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I have never gone around
shouting that the polar ice caps are melting. Whenever anyone talks
about CO2 emissions, I always like to say, "One good volcano eruption
negates all our auto emissions." As a matter of fact, in
August 1883 when Krakatoa erupted, there was so much ash in the atmosphere
around the world that the year 1884 was known as the year without a summer
causing crop failures around the globe. Perhaps the greens should
picket volcanoes first and then worry about man's effect on the environment.
But, here is something so green and so good, I had to take advantage of it
for pure economic reasons. Solar water heating along with a few good
old fashioned tax credits. The current technology alone is not good
enough to interest me, but when I saw the tax credits that went along with
it, I could not resist. It reminds me of the child who was so ugly they
had to tie a pork chop around his neck so the dog would play with him.
Currently, the Fed is giving a 30% income tax CREDIT for solar hot water
heating. The great State of Louisiana is kicking in another 50% income
tax CREDIT as well. This means the net cost of the system is ONLY 20%.
Now, I am one of those people who built an all-electric house back in the mid
1980's, so my hot water is electric. (I even had two electric hot water
heaters.) I was able to replace both of them with one 80-gallon solar
hot water heater. The new hot water heater has an electric heating
element for backup on cloudy days, so at the worst, I am in the same boat as
before. The system cost (installed) was $4,500, so my out-of-pocket
cost was only $900, after the tax credits.
I was on the fence trying to talk myself into the new system, when my lovely
and long-suffering wife, Puddy, called and told me our old hot water tank had
died (it was only 24 years old) and the plumber said it had to be
replaced. As soon as she said it was going to cost close to $900 to
have a new hot water tank installed, I told her to pay the plumber and send
him home for now because I had to make a quick phone call. I called the
solar contractor I had spoken with a few weeks earlier and told him I was
ready and could he install the hot water system tomorrow? Unfortunately,
it took a week or so, but that was all right. I told myself I was now
getting the system for "free", since I was committed to
spending the $900 anyway to replace the old hot water tank and the Fed and
the great State of Louisiana were paying for the rest of it.
The system is quite simple. It is nothing like solar photo electric
cells that generate DC electricity and then must be converted to AC power,
then stored in batteries, etc, etc, etc… This is just the
sun heating water! The hot water tank looks the same except for a
couple of extra ports that lead to a heat exchanger inside the tank that
circulates anti-freeze in a closed loop to a 5' x 10' solar collector on the
roof. The circulating pump is a 1/10th horsepower solar powered pump
that only circulates the anti-freeze whenever there is enough sunlight to
power the solar pump (that is also when there is enough sunlight to heat the
anti-freeze). The anti-freeze circulates back into the hot water tank
and heats the water. If for any reason it is too cloudy or if you need
a lot of hot water during the night, the electric element kicks in and heats
the water like a conventional electric hot water tank. It is elegantly
simple. Since the Department of Energy (DOE) estimates that one third
of your electricity (in an all-electric home) is used to heat hot water, this
is a real kilowatt-hour saver.
It has now been a couple of months since the system has been installed and it
is working perfectly, generating more free hot water than we know what to do
with. The system is simple, freeze-proof and pretty low tech. It
generates hot water up to 180 degrees, so it has to be diluted with cold
water through an automatic mixing valve before it enters the house, so it
does not scald anyone accidentally. Now, I can set the hot water back up to
140 degrees without guilt and enjoy a nice HOT shower. As an added
bonus, it operates just fine without any needed input power and will continue
to make hot water during a power outage.
With the high cost of oil dragging up the cost of coal, which translates to
more kilowatt-hour expense on our electric bill, I can at least feel a little
smug in that I am making my own hot water just fine thank you. While I
am not an oil sheik, I am making energy right on my own roof and that is the
kind of "green" that makes me smile. And hey, I'm
saving the planet, too. I wonder if Al Gore would want to buy some more
carbon credits for his personal jet?
Larry Laborde
Silver Trading
Company
www.silvertrading.net
Larry lives in the occupied South with his wife Puddy and sells
precious metals at the Silver Trading Company. Larry can be contacted
at llabord@aol.com. You can view
his web site at www.silvertrading.net.
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