Would you agree with a bill that would mandate consumer hot water tanks be solar ready-heat exchanger inside?
To me this is one area that this generation of shower takers, clothing washers, and tea drinkers could become a little more aware about. Yes, it would be extremely simple,upon manufacturing, to install inside currently made gas and electric hot water tanks a coil of non corrosive tubing- wherein the beginning and ending of this tubing could be connected to the homeowners remotely placed solar collector. The collector would be nothing more than a piece of black plastic tubing coiled on the rear of the house in rural communities. Believe it or not, there is more than one way to skin a cat, engineers could have little trouble hiding water/ glycol ( remember it is a closed system so any conducting liquid solution would be sealed from the actual hot water in the tank) in many creative fashions. Shingles are excellent heat conductors if they are black so it might even be advantageous to place a conductor behind them if possible. Better still, the peak of the roof line is often used for venting attic air. With not much difficulty the manufactures of these venting systems could offer successive lengths with tubing concealed behind the sections which could be connected to suit the purpose of project. The bigger the house means the bigger the roof, AND the bigger the hot water needs.
Homeowners could be offered tax credits for using solar hot water systems. It could be calculated down to the single BTU with simple calculating circuitry built into the hot water tanks.
So why not? If some podunk like me from Ohio can think of this then how come nobody is doing it yet? After all we all use hot water everyday!
April 4th, 2010 at 3:23 am
That would be nice. Some areas of the country would be more appropriate for this than others, probably in the middle belt.
Countries like Japan already to this all over the place. It just hasn’t caught on here yet, but this combined with something like Photovoltaic panels might have more impact.
April 4th, 2010 at 4:59 am
A mandate? This is a good idea but no one has the right in this country to mandate things like this that would cost 20 times as much for a hot water tank.What about the people that make barley enough to make ends meet. Your from Ohio where a lot of people ain’t working. They have to take cold showers or not at all? I use cold water for laundry, use the microwave for heating water and a coffee maker. For someone like me that takes one 5 minutes shower a day the electric payback would not be in my life time. They make a timer for a hot water tank that saves. If you use electric and your electric company where to generate through wind and nuclear, or solar (not coal like Ohio does) you would end up with the same end results. There is a enough things mandated in this country, the word mandate to me means loss of freedom. See if you can sell this idea that is affordable to a company.
April 4th, 2010 at 5:49 am
I would agree with mandating hot water tank producers make tanks like you suggest available at a reasonable price for those who would like to use them.
April 4th, 2010 at 11:30 am
As noted similar approaches are being taken but I am not sure if there is a wide-spread program for it. Why not start in Ohio and see what is already in place such as grants and credits? Contact the Ohio EPA and the power companies. See what your state and federal representatives think and would they back such a proposal. A mandate might be a hard sell, but something voluntary might also get support.
April 4th, 2010 at 12:45 pm
Actually, your not the only one to think of this stuff and some of us ARE doing it already. I live in a rural section of Florida…and my dh does actually happen to be an engineer so that is probably why, though I would like to think we would do this stuff with or without his background. Quite frankly, I have given a lot of input into the design ideas and I am not an engineer. So I do think many others can do this kind of stuff…I think it just takes using your brain on an idea for more than 5 minutes, lol.
We have our own setup a bit different, but in a nutshell still a solar hot water heat exchange system. We are looking into “Roman” air conditioning too, to pull us totally off the grid with the AC here in hot steamy Florida. (another form of underground heat exchange but in this way you are removing the heat rather than collecting)
We have already eliminated using any electricity to force out the hot attic air…so now we are looking at various uses to harness it for other purposes.
I also have a giant container in my yard that we are working on to use for all of the animal manure around here as an alternative energy source.
Even though it seems the government keeps stalling out on us, many of us are not waiting around for THEM to take action to lead us. Some of us are leading ourselves.
Anyway, my point is that it is not that no one is thinking of things…it is that their are a bunch of reasons things are not mandated. Most of them boil down to lobby and expense. You have no idea how many things we have come up with that could be implemented to really help our country…but GETTING them implemented is a whole different ball of wax.
So, if you have an idea you think will work…I say go for it! Implement it for yourself, try to get your family and freinds to follow when they see your method in action. Don’t wait around for the government to mandate. Ask Nike would say, “Just do it!”
You never know, your ideas could spur a friend into a new idea for something else…that could spur on another freind, etc. etc.