Normally the output pipe should be hot water pipe for durability. If you got the choice use hot water pipe. PVC will get soft and the joint screw-on part will have problem. 50 degree is ok for PVC but sometime when you want to have really hot water like filing a tab or bucket you have problem. It expands though it wont bend or melt. Nobody suggest to use pvc in such situation unless due to cutting cost. Morevoer if you use class 0 you have problem maintaining its shape as the wall of the pipe is too thin. You also see that to bend pvc pipe is to heat it will fire. Even a candle fire can make it soft for bending within few minutes. Of course boiling water cannot bend the pipe. Still if you got the choice use hot water pipe.

No bro. No. The end of PVC is usually connected with a metal socket like GI or stainless steel or copper/brass so that it will not worn out screwing/connecting the mixer. On top of that the cold water (and the hot water) will enter the mixer inlets then mix inside, beyond the inlet hot and cold pipes. Even if the socket is PVC it will never get heated up. As the cold water pipe keeps supplying the cold water to the mixer keep flowing there is no way the mix hot/cold water can reverse the flow and heat up the cold pipe. It is a one way traffic. Hope that clears your doubts.

I dont believe solar heater can generate electricity. Only the solar cells not heater or hot water. Unless you convert the heat to steam and turn the magnet or dynamo magnet like bicycle. Solar heater is not hot enough to make steam.

The benefit of having solar heater is you enjoy plenty of hot water shower with as huge volume of water your pump can deliver. You can have rain shower, multiple-spray with power misting spray where you need not rub down the soapy water and it clean you all the soapy water comprehensively. Besides, the misting is needle masage your body and you can aslo use it to clean the toilet. You can also have water massage showerhead. You can torture or enjoy or thrill yourself with instant hot and instant cold water all over your body with full turn the mixer to the right and to the left. You can use the super hot water to clean and kill germs in your toilet. All these and more instant water heater cannot do. Lack of hot water power.

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Added on June 15, 2012, 2:23 pmThere is no such thing as breakeven in RM $$$.

A cheap solar heater cost RM5K with pump plus piping installation RM2k. Instant water heater 3 units RM1k got cheap ones and RM1,5k.

The difference is RM6K. RM6,000 with average of financial return of 6% (like EPF, mutual fund) is RM360 a year or RM30 a month you can pay for monthly instant water heater electricity bill.

4 persons bath for 15 minutes a day with average 2.5kw = 4 x 15min/60min x 2.5kw x 30 days x 40 sen per kw = RM30.

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Added on June 15, 2012, 2:31 pmThat is to say there is no compare. The comparison is like you stay in a 5 stars hotel and 3 stars hotel. Or you bought a RM10k mattress and RM2K mattress. One is luxury the other is common.

You walk into a fren's house bathroom and you see rain shower and you say wow this guy know how to enjoy. When you see instant hot water heater you say errr like mine, no difference.

This post has been edited by stevie8: Jun 15 2012, 02:37 PM

You also have kettle, stoves, oven at home. Children learn. Infact instant water heater is more dangerious in term of scalding. When you stop the water flow the heater its heating element is still at red hot and though the power is cut off it continues to heat the small tank inside. when you turn on you get hot very hot water. Dont believe try it yourself. On the heater to almost max, one the water to max, after few minutes you get comfortable flow of warm water. Off the water let it stay for 30 sec to 1 min. Turn the flow to max, you will feel hotter water, burning hot water coming out then cooler and cooler to warm water. Sometimes the heater still on for few second when water is off, try a few times you will know.

Some use rain shower on instant heater but the electric power heating cannot cope with the high flow of water and the water is cold. You can never have hot shower with rain shower huge flow. If you tear up the instant water heater you can see there is a small tank. Any bigger tank cannot work or heat up the water in time for you shower.

One other benefit is no power no electrocution unless you switch on the solar water heater heating power.

Thank you for all the likes and support. I am only speaking from my true experience.

Life is short. By the time we bought our own house we are already in our 30s and some in their 40s. That is half gone. I know solar or storage water heater is much more expensive than instant water heater but we have to live to enjoy otherwise live just to live and suffer there is no meaning at all. Water heater is a long term investment. Like mattress, you can have RM200 mattress and few thousand RM mattress. We need to sleep well everyday and to sleep well is to choose a mattress that support our body well and good ventilation cool our body.

