Newbie from Louisiana - have questions about solar panels

[susanbmason]

I live in North Louisiana. I've installed two solar panels on the roof of my house. The panels are located on the North Side of the house but I get a great bit of East and West sun, at least 6 hours. My panels seem to be attached properly and I have a great return flow but the water is not hot. Is my problem the location of the panels? my pool is 21 x 52. I understand I might need additional panels but shouldn't I at least have warm water returning into the pool? Attached is a copy of my panels. The inflow is at the left bottom and the outflow is at the top right. Could I have this hooked up incorrectly? I apologize for being so ignorant but I just cannot figure it out.

Many Thanks!
[ATTACH]7839
Susan

[SunEagle]

I live in North Louisiana. I've installed two solar panels on the roof of my house. The panels are located on the North Side of the house but I get a great bit of East and West sun, at least 6 hours. My panels seem to be attached properly and I have a great return flow but the water is not hot. Is my problem the location of the panels? my pool is 21 x 52. I understand I might need additional panels but shouldn't I at least have warm water returning into the pool? Attached is a copy of my panels. The inflow is at the left bottom and the outflow is at the top right. Could I have this hooked up incorrectly? I apologize for being so ignorant but I just cannot figure it out.

Many Thanks!
[ATTACH]7839
Susan

Any type of solar panel facing North in the US will never get enough sunlight to heat the water. If you can't use a Southern facing roof then pick the West or East roof depending on which side gets the smallest amount of shade.

[inetdog]

Are your panels mounted flat to the roof? If so, then as mentioned you will get little heating.
If you can, raise the bottom edge of the panels to get them close to horizontal or even facing slightly south. That should help a lot.
But if the high side of the panel changes, you may have to redo your plumbing and turn the panel.

[susanbmason]

moved panels to face south

Okay, I took down my north facing panels and they are now on a raised platform facing south. I know the angle is not correct but I made the platform too heavy to move by myself! LOL So, I will correct that in a couple of days. I found this web site which shows the correct angle I should have. http://www.gogreensolar.com/pages/so...ilt-calculator

Anyway, should I be able to feel warm water coming into the pool within a couple of hours or how long does it take?

[Naptown]

Okay, I took down my north facing panels and they are now on a raised platform facing south. I know the angle is not correct but I made the platform too heavy to move by myself! LOL So, I will correct that in a couple of days. I found this web site which shows the correct angle I should have. http://www.gogreensolar.com/pages/so...ilt-calculator

Anyway, should I be able to feel warm water coming into the pool within a couple of hours or how long does it take?

Depends
With only 2 panels it wont heat much
You want a collector surface area approaching 50% of pool surface.
If you have a high flow rate heating will be hard to detect maybe only a half a degree. DO NOT cut back on flow to rsise the outlet temp. This will cut back on the output of the collectors.

[saniconenergy]

As explained it really depends the sizing of the collector. However my gut feeling says that you wont be able to get sufficient heat. The two collectors would be generating approx 30,000 btu per day, which is sufficient for lets say a pool having 1000 gallons water with surface area of 25sq ft.