Solar Thermal Piping 9.1.2010
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
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
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
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
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.
Pre-Packaged Solar Hot Water Kits 6.21.2010
SUNMAXX SOLAR HOT WATER SOLUTIONS Pre-Packaged Solar Hot Water Kits Date: 06/21/2010 Okay, well I’d like to welcome those of you who are joining us to the SunMaxx Solar Webinar Series. Today we are going to talk about HelioMaxx kits. We’ve done several webinars now. We’ve done the controllers, tanks, various types of collectors, and I’d like to spend the next half hour talking about HelioMaxx kits, and what SunMaxx has done to help pre-package these systems to make it easier for the end user or for the-- ultimately the installer which is you folks to put these in, and have them properly sized. So, we’ve actually spend a considerable amount of time and different softwares, sizing of these pre-packaged kits. And their-- generally as you can see in this diagram-- we have closed loop glycol system, alright, to make things as simple as possible-- the drain backs have their merits, and we will be coming out with some drain back systems-- but these are closed loop glycol, generally with the piping schematic that you see here. This particular one shows a single coil in a storage tank. We do have variations where we have double coil-- double -- two double walled coils. But for the basic schematics, in the solar loop, this is what we are working with. We always run the collectors off the bottom loop, now our pump station has all the necessary components to make that loop run. [Now I would like to remind you if you have any questions your more than welcome to type a question in. I try to multitask, so if I see a question that pops up that is relative to what we’re talking about, I will be happy to stop and address that question. I can’t promise you all the time, but please feel free to ask any questions as you see.] So generally, we have two types of HelioMaxx kits-- pre-packaged kits-- the standard HelioMaxx, and the HelioMaxx Plus. So as you can see, HelioMaxx basically includes a collector tank and a pump station. All right, some of you have different preferences in terms of line set and mounting strategies, different types of glycol, so we would like to offer you a pre-packaged kit that just includes the collector and the tank and the pump station, all right. Now for both of these the HelioMaxx and HelioMaxx Plus, we’ve decided to size these so that they meet a 50% solar fraction in Syracuse New York, okay. Syracuse is-- for those of you that live in this neck of the woods, you can attest that Syracuse is cloudy as it is anywhere in the country, probably Seattle might be worse. So if we can do 50% in Syracuse, then in places like Phoenix and Columbia, South Carolina, and Ohio and various places like that, the solar fractions have been climbing up into the mid-70s, okay. So, you know that this kit, if you choose the right kit, then you’ll have at least a 50% solar fraction which is the minimum required for the federal centers, all right.
Now both of these HelioMaxx, and HelioMaxx Plus come in two-- six versions, basically three sizes both designed for either flat plate or vacuum heat pipe. For those of you who know about SunMaxx, we do offer both the flat plate and the vacuum heat pipes. We are as much-- as unbiased as we can be. We like to include the flat plates for particular purposes and some call for vacuum heat pipes, so, we’ll help you decide based on things such as aesthetics and location, temperature requirement. We’ll be able to offer you either, okay. Now the HelioMaxx Plus, as you can see on this-- the right hand side, comes with just about everything that you need to get this system charged, okay… the bushings required, the glycol, the hardware, quickmount PV to fasten to the roof, the line set-- line set comes in 50 ft lengths. If you need more than that, just let your sales rep know, we can send you an additional 30 ft length or one 80 ft roll. It also includes the pump station, with the controller and all the fittings. We recently put on a training in Denver where we were able to take a HelioMaxx 65 vacuum heat pipe, with all of the necessary components and get it fully installed, including the bushings and everything. The only thing that’s not included would be things--obviously the tools-- but the Teflon tape, and pipe dope, and things like that. So you should have everything with the HelioMaxx Plus, okay. All right, now, just to go over again, the HelioMaxx Plus includes the rail-- I'm going to through each one of these in particular so you can see the picture-- but the rail for the mounting to the roof, the pre-insulated line set, which by the way is a really, really good line set, you can't possibly crimp it, and for these we include the 5/8 line set, and 50 ft, also 2 gallons of high temperature glycol. This glycol we are bringing over from our German friends. It's rated in the low 300's, I believe 320 