installed two domestic hot water systems, then you will meet that requirement. If you’d like to e-mail me and ask me some specific questions, if you’d like me to take a look at a system or some pictures to see if it would meet the requirement, I would be more than happy to. I’m more than happy to help all of you out and I thank you again for joining us. Please stay tuned for your next invitation and have a great solar day. Luckily up here in upstate New York the sun is out so I think we’re going to be making some BTUs today. Okay, take care all and have a great week. Bye-bye.

Solar Thermal Piping 9.1.2010

admin — Tue, 21 Sep 2010 16:09:17 +0000

[iframe https://my.dimdim.com/view/reco/all/sunmaxx/default/53686bf2-5297-480f-a691-d43c711043be 650 500] SUNMAXX SOLAR HOT WATER SOLUTIONS SOLAR THERMAL PIPING Date: 09/01/2010 All right, well today’s topic is going to be solar thermal piping, and as many of you may know there’s a tremendous variability in the way you pipe a system, and piping really does influence performance in many ways. Not only performance, but also cost. So you’ve got to try to maximize performance and minimize cost, so there’s a few things you have to consider and what I’ve seen most is that guys are using pipe sizing that is too big. Too big in the sense that it works and there’s really no downside other than initial cost, and you would sacrifice a little bit of performance. So, we’ll move right along here. When you’re designing a system, there are certain considerations that have to be made with regard to piping. Before I go too far, I should have done this - can someone confirm that you can hear me? I’m sure you can, but I like to find out ahead of time before I get too far into the meeting. All right, great, thanks. Okay, so obviously piping is really going to be determined on flow rate, okay I don’t want to state the obvious, but flow rate is probably the most important factor in maximizing collector efficiency. So the flow rate is dependent on the collector, and the piping is dependent on the flow rate. So, I’m going to talk more about how to determine flow rate, and why it’s important in sizing up your system. Also, for those of you who aren’t hearing anything, it must be a local issue. Perhaps you can make some adjustments on your speaker volume, and if we go through this and unfortunately if you can’t still hear, then you might access the archives and you’ll be able to. Okay, now your pipe sizing is also - you have to consider the temperature, not just the pipe sizing, but the type of pipe used. Many people are inclined to go with the least expensive, of which would be some pex tubing. Now as most of you know, pex tubing cannot be used for solar thermal systems. The rating at 180 degrees is still, if the system is running well, 180 is fine, but if Murphy has anything to do with it, there will be times when you might bring a 220 degree shot of steam down off of the roof, in which case it would melt and violently explode your pex. So, as a manufacturer, we recommend that you don’t use pex tubing at any part of the solar loop. Now pressure drop is another important consideration because it over the life of the system, the more pressure drop the more energy you’re going to have to consume with the pump and then that energy cost money. So you want to try to design the system that first accommodates the flow rate, but also reduces the pressure drop. Now, obviously as I said before, you want to have the smallest diameter pipe possible, but the smaller diameter pipe also increases pressure drop, so there’s an intercept that we have to identify with the least pressure drop and the smallest diameter. Volume inside the piping is another important consideration because volume in some regards can be used as a buffer. Especially with larger systems, we can step up the size of the pipe because we want a larger volume of fluid in the pipe to act as a buffer because perhaps we’ve reduced the storage volume. And that can impact your system volume in your storage by 100 or 200 gallons by changing the diameter of the pipe, particularly for commercial jobs. Installation and aesthetics, you know as you see this picture here, there’s probably about 18 feet of piping, but it’s been designed in a way that you see only about 3 feet of it. So you really want to consider how you’re going to pipe it, how it’s going to look on the roof, and then ultimately the cost. So, first of all, as I said, the most important thing is determining flow rate. So flow rate has to be determined by the total foot of the collector. If you have certain collectors in banks or in rows, then each row is going to have to have its own unique flow rate. Now if the layout of the system is not balanced, each array or each row may receive a different flow rate. The only real way to accomplish that unbalanced system is through the use of balancing valves, which I’ll talk about a little bit more later. So for flat plates, the TitanPower, now this is unique to this manufacturer’s recommendations, obviously other manufacturers will have different recommendations, but we recommend a .022 gallons per minute per foot squared. Okay, so that is for all collectors in series. So one collector in series would be 21 square feet times .022, if you had 10 collectors in series, then it’s 10 times 21 times .022. Now you’re going to add the parallel arrays to get your total GPM, but each array will have a unique GPM. So, when you’re doing these calculations, you first have to add up the total square footage of each row, and then add the rows together. For vacuum tubes, the thermal power brand, we recommend .028. Now these flow rates are very closely connected, so if you were to build a hybrid system, which I know Pete Skinner of E2G Solar has been doing some studies on the use of hybrid systems, where we’re flowing flat plate into vacuum tube, and interestingly enough time and again those hybrid systems have been outperforming both the flat plate and the similar sized vacuum tubes. That’s a discussion in itself. But if you do, then knowing that the flow rate required for each of those are close enough that you would probably shoot for middle of the road, so with a hybrid system you would go with .025, okay. Now, the flow rate then, once you’ve established your flow rate, then we have to determine what size diameter is going to be able to handle that pipe. Now generally you want to use the smallest diameter pipe. We have some systems out in California that are running with 3/8 copper tubing. Now the diameter of the pipe is really going to determine how many total BTUs can be transferred through there. And it always works out that the limiting factor of the flow rate for the collectors is usually less than what the BTU capacity that diameter pipe is anyway. So, there’s two ways to size pipe. One would be how many BTUs can you actually transfer through that diameter pipe, and the other is what’s the flow rate required for the collectors? And so we’ve always found that by using the flow rate to the collectors, you’re always going to be able to handle the minimum, or at least you’ll be producing less than the minimum BTUs that that diameter pipe can transfer, if you understand what I meant there. So, total flow is really a function of velocity times volume. So, if we know we need a certain flow through the collectors, we have to understand what the volume in the collectors are, or in the piping, and then the velocity. Now the velocity, we can obviously increase the flow without increasing the volume simply by increasing the velocity, but there’s a threshold of velocity that we need to stay less than, and that’s 5 feet per second. One of the dangers is you get some particulate abrasion, the friction that’s created against the walls of the soft Type L copper, even the stainless steel, over time will erode the manifolds, the inside of the flat plates. So I'll show you some charts in just a few moments. It looks at the function of velocity and volume and how it relates to flow rate. Another consideration for pipe size is the pressure drop. So the higher the velocity, the greater the pressure drop. The larger the diameter, the lower the pressure drop. So as I said, we want to find that intercept between having the smaller diameter pipe possible, keeping that velocity less than five feet per second, and reducing the pressure drop. Anybody have any questions? Okay, it appears on my screens that you may not be able to read this chart. And I can make this available to you. This comes out of the U.S. solar handbook that was written back in the '80s. And I'll reference it for everybody at the end, if you like. But basically this lays out for us examples of different pipe sizes and flow rates, using a 50/50 mix of propylene glycol and 150 per foot is going to give us, if we're using half-inch, about a 14 psi drop in pressure. And as you can see, if we increase the velocity from 4 feet per second to 6 feet per second, the pressure drop doubles. So an increase of 30% in velocity, the pressure drop doubles. So that's a pretty consistent relationship that you have to remember. It's a disproportionate increase. And that's true with any diameter pipe. So we really have to be careful of increasing the velocity too much. Another consideration is balancing the system. So once we've determined our pipe diameter, for example, just to back up one second. If we typically install ours for residential system, we'll go with 3/4" pipe. Without really making any other considerations, 3/4" pipe would work and it makes your decision easy. But the difference of 3/4" pipe, perhaps you can use 1/2". For a one-collector or two-collector job, your flow rates only going to be about 1 to 2 gallons a minute. And at 2 gallons a minute, we can use the 1/2" pipe. So you're going to be able to save, if you have 200 feet of piping, you can save a considerable amount of money by reducing that pipe volume, or pipe diameter. So I want to point your attention to the fact that many times, and I say that with a lot of experience, most systems that I've been involved with selling or designing, the initial design always has pipes that are oversized. Now, that's not a 100% "you've got to reduce the pipe," because, remember, the larger volume means lower pressure drop. And a lot of the pumps that come into our pump stations and other manufacturers' similar pump stations, they're really designed for optimum operation at 3 to 4 gallons per minute. So when we get up to 5 or 6 collectors, that is to say, 150 square feet a collector, then it's time to go to a larger pump. But anything less than that, you should consider reducing the volume or the diameter of the pipe. Now onto balancing systems. Now, as I mentioned flow rate being most important, you have to make sure that each array has the appropriate flow rate. Putting collectors up on the roof, piping them according to manufacturer specs, and then walking away and looking at your flow rate down at the pump station, you may know you're sending 2 gallons a minute up to the roof. But if you have multiple arrays or several rows or even two rows or two collectors in parallel, you have to be sure that each collector is receiving the right flow. And there's really two ways to do this. The most traditional is reverse return piping. By making sure that each loop has the same pressure drop, the pressure drop in that case would be a function of the pipe length. So by using reverse return, you balance the pressure drop. By balancing the pressure drop, you indirectly balance the flow rates. Now flat plates, most of them on the market now use internal reverse return piping. So I'll show you some diagrams here momentarily. Even though you may assemble the collectors in series, internally they're really piped in parallel. Yeah, I just got a reminder. All of our webinars are archived at solarwebinar.com. And I think we're up to 11 now, maybe 12. So you can always access these. If you have to leave, I certainly wouldn't be offended. But please remember that if there's questions, feel free to ask them now. I'll just give you my e-mail later. You can e-mail me. And as always, you can access these archives at solarwebinars.com. One of the considerations with reverse return, especially in colder climates, is you do suffer from a greater amount of heat loss, because you will have more external piping. The other option for balancing systems is to use balancing valves. One thing I've noticed with talking to 3,000 or more installers across the country is, generally, there's a division between reverse return piping has generally been accepted by plumbers. Plumbers tend to use reverse return piping. And it guarantees that a system will be balanced inherently based on the pressure drop. Yes, there is audio recording as well, Eric. Yup. Balancing valves have been most often adopted by HVAC professionals. Now balancing valves will cost a little bit more, but they can be adjusted. So if you add onto an array or you reduce an array, you can always adjust it. So it's much easier, I think, over the life of the system to ensure the proper flow rate through the use of balancing valves. A drawback, obviously, is it will cost you a little bit more. And it does increase the pressure drop, which means that you will need a larger pump. And lastly, the balancing valves will go bad. Everything has a life, a shelf life. A valve will go bad before a pipe goes bad. So if long-term maintenance is an issue and a concern of yours, then you probably would consider doing reverse return. Now as I mentioned, I just want to point out, these half-hour webinars are intended to peak you interest, to help answer some questions you have. But it's very difficult to cover everything that I'd like to say about piping in 30 minutes. So I just want to remind you to e-mail me questions. We can help answer anything else, beyond what I can cover in just 30 minutes. Piping series vs. parallel. Many of you may understand the efficiency and how efficiency is determined, whether it's TI - TA and the fact that the colder the temperature coming in, ultimately the higher the efficiency will be for the collector. So by putting collectors in parallel, each collector will have the same Delta-T, and thus each collector will exhibit not only the same efficiency, but you'll have higher efficiencies in each of those collectors. Now that efficiency increase is really proportionate to the size of the system. So if you only have two collectors, you're not going to see much difference, whether you put those collectors in series vs. parallel. But in a larger system, in the end, parallel banks will yield a higher efficiency. It also does lower the pressure drop, which will cost you less money or cost the client less money in the end. Putting banks in parallel does require more external piping as well. So external piping means more heat loss. So these are considerations. It's not an end-all. It's not going to answer everything. But you do have to consider how much external piping will I need if I put these banks in parallel. Now in series, it's a trade-off, although you will lower the efficiency, the result will be a higher temperature. So we've been doing this a lot with systems where we're tying into heating systems that have a high temperature load. The more--