The thing to do is when you get your house key delivered to you and you are doing reno and if you do not have the money for a storage or solar heater do the piping first, the hot and cold pipping to your bathroom for future installation. Do not try having a long bathtub or even jacuzzi. You are wasting your money. We do not have winter. bathtub is for when the weather is so cool you do not want to take shower even with hot water. Taking out cloth is so cold already. In cold weather winter the only thing that make you to wash yourself is if you have a bathtub where you can dip in hot warm water and enjoy for hours warming your body and stay active and healthy with all your cells awaken. Our hot climate even with jacuzzi you will not stay in it for hours or even half hour. You waste a lot of hot water. You only do once or twice in a year and fairly quickly you dont want to stay long. Why? imagine you stay there doing nothing for 1 hour??? with a galss of wine and reading book? Crazy.

We shower everyday and something we cannot do without. some ppl 2 times or 3 times a day. For something we do everyday it is better to enjoy it. Instead of paying RM3-4k for iphone for 1 person use and get obsoleted in one year why not save the money for many many years and for the whole family members. When you dont have a good bathing system it will always on your mind how you wish you have one especially you see other people houses with the heater on their roofs.

This question needs to be answered by those using storage heater how much they pay extra for electric bill after installation. Also, if you connect it to washing machine it save you even more.

If you want to use storage heater, few smaller units is better than one big unit. The time taken to heat large volume take times. Sometimes only you alone at home and family members go for a week holiday. You are heating the water for 4 instead of 1 for big tank.

Not forgeting that if you do not use the hot water it will lose some of the heat and waste electricity. Whereas Solar heater you just dont bother to "off". There is no "off" button you cannot off the Sun. Say the whole family go for a week holiday, you off the storage heater switch to save electricity constantly "re-heat". When all of you are back same time at night you got to wait, wait, wait. When the tank if not fully heated you go and take bath and another also take bath, you get cold water. It has to be who first? Who is the boss? Whereas with Solar all of you can use all the bathroom at once at full blast.

When you have something bothering you like the longer you bath the more money you spend, how to enjoy bathing? You dont want to be like singaporean, do you? Their water bill is expensive, it is a pain to take a long long bath. Here it is not the water but electric bill. Every extra minute kill your joy. Forget about taking 2 or 3 bath a day. Better dont bath la so calculative, your kid might say this to themselves when you remind them not to spend too much time in the bathroom.

Of course they want nuclear plant or whatever plant. There is a lot of money involves. Nuclear plant is green too. But dangerous and we have to against it. Why? There are many reasons. First, we cannot trust the company that run the plant. They are interested in profit. Then the ones that supervise them are group of individual with some of them take money and for those who dont take they are stupid. Stupid not because they dont take but because they know little or nut and present with science they say oh yeah. 2nd it take so much money to maintain and the company will try to save money, you cannot trust them.

Look we had Asian rare earth and so many ppl suffer from cancer, birth defect, etc and yet it was run by Mitsubishi, a giant jap company. They coned our government into believing it was safe. Who in our government is so knowledgeble to dispute, they know nothing. Now weap are going to have Lynas and just wonder how knowkegeble is our authority to supervise them.

Lucky for us unlucky for the Jap, the tsunami last year put our nuclear plant a comma, not full stop for the moment.

We supposed to have bakun dam supplier power with submarine cable from sarawak to peninsular. What happened???

Over this part of the world we cannot trust our governments. I am not refer just about our countries but most of the countries where nation come first, not the people. The people have to die for the country, the nation interest come before people interest. Countries like Japan, China, Spore, Indonesia, Russia, etc they said you have to die for the country. The jap can kamikazi and you see they just had nuclear disaster and no one were put in jail or shot. So is our Asean rare earth disaster, no one officer was put in jail and no one from the company was put in jail. Whereas countries mostly western europe their culture are different, the people life and death comes first before the country interest comes first. Like Ozak said, always takecare our wallet first. If you put the people in danger in these countries you are mad, unthinkable.

With our strong sun the little dirt do little or no harm to the performance of the collectors. It is the cloud and rain that matter most. But again solar heaters in our part of world need just 2 hours of strong sun is enough to heat the tank for the family. Moreover it is still a hot tank from yesterday. Unless continueous raining with no sun at all for 3 days. Just need to size the heater properly.

No power backup for heater is not a real problem. You only need backup heater when it contineously raining for 3 days or more. This only happens once a year or once every 2-3 years. You can just bath with cold water or boil water for a day or two. But it is embarrassing when you have guests at home when you have to boil water for them.

For more than 10 years I never have problem after my backup heater broken and did not fix it as it costs RM450 to replace. I never boil water due to rain. I did boil water to bath for over a month when the solar heater tank leaked and sent for repair.