degrees. Also the expansion tape and the connection set, okay. The TitanPowerPlus is a line of flat plates which I'll include in just-- I'll talk about in just one second. And our UniMaxx-Plus pump station. We have two different pump stations that we offer. The UniMaxx Plus and the UniMaxx Plus B. I'll talk about the differences of those in just a few moments. And to HelioMaxx standard includes the connection set for the flat plate or the evacu tube, the expansion tank, the connection set for the expansion tank, a hot water tank, and depending on the size, you would get either a 65 gallon tank, an 80 gallon tank, or a 105 gallon tank, and then TitanPower Plus either flat plates or vacuum tube and the UniMaxx Plus pump station. Okay. In terms of the collectors included, like I mentioned before, either the vacuum U-pipe or the flat plate, I just want to talk a couple minutes about some of the benefits of the TitanPower. This is a tinox absorber, so it's one of the-- it is the latest and greatest in absorber coatings. This is a header riser style, so it allows for drainback. Also it allows us to achieve a slightly higher temperature because we can put more of these in series. This-- the frame of the collector is really the part of the-- is the box of the collector itself, so it's a stainless steel framing that makes up the box. It's textured glass. It does increase the efficiency because it scatters the light more evenly across the absorber surface. Additionally, aesthetically some people don't like that glare, so it cuts down on the glare off of the collector. Now if you notice on the-- of the this TitanPower you see a three quarter inch compression fit, that allows us to just mount one collector right after another. The average flow rate through each one of these your gonna have in series is about a half a gallon a minute. Now for the thermal power our vacuum heat pipes, in terms of the vacuum tubes, these have some of the highest efficiencies relative to the absorber area in terms of total output for vacuum heat pipes and more importantly we include the adjustable hardware so whether you want to mount like this is, sort of at a compound angle or a straight flush mount or your want to take it up off of a pitched roof, the hardware that is included is fully adjustable. Now there has been some debate, and it's never ending, but vacuum heat pipes are really suitable for all climates. We have vacuum heat pipes installed in some of the warmest places on earth, however they are most suitable for colder temperatures that therein is the value of the vacuum. Additionally, in not only colder environments, but cloudy environments allow you to take in any of the diffused radiation. Okay, now I want to just point out the connection set that comes with the M2 if you notice from this picture, if we are to just take one flat plate--this is a demo unit, which has been cut away just to show you the insulation, and the absorber coat, the connection set that comes with every row or every series-- so if I get one flat plate, I'll get one connection set, if I get two flat plates, but I connect them in series, I still need one connection set. In fact, if I get ten flat plates, and all ten will be connected in series, I'll still get one connection set, okay. This connection set is your supply return from each bank. As you noticed there's a nice T. It makes it look very professional. It comes in on the bottom. Each T will accept either a plug, or as on the top side, the T will accept a sensor port, so you see the stick it's about 6 inches long and it threads into that T in which you put your sensor. So it's a dry well for the sensor. And it allows it to be inside of the manifold pipe of the supply side of the collector. Also, on the top of the T is a manual air vent. Okay, and so while you are charging the system up, a small pair of plyers, you can open up this air vent up and more efficiently remove air from your loop. And then obviously you need a plug on one side and a cap on the other. If you noticed the top left of this picture is a plug, but really it's a cap, it's gonna cap over the male, because on that-- on the TitanPower you see two male threads on the left and on the right are two female threads. Now you can also take a look at the monitoring hardware that comes-- The hanger bolt is a really designed to very easily pass through any roofing membrane. It's long, it's very robust, and it can take in any of the weight loads associated with the flat plate, all right, in wind or snow conditions. Also the length of that hanger bolt allows you to mount directly through the Spanish tile. There is enough space there so the-- washer can seal itself tightly against the ceramic tile as long as you've been able to puncture a nice clean hole. So, when you're done, as you notice on the picture on the right, it would appear as though that hanger bolt has been threaded into the rafter, about-- the hanger bolt-- it's really about 14 inches long, so you can very easily cut the remainder of the hanger bolt that you don't need. That key profile, you see a little slot and that slot is used to accept