Solar hot water makes sense in a country like Australia, even in winter we get a lot of sun. Particularly here on the Granite Belt where winter days are usually quite warm no matter how cold the nights get.

I did a lot of research into our hot water options. You're not allowed to get electric hot water systems anymore, so that cut that option. The remaining options were: gas, heat pump, and solar.

Gas was appealing due to the instant and always available hot water. But we would have bottled gas, and several people warned us that gas prices were going up pretty heftily soon. One friend has gas hot water and say they go through a bottle ($120 or so) every 3 months for a 2 adult 2 kid family, but they are super careful with how much they use and adjust the temperature all the time. One salesperson said his family also go through a bottle every 3 months for a family of 2 adults and 3 teenagers and many visitors every weekend. Not sure how both families could be using the same amount of gas. Gas is the cheapest system though, a recommended system would be around $800 for our family of 2 adults 2 kids.

Heat pumps seem to be the default replacement for electric systems. They work like a reverse refrigerator - drawing heat from the ambient temperature. They are supposed to work at up to a few degrees below zero. But I didn't see any real proof of how they work in our climate here on the Granite Belt. One salesperson said they wouldn't work properly here because of our altitude, but I couldn't find anything that backed up that claim. The big negative about they is that they apparently sound a lot like an air conditioning unit - not that quiet. And when they can't get enough temperature gain, they just use electric boost.

Solar hot water was very appealing. But even more confusing there are many different types of solar hot water, and of course when you talk to the salespeople their system is always the best on the market and they dis all the other types of systems. My research led me to believe that the evacuated tube systems would be better in our climate than the flat plate collectors. The evacuated tube systems work even in Canadian winter conditions, so I believe they should suit our conditions here.

Solar hot water can be boosted with either gas or electric, but gas would be several hundred dollars more expensive and noone seems that keen on them. Many people with evacuated tube systems just turn off their electric boost until they need it (apparently after 2 or 3 days of very cloudy conditions), otherwise the boost might come on every morning before sunrise. But do your research, as the water needs to be hot enough to kill some bugs that can breed in not so hot water.

So, we decided on evacuated tube hot water, and we're going with AMAC in Tenterfield, as noone supplies evacuated tubes locally [update May 2010: it appears MWF and Aqua Rural are now selling Apricus systems locally].

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