Is A Radiant Solar Heating System Right For My Home?

Radiant solar heating systems that allow you to harness the energy the sun delivers to your door every day to heat your home have gotten more efficient and easier to use in recent years. Most of these systems can replace your existing furnace and will allow you to save thousands of dollars every year on energy costs. They can be added to an existing home, or built into a new home during construction to provide a near-perfect alternative energy solution. They provide a durable, silent and very efficient heating system for the average home that can pay for itself in a very short period of time.

The concept of radiant heating is not a new one. Older homes were fitted with a boiler in the basement that would heat water to a very high temperature and then circulate it through freestanding radiators located in various rooms throughout the house. These older systems worked well and became the standard heating system until the forced air system was introduced. These radiant heating systems were eventually upgraded to radiant baseboard heat in newer homes. This simply replaced the large radiators used in those older systems with a slim horizontal radiator that ran along the baseboard of the room.

Modern radiant solar heating systems operate in a very similar fashion and can actually use much of the older systems plumbing if it’s already installed. The big difference is that these radiant solar heating systems use the sun to heat the water instead of the large boiler used in older systems.

In these newer solar heating systems, several solar thermal collectors are mounted on the roof of the home to harvest the sunlight. Each of these solar collectors contains a webbing of small tubes that the water used in the system is circulated through to heat it. As it passes through the collectors, it’s exposed to the sunlight and warmed. Because these tubes are very thin, the water traveling through them is heated very quickly and returned to the home for use. This hot water can then either be directed to a room that requires heating, or sent to a thermal storage tank for use later. This allows these solar heating systems to be used even when the sun has set for the evening by circulating the heated water in this storage tank.

If these newer solar heating systems are installed when the home is being built, the radiators used are actually incorporated into the floors and walls of the building. The newer radiators are better able to distribute the heat and improve the efficiency of the system as a result. These radiator systems are difficult to add to existing homes, but a solar heating system can still be used with the original radiators installed. Most of these solar heating systems still require a backup heating source in case you have a period of cloudy or rainy days. This way you can be sure that you’ll have the hot water needed to heat your home in the event of inclement weather.