the bolt connected to the flat plate, so basically 3 simple installation procedures: insert the hanger bolt into the rafters, insert the T profile into the clip and then set the flat plate on the T profile and put your bolts in through the slot, it's very simple. Okay, now when it comes to the pump station included in the HelioMaxx kits, we go the UniMaxx Plus pump station. . . I just want to discuss real quick the UniMaxx pump station. Now, this is a nice slick unit, okay, if you look at the inside, we have our fill station on the right hand side there are those two little orange valves, allow us to fill it up automatically with our fill station, or our pump. And then the flow meter, all right, so like I said with these collectors, we're really looking for about a half a gallon a minute, so it's quite simple. If we have two collectors, we want our flow meter to read a gallon. The expansion tank port is above the pump, so you can tell the direction of the flow. Our expansion tank needs to be above the pump so it allows for our collectors to steam back, and takes in any of the expanded fluid. There is also an air separator, okay, there is a manual air separator, and an automatic separator that's on the hot side, okay. So it's nice-- a nice unit-- the fittings are manufactured by PAW, some of you may have heard of them, from what I know, it's top of the line components, and it fits nicely into our line set. Take another look at the controllers, for our HelioMaxx kits, we include the DSW Plus. This controller has two relays and four sensor inputs, for our Combi System pre-packaged kits, we include the Combi Plus which is the Deltasol M version, I believe this one has about 9 relays, I'll talk about that in one second. Additional-- Additionally to the controllers are the accessories. Now these are not included in the HelioMaxx kits but can very easily added on, and it's highly recommended that the IntelliMaxx-Ezlog in combination with the IntelliMaxx-Flow meter is-- it is probably the easiest way to monitor the system, it's gonna tell us total BTU ouputs, pump on time, and you can calculate efficiency based on the square footage of collectors and average installations, and your clients, if you should wish, can access a URL where they can see your data online. I don't really know the cost, but I think the IntelliMaxx-Ezlog in combination with the flow meter, is less than 400 dollars. As an accessory cost, it allows you to log this data. Okay, just real quick, I'll show you a couple of other components, for the kits, the expansion vessel. Now you may be inclined to go with the less expensive standard hydronic expansion vessel, but if you notice usually the -- like the Amtrol for example, of 3 gallon, 3 ½ gallon, or 4 ½ gallon tank, it's not rated for high temperatures. [They're not wireless, Cameron, but what you can do is plug your data logger into an Ethernet, and into a wireless modem, so if you can purchase a separate wireless modem from BestBuy or Kmart, and then access the data anywhere in the home, through a laptop or a desktop and then it automatically goes to URL, so. They do need to be wired to the controller.] Okay, in terms of the expansion vessel also on the right you see this connect kit. The connect kit is a very sturdy L bracket that's gonna allow you to mount directly to the wall. Another thing I want to point out about the expansion vessel, even for a smaller systems, we recommend a six gallon, so that's going to be our standard size, and thankfully with some of our positive relationships with some of the more experienced Germans and Austrian solar thermal engineers, it's really helped for us to realize the total impact that a properly sized expansion tank has, not only system performance, but system longevity. So, for these systems, we're going with the 6 gallon tank with a high temperature diaphragm, okay. In addition to the high temp expansion tank, the maximum temperature of the expansion tank is 320 degrees, and the maximum pressure is rated at 10 bars which is equivalent to about 148 psi, okay. This glycol is rated for 325. It does have the same chemical properties, in terms of heat coefficient in viscosity of standard propane glycol. And we recommend that this glycol be replaced every 5 years. Okay. Moving on to the line sets. One of best features of our pre-packaged kits, in addition to the performance, is the easy of installation. And as anyone can attest, if you have ever installed this full max line set, it makes for what could be a difficult installation, very easy. Now some of you might prefer straight lines, and long runs of copper, and I can't disagree with you, I think straight lines do have value in aesthetics. But when it comes to places where there won't be straight lines, the full max line set is going to probably cut your installation time down significantly, and the quick connect sets that come-- I haven't had one leak yet. You know, we might find leaks in unions, or leaks in fittings in the tanks, but when properly secure, a quick connect to the line set, I have not seen one leak. Also, it's got a UV protected wrapping and 16 