SunMaxx Product Overview 8.23.2010

admin — Tue, 21 Sep 2010 16:08:31 +0000

[iframe https://my.dimdim.com/view/all/sunmaxx/default/5aed89c3-9e52-476b-a07e-1c38e4279803 650 500] SUNMAXX SOLAR HOT WATER SOLUTIONS PRODUCT OVERVIEW Date: 08/23/2010 Ok, well good morning folks. This is our 10th edition of the SunMaxx Solar webinar series. I’d like to start on time and I know people will join as we go along here. So today’s webinar is going to be on product. The various SunMaxx brands that we have established, and some of the details surrounding those, and I would just like to remind everyone that you can ask questions in the chat box. Ok, so, over the last couple of years, SunMaxx has developed a brand and within the brand we have developed different associated icons for all of our components, so if you look at this flow chart, it just, it’s going to layout the guidelines- the format for our discussion today. It starts with our collectors. Okay, we have two different styles as you know the evacuated tube and the flat plate. The flat plate collectors we have branded as TitanPower, so SunMaxx TitanPower, and then the evacuated tube collectors have been branded ThermoPower. So those are the two main divisions, each of which can be designed and integrated into systems that include the rest of the components. Going counter clockwise, you see ConnectMaxx. ConnectMaxx is our system of option hardware, they can be designed for single collectors or as in the most recent job at Harvard, the entire mounting system was pre-fabricated-- pre-engineered/pre-fab, and installed very easily on the roofs of Harvard. This you know we have a newly commissioned 150 TitanPower Plus collector system on Harvard. Okay, another brand is StorMaxx. StorMaxx is our line of tanks both pressurized and non-pressurized. And IntelliMaxx. IntelliMaxx are the controllers, and the associated components, flow meters, and BTU meters. And then line set, we have branded as FlowMaxx, and so the FlowMaxx line set includes 5/8 inch, 3/4 inch, 1 inch, flexible stainless steel. And then our pump stations that tie everything together we refer to as our UniMaxx. Now these names are going to be the precursor to the sku. So, for instance if you are looking for a vacuum heat pipe, it will be thermal power vhp30, or pump station, it would be UniMaxx 3/4 inch line set would be FlowMaxx 3/4, okay, and lastly we have a line of PV panels that we're referring to as GridMaxx. Now just to let you know our GridMaxx panels are among the highest performers, especially after 30 years, I believe it's still 80% after 30 years. Okay, so this is our branding structure. And then in the center of it all, the heart of our company is our training. We feel very strongly-- we believe the power of education, and hence the name EduPower. So SunMaxx EduPower --thanks Carl--, SunMaxx EduPower is our branding for our training. Now we train not only installers and dealers, but we also do homeowner training, we do distributor training, training for engineers, training for architects, training for sales reps, training for designers and training for trainers. So we feel that in order for us to be-- have a sustainable business model, our systems need to be designed and installed properly. And the number one thing that we can do is train them. Everything we know, we want to be able to convey to our dealers and installers immediately, so we have best practices, and we have all of our product updates, and everything that we know, you know. And we do that through our training program. Webinar series is one example of how SunMaxx is dedicated to increasing public awareness. Okay, let's get on with things. So, what I have in mind here is to go over all the different products and some of the things that you may or may not remember. A couple of the selling features and the installing features, some key points for installation. The TitanPower flat plates are our latest-- latest and greatest I suppose. They've caught on really quick. They are a high performer, they're small, very manageable, with only 21 square foot absorber. Another thing that I like about them is the compression fittings. On the right hand side you see a female. 2 - 1/4 inch females, and on the right hand side of the collector are the male connections. So it allows you to mount one collector right next to another with only about an inch and a half in between. The tinox absorber used in the TitanPower Plus is welded ultra-sonically to the risers. This gives a clear linear formation which makes it-- increases its aesthetic appeal. Internally the collectors piped in reverse return. So you don't need any additional piping between the collectors at all. We can put 10 of these in series, okay, so for commercial jobs, it becomes very appealing to be able to mount one collector right after another without any external piping whatsoever. Each collector is usually-- gets about 1/2 a gallon per minute. More specifically, it's about .022 gallons per minute per square ft of collector. And the collector is 21 square ft. Also it's one square meter by 2 square meter, so it makes it very easy for sizing systems when we base them on square meters. One of these high performing flat plates can produce about 40 to 60 gallons of hot water per day depending on, obviously, your location. Another thing I like about it which you can sort of see here in this picture is the very thin profile. The glass covers about 97% of the entire surface, so there is no lip or edge on the collector itself. And there is a very high tech ventilation system which prevents any calcium buildup from the inside of the collector. We'll find, even though this is a relatively new collector to the market, I'm certain that we'll see over the next year or two that this rises to the top, based on some of the features, and not only on performance. Okay, with your TitanPower Plus collectors, you're gonna receive a universal connection set. Now this connection set allows you to pipe in a very slick format-- or in a very nice way, it looks highly professional. But more importantly, these connection sets come with ports for your sensor. It comes with a manual air vent. And they come with plugs and caps when, obviously, a plug for the female side and a cap for the male side. It allows you to mount your quick connect from your line set directly to the connection set so there is no for-- no need whatsoever for sweating. And just to remind you that if I have 10 collectors in series, I only need one connection set, because the collectors will mount to one another, okay. So I use one connection set for one collector, or I use one connection set for 10 collectors. You need one connection set for the number of rows that you have, okay. Just to show a little bit-- a closeup. This connection set comes with a cap and a plug and it screws right to the male side, and the opposite is true for the female. This one mounts to the female side, and you see this dry well port that screws in, this allows the sensor to be embedded into the manifold without increasing any potential loss or degradation of the sensor because it's not bathed in the fluid. Okay, the mounting hardware that's associated with our collectors is universal, okay. We have the hangar bolts with the clips. A couple of different style of mounting hardware. In fact we are modifying it slightly to make our mounting hardware truly universal for both our vacuum heat pipes and our TitanPowers. But the flat plate itself is frameless in that it doesn't require additional support so this T profile you see, there is one at the top and one at the bottom that is stabilized with these bolts that bolt directly to the collector. That makes for the installation very easy. Okay, our ThermoPower, we have two styles, the vacuum heat pipe and vacuum direct flow. VHP will be the 3 letter sequence that's used to describe the vacuum heat pipe collectors. This one on the roof is a vacuum heat pipe and it has leading SRCC performance per dollar. Most of you are familiar with our SunMaxx 20, SunMaxx 25, SunMaxx 30, these are now referred to as ThermoPower, VHP ThermoPower, and VDF, that's the vacuum direct flow. Vacuum direct flow is used for when we have a façade mount, when we want to mount it on the façade so you increase your winter time production and decrease your production in the summer. These façade mounts for heat pipe--sorry for vacuum tubes can only be used with a direct flow. Remember the heat pipe requires an angle. We have to mount our heat pipes at 15 to 75 degrees and the U-pipes or the direct flow can be mounted at any angle whatsoever. So in this photo you see both the heat pipe and the direct flow. The direct flow is not SRCC certified however, so it's very important to make that clear expectation upfront. So your savings comes on the front end rather than on the backend, because the direct flow produces more BTU's per dollar, than the heat pipe does, given its existing low price for the direct flow. Okay, a couple things I want to point out that this PowerPoint is available to your at SolarWebinars.com and go into the archives section. You have the PDF's of all these PowerPoint that you can use as a reference. So although I may go fast, please remember this is all available to you in PDF form at SolarWebinars.com. So the ThermoPower vacuum heat pipe has a large coated condenser, its nickel coated and-- [Carl the name changed only, everything else is the same, we have just gone with ThermoPower to describe our vacuum heat pipes]. The manifold has a flow rate of 3/4 inch which means we can get about 7 gallons a minute through one of the manifolds. 7 gallons a minute however, means that we can only put 210 tubes in series, okay. Remember the flow rate is dependent on the number of tubes and for example the ThermoPower VHP has a flow rate of .028 gallons per minute per tube. So when we average that out, we try to keep our velocity less than 5 1/2 feet per second. It tells us that we can basically put about 210 tubes in series. Now be very cautious, there are a lot of other considerations that need to be made, but as a general rule of thumb, 210 tubes can be the maximum that we are gonna put in series, okay. Okay, just to break down the vacuum heat pipe again, you have your twin tube, which is the double walled glass tube with a selective coating on the inside, the heat transfer fin which is aluminum, as that aluminum heats up it increases the surface area contact of the glass, it also squeezes the heat pipe which its surrounding, and the heat pipe remember has a vacuum that causes a low boiling point in this secret solution inside the heat pipe that I can't tell you about -- water. And as the water boils, it rises up into the condenser valve and transferred into the dry fit of the manifold. A couple of things that I wanted to remind everybody, the gasket-- when you install these heat pipe--the gasket needs to be inserted prior to putting the glass tube in. And once you have the glass tube in the bottom, then you're gonna put this high temperature silicon grease around the nickel coating. And if you do this as the picture shows, it creates a nice even spread. Just to remind you, some guys are forgetting to that even though it says it. Now our StorMaxx-- our tanks are referred to as StorMaxx, okay. So we have our TitanPower, we have our ThermoPower, and our storage tanks are referred to as StorMaxx. We have 3 options really here. We have two pressurized, which are the StorMaxx DW, and the StorMaxx-Ptec, okay. Those are both pressurized tanks. Our StorMaxx MP is our non-pressure series. I'll talk more about that in just a moment. So with the StorMaxx DW, DW stands for double walled, okay, there are many situations across the country where double walled heat exchangers are required, and if that's the case our StorMaxx DW is gonna suit that need. The Ptec is our latest tank and it's as highly, highly well designed tank that we've manufactured in Germany that has an enamel coating, and a couple of other features that I'll talk about in just one second. Okay, now back to the StorMaxx pressurized DW. This is a-- has a Hydrastone lining on the inside of the tank. Now what this does is it prevents, and it really prolongs corrosion of the tank itself. It allows-- it's porous, but it doesn't allow for the direct exposure of oxygen to the steel, okay. And obviously, oxygen is the root of all corrosion problems, so by eliminating that with a Hydrastone, you prolong the life of the tank. It does mean that the tank is considerably more expensive. StorMaxx DW, an 80 gallon tank might retail for, somewhere in the neighborhood of 1600 - 1700 dollars. But what your gonna get is two removable double walled heat coils, okay. Those double walled heat exchangers required for OG300 systems and it's got a pretty high output. 