I'm almost finished building a home made solar collector. It is basically an oval lozenge shape on top of a poolside pergola. I've divided up the 2" feed into 20 x 5/8" irrigation pipes that spiral round 4 times before being "collected" together into a 2" pipe together. The spirals range in total length from 130' to 200'. The total collector area is 172sq.feet. The pool surface area is 193sq.feet. This is just under 90% of the pool surface. I understand that it would have been consistent to have had all the pipes the same length.
I have a huge sand filter and currently my pressure there is 12psi with DE (Pool has 1 skimmer,1 main drain and 2 returns)
My question is, I'm reasonably sure with the extra strength of the irrigation unions/clamp brackets/pipe I can run my currently 37 GPM all through the collector without any bypass to get a much higher efficiency than normal. Will the plumbing take this throughput without issue ?
As a side note, it has been said that this type of home made solar isn't worth the effort is it's cheaper to buy retail collectors. These cost me around $2.80/sq.foot and I was able to fit 9 square feet per hour for a total of 20 hours.
I have a huge sand filter and currently my pressure there is 12psi with DE (Pool has 1 skimmer,1 main drain and 2 returns)
My question is, I'm reasonably sure with the extra strength of the irrigation unions/clamp brackets/pipe I can run my currently 37 GPM all through the collector without any bypass to get a much higher efficiency than normal. Will the plumbing take this throughput without issue ?
As a side note, it has been said that this type of home made solar isn't worth the effort is it's cheaper to buy retail collectors. These cost me around $2.80/sq.foot and I was able to fit 9 square feet per hour for a total of 20 hours.