Everyone seems to be thinking, reading, writing and talking about solar energy these days. That’s good. Mews about solar technology — like sex — pops up regularly in almost every newspaper and magazine in the country. It looks as though both sex and the sun are here to stay. And we can be thankful for […]

In a fairly sophisticated solar pool system, water is pumped out of the pool, through the strainer, and through the filter. Alter the filter it passes through a check valve. This check valve is more than just an option. Its purpose is to keep water that’s draining out of the panels from back-washing the filter […]

The roof of a pool house or cabana makes an ideal location for solar heating panels — espe­cially if the roof faces south. If there’s a flat roof, or if you decide to mount panels on the ground, they will have to be tilted a few degrees to give you reasonable heating efficiency. You may […]

For some reason, cheaper solar collectors de­signed specifically for swimming pools are called "heating panels" rather than "collectors" — even though they work on the same principle. Regular collectors — the type we’ve been discussing throughout this book — can be used. But it’s a little like taking a Ferrari to pick up a load […]

An opaque or transparent swimming pool cover — which will transmit solar radiation to the water — can give your pool another 10 degrees of natural storage capacity. This means that if a free-floating cover with pockets of trapped air is stretched over the pool at night (and whenever no one is swimming), we can […]

We’ve saved our discussion of solar-heated swimming pools for last — not because it’s least {or most) important, but because it’s different. On one hand, swimming pools are still consid­ered luxury items, even in the minds of most affluent Americans. Domestic hot water, on the other hand, is something we take for granted in most […]

You are the master controller because you set the temperatures and determine the pump speed (start #3, Figure 86). But when you’re not around to oversee things — which is most of the time — a small electrical box with a differential thermo­stat takes charge. Out of this box run 4 electrical lines. Line A […]

To keep things simple, we’ll divide the heater into its three major parts: (1) the collector loop, (2) the hot water loop, and (3) the thermostatic controls. Then, we’ll trace the flow of antifreeze fluid from the storage tank (beginning at the very base of the collector loop), to the collectors and back through the […]