Maintenance of the DIY solar thermal collector

Getter and repaired

Hello dear readers, I do not know in your area, but here in northern Spain we have had a February 2017 very very windy, with gusts over 100 km / h  (some kind of cyclogenesis ), so strong that it removed literally one of the panels of cellular polycarbonate, and after the noise we heard, we have found, pushed by the wind literally against a tree!

So light it is (1 cm wide and 1 mm wall), who knows where we have found it if the tree was not in the middle of his path. Even it had a brown mark, a sign that before it arrived there, it hit the tiles of the house, partially breaking it.

But this would not have happened if the panels had been properly anchored, and better protected from the wind. On the one hand, the wood of extreme suffering the ravages of rain, rotting it, it should put more sheltered. And secondly, the screws that secured panels only the timber were fastened, when should having crossed and fastened to the rigid metal under it much safer.

Solar thermal collector configuration supporting gas/oil boiler

Antonio from Orense had a solar panel with a deposit of 150 lts connected to the same circuit ACS but separately, so that when it was sunny had to walk opening and closing keys to harness this energy and save fuel in the oil boiler.

With solar thermal energy (pre - heat the water with a solar collector) all are advantages. This renewable energy system is today the fastest amortized, usually in two years the installation is amortized, and lasts up to 30 years , with minimal maintenance. It's easy money, and who have not it installed, properly sized, they are throwing money to the trash, literally.

After analyzing your installation of ACS (ignoring the heating pipes), I advised him to use solar thermal as we do; supporting boiler  (gas in our case).

The method is simple; it provides warm water tank directly to the boiler, so that it only has to provide sufficient energy to bring it to the temperature (usually 60 °), and so you forget.

Centralized control Solar-Biomass mixed system with Arduino and TFT Shield

In this post I will share with you the improvements I've made to our biomass/Solar mixed system , which is basically to change the obsolete control system for thermostats with a centralized system based on Arduino fully customizable, flexible and expandable; we will see the assembly, components and source code.

Applied materials:

   1 - Arduino MEGA 2560 (specifically I used a Funduino clone ), because the TFT shield does not leave me enough inputs / outputs Free UNO R3.

   2 - Touch Screen TFT 2.4 "  McuFriend , which will give us great freedom when it comes to display information on screen libraries that have worked best for me. Are the BUHOSOFT ; here you can download the version I used.

   3 - relays to activate solenoid valves, with a fed to 5V that can handle 230V and 10A worth us to spare.Not to stress regulator Arduino board, the food independently with other L7805 regulator (handles between 7-30V and 1.5A max). Being so low consumption, nor need a heatsink:

   - A speaker-buzzer for alarm warning in case of problems, which operates between 7 and 12V 100dB, enough.

   - A relay SSR DC-DC to activate the buzzer ; only consumes between 3 and 25mA so we can turn directly to the Arduino pin. I used one of solid state more than anything because I had left the other, butsince it is an element that is to be activated soon, you better go to a mechanical more economical and compact:

Centralized control mixed system Solar-Biomass with Arduino and TFT Shield

In this post I will share with you the improvements I've made ​​to -biomass Solar mixed system , which is basically to change the obsolete control system for thermostats with a centralized system based on Arduino fully customizable, flexible and expandable; We see assembly, components and source code.

Used materials:

   1- Arduino MEGA 2560 (specifically I used one Funduino clone ), because the TFT shield does not leave me enough inputs / outputs Free UNO R3.

   2 Touch Screen TFT 2.4 "  McuFriend , which will give us great freedom when it comes to display information on screen libraries that have worked best for me. Are the BUHOSOFT ; here you can download the version I used.

   3 - relays to activate solenoid valves, with a fed to 5V that can handle 230V and 10A worth us to spare. Not to stress regulator Arduino board, the food independently with other L7805 regulator (handles between 7-30V and 1.5A max). Being so low consumption, nor need a heatsink: