Solar Thermal Brackets

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Mad Inventor™
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Anyone ( @binky ?) point me at where's best to get brackets to mount 3 of these:







To this roof profile:





I assume the necessary brackets are stainless? If I had even a sketch/ drawing I'll make my own.

Cheers.

 
talk to your local electrical wholesaler, they all have eco-departments these days. Something like the bracket below is what you want, note the height adjustability, you don't want the arm of the bracket resting on the tiles, it will cause them to break, and battens can vary in height.  No drilling tiles either. Use mushroom head screws, something like No.6 or 8 fix direct to rafters not battens. Trim tile around bracket arm, makes job neater, and stops small birds nesting in your roof,

100001-001_300x300.jpg.b81f4b03732bcb2e6f167b1c83e785af.jpg


 
What happened to the beer cans?

I made some for a pv panel out of old steel sheving and some scrap I had lying about, not on a tiled roof either!

So probably not much help but maybe I'm trying to get you to make you own. :)

My old man has one solar thermal panel on  his roof and is very pleased with it so three should be good!

:D

 
those are vacuum insulated glass tubes with black finned copper tubing, they really do work well. Bit like a car, you need to maintain the anti-freeze about every 5 years, and you need a water tank with dual coils. You could make brackets, but it would probably cost more in your time than it's worth. The picture I posted of a universal bracket costs about £5, and is marine grade stainless steel. If you are coming down my way for a holiday, I have various off cuts of rail you can have ( not worth posting, they aren't that expensive). galvanised unistrut is a possibility.

 
Cheers, maybe if we do an IoW visit this year I'll come scrounge your offcuts! :)  Got a picture of the rail in question or link to a dimensioned section? Still thinking st/st angle if I can get cheap from my fabricator!

So it seems the company behind these panels was dissolved in 2013 so I've no issue posting there up from the brochure that I got from the people who have me the panels:





Of course all I have is the 3 panels and none of the other components! All the house has is an oil boiler and gravity fed, traditional copper hot water system.

Plan is to put the panels on this SW facing roof.





From what I've read and heard the "issue" if you can call it that is that these things can produce too much hot water. Better having to deal with the excess than not so I'm thinking of a thermal store.

Short term I want to integrate with what I've already got.

 
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good roof pitch.

I'm not sure, but if the water is getting too hot I think they re-circulate the hot water, or it gets sent to a radiator to dissipate heat.

 
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good roof pitch.

I'm not sure, but if the water is getting too hot I think they re-circulate the hot water, or it gets sent to a radiator to dissipate heat.


Yes I've seen something with lots of copper fins. Even read people advocating running dedicated clothes drying or towel rads. The most inventive one I've read was somebody proposing dumping heat into the GROUND to recover later in the year!

 
From what I've read and heard the "issue" if you can call it that is that these things can produce too much hot water.


I've been to a couple of systems where the panels are outputting far more than the tank/system can dissipate and so everything just gets ridiculously hot (like >100°C hot). Best/easiest option is to dump the heat into the radiators, or at least have a decent heat leak radiator.

 
I've been to a couple of systems where the panels are outputting far more than the tank/system can dissipate and so everything just gets ridiculously hot (like >100°C hot). Best/easiest option is to dump the heat into the radiators, or at least have a decent heat leak radiator.


Cheers. I've seen some places selling what are clearly standard rads as heat dumps. Still fancy the heat store then I can divert to the UFH.

So what happens with the above diagrams in the event of an overheat as there's no heat dump? Does the glycol go to the expansion vessel effectively purging the system of heat transfer fluid albeit temporarily?

 
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I've seen some places selling what are clearly standard rads as heat dumps.


Do the same job, I've seen rads randomly fitted in roof spaces used as heat dumps, whatever works I suppose. Just a waste though so really a last resort.

So what happens with the above diagrams in the event of an overheat as there's no heat dump? Does the glycol go to the expansion vessel effectively purging the system of heat transfer fluid albeit temporarily?


The expansion vessel will just take up the expansion, it won't take any additional heat as such. If the system gets too hot it just gets hot. All of the systems I have dealt with though have been triple coil tanks so it's relatively easy to use all or some of the radiators as heat leaks. I actually started to design a more complex/standard control system for triple coil tanks so the valves and bypasses all worked and the priority did what it should. Most systems relied on standard tank stats and pipe stats so they weren't all that accurate, especially with 3 stats all working in a 20°C range with huge hysteresis meaning it was anyones guess what would happen.

 
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