How to heat water for RV or home with PV solar panels part 4
Channel: OpenSource Shipping Container
Date: 19/01/2020

Here is part 3: https://youtu.be/t0f-i3TbIwg


We came back out about 1 hour later, so the bucket had been getting heated for about 2 hours and 20 minutes total. 



The control was still 60 degrees. 

The water at the top of our heated bucket was 125 degrees.  (we had some clouds too)
The water in the whole bucket after I mixed it was 90 degrees. 





I really like this for pre-heating and maybe even really heating water for a home.  It is much easier than putting panels up on the roof that may freeze and that are so complicated with pumps and all of that. 



I am thinking that my father-in-law may want to do something like this to heat the water for his swimming pool, if his other panels are too problematic. 



I think we can put a thermostatic switch on some panels like this in a house to heat the water/glycol for the hydronic radiant heating, then when that gets up to 100-120 degrees then the switch moves the energy from the panels back over to heating water for the house.  Once the fluid in the hydronic system gets back below about 90 degrees then the energy is switched back to the hydronic system. 



By doing something like this, the panels can be used for several different applications. 



The electric heating elements are about $20-$30 each, so if we have two different systems with a switch and a couple of heating elements that would probably cost about $100 plus about $250 for the panels, plus the cost of the tanks. 


Then we will have access to a lot of cheap hot water and we won't have to hook up batteries to our solar panels. :)