90,000 BTUs an hour is an extremely high output for a copper coil-- a submerged copper coil. Another feature is that it's removable, so if the coil needs to be serviced or replaced, it can very easily removed, and additionally, there's an existing 5000 watt heating element. So this StorMaxx DW becomes-- although it's slightly more expensive up front-- it becomes a stand alone, in that it has a heating element at 5000 watts, should cover everything you need. It also has a removable heating coil, and it's quite heavy. So once it gets down in the basement, you probably won't need to or want to remove that for quite some time. And additionally, it's made in the US. Okay, our PTEC tank-- I really like this new PTEC tank because it's got a couple-- it's got dual protection-- triple protection against corrosion, first of which is the enamel coating. The enamel coating is baked on and it's in accordance with DIN4753 part 6. It also has two coils-- two steel coils the tank. The bottom coil is used for a solar loop, top coil is used for a heating loop or a recirculation loop. It also has one inch ports, now this is good especially when you're talking about light commercial. So one inch port, it's gonna allow you for a good cold water flow of 12-15 gallons a minute, which means car washes, laundry mats, things like that, the StorMaxx PTEC is a perfect solution. Another component-- or a feature of the PTEC tanks is the 4 inch port on the back that allows you to clean these tanks out. I know for a fact that hotels perform tank maintenance often, and they can really extend the life of their tank by draining it out, by cleaning the debris from the bottom, and that debris can be anything from manganese or bits and pieces of calcium-- some calcium carbonate-- but that 4 inch port on the bottom allows you to clean that out completely. It also has a nice beefy anode coming down right from the top. It's a very thick anode, and it's gonna prevent corrosion. The life expentancy of these tanks is equal to the life expectancy of the whole system . This will not be a limiting factor for you. A good 20 years you should expect out of this system . There is not a heating element included, however there is an inch and half port that you can add a heating element, okay. So for-- I believe these PTEC tanks are less than 1000 dollars, 80 gallons. They come in 65, 80, 105 and 130, with larger sizes to be offered soon. It's a very good solution for heating system and Combi system tie ins. Okay, with the non-pressure tanks, one of the benefits of this is that you can take it down to different spaces where you wouldn't normally be able to fit a 200 or 300 or 400 gallon storage tank. It's fully collapsible and it's easily moved by two people. And once it's in place, somebody literally gets inside the tank and forces the sides out until it fits into a pre-cut bottom to represent the necessary dimensions. Now each of these tanks is customizable so depending on your situation and you've worked with your sales rep, we will design this tank for you to suit your needs. The different design issues are open port vs. closed ports, different number of coils, the length of the coils the diameter of the coils, the proper flow rate, the level inside the tank that you want to extract the heat from. So there is different considerations that we can make for these things. And if it's installed properly you should see a good 20 to 30 years out of it because there's-- internally there's nothing that's gonna corrode. Having non-pressure-- anything that’s relieved of pressure always have a longer life expectancy. The limiting factor here would be temperature. So you've gotta be sure to begin taking heat out of the tank once we approach-- it's really 180, but you want to probably start removing heat as soon as you get around 170, you want to begin taking heat out. So these are all custom built and a really good solution, especially for larger systems-- I have a couple of tanks in place that are about 4000 gallons and they serve as a pre-heat to a hotel with 65 gallons a minute requirement. So we can do just about anything that you need to do with these StorMaxx non-pressure tanks. [Carl, the lining is EPDM, so that will theoretically begin to melt at those higher temperatures. And so the manufacturer recommends the temperature under the boiling point, or melting point, obviously of that rubber, and we recommend a temperature less than the recommended temperature by the manufacturer which is less than the melting point of the EPDM. So we recommend that you begin to dump heat off at 165, certainly by 175.] Okay, our StorMaxx non-pressure exchangers, we use copper coil-- I'm not going to go too much detail for the sake of time, but for the solar domestic water loops, we have 60, 90, and 120 foot coils. And typically size up the solar and domestic hot water loop based on the number of BTU's that it can exchange. For example, six TitanPowers has an absorber of 126 square feet. Now I would typically decide to go with 1 foot of coil per 1 foot of collector, but to be specific, we need 105 feet of coil. So I'm always inclined to round up when it comes to heat exchangers, so for a 105 foot requirement, I'm gonna recommend a 120 foot, and same is true for heating loops, you can see it here on the right hand side of this graph or this slide. If you have any questions, please do email me and I can go over some of the things specifically, or your sales rep is trained to be able to answer any questions regarding heat exchangers. Now there are pump stations, as I mentioned, we referred to our pump stations as UniMaxx, the UniMaxx-Plus and the UniMaxx-PlusB. Basically the same components, the UniMaxx-Plus however has our BS plus controller which has two relays. The UniMaxx-PlusB does not have a controller. They are all brass components, PAW is the manufacturer of the components. The UniMaxx-Plus has an air separator, temperature gauges, port for the expansion tank, relief valve is set at 87. There is a well designed fill station that directly connects to our fill station, a flow meter for direct assessment of flow, and ports for the supply and return. Again, for the sake of time, I will go relatively quick, but you are more than welcome to email me if you have any further questions. And we have two pumps with our pump stations, the Wilo and the Grundfos both of which have different pump curves. I just want to point out that we do consider your headloss very specifically when we make our recommendations as to what size pump you're going to use. So before we just throw out a system of pre-packaged kit, it is very important for us to understand what your flow rate requirement is and what your pressure drop will be. The UniMaxx-PlusB is a simpler version of the UniMaxx-Plus, as well as it does not have a controller. So for those of you who need a pump station without a controller, you'll probably be better off going with the UniMaxx-PlusB, and you can see the pump performance here on the little chart. All connections are 3/4 inch NPT, and it uses a 6 gallon tank for the expansion vessel. Now the IntelliMaxx is our brand for controllers. Generally we offer two different brands, one is the DHW Plus, and the other is the Combi-Plus. We do have some variations of these two controllers, but for the most part, you order IntelliMaxx controller, our designers will choose from one of these two, the DHW Plus, or the Combi-Plus. The DHW Plus is the basic controller, it has two relays, a thermostat function which allows it to operate at a set temperature, rather than at a differential, so to clarify, it has differential function, obviously, but in addition to the differential function it has thermostat function. And this is nice because you can set a heat dump at 165. So once the temperature of S2 reaches 165, the contacts in that relay will close, and it's not different on the differential, rather than a thermostat function. Okay, it can accept up to four PT1000 sensors. With your controller you'll get a black sensor and a grey sensor. Okay, the black sensor is always used for the -- for the solar loop, because it's heat resistant. You can choose from 10 different sensors -- 10 different systems with this controller and it also allows you to attach the Vbus. The Combi-Plus now has 12 sensor inputs. So rather than having 2 relays, like the DHW B Plus, this one has 9 relays. 9 relays give you a tremendous amount of options. So I believe there is somewhere in the neighborhood of 30-32 different systems that can be programmed using the IntelliMaxx Combi-Plus. Now we have shopped around and we've looked at the different functionality of different controllers and we feel very strongly that this Combi-Plus controller is the most versatile that we can offer in trying to standardize things as much as possible. The controller accessories-- the IntelliMaxx-Ezlog, the IntelliMaxx-Flow and the EZConnect, these are things that are used to monitor your system, so if you'd like to monitor performance then you are going to need the IntelliMaxx Flow, this sends an analog signal to the Ezlog which then is converted into BTUs because if we know the flow rate and we know the temperature across the exchanger then we can very easily determine the BTU production. So the Ezlog will allow you to dump into a computer either using a wireless modem or using a cable plugged directly into the hard drive, and that way you can access the data over long periods of time to study performance. It's very good marketing, for case study analysis. We have many installers that will install these into their clients systems for an added cost of maybe 400 dollars. It allows them to monitor systems and use those monitoring devices for marketing. Our FlowMaxx line set, like I mentioned before, comes in 5/8, 3/4, and 1 inch diameter. They come in rolls of 35, 50, and 80 foot, and when you look at the price of a substitute, let's say [] copper, with your closed cell alter temp foam, with the thermostat wire already included, and then the labor involved, it really makes sense to go with a flexible line set. For one thing the labor involved is minimum, you could have an 80 foot run with only 2 fittings and go-- you don't have to-- especially when you are going through crawl spaces, or attic spaces, or chase ways, you can run this right down. Now you also want to look at the aesthetics, you know, if you've got along run where you're really looking for a straight line, well maybe that's an opportunity to go with just some straight copper and you can very easily tie copper into this and then go from this back into copper. So you might look at a combination approach. In my mind, the flexible stainless steel is most beneficial for places where you need to flex. So it is a good product and it's at a great price, so if you looking to increase your efficiency, and increase your revenue, this might be an opportunity for you to do that. Just to show you real quick how we connect our fittings, all we need to do is use a standard pipe cutter, put the nut in place, and then the C clamp - clamps in place, we bring the nut up and then we tighten it using a-- two pipe wrenches. Tighten that plug down into the nut that you seated on to the stainless steel first, and what that's gonna do is take that aluminum plate that you put in place and create a flange. And that used in conjunction with the graphite washer will never leak, and in fact the more torque you put on this, the tighter the seal. There is a limit, but you really-- you won't be able to put much more torque than what's required anyway. We've installed lots of these systems with using nothing but flexible stainless steel and our quick connects and no leaks right off the bat. I highly recommend trying these out. Now our fill station is an accessory product that we offer. It has a half horse power pump, and it's really gonna increase your efficiency of your installations. The added cost up front is gonna pay for itself the first couple of jobs, easily. It holds 8 gallons of glycol and water mixture, it can pressurize up to-- I believe it can pressurize up to 70-75psi, and it's just a cleaner job. You take your hoses, hook it up to the filling station that you can see on this diagram, and then flick the switch, it does it for you. It's got a filter; that's one of the nice befits about this is, there's a little filter down at the bottom that allows you to basically fill your system up first time without having to purge it. A lot of guys will fill their system up and then purge it to get any of the debris out, any flux or stuff from soldering or just dust in the piping, you don't really want to get those in your pumps and in your valves, so filtering is a good idea, regardless, and this filling station comes with a filter. Okay, our drainback tanks-- both of collectors the TitanPower and the TitanThermoPower can be used with drainbacks, and we have-- there is more and more interest with drainbacks these days, so we have a nice drainback tank that comes out of-- it's made in America, and there is internal coils, or no coil, whichever you prefer, if your gonna do a retro fit or build new, that will determine. Your sales rep can help you figure out which tank is best for you, but these are as good as they can and very easily tied into our collectors. For those of you who don't know too much about drainbacks, we will be doing a webinar on drainbacks within the next month, so please stay tuned for that webinar. Drainbacks are becoming more and more popular, and we're going to talk about the considerations of those. Our heat exchangers are coined XMaxx. X as in accessories, and so heat exchangers are an accessory to the SunMaxx brand and we coin them XMaxx. So generally we have 3 types: the XMaxx brazed plates the XMaxx Air to Water and the XMaxx Shell n Tube. Subsequently, their sku's are XMaxx BP, XMaxx AW and XMaxx ST. Now for more questions and product brochures, please contact your sales rep, and you can get these right off. You can also access all these product brochures at SunMaxxSolar.com as well. And another heat exchanger that some of you might be familiar with is the Wand, this fits inside of an existing domestic hot water tank. As you can see, you have the supply and return from the solar loop which is inside of a double walled heat exchanger, and the hot water supply which is only reduced by about 15-20 % flow, comes up out of this port and then that connects to your shower or your hot water load. These wands are very effective at stabilizing the stratifications inside of a storage tank. They are cost effective if nobody has room for an external tank or pre-heat tank and all they want to do is tie a collector with a pump into their existing tank, this is a perfect solution, the XMaxx-Wand. It does also come with OG-300 certificate. The heat dumps-- the SunMaxx heat dumps-- these are the non-pressurized heat dumps. Some of you may have seen these and noticed them as being-- changed color. They have gone through a little different design. There's also this large one on the top. This is used for more larger systems, commercial projects. And these have been coined as the SPOC - the self-pressurizing over-temperature canister. What we call them SunMaxx heat dump BB, as in Barry Butler. Okay, any questions you have on these, I'd be happy to help you out with more outside of this webinar. And additionally we have the pool heaters, our FAFCO brand pool heaters are very easy to install. Probably the solution for anyone who is looking to heat their pool in the summer time, this is the solution for them, please ask your sales rep for more information about our pool heaters, and our various components that come with the pool heaters. And lastly GoodMaxx. GoodMaxx is our brand of PV Panels. We have both 180 and 220 watts. Each of them come with a 10, a 12, or 30 year warranty. Additionally there is a tolerance of +5 watts that we can guarantee, and a very high efficiency rating upwards of 15% under certain conditions. And the GoodMaxx comes in 180 and 220 watts, so please ask your-- additionally the Good Maxx comes with a ConnectMaxx mounting hardware that can be pre-assembled and lifted onsite pre-engineered and pre-designed, so GoodMaxx is the entire package with inverters, charge controllers, and mounting hardware. Okay, I've gone over 8 minutes, I started a couple of minutes late so I don't feel too bad, but I would like to end this formally, and that way I can keep any of our future listeners interested. Thanks again, and I hope you all have a sunny day. Looks like we're under some severe rain here in Upstate New York and it's likely to continue for the next couple days, so I hope you all have some sun somewhere, wherever you are. Have a great day. Take care.