gauge-- basically thermostat wire-- runs inside-- on the outside of the insulation-- but on the inside of the UV tape, okay. We do have 5/8, 3/4 , and 1 inch diameters, and we typically sell them in lengths of 35, 50, and 80 feet. Your pre-packaged HelioMaxx kits are going to come with a 50 ft line set, so it will be important to know if you require more than that, we can replace 50 with 80. While I'm thinking of it, I do want to bring up that although we do recommend these pre-packaged kits, they do make a good place to start in terms of what type system do you want to install, and then if you have any variations we can easily adjust the component list for each pre-packaged kit, so we include 50 feet, but if you need 35, then we can replace that out with 35. All right, let me show you the quick connect kits-- quick connects look like-- so it's got a 3/4 inch male thread, okay, on the bottom-- and on the top, this thread, threads into this, basically compression ring. The installation procedure is a follows. This nut slips onto the stainless steel, and then once that's in place, then we take this little clamp, and we're going to squeeze it down and compress it into the first corrugation, and then we have to take this disc, and we're going to put the disc on top so, seat it up against our corrugation, and then put our male thread, this one, into this slot, and tighten it down. What that's going to do is cause this stainless steel corrugation to flatten out, then we remove this disc. We can discard that disc and put it in our washer. The washer is then going to seal the joint between our 3/4 inch male thread here, and the inside of this nut, okay. And what remains is our 3/4 inch male MPT that's ready to tie directly to our line set or our storage tank.
Speaking of storage tanks, the kits really include the first of two storage tanks. I wanted to just show you we do have non-pressure tanks, those are included in our Combi system which is a whole other webinar, okay. This StorMaxx-DW and the StorMaxx-Ptec. The StorMaxx-DW is a double walled -- two double walled coils. And like I mentioned, we do want to customize our pre-packaged kits, it seems kind like an oxymoron, customized pre-packaged, but for those of you who live in areas where a double walled exchanger is required, then you're gonna go-- we're gonna swap the StorMaxx-PTec, with the StorMaxx-DW which stands for double walled. Both of them have the same performance ratings, the heat exchangers are very similar in their functionality, but the one on the left does has a double wall, two double walled heat exchangers internally, okay. As you can see here with this StorTec--sorry StorMaxx, we have two double walled exchangers, this bottom coil is going to be our solar loop, the top coil is going to tie into a recirc loop, or a heating loop. I also want to point out this port here labeled Z. Z is an open port, so we have an open port for cold water here, we have an open port for hot water here, and we also have an open port here labeled Z, and that allows us to pull heat out of the top of the coil, and if we are going to return that water, after we pass it through an exchanger, or into the other tank, we can return it here, and some of you might be thinking 'why would we be returning water here rather than the bottom', but what we want to try to accomplish with this is a large degree of stratification. So we want to bottom to remain relatively undisturbed. And we are going to bring our return in-- in Z that keeps the hot water in the hot part of the tank, and allows us to maintain colder temperatures in the bottom which increases the utilization of our collectors, okay. Now this storage tank is enamel lined, and it has an anode, so we have several different lines of defense, for oxidation, obviously two of which are the anode rod and the enameling. We expect a nice long life out of these tanks. Just to point out our StorMaxx, for those of you that are considering a Combi system, where we won't have time to heat load, we've had really good success with our non-pressure tanks. There is very little stress put on these systems. We're able to maintain some really good stratification, because we're using coils instead of direct flow. And more importantly than anything, I suppose, is that you can fit these non-pressure tanks directly down the stairs, into the basement of an old Victorian house with a windy cellar stairs, where you just certainly wouldn't be able to get anything down there much larger than 80 gallons. Okay. Just to quickly point out the internal coil of the double wall exchanger, you see the thin copper, although it's a shorter coil, the thin copper gives it that extra surface area so that the heat exchange capacity is very similar to the longer straight copper coil in the StorMaxx-Ptec. The double walled exchanger tank is much heavier. It's got a hydrastone lining, so it does make it a nice dense tank, but once it gets down to the basement, it should be functional for 20 years. Okay. Well folks, I just wanted to quickly go over all the components of our HelioMaxx kits. They come in 3 different sizes.
