[Greenbuilding] [BULK] Re: Baxi Luna question

[Reuben Deumling]

Instead, save a lot of capital, some operating costs, a lot of maintenance
costs, and a hassle with overly complex solar water heating installations
and use a small gas-fired (tank) water heater--if you can find one.
I'll repost my question to this list of ~five years ago: to anyone with a
solar domestic water heating system backed up by fossil fuels (natural gas,
propane, oil, or electricity)--how many therms, gallons, or kWh do you use
in an average year? You of course need to have a submeter installed to know
this number, and these are not common. And in the interest of full
accounting you'd need to include the electricity to run the pumps and such
if you have them.
I like the idea of solar water heating a lot, and some on this list have
submitted designs for home-made simple systems I find delightful, and hope
to try myself one day soon, but in the meantime most of us have or have
experience with off-the-shelf solar arrays that can be difficult and
expensive to keep in good order year in year out, and are not all that
impressive when it comes to the fossil fuel consumption they were meant to
offset.
I welcome being proven wrong.

Reuben Deumling

On 6/20/07, Drew A. Gillett, P.E. <deaneg at hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> don't waste your money on a tankless
>
> instead , save a lot of capital, some operating costs,  a lot of
> maintenance
> costs,  and a hassle with poorly operating tankless units and simply
> install
> a backup electric heating element in the top of the solar tank and an
> extra
> collector with the money you save on not buying the useless tankless.
>