old house, old panels, new owner?

[luciaps]

I have never used solar power, although I think it is fabulous and have always wanted to get off the grid as much as possible. My husband and I are looking at an old house ( 1900) to buy. Driving by it today, I saw it has some old solar panels on the roof. The panels are very cloudy and sort of yellowish grey. They also were in the shade at 9 am, but that was with that part of the roof facing south. I would guess that within an hour or so they could be in the sun. It is possible with some tree trimming they could easily be in the sun most of the day. I don't know if they are hooked up, the MLS listing does not indicated solar power.  My question is, how hard or expensive would it be to reconnect them? Is it at all likely they would still work at all? If at all possible I would love to revive them. The house is in Massachusetts, I don't know if that effects anything. My parents had tried to use solar power about 15 yrs ago just for hot water, but had a bad installation and a contractor building the house who had never worked with solar. It was an expensive project for them as the hot water heater was not hooked up correctly. Finally, the place where the pipes went into the roof began to leak and they had water damage in the ceiling. I don't want to inherit sombody else's mistake like that. Any advice would be welcome.  Thank you.

[troy]

Howdy,

Cloudy glazing would suggest to me either that they are pretty old and/or that they had been overheated at some point.  I would be bold and ask the owners directly about age and condition.  You might acquire a fully functional installed solar heat system for no additional cost.  If they didn't list it as a benenfit or feature of the house, it's probably not a good sign...

So really, you need more information.

good luck and have fun,

troy

[RatOmeter]

Hi,

As you may already know and as can be studied a bit at http://www.otherpower.com the first step to reducing your dependency on outside-supplied energy is conservation and efficiency.

Depending on what may have been done by previous owners, you may want/need to do some work on a house that old to improve its efficiency (and maybe just to bring it up to date).  My sister and her husband bought a house about that age in Minneapolis.  Two stories with a full basement... they gutted the thing entirely.  Rewired it, added insulation and repaired structural issues.  Not a task to enter into whimsically, but well worth it if you have the wherewithall.

[brock]

My guess is they are solar hot water rather then electric.  They are a lot more common and less expensive.  They might be able to be cleaned up and cutting tress out of their view will help.  Solar hot water isn't as affected by solar blockage as solar electric is.  It's not good in either case, but in solar a 5% block tends to kill 80% of the power, while a 5% block on hot water is about a 5% loss.

[tecker]

 Yep look for the connection probably plumbed in .

[ghurd]

If they are solar electric panels, the yellow grey color sounds like pretty old, over heated, "amorphous" silicon type. The reliability of this type from 10 years ago or older is poor, especially if they were mounted in a fashion where they could over heat.

If use or removal will truely be a factor in the purchase of the house, get someone who knows about them to fully test and evaluate them. Just to be safe, I would not expect long life even if they test OK.

(I got some 15 year old ones from Florida, not over heated, about 25% were OK, 25% were almost OK, 50% didn't work enough to bother mounting.)

[Volvo farmer]

That was my first thought as well. I've been in several houses around here that have non-functioning solar hot water systems. I think there was some sort of federal tax credit for solar hot water systems in the 70's. After 30 years, the panels leak or the storage tanks fail and people abandon them. I think it's pretty hard to find a knowlegeable repairman to fix these things nowadays. Even if you do, it's often far cheaper to install a conventional hot water system and just pay the utility bill than to deal with the repairs and maintainance of one these systems.

For a DIYer, there's savings to be had with these systems but if you're paying someone $60/hr to fix it, it might be cheaper in the long run to go conventional.

 

[wiredwrong]

Years ago(15-20) my parents purchased a hot water and heating system that is solar, it has worked great and they also got a huge tax rebate as an added benifit. they have had the roof replaced since this purchase and thus far have never had a leak.

in the winter you can stand next to the vent and can tell that it is considerably warmer than the room temp. The panel has become discolered and still does pretty good, dad has said that this system has already paid for itself more than once, (after the tax break I'm sure) and that the people here have built there own versions of solar hot water heaters probably used them for heating the air just a little too. It would be my guess that if this is the same type of system that they have, replacing the panel with a posible homemade panel would be a well spent investment, and would pay fro itself over time.