What is a solar heater?

A solar water heater is also known as a solar geyser and uses energy from the sun (which is naturally free) to heat up your hot water by the means of solar panels, also known as heat collectors. You get two types of heat collectors:

1. Flat Panel: More suitable for our South African climate and high temperatures in summer.
2. Evacuated tube panels are glass tubes next to each other to form a complete collector. Although this is a very efficient panel and has been designed for the European climate, it is not recommended for our summer climate, as these panels over produce in summer and also because of the heat, they tend to start giving problems over a two to three year period.

There are also two types of solar water heaters:

1. Direct: Where the water flows directly through your panels to heat up (This system can only be used in frost-free areas, so the water does not freeze inside the panel).
2. In-direct system: Uses a food grade anti-freeze also known as GLYCOL, which flows through your panel, heats up and travels through an outer tank inside the water tank, heating up the water inside. For this reason, the DIRECT system is more efficient than the INDIRECT system.