| Hi all,
Well, I took the plunge last week and bought a single solar panel from a company to see what the difference was between my nice homemade system and a professional one. Well, I'm impressed, and depressed. I guess I am glad I'm impressed because the professional solar panel was expensive. Anyway the thing puts out tons of water, and from what i have read, it's not just heat you need it's heat AND flow. You can burn your finger with a match, but you can't heat a pool - meaning my little 1/2" tube homemade solar system is nice, but it's not going to do a great deal to heat an 18 foot above ground pool which is 5 feet high, - that's a LOT of water in there.
Once I got the professional system running today with the very large 1-1/2" tube, I quickly realized my that my system although cute was not anywhere near as strong as this one panel.
In any event, I am glad i tried using black hosing to heat my pool, and indeed it DOES work, no matter what any salesman will tell you, - you just need enough flow to get a pool warm.
I now want to buy another 4 panels from this company, - each kit or "panel" is 40 sq.feet, and with 5 panels, that makes 200 sq. feet, which should be enough to do my pool... - most places suggest 60% of your total area of pool.
In my case the pool is an 18foot, round above ground pool, so that's 256 sq. feet approx, so I'm well over the 60% needed to heat that pool quickly.
Anyway here are some images to check out.
Mark.
Does this mean my HOMEMADE solar system failed ? - by all means NO... and that's a very positive NO !, if I had the room - say I was living out in the country or had a lot of propery, I could use more black hosing and would have very good sucess with my homemade system.
What you see in the images is ONE panel - eventhough you see 4 pieces, it is actually only one panel or "kit" ... which equals 40sq feet.
Install was easy, and I'm more than impressed. Now to find somebody who doesn't scare easily and install this and other panels on my roof.... I have a 2 story house, and it's just impossible for me to even put my life on the line to put a solar panel system on the roof.
How I envy people who have a single story house .... they have it so easy :-)
Mark.
Editors Note:
I fixed it so those huge photos show on a reasonable screen width. Hopefully DanF can get that fixed soon.
TomW
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