You should choose the vacuum tube type of solar water heater with better and faster heating. Use stainless steel pipe instead of copper pipe for the connection of hot water from the solar heater tank to the copper pipe of the bathrooms to minimize lost of heat and insulate these length of stainless steel pipe if you want to. Solar heater is getting cheaper and cheaper with China made but cost of installation, service and support is getting expensive. Make sure got local support service and part replacement like tube broken, leak.

This post has been edited by stevie8: Jul 6 2012, 11:53 AM

What you see and think is whitish substance is actually tiny water bubbles. To confirm it, use a clear glass fill it with the water and examine it. If it is bubbles it will disappear in a minute. If it is dirt or something it should sink or float. If the water stays white then there is something like solution in the water tank or tubes.

If it is something leach out from tank/pipe is should be cleared after few days or weeks till all the soluble dissolved in water. by then when you complain and the service man comes it will be cleared already and remain mysterious.

I still think it is air bubbles. Let it settles and use a big glass or jug. Worst is if it is anti termite/ant solution A drop of anti termite solution makes one little of water whitish and it remains and stays white for months. Someone accidentaly pour in some termite soluton. Ok, not to frighten you too much. Does the water smell? If you have no good nose get children to smell. No wind no fan bring the water close to your nose.

I got a question to ask regarding installation.

The Solar tank is heavy and water is heavy. one litter of water = 1 kg. A 250 liter tank + the stainless steel tank itself + the water in the copper/solar tubes can easily weight 350 t0 400 kg equal to 6 to 7 man standing on one spot of the roof.

The question is do we need additional truss support under the roof with more wood/truss?

One other thing is the roof truss support the roof tiles and it is calculated so and no more. We added the solar tank is one issue and if it stands well all well but our roof tiles are mostly concrete roof tiles. As it gets old after 10 years the shining layer of paint will be worn out. Without the protective paint rain water will be absorbed like sponge and added weight to the roof truss. What next??? Accident waiting to happen??? Has anyone thought about that?

Comment needed my roof is sinking on one side where the tank sits (senget already)

Thanks for the reply. So you are saying most of the time the installers just install without any additional support for 60 gal solar tank. For me two pieces of wood under one side of the tank have bent recently. I added a 2x5 on these two pieces but there is no way to make it straight. Just make it so that it will not bend further and collapse.

Nowadays metal roof truss are used. Just do not know if it is stronger than wood. It looks very thin.

Thanks for the replies.

This is what happened and I added two pieces of 2x5 on the side that was sinking next to the two bent pieces.

Was waiting for my contractor but never turn up. He bought the wood, keep postpone and postpone and postpone and I worry the roof might collapse and so I go up and DIY. Small job like this dont get their attention. then next day he called and said he would sent his man but I already get it done and sweat

4 feet apart.

See picture. I think it is extra weight due to roof tiles now absorbing water.



Anyway, I think it is now ok since I added 2 pieces of 2x5 supporting the 2 bent pieces. The only thing is it cannot go back to its original, just that I dont think it will sink furhter. The 2 2x5 is supported by concrete wall below as you can see from the drawing above.

I worry using too much force and instead of forcing the roof up, it might push down the wall and then pushing to my 1st floor floor slab and worry the floor slab cannot take it. My living and dinning areas is large combined with a beam that is directly under the wall and up to the roof. Better be safe than trying to be too smart. These are all unknown so dare not take risks. See added drawing below:

Mine is Solar Mate have been using it since 2001. During 2010 the tank leak and claim warranty. The heater broken long time ago and never replaced. No need for heater just make sure the non return valves (vacuum valve especially) are replaced from time to time when you see water dripping from the roof.

I bought 2 china made for my sisters' houses come with vacuum tube. Cheap but have yet to install. It is cheap and the built look efficient but not sure it is durable. I tested with one tube fill up with water and place it under hot sun. Within minutes the water is damn super hot. dare not test longer and took it inside house and let it cool itself. Service is not available. The reason I bought it is because it is so cheap and if it broken just throw and change a new one. Also no one is going to install for you. Installation is RM600 to RM1.5k a unit. If you are not adventurous and you cannot DIY installation, just buy Summer or Solar Mate for service is important to you but not me, I can diy. Micro Solar, from the posts, such lousy business service you better forget about it.

Pictures of the model I bought





And 2 sheet of installation instruction and if you cannot understand these 2 sheet of instruction, don't ever think of buying.

The picture show 6 -8 persons. that is for cold climate. For us her hot climate 10 -14 person is not a problem as our cold water is already warm so need little hot water to mix.