creategreenhome.com Blog

Solar Hot Water brings significant benefits to a German family

July 18th, 2008

It seems that Europeans are readily adopting Green technologies and incorporating them in their everyday life.
An example of that is a Solar Hot Water system installed on a home in Hannover in northern Germany. Shortly after they purchased their new home, family Heinrich decided to upgrade their heating system and augment it with Solar Hot Water panels to harvest the sun’s free energy to supplement their heating and hot water needs.

The system consists of two sets of solar collectors (5.6m2 area each), three hot water tanks (635 liters total capacity), a set of pumps and controllers and even includes an enclosed fireplace in the system. Solar collectors heat the antifreeze fluid that circulates trough a pipe system in the panels, which is then routed to a heat exchanger that transfers the heat to the water in the tanks. One of the tanks is purely to supply hot water for the heating needs, another is for storing a drinkable hot water, while the third, the smallest tank is to accept any excess heat on the days when the sun is hot and the hot water needs are low.

System has been functioning flawlessly so far and Heinrich family is already seeing considerable reduction in their natural gas bills.

Full details about the system and images can be found on http://www.creategreenhome.com/Green_Project_SHW_Germany.htm

Entry Filed under: Energy Efficient Heating & Cooling, Green Building