In article ,
Grimly Curmudgeon wrote:
We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the
drugs began to take hold. I remember Gordon Henderson
saying something like:

Solar HW usually fails to ever pay its costs off, but its not
impossible to make it work financially. Have fun designing a system
that will do so. Needles to say professional systems are the least
likely to pay their way.

I agree that if a system is "professionally" installed then the payback
time can be very long indeed - mostly due to the so-called professional
installers ripping the customers off... (IMO - e.g. a relative paid 4
times what I paid for my system, but she got a 15% grant so that was
OK. Err...)

However a DIY install, which is what I've just done ...

It's no use trying to talk sense to him about diy solar - I would 't be
at all suprised if he's in the pay of BNFL to promote nuke power and he
certainly has a severe wasp up his arse every time someone mentions
solar.
Funny, last time I pointed out this was a diy group and I was diy-ing
solar, he shut up.
Glad to see someone else doing it and putting the nay-sayers' gas at a
peep.

Heh... Intersting to read the other comments while shutting up for the
past few days... I find it intersting that no-one actually asked me
what I think about it all, nor why I was doing it, but rather assumed
I'd been conned by the greenies, or hype surrounding it all. Ah well.

All I'll say is that I'm a Geek, Engineer and Scientist in that order,
and leave it at that.

Now, anyone replaced central heating system with a home-made controller
based round e.g. Arduino? I've only recently realised how crude central
heating systems really are regarding their controllers and choices made
in them. Must have been a genious of a madman that invented the 3-port
valve! MOMO valves would appear to be the way forward, but I guess 30
years ago were quite expensive...

And now to have a free hot bath, heated by the sun and by-product of the
cooker. Spent the day with the chainsaw filling the wood store (we have
2 wood stoves, thinking of a 3rd)

Gordon