On 9 Dec, 13:59, (Steve Firth) wrote:
Michael Shergold wrote:
Does anyone have good or bad experiences with any UK Solar Heating
suppliers/installers.. This is not really a DIY project but the total house
energy project is really DIY with, and often without, the help of
professionals. Any recommendations or people I should avoid?.

I'd also recommend going the DIY route. The kit I have used is a heat
bank from Dedicated Pressure Systems Ltd (DPS) with a Resol Controller
and three 20 tube thermal solar panels bought from eBay. Sadly the
supplier of the panels based in Bristol seems to have ceased trading -
he's no longer registered as a trader. However the design is a common
one so spare vacuum tubes are available from Navitron and other
suppliers.

http://www.heatweb.com/

Installation is perfectly simply if you are happy with working on a roof
and the DPS system comes complete with an excellent installation guide.
The purchase cost was £2000. Installation took three days but I was
hardly working flat out to do it. It could have been done easily within
a day.

Preparation was important, the thermal store was installed in the roof
void above a new bathroom constructed with block walls and a reinforced
concrete roof. The heat bank also takes hot water from a log burning
stove, and LPG boiler and in the near future we will probably add a
boiler using chipped wood as fuel.

One potential problem for us is that on a realy good day we can collect
ar more heat than we can use. So before next summer I'm going to install
a heat dump of some sort. The quick and dirty solution is a radiator to
dump the heat to atmosphere, a more sensible solution is to put the heat
into a large store of water. I was thinking of placing a 2 tonne store
into the ground and using this as a pre-heater for incoming water in
winter.

I've been interested in the Navitron stuff and was thinking of a 10
ton heat store underground.