I try to be as prompt as possible, I started at 12:00, and it's certainly 12:30, so I would like to thank you for your attention. I will be sticking online for a few minutes if anyone has any questions, I'm glad to answer them. Formally I'm going to have to stop the recording so that those of you-- other clients that like to view this in the future can see it. Once again, thank you very much, and hopefully we'll see you next week when we talk about various mounting strategies for solar thermal systems.
Solar Storage Tanks 5.21.2010
SUNMAXX SOLAR HOT WATER SOLUTIONS SOLAR THERMAL STORAGE TANKS Date : 05/21/2010 Solar Thermal Storage Tanks: OK! Well, good afternoon. Id like to welcome everybody to the first of our SunMaxx solar webinar series! This is GeoMaxx tanks. What I'd like to do today over the next half hour is go through the features of some of our GeoMaxx tanks, and different design configurations: pressure related things, heat exchangers You each have a chat button . You can ask some questions as we go . I'll try to answer them as I can, and of course you do have constant contact with one of your dealer reps If you have any questions following this webinar please don't hesitate to get in touch with us . OK ! Well, our new line of tanks is really an obvious evolution from just a simple dual coil stainless steel tank . You know the dual coil serves a lot of purposes . It allows you to pull your solar loop off of the bottom , which increases the efficiency of the collectors . It also allows you, using your solar tank not only as solar storage but also as an indirect water heater off of your boiler , to replace your existing water heater altogether , and just tie a separate zone off of the boiler with the top coil . Now this is just a simple closed loop indirect system where we can also - if we look at this slide - we can also use the top coil to tie into a heating zone , depending on the capacity of your tank . The top coil can transfer up to one hundred ninety thousand BTUs per hour , which is pretty significant heat exchange for a coil . One of the reasons for such a large rate of heat exchange is the large surface area , but there is also some degree of turbulence inside the coil , which increases the heat exchange through the walls of the coil . Now with a system like this we can go from something very simple to complex , easily, with some control valves, 3 way valves , or additional circulators . Our control modules - the intellisol domestic hot water combi plus - has 11 configurations .Our simplest controller has 11 configurations !