Solar Thermal Site Survey 8.16.2010

admin — Tue, 21 Sep 2010 16:07:33 +0000

[iframe https://my.dimdim.com/view/all/sunmaxx/default/7196a36e-6e18-4567-909b-71c44943eb2a 650 500] SUNMAXX SOLAR HOT WATER SOLUTIONS SOLAR THERMAL SITE SURVEY Date : 08/16/2010 Solar Thermal Site Survey: This is an other addition of our sunmaxx solar webinar series, Today we are going to talk about Solar Thermal Site Surveys as well as T*SOL, later on the program shared with our product manager will discuss how to properly design and size the system using T*SOL. So the first half-hour I will talk about site surveys I'd like to remind everyone that I more welcome to ask questions in the chat box and I will try my best to answer them right away. Ok Well, What I like to discuss this morning around this afternoon is how to properly survey a project that is lot of considerations they have to be made, many of them are fairly consistent from ever from with one project to another and some are relatively unique but its important you understand all the considerations okay anywhere any questions, here we go, one of the first things you have to do is determine the solar potential of your client and that should be done before you give them any indication of what your system can perform how well it can perform and there are many ways to analyzes the solar potential and I will talk about those little bit but that's got to be your number one priority right off the bat is what type of solar potential do they have chances are using a thermal collectors of today whether flat platter or aqudity two. I personally run across very very few rooftops that has a minimal solar potential , even you know, some that are half shaded or 75% shaded will still yield a decent amount of solar energy, so it's not that you wanted to disclude anyone from using solar but you have to accurately assess their solar potential so we can figure out exactly what a system can do for them. because as you may know already it's all about expectations. Few properly survey a system or a project is starts with solar potential and you really shouldn't say anything to the client regarding solar potential until that it's been accomplished. Another consideration site surveys is in our experience is that when they are done professionally they become a very intercrop part of the sales process and so it starts out as being well dressed and well spoken but it's not opportunity for you or your sales rep for your engineer, designer to accomplish much of the sales process as you walk around the home whether the wood building it up on the roof or as the key questions the clients can very easily assess your knowledge. So be cautious of sending someone to do a site survey just for the purpose. So site surveys have dual purposes or triple purposes and not the least of which is actually the most important is to gain a sale and by assessing the project in a very professional manner with someone who is knowledgeable and who can also design a system on the spot determine solar potential, the client is going to be much more confident your ability and another consideration to make it easier sunmaxx developed prepackaged kits and leave practice of always thinking so prepackaged kits right off the bat. So for just about every system we have seen leave developer prepackaged kits, another not to say that those prepackaged kits campy customizable but it's very important that you first look at the prepackaged kit options and then the last point I would like to say in this introduction is that you should never overstate the system's ability, like I said briefly that it’s all about expectations. So you want to be very conservative in your estimates early on. So that it gives the system and ability and opportunity over performed and lot of your future job sources the ability of your other company will rely on our referrals. So any customer that is disappointed in their system, from our experience, disappointment lies in their expectations. So we set expectations properly accurately the beginning then you can set yourself up for success that is very very important. We learnt from our mistakes of early on that over emphasizing the system ability will inevitably lead to disappointed in performance. Now one of the first thing you should do before you can do a site surveys qualify your leads. You can spend a considerable amount of time, chasing leads around, doing site surveys, only to find that those leads have really had the interest begin with or that you know after the proposals done the financials are working out in the 8 to 10 year payback and other some cases whether financially it doesn't just exclusively financially doesn't make a lot of sense. So it’s very important for you to determine which of the site surveys you're going to fall through with. Another question is, are you going to offer free site surveys, we should allow this lot of success in trade shows and at public events where companies that offer free site surveys, will have an number of leads to fall through it, that's a good thing but it's also report prioritize those leads and qualified them, in qualifying leads for site surveys you want to first determine their hot water load and be sure that they have a hot water load , hot water loadss compared to heating loads , hot water loads will afford the client much better payback in a higher return. So if you have 26 surveys you want to take a look and identify those the first of the large hot water load and secondly the ones that have a consistent look throughout the year. lastly if you can determine the status time those that are paying a premium rate for instance if someone is using natural gas versus electricity. the client is using electricity largely have a much better payback. so you can save yourself a lot of time I think, by qualifying your leads in determining which ones will percent of the best financials after the site survey. I have listed a few of those quotations in order of these are essentially the low hanging fruits of the solar thermal market large water load a consistent usage throughout the year relatively consistent anyway and those that pay a premium rate from descending order would be fossil fuel and number two diesel, electricity, propane and natural gas, so the best feedback sure are those clients are using fuel oil, second would be electricity then propane and natural gas. it's very important you do your background information, in other words, you should really try to do your homework before you go to the site survey. There's many things you can learn from your client without actually going to the house. I listed some bullets that goal will give you little bit of detail and if there's ways you can find and determine how water usage and their low profile you can come into the site survey with relatively decent amount of knowledge that would eventually lead to more confidence in your client, for instance, looking at the water usage, programs such as retscreen will help you determine how water usage indirectly through the hotels, llaundromats, restaurants, hospitals, nursing homes and different manufacturing and the like.So you can get relatively good idea of how water usage before you even step foot on the property. Another thing you'd want to try to do for commercial properties in particular it get over the superintendent or the head of maintenance that person is going to give you access to places that before you do an official meeting or our proposal you wanted to be sure every these opportunities lined up. So you can see the weather skin on the roof , couple of the tools you can use, as mentioned here roof ray, you can go to roofray.com this is a site that allows you to measure and determine solar potential of most any roof, is certainly in North America and have seen several South American, I can speak for the ability to look at a roof and in the Middle East, but roofray.com is simply plug in the address very similar to Google Earth, might use the same software but more importantly it allows you to plot out the roof and determine the size of the roof, so that before you go to the site surveys you already have 50% of that solar potential done. Next thing you want to find out ahead of time as possible is what type of boilers do they used and what type of fuel and how much they pay for that fuel. This helps you qualify those. Another important point to make is, in the end after the site surveys done and your proposals done, you really have to build communicate with the person who is going to make the decision. Now with residential clients is very easy, because you know that the husband or wife and sometimes unfortunate enough they'll both make that decision but often there is board or someone who is going to be responsible for making the ultimate decision. You should do some background research to find out who that person is so that ultimately you can be in front of them and convince them directly. Other thing to learn ahead of time is Francis organization has some existing initiatives that you can piggyback the solar thermal upgrade with this part of capital improvement, do they intend to do any energy upgrades, replacing boilers or replacing chillers will be doing the roof or any other capitol projects. This again is just as head is as homework ahead of time. So you can come into it with some well-informed suggestions with regard to capitol projects, you can bring the cost of your system laid down by including into an existing upgrade. Also once you identify the decision-makers, what is it that really drives the decisions are they green minded, are they really just looking for to save money, are they looking for tax rid off, are they image-conscious and they have clients in hotels or apartment buildings. Today they intend to promote their building as being green and energy smart. another thing that you can do ahead of time is to being contacted with sunmaxx rep, let them know that you planned to do the site survey for particular job in and they might be able to offer some suggestions or similar systems that we've recently designed and sold and be sure you have your pricing all figured out ahead of time because it does help to offer clients ballpark figures. You want to be very careful in a conservative in that but many people like to you know as part of a second stage qualification. many people like to have an idea of what a system might cost them and so I highly recommended that you have your price list, not necessarily memorized but you know what ballpark you will be working within, what overhead and margins you'd expect and also may be the price is part of a bid. So what type of bid is, we will be bidding on an old job or is it just commercial but you should know what type of bid and also for larger systems , some homework ahead a time is identified, some bonding capacity, any requirements in terms of insurance and what type of bond you need to hold case of this is also that needs to be done ahead of time if possible of that gives you the more professional parents as you begin to meet with them face-to-face doing a site survey you obviously done your homework and will go along ways to purchase sales cycle. So a proper site surveys is very important, I have listed only really 5 reasons why proper site surveys is important but there's many more, simply for all solar thermal systems must achieve 50% solar fraction and really the only way to determine that solar fraction is to do a proper site survey. Site surveys don't always require on-site. They can be done using virtual methods and indirect load calculations but most often site surveys will need to be able to determine the load so that solar fraction can be assessed. Another reason that proper site surveys are important is that clients especially the ones early on many of your early clients are typically the ones that are more well-informed than others and the well-informed clients need to feel confident that all the considerations have been made. It also gives you an ability to demonstrate your knowledge as you do the site survey look at the site survey as an opportunity to demonstrate your knowledge and like I said before, it's a very important part of the sales cycle, whether it’s on phone or face-to-face, it's important that they understand, how knowledgeable and passionate you are. If they see that you are, you may be all very knowledgeable but perhaps you don't have the passion that’s going to obviously reflect poorly on your business, but you wouldn't be listening to this if you're passionate already, I would imagined such as myself. also remembers many ways to size and design systems and they properly survey project will give the client the best fit, whether it's you go with your option is flat plates, evacuated tubes, still mount, flush mount, train back, close loop. There is many ways it is important that you have a host of methods that you can install these. The most successful installers will be the ones that has the largest degree of variability I guess in their systems, so that you can pick from your magic at the system that suits their situation the best. In other way to do that is with proper site survey and I will leave you with this last point on the slide is that site surveys will properly size systems and that the filling the rooftop is not the best solution and one thing that we found when you suggest that a smaller system is better, it immediately indicates to the client figure out for their benefit as well as your own. obviously you make more money on a bigger system but it is important for the client to know that bigger systems are not always better in your recommendation is that they have the best system and not the biggest system. Any questions at this point. On-site semi-exterior considerations that must be made in determining your solar potential are the first two bullets; obviously the size but also the orientation which direction does the roof phase and will this orientation of the existing roof hindered the aesthetic appeal. so it's important to know that you know if you feel the roof is facing/the slope is facing north west or south east or it's not a dealbreaker but that's a consideration we need to use to determine the potential of the roof and from that then will decide whether it’s going to be better for you too, cantilever the collectors are creating compound angle, flush mount because one of the most important things in sustainability of your business is the aesthetic appeal of your systems. So by knowing the correct orientation of the roof, we can take that into account in terms of the performance. So you better off may trying to make the collectors the roof statically rather than a big compound angles and still mount of self-pitched roof, you want to use compass, if you don't have the other tools to determine and other one is accessibility how easy is it to be for you to if you need to get truck or ladder or forklift or cherry picker whatever it’s going to take how accessible is this rooftop to getting the equipment on there and another any structural hindrances like chimneys or dormers identifying where shadowing is not only done by trees and houses but parts of the roof can provide shading as well in terms of obstructions. Can you go down the chase ways either chase ways you can follow or you go down on the side of the house, if you go down the side of the house and you have exterior piping, how will look, what you can do to create that aesthetic appeal with exterior piping in terms of chase ways how accessible it will be for you to run piping all the way down, obviously if there's a way for you to go inside the house, ultimately you will have a higher performing system and it will cost less but exterior piping has been done of the fashionably I guess and I've seen many that look way well and in hiding in cursor downspouts or a wrapped in a corner of the house. So you have to determine how you're going to, you have to need a picture in your head and use your imagination, how will this look on the roof, how will you oriented on the roof, how you will run the piping down. Another thing is wind load. Different places in the country would have different wind velocities and we have to be sure that the collectors in this and the type of mounting will accommodate the wind. In some cases where we would recommend flat plates based on a budget and performance the deal breaker was the fact that the wind load would be too high to mount these. So you have to be prepared even though your clients might prefer flat plates and flat plates are better you should consider the fact that you know mount these up of to the roof this is excluding the fresh mount, mounting them up of the roof will increase wind load and every minutes right now so far has had different quotes, reference scenario little town here $25 building permit and a one-page of application will get the job started and then the court will come around and take a quick look at the system and typically sign off if you've met certain small set of guidelines in other cases you just an hour away the city officials have determined that of their going to make it very difficult to install anything on the roof and some extra pair to help you with all the specifications that you need in order to meet these codes. Unfortunately we don't have the nationwide database of all municipal codes but we can help you with the federal quotes. Also if they have a white roof or highly reflective roof that needs to be noted for our search survey TSOL reports that we can include a reflectivity in the performance. We've seen anywhere from 10 to 25% increase in performance based on different reflectivity is of roof structures and see light-colored roof is going to increase the performance of evacuated tubes, won’t do much at all for flat plates but if you go with evacuated tubes reflectivity will be played portal additionally can you increase the reflective, even if they have black asphalt of architectural shingles, can you increased reflectively by applying a roof made below the collectors or some foil backed foam under the collectors and the client is going to do this. I can say this much that if with a flush mount evacuated tube system, we've seen performance of 17% simply by claiming the roof would surely williams highly reflective roofing. Also how old this roof, is there an existing warranty that will need to be re-warranted and they plan to replace the roof anytime soon, if so can we include the solar thermal system with that endeavor and how far away is the boiler, what the distance that we need to travel with these pipes to get to where we need to go and that might affect the placement of the collectors on the roof is a shorter savage the better in terms of heat loss to the system. Now it's important if you follow scripted assessment for your site, you can go with a scratch pad and could board and ask questions in a random manner and that would probably be fine but goes back to original being professional and having homework. We highly suggest that you have a scripted assessment and liked to show you one for example right now. This is our, I am going to show you my computer screen here and it will take a second. Now if you take a look at the Sumaxx survey form, we have several different pieces of information that need to be assessed on some situations you find that this point is irrelevant and you can specify but it's you have all these points covered, obviously the location is a public or a private, the type of building, it is a nursing home, resident, hospital, workshop, quickly check that off and the one of the most important things is determine the low profile which includes the scheduled throughout the year, throughout the week is a five day system or five day occupancy, or they all week long so they goes back to our original qualification of having customers at consistent loads and their hot water consumption on workdays and Saturdays Sundays holidays. We want to know what their low-profile is, not only for the day but also throughout the entire year, determining the water consumption throughout the year that is their yearly low-profile will help us properly size the system, determining low profiles for daily use without the determine the size and storage tank, So this allows you to determine what percentage of their load is used during different months of the year and Franciscekey resorts so water park is going to have in inverse relationship in their water usage. So we want to be able to size of the system that doesn't exceed 100% , those typically the systems are given as the best payback not always the case but often we can build a system that rarely if ever exceeds 100% percent than the system utilization will be much higher. I don’t have time to go through this entire site survey form but I would like to show you point attention to the fact that it's highly scripted and it comes with experience of from the European market that we've adopted by looking at the most important information that we need to gather in order to run a T*SOL report. Summary, back to the to the PowerPoint quickly this site survey form is available to you through your deal around and just one second will get right back to the PowerPoint. The next thing you have to do, once you've done the site surveys, submit a quote request form, the quote request form that you are going to access through your login information as a dealer if you don't have login information please contact your Europe sunmaxx representatives in the picture to get you login. So you can just show up quote request form with the information you done from a site survey and engineering department will help you size design a system of thinking first to the prepackaged kits and then lastly we would look at a customized solution. One of the important thing about quote request form is decreases your liability, we would like to take liable. We are liable for the systems that you're going to be installing. So it's important that we have input in size and design solar faction of that system said also helps you because the less liable you are the better it is, the quote request form is for you. you will be submitting a quote request form to us and will help you design the systems, looking like this at first at the prepackaged kits and then customized solution and like I said that if we size it properly, it can reduce your liability and every time that you would like a quote from us, will see quote request form so that we have ways to track and see that and modify the type of systems that you have been requesting. It helps us to make a more customized service with your relationship. Once you get that quote where we will submit a quote to you at your cost. We give you manufacture suggested prices but those margin will be entirely up to use, so as a dealer you will receive the dealer pricing in your quote, a site survey is required the use of submitting in order to do it properly assesses solar potential, got to use one or two, these two that are shown or are just two of the options but I found also an application that will accomplish mostly with these two will, solar pathfinder is the most commonly used in, many of you might be familiar with this. We would probably have a webinar in the near future on the use of the solar Pathfinder. But for now you can go to www.solarpathfinder.com, there are several videos and tutorials that walk you through, Solmetric Suneye is priced in for or five times more than solar Pathfinder. But it becomes highly technical allows you to give a much more instant feedback and original GPS Lincoln and all that. But it’s very important they use instrument rather than your own intuition regarding the path of the sun front here. Now, when it comes to interior considerations, we have to see the boiler room, you can look at the age of the boiler that can help us determining the efficiency of the boiler. And if it's true for any particular upgrades, the size of the boiler, also remember that the size of the boiler is typically designed for design days that is the coldest time of the year, boilers will indicate, how are you such but it's it becomes difficult to determine how our usage based only on the size of the boiler because they are most often oversized, that is, the result of oil you know fuel companies selling you bigger boilers because bigger boilers use more energy , more energy use the more money they make. We also need to know piping diameter for cold water supply. how water feeds that allows to directly determine the flow rates. We want to built to accommodate the maximum flow rate specially preheat solar water tank, you also need to assess whether there's room for storage, the special for Cumby systems that require significant amount of space to store the energy. Hot water systems take up much less room in fact week in tirade into the existing structure cannot think of any room of the two better get a look if there is room and client is okay with that you're better off always gone with preheat tank So it your priority is to find a place for preheat tank if that's not possible then you can use existing tank can you get those tanks inside the house, can you get even downstairs, how, why do the doors, is there any temperature maintains, how high is the ceiling, with height of the tank fit, is there any existing storage place you can use that already have a storage tanks and where will we put the valves , another valves you can argue corporate do you have to install new valves, so it's important to get a little drawing , scan then send it to your dealer around and sharing can help you make the most of what they are to have in place looking of. I have come to the conclusion of the site survey webinar I would like to thank every attention and remind you that we're always available for questions. So again thank you for your attention.

