Elbie Yates's posts

Thanks everybody for the replys so far...

The hot tub does not have a heat exchanger per say. But then again, it doesn't really have much of anything until UPS delivers all the stuff..

I'm torn between trying to make my own heat exchanger, or buying one, but either way I go, I'll use the hot tubs internal circulation pump to feed one side of the exchanger, and the solar pump would run the other... I'm thinking that if I bury the pipe 12 inches, it should be protected from what we get as a "freeze", the hot tub has a freeze protect mode, which would keep warm water through the heat exchanger....

All the thinking about the amount of valves required is making my head hurt..

Elbie

Benefits, or at least benefits I'm hoping.... Maintain hot tub as close to 100 degrees as possible, and heat the DHW, without firing off 15Kw of electric heating elements...

Yes, I'm looking at a high head Taco circulating pump, to run the heat exchanger fluid through both heat exchangers and the collectors.

The cost of running the circ pump is $3 a month, or 10 cents a day, if my math was correct.

Labor I'm not too worried about, I've got me.. Materials I am. I am in a freeze zone, so if I were to put to independent systems in, thats two drainback tanks, 4 circ pumps etc etc.... I could buy each drainback system for about 1000, or, hopefully, just one will do and run piping to both heat exchangers....

Folks

I've been reading, drawing, and thinking. Last one is the scary part.

What I want to do it heat my hot water, and supplement the electric heater in my hot tub (approx 300 gallons), with solar. I am in Jacksonville Fl

What I was thinking of was an AET drainback retrofit kit, 2 4*10 AET MSC collectors, and a bunch of copper pipe. What I was hoping I could do was run the collectors, pipe down to the drainback tank (heat exchanger 1), bury a 30 foot run to the hot tub, hit hot tub (heat exchanger 2), come back through existing trench, and back into the drainback tank to begin the cycle over again.

I figured by doing it this way, I'll have my DHW first, and then I'll have a hot tub, hopefully heated with thermal energy that the drainback system didn't absorb. I'm trying to avoid having to put in two independent systems.

Anybody see anything glaring wrong in my plans?

I appreciate your help.