Wednesday, May 04, 2011

New solar hot water on the farm

We called Solahart to come and service the elderly solar hot water service on the farm cottage because it had stopped heating, They sent a plumber along and he fitted a new electric element but said it was pointless carrying out a service as the unit was useless. Not surprising really as we installed it nearly30 years ago. (Solahart still tried to charge us for a full service)
The newly installed Solahart unit
Anyway we got him back a week or so later to install a new system - or rather a second hand one as the casing had been damaged by hail and was an insurance write-off.

While he was here, I asked him to look at the solar unit on our main farmhouse - and that was a mistake.

The evacuated tube solar hot water system on our main house.
It's apparently the most efficient system there is -
but we are not convinced! 
It's an evacuated tube system which had a slight  water leak, so I always turned the water off to it unless we were using it for showers etc.  When he left, the leaks were worse than before he arrived, so I wish I had kept my mouth shut!!!

I'll now have to clamber around on the roof trying to reduce the leaks

As we are now heading into cold weather we need hot water - but we don't want to increase our energy consumption or our carbon footprint.

1 comment:

Olive said...

I think that he thinks he'll get another call from you in the very near future. Can't trust some of those tradies, after a buck.