Solar Hot Water System Sizing 7.6.2010

admin — Tue, 21 Sep 2010 16:04:52 +0000

[iframe https://my.dimdim.com/view/all/sunmaxx/default/8e7e1e0c-9553-4533-a67a-d690476badab 650 500] SUNMAXX SOLAR HOT WATER SOLUTIONS SOLAR HOT WATER SYSTEM SIZING Date: 07/06/2010 Well, good afternoon. I would like to welcome everybody to our 6th edition of the SunMaxx Solar product webinar series. Today I want to talk about system sizing. We’d like to do this once a week and we try to keep the conversations to a half an hour, so I will end this at 12:30, and after which, anybody would like to have any questions please feel free. [okay, I’m going to have to start over with my audio, it doesn’t appear as if my audio is working, ok well, I got-- thanks Tony, I appreciate the feedback. I’m going to continue to talk -- Okay] So, what I’d like to cover today is how to properly size a solar thermal system because as you know, a properly sized solar system --our main goal is to try to get the most out of the collectors, and by keeping that operating temperature low, we get a higher collector efficiency, which I will describe in more detail a little bit later on. As well as maximizing solar efficiency, we want to try to extend the solar day, and in cases where we can start the day earlier, or end the day later, we end up getting a considerable amount more BTUs over the course of the year. I’d like to welcome everybody now that is now joining. And one of the most important things to system longevity is not overheating the system, preserving the glycol if its glycol, or if it’s a drainback system, we want to be able to not overheat the system, not over heat the pipes, not overheat the pump, not overheat the exchangers, and certainly not overheat the collectors. So, these can be accomplished with properly sized system. Additionally we want to try to meet the requirement. So if our temperature requirement is 120, we don’t really want to exceed that by more than 20%. The reason is, the higher the temperature of the storage tank, the lower the utilization of the system. So if we can target our temperature at 120, we might exceed that by 20-24, we might go up to 140-150, but we don’t really have any use for water at 170. So if we are -- if our tank is at 170, then the storage volume is probably not been considered. And then the-- probably the most important among all of these is that we've got to be able to present the best return to our clients, all right. So a large system that fills the roof isn't always the best return. So we have to be realistic about what this system will produce, and try to present to our clients a system that gives them best return, and often times that is a smaller system, okay. So I'll go through a couple rules of thumb. I will be redundant because there are some points that are more important than others. If you have any questions, I'll remind you to please feel free to type any questions in the chat box so I can see them, and I tend to respond immediately, okay. All right, so a few things that we have to consider, first, is probably the roof space. Generally that's going to be the limiting factor in system size. Probably 70% of the time, the roof space is never enough to get more than 40-50% solar fraction anyway. And also, when we are sizing systems, we size them based on the square foot of collector. Not how many collectors there are, rather it's the square footage of collector surface, okay. And when you do this per--, you have to be clear whether you are talking about gross area, or aperture area. Some, for instance SRCC will give you the BTU output for collector based on gross area. So either way, just be sure you know what you are talking about in terms of absorber area or gross area, nevertheless we're gonna size these systems based on square foot, not based on number of collectors, okay. Another consideration, just to bring it up early, is, for those of you who have been through the training, you know that we try to size up our storage tanks at about 2 to 3 gallons per square foot. I wrote 2 there, but it's really 1 square foot, whether it's flat plate or evacuated tube. Now, I will talk a little more about the difference between 2 square foot vs. 3 square foot a little bit later, but generally it's dependent on the temperature requirement. Storage space in terms of your solar thermal storage tank will be really dependent on the temperature requirement. Another thing when it comes to sizing the system is that, for residential systems, we really don't want to go more than 150 feet away, basically because of pressure drop and velocity. Another very important point, as you'll understand as we move through the next half hour, is that the higher the solar fraction, the lower the total system efficiency. This is generally the case that as we approach 85 and 90% solar fraction, we end up using fewer of those total BTUs that we produced. So system efficiency is a function of the total number of BTU's that strike our collector vs. those that we actually consume in our storage tank. And the higher that solar fraction is that we are trying to achieve the lower the total system efficiency. If we can get our system efficiency, total system efficiency, between 30-50%, that's actually a pretty good efficiency and TSOL report which I will show you later will help us determine those efficiencies. So we're shooting for the intercept between the highest solar fraction and the highest efficiency. And that goes right along the same lines as, if we're-- the higher solar fraction of 95% may have a system efficiency of 12%, but we can get double the efficiency with --or smaller solar fraction which means higher rate of return with a higher fraction. Okay, another point that we need to know is the load profiles. We have to understand that peak consumptions during the day, the daily load profile. This will help us size up our storage tanks. So if I know that I'm consuming most of my BTUs at the same time that I'm producing most of my BTUs, then I'm gonna have a much, much smaller storage tank, and in some cases I won't have a storage tank at all. Now, in terms of the seasonal load profile, this will help us determine system size. So over the course of the year, does that BTU load change/vary from one season to the next, and how does that seasonal load profile compare with our seasonal production profile. As often times these two points, a daily and seasonal load profiles are not readily available. But when you do have access to the load profiles, particularly the daily load profile, it really helps us understand the total system size -- storage tank size. Another consideration is, the summer time-- the amount of solar radiation often is 2 to 3 times greater than it is in the wintertime. So if we have a low load in the summer and a high load in the winter, then what's gonna happen in the summer time, we're gonna produce -- we might produce 4 times than what we need. So we really have to look at our summer time insolation, to determine the maximum system size, we'll do that a little bit later. Now we can also affect that system efficiency for summertime by increasing the incident angle. So by standing our collectors upright, we decrease the total production of the collectors in the summertime, which gives us a greater amount of BTUs in the wintertime, and fewer--. So basically we can compensate for that higher insolation level by increasing our incident angle. I've got a question here, what do you mean by efficiency? Well efficiency is really a function of the total number of BTUs from the solar insolation that strikes the collectors, relative to the number of BTU's that we produce that we actually consume, okay. So, its efficiency of the system is not only efficiency of the collectors but it's also the utilization of the system. Utilization being how many BTUs we product vs. how many BTUs we consume. And that's-- collector efficiency is a function of the insolation that strikes the collectors relative to the temperature of the collectors and the ambient temperature. I'll get into more of that in just a bit. Okay, Some guidelines for domestic hot water. I'll try to keep it very simple. For small residential systems, which is the largest market in the United States right now, we recommend 10 sq. ft. of collector per person, okay. Now I wrote in parenthesis there 52% solar fraction (SF) solar fraction. That is really designed for Syracuse, New York, one of the places in the country that gives us the least amount of insolation. So following that guideline, 10 sq. ft. of collector per person for Syracuse New York -- if you live anywhere outside of the Southern tier, or central New York, you're probably gonna get more insolation than us which will give you a higher solar fraction. Okay, to be specific, in terms of your solar fraction, your gonna look to your SunMaxx representative, and they'll give you a specific program-- analysis-- TSOL report, that will give you your solar fraction for your particular area. But you can guarantee that the federal incentive, which requires 50% solar fraction, if you go with this 10 foot of collector per person, then that's designed for Syracuse, New York which has a very low insolation level. We can also look at the total hot water bill-- I'm sorry, the utilities bill, for heat and hot water, and typically domestic hot water is 30% of that, so we can indirectly determine the number of BTUs consumed by those individuals for hot water if we understand that they're household fuel built. Another way to look at is that generally the American average is 20 gallons per person. Now that's only for the first 2 people, okay. The third person, they consume 15 gallons, and the forth person is 10 gallons. So we have a D rating of the usage per person per day. This is the American average, all right. Now for large commercial domestic hot water systems, or even large residential systems, we can calculate the BTU load per day if we know the gallons. So the delta G that I am referring to is the difference between your max and the min. What is the required temperature minus the temperature of the incoming ground water? That gives us our gradient, our delta g. How much do we want to see the temperature rise by? Every degree requires 8.3 BTUs per gallon, okay. So I can calculate the BTU load by looking at the delta G, which is the difference between max and min, multiply that by total gallons and I multiply that again by 8.3, that gives me the BTUs per day. 8.3 incidently, is the number of BTUs that it takes to heat one gallon, one degree. Or, it's the amount of 1 BTU is the amount of energy it takes to raise 1 pound of water, 1 degree, and there's 8.33 pounds to a gallon. Okay, now we have to determine what the BTU output is per square foot of collector. And I'll go through a little exercise is a minute to show you how we do that. And typically we look at the efficiency, average efficiency of our SunMaxx collectors is 73%, that's at a very low or 0 delta T, that efficiency is gonna change periodically throughout the year, so it's very difficult for us to calculate exactly the production per day without using software or taking our time and methodically going through the logarithms to determine the change in efficiency relative to the insolation. And then what we want to do is fine what solar fraction is most suitable. And by most suitable I mean, which one is gonna accommodate the roof space that's available, the storage space that's available, and the budget that's available. So we-- even though they might have 100,000 dollars for a solar thermal system, a smaller system might give them a better return. Okay, so you have to remember that your business is going to be referral driven, and you want your customers to reap the reward financially as much as possible. So sometimes a smaller system is better. Okay, one rule of thumb, and remember, I told you I was gonna be a little redundant because some are very important, the higher the temperature requirement, the lower the total utilization, okay. So whenever we can lower the temperature requirement, you get more out of the solar. For instance, if I have a solar thermal system and my hot water tank is set at 120, and I've got two flat-- I've got a 42 square feet of collector. Well I can increase the utilization of my solar thermal by lowering the temperature requirement of that storage tank down to 115. Most people take showers at 104 to 107 anyway, and in many cases, hot water, dish water - dishwashers have their own little heating element to bring the temperature of the water up. So if we can lower the temperature requirement, you're gonna get more out of the solar thermal systems. Okay, and again, a high solar fraction equals a lower system efficiency, and we never want it to exceed 100%. So if we look at the June's data, I wanna look at June's load, and it might be low, but the insolation is very high, so I really have to set my maximum number for June. If I can meet 100% of June, knowing that I'm not going to go over 100%, then I can determine the total solar fraction by looking at that maximum square footage that I've determined to be less than 100% in June, and find the most suitable solar fraction. And we'll do that in just a few minutes. Okay, we have to a also understand the consumption vs. production, okay. So insolation varies from day to day, but we have to try to accommodate the varying insolation levels so that we can meet a pretty good load each day. Whether we meet 30% of the load or 90% of the load, we have to take into consideration the changes in insolation not only seasonally, but daily. And from our experience, the solar fractions that are giving us the greatest return are those that are falling between 30 to 60%. So one of the biggest mistakes you can make is to go tell the client you're gonna replace their existing fuel source, or you're going to reduce their hot water bill by 95-100%. There's very rarely does that happen, and when it does happen, they've spent more money than they needed to, so we want-- have to play it safe this early in the industry and we wanna make sure that our clients are getting their money back from these systems and those that are getting the most money back are the ones that have the high hot water load, low temperature requirement, and have had systems designed for 30 to 60% of their solar fraction. Okay, and again, we can determine the storage volume required, by looking at the amount of BTUs that can actually be stored in one gallon of water. So if I have a useable BTU temperature of 120 degrees, anything above that, I can very easily calculate how many gallons it's gonna take to store a certain number of BTUs, because