I'm playing around with solar water heating at the moment.  First off I'm trying to warm the pool up a bit as it's a chilly 8 degrees at the moment.

I'd be interested in anyone else's experiences with solar water heating - either of their pool or for domestic hot water.  I'd like to heat our hot water using solar as well as the pool so any advice or experiences greatly received!

Thanks,

Nigel

Well, I played and the results are interesting...

The pool (66,000 litres approx) responded well to heating.  The configuration ended up with 4 panels (approx 8ft x 4ft each)  These gave a temperature differential of around 12 degrees from input to output.  Water throughput was around 40-50 litres a minute.  It actually meant the pool was usable by the end of March (it was 22 degrees by then).  The biggest problem was windchill and cold nights - I was amazed how much this caused the temperature to drop and regularly resulted in losing all the previous days heating, and more.  Anyway, I'm persevering and will try a cover or more drastic measures towards the end of the year...it's currently 30 degrees - just right for me but the days are long and hot and the nights are warm so it doesn't cool down too much.

Most recently I decided to try heating the hot water for the house - with excellent results!  We already had a hot water tank with a heat exchanger connected to an oil boiler and with its own pump.  I disconnected this circuit and 're plumbed' it to go through a solar panel (one of the 8ft x 4ft panels I used on the pool). The hot water tank has a capacity of 200L. The water is being heated to 58.9C (138F) by the panel.
The pump (just a standard domestic central heating pump) is being run by a small (38 euros from Ebay) inverter from solar batteries and panels and I built a temperature differential controller to switch the pump on and off.  The result - free hot water.

Hope this inspires others to try out similar things - save the environment and save some money at the same time!

Nigel

Hello Nigel,

Don´t know much about solarsystems but I understand this company is soon going to build a huge factory for a revolutionary type of solar-panels in El Pinell de Brai:

http://www.randbenergy.com/presentation_english.htm

I´vw heard this area has the most sun-hours in Catalonia so they want to build a solar-power central also in El Pinell.   

Mark