Wednesday, December 29, 2010

Solar Heating

Solar water heating is becoming one of the smartest ways to heat your house, cut down on your monthly costs for heating up water and do your part to help reduce your output of carbon dioxide. This is because solar water heating is a cost effective way to generate hot water to your home using the sun. The sun is responsible for all life on Earth, and generates a tremendous amount of clean, renewable energy that largely goes unharnessed. If, however, this energy could be harnessed, it could go a long way to reducing our use of fossil fuels, and coincidentally our emissions of greenhouse gases. Solar energy can be converted to electricity in the home, as well as a source of heat for water. Solar Water Heating is a simple way of making us of the energy from the sun for your private home.
How Does Solar Water Heating Work?

Solar water heating uses solar collectors or solar panels which gather up the sun's energy and use it to heat up water for your home. The panels will collect the sun's heat and the solar tanks store it for use in the home.

Essentially, there are three different types of solar hot water heaters that can help you to heat your home using the sun: the flat panel collector; the evacuated tube collector and the concentrating collector.

The flat panel collector is the most common and is comprised of an insulated weather proof box that contains an absorbent material which attracts the sun's heat and energy. Flat panels are usually attached to your roof. Very simple flat panel solar collectors are often used to heat a pool that uses solar energy. However, flat panel collectors can also be used to heat your home or provide you with hot water for showers or cooking.

Evacuated tube collectors use parallel glass tubes with an inner and outer tube that absorbs solar energy. The advantage of evacuated tube collectors is due to the fact that the outer tube is evacuated, does not contain any air, there is a minimum amount of heat loss through radiation. Concentrating solar collectors use troughs that concentrate the sun's energy onto an absorber tube which will contain a heat transfer fluid.

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