I know that each gallon per degree can store 8.3 BTUs . Okay, for sizing and design, first we have to determine total BTU load per day. And this may change daily, it may change seasonally, but we have to get an average. We have to know what that total BTU load is. Once we do that, then it's important for us to understand the load profile seasonally and daily. If you remember from earlier, not quite 15 minutes ago, I described the importance of seasonal load profile and that is for system size, and the importance of daily load profile is for storage tank size, okay. Now you can-- one of the biggest mistakes you can make is not understanding the solar potential, okay. The solar potential -- what we really need to know is available roof space, and the insolation that's gonna strike that roof. So when it comes to using a roofray.com, or Google earth, and zooming down onto a roof top, you're getting a picture of that roof. You might now see any shading, it looks like its got full sun, but it can be really misleading. So you really have to use some type of a tool, an instrument, particularly a solar instrument to determine solar potential. Solar Pathfinder, Solmetric SunEye, those are two very easy readily available instruments. The Pathfinder is about 300 dollars. You can get that right from your SunMaxx rep, or a Solmetric SunEye, those I've heard are in the 1600 - 1700 dollar range, but you've gotta determine the solar potential on the roof, and that's our starting point. RETScreen is a free software, I'll show you a little bit later, that will help us determine the insolation values for different regions of the world, that might now get very specific to a small town in America, but for most states, there are several different cities to choose from that will be very close. So we have to understand, the roof potential and the insolation, both of which you can find from either going on site using a Solar Pathfinder, and then online using a RETScreen for your insolation data. From that we have to calculate instantaneous collector efficiency, although you may know that the thermal collectors operate at 73 to 75% efficiency, that changes relative to the incoming temperature, it also changes relative to the ambient temperature. So in order for us to determine total system output, instantaneous collector efficiency really has to be calculated on a day by day basis. It can be very belaboring. Luckily we use some software that does all the calculations for us, and then we need to know production vs. consumption and from that then we're gonna determine the flow rate and storage size, and what type of heat exchange that we're gonna use. Heat exchangers, by the way, will be another webinar in the very near future, but there's a lot of things we can do to increase the system performance by choosing the right and most appropriate heat exchanger. So, before we begin to size, we have to know what the functionality of the collectors are that we've chosen, so I'm gonna show you a picture of an SRCC certificate, and I guess I need to apologize for those of you if this is unreadable. You can visit solar-rating.org. Solar Rating is the location where all the SRCC certificates are located online through SRCC. So if you do a web search SRCC, you'll come to this website. And you can pull up the certificates, and I encourage you to do that. And a couple of things you want to pay particular attention to, again I see something a little different on my screen, it's not visible, but you might be able to see this. Things you want to look at when you're sizing up the collectors are the slope. Okay, one is the slope. So BTUs per hour per foot per degree basically tells the losses in efficiency relative to the Ti minus Ta which is this category right over here. Categories A, B, C, D, and E are 5 different categories basically representing climactic conditions, so for instance, the Ti minus Ta of 144 degrees would be in category E. Okay, under those conditions it says mildly cloudy, these collectors are going to produce 1.3-- basically 1300 BTUs per panel per day. Okay, so the two most important things to look at when you see these--when you're looking at the certificates, are the Y intercept, this Y intercept is our collector efficiency at 0 Delta T, and I'll show you a graph in just a moment, and also the slope. The slope is the degree to which the collector loses efficiency based on the Ti minus Ta, or the ambient temperature vs. inlet temperature. Okay, so these different categories are climactic categories, and clear, mildly and cloudy represent 3 different levels of insolation, 2000, 1500 and 1000 BTUs per foot squared per day. Okay, so when the collectors are measured-- analyzed through SRCC and performance tested, they are-- determining the collector efficiency, which on the certificate is called the Y intercept, and they do that by looking at the inlet fluid parameter. The inlet fluid parameter is basically the inlet temperature, the temperature coming into the collector minus the ambient temperature. Okay, so whatever the ambient temperature is subtract that from the inlet temperature, and then it's divided by i. i is the total solar insolation that strikes the collectors, okay, and that's per foot. So we don't need to know the total for the collector, because it's divided by-- per square foot of the collector, all right. So if we look at the graph here on the right hand side, the collector efficiency is the function of the inlet fluid parameter. The inlet fluid parameter, Ti minus Ti divided by i times this-- multiply it here, this is the slope from SRCC, so we multiply the inlet fluid parameter times the slope, and it gives us the efficiency. If we work our way over to the Y axis, this will tell us the Y intercept, okay. So for example, of an inlet parameter of .6, the efficiency of the flat plate is 24%. If we are looking at the inlet fluid parameter of .4, the efficiency of both flat plate and evacuated tubes are the same. So it's very important to understand what determines this inlet fluid parameter, because inlet fluid parameter is gonna affect our performance more than anything. Well, there is two things that determine inlet fluid parameter. The ambient temperature, and the collector inlet temperature, all right. Which of those two do you have anything to do with? Well, the only way you can affect your ambient temperature is to move south, which in most cases can't happen. The second thing you can do is lower your temperature requirement so that inlet temperature is basically a function of your storage temperature of your requirement. So the lower that is, the lower your inlet fluid parameter, which gives you a higher efficiency, okay. So these are things that we need to consider before we can determine the system size. Okay, so this is another graph showing you how we determine the inlet fluid parameter. We've got the Y intercept is the location where this slope crosses the Y. So if your inlet fluid parameter for example is .7, .7 will give us an efficiency of 20%. So obviously as I said before, the best way that we can increase the efficiency of the collectors is to lower that inlet temperature. Lowering that inlet temperature by -- by lowering the temperature requirement, will give us a higher efficiency, which will ultimately give us a better payback. Okay, so to determine the number of square foot of collector. First thing we need to do is find that maximum square footage of collector is, and remember we don't wanna exceed 100%. Then we have to determine what the total BTU load per day is and divide that by our peak production, okay. I'm going to run through an example in just a moment that illustrates this. So once we have our total BTU load per day, okay, which we used our delta G times 8.3 times a gallons. I have to divide that by their peak production per day that'll give me the maximum number of square feet. Once I have the maximum number of square feet I have to find out what the best solar fraction is. The best solar fraction is the one that never exceeds 100%, because, remember the more BTUs I produce that I don't consume, the more that system is gonna cost, okay. So I want to try to bring the cost down as much as possible, and I do that by consuming every BTU. So for step 4, I have to find the maximum number of square foot, which I did in Step 2, and multiply that by the average output. Okay, that is using insolation values, and the average efficiency of the collectors which will give me the average total production. Once I have the average total production, then I divide the average total production by the total BTU load per day and that will give me the recommended solar fraction so that I do not exceed 100% in June, okay. Now, this is something that you can potentially go to your client with to give them a preliminary proposal, and say, yeah it looks like we can do about 60% of your solar fraction, whatever. To be much more professional, this would be a good chance for your to turn to your SunMaxx rep so they can print out a-- or actually I send you a copy of a Tsol report that then you can present to your client which gives them a much more specific solar fraction in detailed analysis. Okay. Now here's a sizing example I can run through you real quick. For example we have 100 gallons per day water consumption, okay. Actually 1000 gallons per day. Water consumption is 1000 per day. Our delta G, our rise in temperature is the difference between max and min., and that's 65 degrees. And our BTU load per day is 65 degrees times 8.33 times 1000 which is 541,450 okay. And then I need to find out what the average insolation per day is so I use RETScreen, and I found 4.62 kilowatt hours per meters squared per day. In order to convert that to BTUs I multiply by 317 which gives me 1465 BTU's of average insolation per day. Now to determine my BTU output, I got to multiply the average insolation which is 1465 times the collector efficiency. So using the parameters that I showed you on the previous slide, in determining the collector efficiency, I've calculated the average efficiency of 66%. So I multiply 1465 by .66 and it gives me 966 BTUs per day per foot squared of collector. Now I need to find out the peak insolation. And I found that to be 6.3 Kilowatt hours, using RETScreen. Multiply that by the converting number of 317.1, gives me 1997.73 BTUs per foot square per day. Finding the peak output, I looked at the collector efficiency, which I determined to be .66, multiply that by the peak insolation, and I get an output of 1318 BTU's. So now I take 1318, and I divide that into my total load, which is 541,450. And that tells me that in June, if I'm producing 1300 BTU's per foot squared, I can meet that load with 410 square foot of collector. All right, that gives me 100% of my June load, and ideally not a BTU more. So if I take my 410 square foot maximum, and I multiply that by the average output per tube, which is 966, that gives me an average production of 396,844 BTU's. So then I take 396,000 my average BTU production and I divide that by my average BTU load and it gives me a 73% solar fraction. So this solar fraction is pretty high. The heat demand is low. The lower the load, the lower the temperature requirement, the higher the solar fraction can be, okay. Now RETScreen is a free download. I strongly recommend using this as a tool. You can go to www.retwcreen.net and download RETScreen, or call on me or any of the sales reps to give you some simple advice on how to use this, but it's pretty user friendly, and it's a good tool to look at insolation data. It does a lot more than what you really need it to do. So for starters, if you haven't used it yet, give it a shot, it's a good encyclopedia if anything else. And then, to give you a quick little glimpse of some of the reports that you'll get from TSOL, we'll get our system schematic which will show us the collectors, the square foot of collectors, the azimuth angle, the inclination angle, give us the volume of storage, give us our traditional heat source, the load, 40 gallons per day at 120 and any heat transfer that's associated with that. It'll also give us in the course of the year, our production profile relative to our consumption profile, which is exactly what we'll need for system sizing, okay. And then it breaks down all these little components very specifically, ultimately giving us the total system solar fraction, which in the case is 45%. Okay, and lastly storage tank sizing. We really have to understand the daily load profile, so that we know how many extra BTUs are we going to consume during the day, that we won't consume-- how many will we produce that we won't consume, the time of use, what time will be peaking our consumption. Also the temperature requirement. What is the necessary temperature that we are trying to achieve? And remember that we don't want to achieve or reach more than 20% of the requirement. This allows us to increase the efficiency of our collectors. If you remember the temperature requirement is basically going to determine the Ti, the inlet temperature of the collector, and Ti is the only variable that you have any control over. So the only way that you can really increase the collector efficiency is to lower the temperature requirement which properly sized storage tanks can do that for you. And then obviously we have to look at the output of the collectors which changes throughout the year, based on the efficiency and the ambient temperature, and azimuth orientation. What I try to do, is I try to be prompt when I start, I have run 4 minutes over, I want to keep these to a half an hour so I don't take up too much of your time. I'm always more than happy to help you out with any further questions. If you have any other questions and you'd like to have them answered now, go for it and type a question right in. Otherwise I would formally end the presentation now and hopefully I can see everybody back next week. We do have a pretty good schedule set up for the next-- I think we're already set in stone through September, and-- but we're always open for suggestions. If anybody has a particular topic that they'd like us to cover. We have been saving these webinars and you can revisit the solarwebinars.com website where you are registered and you can see the past presentations. It takes a few days to get them online, but it's really my responsibility to record as I start, and so far I have recorded 3 out of 5 successfully. So go ahead and visit solarwebinars.com and you can find a copy of this presentation and others, okay. Well, I'm gonna stop recording and if anybody has any questions, I will be glad to stick around for a few minutes.

