I have a client who complains her pool solar system is not effective. The original install insists it is hooked up correctly. My solar guy says that since the panels are set at different elevations the hook up should be different. See attached drawing
Since I know little of this technology I am not sure who to belive. Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated.
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I have solars on my pool and I find you seldom do better that ambient air temp. That is particularly true if the pool is not covered.
One thing you can do to evaluate how well they are working is to read the temperature on the collector surface with an IR thermometer. It should be fairly uniform across the array. If you have hot spots, that is not being cooled by the water and you have a flow problem..
Assuming that the water circulation is with the filtration system, I would be concerned that the modified set up running the panels in series may produce too much resistance and thus drop the flow rates too low for proper filtration. I work with a condo complex pool which is considered "public" and thus has health department inspections which require a certain minimum flow rate (the entire volume of the pool needs to go through the filter in 8 hours). When the solar heater is on, the resistance is increased and the flow rate decrease significantly in a lay out similar to your present set up (all panels in paralell).
I would check the temperatures when it is operating in good sunshine. Even though they are black in strong sunshine, they should feel only slightly warmer than pool temperature. If some panels are cool and others are hot, then there is a problem with the water mostly using only one panel. It appears that the path is nearly identical lenght and resistance through each panel, I would be suprised if that is the problem.
I would look at the controler. There should be a controler which circulates water through the solar heater only when the pool water is below the desired temperature and the solar heater is warmer than the pool water. If water circulates through the solar heater all the time, it will heat the pool on a sunny day but radiate heat back out on a cloudy day or at night, cooling it off faster than the pool would do by itself. The pool I work on has the controler operate a three way valve which by passes the heater when either the pool is warm enough or the heater is not warmer than the pool. The filter runs continuously. The performance is significantly degraded when the controller is not working properly.