Solar hot water, me too

Author	Message
phil99 Guru Joined: 11/02/2018 Location: Australia Posts: 1911	Posted: 10:02pm 05 Mar 2023         Quote   I tried to get my head working on arduino again, ( have not touched that stuff for years now) but it was fuzzy ( my head that is). No! Your head is fine, the Arduino language is weird. Re. the Wet Back in the wood heater, long ago had one of those. It eventually rusted out, a replacement was much too expensive so replaced it with a slab of fire brick. The efficiency of the heater went up dramatically, saving tons of wood. After winter we noticed the hot water power bill was much less than previous years, it should have been more. Did a bit of research and it turns out a Wet Back fire box cools the fire too much resulting in incomplete combustion. Half the fuel is going up the flue as unburnt gasses and soot. Power was also being wasted when the wood heater is not used as the thermosyphon effect reverses, taking heat from the tank to the Wet Back. I hope your system is better than that! A better setup would have a heat exchanger after the fire box and use a thermostat controlled circulating pump rather than thermosyphon.