Browse Forums General Discussion Re: Best place for a solar hot water unit 3Oct 05, 2020 4:05 pm arcadelt shahfar I read somewhere that the closer the unit is to the bathrooms, the less you will waste water and energy. You waste water while you wait for hot water and you waste energy when you unnecessarily call on hot water. My thoughts on this is as follows (yep, I have thought about this a lot): * When you have a shower or draw a bath, you intend to draw hot water, and you let the cold water flow until it is warm enough for use. However, while you use a lot of hot water during the shower or while filling the bath, that's what you intend to do, so only the initial cold water is wasted. Most people only bathe once or twice a day, so in a family of four that is four to eight lots of wasted water, but you can reduce that by coordinating bathing times and by using a jug to catch the cold water to use elsewhere in the house. * Quick hand washing in a bathroom rarely lasts long enough for hot water to come out of the basin tap. A lot energy is wasted because people like to have the handle of a mixer tap in the centre line, and when you turn this on is calls hot water which ends up part way down the pipe, and then just cools there. Meanwhile, new cold water is drawn into the tank, and this needs to be heated. Every person probably washes there hands a half a dozen times a day, so that wasted energy can add up. This can be easily fixed by making the sure the tap handle is on the cold side or by installing cool-start taps in the first place. * Hot water is needed a lot in kitchens, not just to wash up a sink load of dishes and utensils, but also to wet sponges to clean up messes. Dishwashers help a lot in this regard, but most people will still use the kitchen tap to get hot water many times a day. You can use the jug to catch the cold water, but you end up with a lot. Based on the above, my take is that if you have to choose, have your hot water storage positioned so that the run to the kitchen is the least and then to the bathroom that gets used the most. The rest of house will be where it will be, so do the best you can to save water and water heating energy as described above. Thanks for the feedback arcadelt! For our new build in NSW we opted for a heat pump with a 315L storage tank. Early days yet as we only moved in 6 weeks ago. Haven't run out out of hot water though. Ours… 7 4371 the sun master is the solar heating to "warm" the water in the tank the S26 is your hot water system which will heat the water (25 degrees?) so with both turned on you… 2 14603 I want to build a decking to the drawn shape outlined in black. The problem is how close can I build to the gas hot water unit? Will I be able to build around it and be… 0 20506 |