So to go from a simple domestic hot water system to something a little bit more complex , like a combi system, is quite simple . OK ! With regard to the tanks , these are obviously very versatile and have a much longer life span than most tanks that you see in the united states . But what I like about them the most is their heat exchange capacity . Over the last couple of years we've designed several versions of tanks , and one of the limiting factors was their ability to transfer heat through the top coil . As I have already mentioned, the 130 gallon tank has a top coil has the ability to transfer 190k BNTU of heat per hour , and that would satisfy most houses . Additionally they are very well insulated . There are two inches of polyurethane foam surrounding the tank proper, around which is another jacket of insulation that zips around the tank. As you can see there are 6 ports in the front . We have the cold and hot supply and return , and also the two ports for the coils, the bottom and the top . Around the back side of this tank is a 6 inch clean out port, on the bottom . It opens up and allows you to service the tank. We expect at least 20 years out of these tanks. They are warrantied for 10 years . One of the features that make these tanks relatively unique is this enamel coating. So, not only do we have a high grade steel (which is 1.4571 High-grade steel) , but additionally an enamel coating . Now that coating offers a corrosion prevention measure, but it also insulates the inside of the tank slightly . It reduces the heat transfer through the metal of the steel of the tank. A third level of corrosion resistance is an anode rod . The anodes are designed to take out the ions from the solution , or 'promote oxidation .' The anode rod is really one of the most important things you can do for a tank, and we took it a step up by utilizing a commercial grade anode rod, which has a lot of magnesium ready to become oxidized and sacrifice itself for the good of the tank . Additionally that anode rod can be replaced. As is generally the case with most anode rods, it is advisable to replace, or at least inspect the anode rod after five years. Now obviously the quality of the water will dictate the life expectancy of the anode , but part of this solar installer service contract , or maintenance contract, should include inspection of the anode , as well as obvious: the PH, and concentration issues with the glycol . Inspection should happen in a timely fashion, even 2 years wouldn't hurt, although it will require you to drain the glycol below that level . On the top of the tank you'll see a port for hot water . The hot water supply is where you will tee off to pressure relief valve. This tank does not come with a pressure relief valve ; different municipalities have laws that are different than others . I know New York state for example has a unique temperature and pressure rating for solar vessels at 180 degrees , and I believe 75 PSI . So the valves are not standard on this system but are easily added . Another thing I want to point out now is that as you out your tee off to this hot water supply you're going to run your pipe down into bucket - so you tee this into a bucket . It shouldn't ever pop, really. The systems are designed in the solar side of things to have enough expansion . We have learned a lot about the importance of expansion vessels , especially when it comes to stagnation and steamback . With evacuated tubes expansion vessels are important but they are not the end all. We obviously also need to dissipate heat rather than just allow for expansion. But with the flat plates, though, if we size the system properly, we shouldn't have this TP valve ever open up . I did have some questions regarding the UL certification . I want to point out that the UL certification is not required for tanks that do not come with an electric element. So what you'll have with this tank is an inch and a half port that will accept an element up to forty five hundred watts . Up to a 4500 watt element is suitable for a tank this size. It can be plugged, which most often is the case . Just to point out, even though you can get stratification from top to the bottom, ideally what we will find is forty degree stratification from the top to the bottom of the tank. Now that allows the efficiency of our collectors, to be greater , because the colder the return back to the collectors, the greater their efficiency. But at the same time, it keeps our wives happy, because they are taking hot showers! Ideally, we might have two separate tanks: one as a preheat tank, and the other as your hot water tank, that maintains that minimum temperature. But with this design we are able to maintain about a forty degree to fifty-five degree, stratification. This is extremely important, lets say on a cloudy day .
In particular, in upstate New York we see probably two hundred fifty cloudy days a year. On a cloudy day, whether we are using flat plates or evacuated tubes we might only get our collectors up to ninety five, one hundred degrees . If that temperature does not meet the minimum temperature of our set point , then our pump will never kick on. If we have significant stratification, even though we might have a hundred and twenty up here at the top of the tank, we might have seventy five or eighty down here,
which gives us a much greater amount of utilization . It is essentially like having two separate tanks: one as a preheater, and one as your heat source . Looking at different TSOL reports, or RETscreen reports, or SRCC OG-300 systems, these systems that use a preheat tank have a higher solar fraction. What we've been able to do is essentially have a separate strata here that represents a preheat tank - it operates at a different temperature than the top of the tank. Now this isn't anything new, obviously. In Europe they're further advanced than we are, and this is something very common in Germany and Austria, for example, where they really exploit the stratification of the tanks to get higher efficiencies in the collectors.