Solar Hot Water Mounting Strategies 6.28.2010

admin — Tue, 21 Sep 2010 15:54:45 +0000

[iframe https://my.dimdim.com/view/all/sunmaxx/default/f0d2abcb-45eb-45bc-b2b9-6ab742c1253c 650 500] SUNMAXX SOLAR HOT WATER SOLUTIONS SOLAR HOT WATER MOUNTING STRATEGIES Date: 06/28/2010 Okay, well, I'd like to welcome you all to another of our SunMaxx Solar webinar series. Today we're gonna be talking about mounting strategies. Gotta short half hour PowerPoint planned, and I'd like to go over several techniques of how mounting various collectors-- thermal connectors to different types of roofs. For the rest of you who have been with us before, you can type a question in the little chat box and I'll try to respond to it right away. For those questions that are beyond me, we also have Kirsten Thorp, our solar hot water coordinator, she might be able to help you as well. So please feel free to type in any questions, and I'll either answer them directly and immediately or we can follow up after the webinar, okay. So what I'd like to first talk about are just a couple of options of connecting the collectors to the roof. How we fasten those to the rafters, or to the decking itself. But additionally, I'm gonna go over some different mounting techniques in terms of placement on the roof and how to make full advantage of the roof in terms of orientation and everything. Fastening to the roof has been pretty well established with these five most common and proven methods. The spanner with threaded rod, log bolt, toggle bolt, J-bolt and then the picture here shows a pitch fan. A pitch fan is one of the older methods. Basically you need to find a rafter and drop a lag bolt in. Lag bolts need to be at least 2 inches into a rafter regardless of the size of the rafter. We gotta go at least 2 inches and the lag bolt itself should be bigger than a 1/4 inch. So 3/8 is the most commonly used lag bolt, or for this particular method. So again, we gotta sink it in at least 2 inches, and the lag bolt outa be quarter inch, or 3/8 inch is even better. The spanner with a threaded rod, in method number one, we have to find the rafter. This only works if you have access to the rafter. And you put a spanner between the rafters. You can either cut the spanner to be the exact dimension from inside to inside and fasten those in between the rafters. Or the spanner could be placed outside the rafter, and basically spans several rafters. Using the spanner method, you can find any location on the roof where you wanna put your feet or your-- or your channel, and that location is determined by aesthetics or functionality, and that determined by location of the rafter. So the one benefit of using the spanner is it allows you to locate your points of fastening, regardless of location or the rafter. Okay, a lot of times, especially on small roofs you have some aesthetic appeal that you have to consider, and by mounting them to the rafters, it may be asymmetrical or. . . A lag bolt with flashing is probably one of the simplest methods and I'll show you a couple of pictures of that, again, but number two, you've gotta find the rafter. So if you have trouble finding the rafter then it can be relatively tricky because if your lag bolt is-- or if you're missing part of the rafter, then you can jeopardize the integrity of the rafter itself, so you really--if you use method number two, you've gotta be sure that you found the rafter, and that you know where the center of the rafter is. Toggle bolt is another one that has been used quite often. The only drawback to a toggle bolt is that you have to drill a sizable hole. And by drilling a larger hole, it usually means you've gotta some roof boots, or flashing, larger flashing to cover up that hole. However, like method number one, method number three allows you versatility. You can move anywhere you want on the roof. So you can really accommodate the aesthetic appeal with number three, because your not tied down to the location of the rafters. Another one, the J- bolt is pretty commonly used. In this case you've got to be able to find the rafter and access it from below. Okay, the J-bolt, just as the name would suggest, hooks around the bottom of the rafter. And so, the machine thread part sticks out of the roof, and allows you to mount right to the top of the J-bolt. And you're basically connecting it right to the roof structure without puncturing the rafter itself. So a lot of guys like that because it doesn't reduce the integrity of the roof -- of the rafter, but it does secure it to the rafter. And, obviously number five, the pitch fan, it's a lag bolt, but the pitch fan is a way to prevent any leaking through the pitch fan. And you fill that up with pitch and then you don't get any leaking through there, and that sort of serves the same purpose as other methods that use the neoprene washer. Okay, so just to show you, this picture of this J-bolt, you can see down here the J-bolt will wrap around the rafter and then you connect your threads and your standoff to the top of the roof. This one, like I mentioned before, minimum of 2 inch depth of the lag bolt into the rafter. Okay, so typically rafters are larger than 2x6 but a 2x6 means that we are gonna be sinking our lag bolt down half way through the rafter at least, okay. And again, the thickness of lag bolts should be 1/4 inch or bigger, 3/8 is better. The quarter inch lag bolt is a little bit on the small side but its okay if you don't have much wind load as with the evacuated tube installations. Okay, I wanted to point out in this particular install, the installer used quick mount PV, this is a flashing, with a lag bolt off of a standoff block. Now this particular installer required the location of the rafter so there's Bosch. Bosch makes really nice rafter finder. I've used it several occasions, and really can't come up with a better solution to finding the rafters. There's all sorts of techniques of using your hammer and listening for vibrations and even stud finders looking for nails, but nothing better-- nothing short of a rafter finder would make me confident that I've actually not only located a rafter, but finding the center of the rafter. So Bosch, I'm not sure of the price, its a couple hundred dollars, but probably money well spent, just in the confidence that you found the center of the rafter. When you use these quick mount type of roof penetrations, you can tie in the SunMaxx rail which is an extruded aluminum allows you to mount the feet right to that lag bolt and then the collectors can slide to the left or to the right anywhere they want, so your-- although the rail is mounted directly to the rafter and your fixed to the rafter point, the collectors themselves can slide horizontally and then if you have some ends, you can cut these ends off to allow them to look better, I suppose. Another important point that I should make is that these standoffs really shouldn't be more than 48 inches apart, using most manufactures rails systems. Rails are really designed to have at least a 48 inch pressure point and not to exceed that. So that becomes pretty easy. You can--the rafters are generally spaced out, 16 inches on center, so you shouldn't have too much trouble finding 48 inches where you can mount these standoffs. All right, now, to point out a couple of different flush mount flat plate installs, this particular one up in Syracuse is one of our most recent that this installer used the TitanPower plus, and a couple of things I wanna point out with this, is there's very little space between the roof and the collector itself. Actually an inch and a half of space, so it doesn't allow for much debris build up. Certainly some of the other collectors will allow for debris and even a home and a habitat for pigeons and whatnot, so there's very little space between the roof and the bottom of the collector, and in this case you really don't see the mounting hardware at all. And I'll show you that with the picture, what this hardware system looks like, and the space in between, these collectors are actually mounted to one another sitting on the same rail system, and the fittings allow them to have just about an inch and a half space between one collector and the next one in the same series. So these systems are mounted using our lag bolt which you see here, which is sunk into the rafter, and in this case we went in 4 inches. So we pre-drilled a quarter inch hole, and on the top of our lag bolts is a hex nut which allows us to tie right into our drill, and we can sink that in, it's got a neoprene washer, so you see a little neoprene washer there, and in this case we cut out a small piece of flashing and we slipped it up underneath the previous, this row of shingles, 4 inches. So we go up 4 inches and sunk our hangar bolt in place with the clips. Now these clips are gonna tie directly into this upside down or inverted T rail, okay. The T rail is gonna be the rail that the flat plates sit on, your gonna see here in the next picture. Okay, so here's our large hangar bolt. The hangar bolt can drop down, the distance here is 4 inches, so we try to get in and take in as much as this 4 inches as possible, and if we can go in even further with this remaining space, then we do. And then the clip is double nutted, so we can change the height of our collectors very easily with this double nut on the clip. We decided we wanted to bring it down as close as possible, so that's what we did. And then once we sink it down with our hex nut, we can basically cut it off, okay. Now these slots. You see the slots on this rail. They're gonna accept this bolt that's being pulled out of this collector right now. The collector itself is the frame. So it's very easy to mount our rails to the collector, there's no additional hardware. So basically your hangar bolts, the T-profile and the collector. Okay, the collector comes with these bolts already embedded into a dry well. So there's a dry threaded socket in the bottom and top of the collectors. Okay, another picture, a close up of the finished product; you see the bolt that's connected directly to the connector itself, in that slot. And our clip is fastened and this T profile has 2 edges, one edge has small serrations that correspond to serrations on the clip. So as we tighten down this hangar bolt, this clip will compress and the friction won't allow it to move horizontally, side by side, and the serrations along with the compression, don't allow it to move vertically, okay. Using a simple little quick connect adapter on this flexible stainless steel line set, the fittings are already built into the collector and all we have to do is screw it in nice and tight with a double nut, and we are ready to go. The TitanPower also has this little drip edge, this chrome drip edge that comes off the bottom, so as you look--let's go back to this slide here-- these little, this what is silver drip edge along the bottom allows the water to move down off the collector and then extend the drip down onto the roof without being inverted, because just under this drip edge is a little air release port. And it allows for the removal of condensation and humidity in the air, any high pressure steam that might build up from the latent moisture will be forced out of that port. This drip edge allows that to happen. In fact, I can speak to it personally; I just had a flat plate that we installed for training on Friday. It was tipped upside down all weekend getting moisture, and then once we installed it, with the drip edge down, over the course of the day, the moisture just--you could feel a light stream of air forcing its way out through that port. Okay, now, a couple things I just wanna-- a couple things I'd like to point out, different strategies, one is the ability to increase the reflectivity. When you use evacuated tubes, you really try to consider ways to increase performance, and one of the best ways is be increasing the reflectivity. And this installation up near Boston, the installer included a white roofing material behind the collectors, and this did increase his performance by 11%. So we know for a fact that this system is over performing our original calculations and that the factor is this reflectivity. And this particular, over here on the left hand side, you see four collectors there, two of which have the tubes in already, and the front row does not have the tubes. But being installed on this highly reflective tin roof, this particular install is gonna see upwards of 20% increase in performance, based on some preliminary data done by Pete Schinara at SunDog, they put some reflective surface and nothing real reflective, it doesn't take a highly reflective and moderately reflective. One other thing I wanna point out about reflectivity is the more reflective it is at the beginning, the less reflective it is at the end. In other words, the reflectivity curve is very sharp for surfaces that have a lot of reflectivity. They tend to lose that dramatically. So even something like a tin roof will maintain the same reflectivity for 