Solar Panels

jairomar

Hi,
I would like you opinion about de design of some solar panels, i found something that i would like to show you: http://www.solarmurals.com/art.html,
I need recomendations those are for heat the water of pools, spas, etc.

What do you think about the design, i fyou were the designer what other interesting things you can do.
maybe put some trees, etc..
do you think it looks very well in an elegant place??
the heating depends on the design or it doesnt' matter

Thanks

BB.

Re: Solar Panels

Jairomar,

You appear to be out of Colombia (South America). Are you interested in how well these will work, as a pure design project, or in selling/installing these?

My two cents worth... First, most pools are used in summer so having vertical thermal panels (especially near the equator)--Very poor at collecting solar energy. For your region, You would need the panels to be near flat to to the ground collect any useful energy.

Next, more or less, for locations much farther north or south, the sunlight's energy is going to be, mostly collected, by the dark colored metal piping and "art" (leaves, fish, etc.). Anywhere there is glass and no metal will not collect any useful heat (in my humble opinion).

Lastly, the typical rule of thumb (North America, 2-3 season pool usage) for heating a pool would be around 50% of the pool's surface area. The amount of "active" surface area in this sculpture would be a small fraction of the "collector's total area" and even a smaller fraction of the pool's surface area.

In summary, pretty art, but not useful for heating any sort of pool or hot tub for far north/south installations. And even less useful for near equatorial installations.

-Bill

niel

Re: Solar Panels

first let me ask if the temps get cold enough to necessitate pool heating there? sounds like a dumb question as you might not be asking about heating a pool otherwise.

2nd are you the designer of these and are just looking for more options for your products?

are you asking of trees being in the design rather than fish or plants as i don't think that would matter too much, but if you are contemplating putting trees around this solar collector then the trees will cause shading at times.

i'm with bill on this in that near the equator a flat collector would fair better. now if the collectors here are oriented so as to face east/west and there's no obstructions then the collector will function by catching the morning and evening sun.

this little bit of heat that it would collect would need pumped to the pool anyway so i would think it would be somewhat inefficient overall.