5, 10 15 years without decreasing too much. So increasing reflectivity is one . . . Another, in this picture, is just a couple different miscellaneous mounts. The installer here used flexible line set. And, he wanted to change his inclination angle. The inclination angle is the angle of the incline of the collectors, okay. So he put his collectors on a swivel, so that twice a year he comes out with a little hand crank, and I know you can't see it, but he'll crank hand crank down, and it will tilt these collectors back to maximize summertime production and tilt these forward to maximize winter production. Although this isn't going to be suitable for the normal installs, it will definitely increase his performance, however, it is questionable whether it will increase the performance relative to the value and cost of this type of installation. One benefit to the evacuated tubes is they have a high degree of variation in their incline and orientation that allows it to maintain 90-95% of what they normally would expect. All right so he's just going to be able change his inclination angle. With this one he won't be changing his orientation angle. On this ridge mount, the hardware that came with this set of collectors was added to by a couple of struts off of the roof. It keeps them level all the way across, so the hardware was adaptable for use like this, and it might be recommended that you put something on your roof. It's not as aesthetically appealing as one might like. In the middle of town, you might not want to go this way, knowing that-- even flat plates have a high degree of variation if we were to mount these on a western slope, then we probably would decrease efficiency only by 15% that can be compensated by adding 15% more collectors and get the same results, or the same is true if we were to mount these collectors on the east. Nevertheless, it is relatively easy to do something like this, but it may not be overall aesthetically appealing for most people. I just want to remind you that if anybody has any questions, please do feel free to type away. I like to be responsive to anybodies-- I have a certain slide show that I'd like to show you, but if you have any questions, now is a really good time to do that. A lot of people go with the ground mounts. And one purpose is they find it much easier to maintain. These collectors can be washed off very easy, sprayed down. They can be even given a sponge bath if they wanted to keep them nice and shiny, although most collectors are pretty effective at self-cleaning in some good rains, but if you live in areas that don't receive a lot of raining, or rainy days then you might need to service them once a year, and wash them down. Well if it's on the roof, it makes it a little bit more difficult. The one on the left here shows the back leg of the SunMaxx 30 that was basically rotated 90 degrees. This back leg used to be mounted here, as it is with this top one, and the triangle bracket that fits in this extruded aluminum, was basically slid down to the bottom of the rail and turned backwards so now the back leg is used to help support this cantilever off of this frame. In this particular case, the client used our existing extruded aluminum, but built a concrete embedded pipe, basically a piping design, used black pipe and painted it silver. Here's another picture of looks like a ground mount, but in fact it's on top of a commercial roof with a rubber membrane underneath some gravel. Now I do want to point out that this install did not require the roofing company to re-warranty the roof, there were no bonding issues, in fact this was inspected and certified by the code enforcer simply due to the lack of wind load on these evacuated tubes. So if you have a situation where you've looked at the performance and they're similar, you've looked at the aesthetics and their similar, you've looked at the cost, but now you have a wind load issue, there is an advantage in evacuated tubes in that this install is basically mounted right on these blocks. The blocks are setting on the stone and then the feet of the collectors are fastened to the blocks themselves. So we have 10 SunMaxx 30's here in series totaling, just themselves totaling 2500 pounds connected directly to one another through the piping, so there really wouldn't be substantial-- yeah, I actually just got a question from Anthony, this is non-penetrating. That's right, it's sitting on top of the roof, and the pipes actually run down the side of the building six stories into the basement. So this was a very simple install. You can do this with flat plates as well, but the curbs or the concrete blocks that would be required are more significant in weight. This particular install is a carport, so collectors can often be used to provide shading. This in on top of a parking garage, the top story of a parking garage with a carport that was already in place to provide shading and then these-- the additional collectors provide even more shading to the carport. Some clients like to use the ridge, and get to the top of the ridge as much as possible and support the back legs on the opposite side of the ridge. Now this can be either flat plates or evacuated tubes, it doesn't matter, but it makes very good use of the available roof space. Because if you look at the amount of roof that this particular install required, in terms of gross area, it's much less than it would if we were to move these collectors down, and take the back legs down a bit. By straddling the roof, you consume less roof real estate, which is fairly important especially when it comes to larger systems or in Combo systems. A combo system where you have PV and thermal and as many of you probably know the PV collectors would take up more roof real estate relative to their solar gain and energy saved than thermal. So by doing it this way, that ration becomes even more apparent. That the thermal collectors are taking up much less roof space relative to the solar input. Here's some flat roof installs. One thing that I'd like to point out about this is the shading. All right, so this installer took some-- this was up in Massachusetts. This particular one on the right, this installer used some large pre-manufactured floor joists. And he set those up so they are 18 inches off the roof and the spacing is such that during the Winter solstice, the angle of the sun will not cast a shadow on the second row. Okay, so for latitudes that are between 40 and 43, that spacing is 12 and a half feet from front to front. Latitudes of 38 to-- 37 to 40 that space is about 11 and half feet and latitudes of 35 to 38, the distance is just about 10 and 1/3 (10,3 feet) that is the distance from the front of one collector to the front of the next collector to prevent shading. Now this installer on the left used the same rule of thumb in terms of shading, but he took his second row and mounted it up at a higher elevation than the first row, which allowed him to take up less roof real estate. Okay, another way to consider installations is how you can increase the performance from the back. I showed you a couple of the reflective surfaces, but additionally, this white is gonna shine. Any of these light, the non-shadow portion of this roof, that's gonna cast light back up to the back side of the collector. It's real apparent on this photo. You see this beam of light that's being reflected down onto these collectors? That's what you'd normally see from the front of a collector. Yet, we are looking at it from the back of the collector. So it becomes very clear that a roof that has a highly reflective or even mildly reflective white membrane is going to be able to increase the performance of the collectors, estimates are from 11 to 20%, okay. Here is a couple of pole mount strategies. This installer in Las Vegas used a black pole which he mounted directly to the rafters itself as a supply and return so his supply and return piping went down through this black pole that he insulated and the pole is also supporting the collector, so that was a very interesting installation technique and I thought I'd share that one with you. Another one where, you saw the picture previously of mounting on the ridge, well this installer-- this client did not want his collectors mounted to the roof, so the installer mounted some poles, upon which he secured these collectors. I just had a question about reflective backing, and we actually have a couple of prototypes that we've worked on and they include parabolic reflectors, flat sheet reflectors, we also have just a reflective surface that can be taped on, or stuck on an existing material. But in terms of including it with our collectors, we do not include the reflective surface with our collectors primarily because the increase of wind load and the increase in cost. And if we look at the existing roof, there is many ways that we can use the roof as the reflective surface for much, much less cost. And a perfect example is Shewin-Williams. Sherwin Williams makes a real nice highly reflective roof paint, I believe it's 35 dollars a gallon, and can be painted on asphalt shingles, increasing your solar performance by 11-20 % so additionally so for 35 dollar gallon of paint, we can get what amounts to performance of a whole another collector or 30 tubes. Okay, just to show you again that another ground mount situation with concrete standoffs, this is the job at Wacol prison. This pre tube installation, and they took these concrete blocks, this entire pad was poured just for the collectors. These concrete pavers were glued together using concrete adhesive and then the feet of each of the collectors was mounted to these concrete standoffs. Okay, and this has been well, this was engineered by OGS engineers, and is expected to be stable for 20 plus years, all right. This is a close up of the picture I showed you that was actually on the roof, we just used these 6 inch, 6x6x12 concrete pavers with blue tapcons right into the concrete paver. Here is an example of how we can reduce summertime performance using the mounting strategies. One is to mount them on the right here, vertically, and this eave is going to shade the collectors in the summertime. This installation is right outside the window here, I'm actually looking at it through the window right over there, and our tubes on a hot summer day right now are about 85-90 degrees, and in the middle of the winter, in January on a summer day they are upwards of 130. So even though we are getting more insolation now, we are able to decrease our performance. Why do you want to decrease performance? Well this is just for heating, so we really don't want to produce excess BTUs and we are able to accomplish that by vertical mounting. Now remember, vertical mounts are only suitable for U-pipes, or flat plates; not suitable for evacuated tube heat pipes. Another strategy was this fake roof that this installer built, where he's got two collectors on top of the roof, and two collectors below the roof and as you can see in the winter time, both--all four collectors have full access to the solar radiation, and in the summertime as the sun goes higher, this bottom row production decreases dramatically. And he balances out his production with his consumption. Very smart method there. Here is another way of overheating protection. One is to obviously cover your collectors on a ground mount situation, not real accessible for most, but I thought I'd point out that this client is having good luck obviously with reducing his production in the summer time for heating system by covering them up. And in this case we have stood these up at such a steep angle, the maximum angle these tubes can be place at is 75 degrees. And that's pretty consistent even with the flat plates, they can go vertical although you wouldn't want to mount a vertical flat plate on top of a roof like this just because the amount of mounting protection it would need from lift and up force, and the evacuated tubes you can increase the incline angle, and it decreases the summertime production because there is virtually no wind load there. All right, I like to keep on schedule. I actually went two minutes over. This was just a 30 minute little webinar. I really do appreciate all of you joining us and I hope it helps with your understanding of solar thermal. Checkout our website solarwebinars.com for upcoming schedule. We are going to be doing this every Monday for as long as we can. I'll stay online here for just a few minutes if anybody has any questions, otherwise I hope to see you next week and you can access any of the past webinars that have been recorded without any technical difficulty, or if I forgot to record them their not gonna be there. But so far I'm 2 for 2 in the last 2 of recording. Any questions? Okay, well I will say thanks again, and hope you guys have a great solar week, and keep getting the word out because it won't be long - solar thermal is going to be right there at the top in terms of the industry and market potential. Take care.