Solar Update!

It is blazing hot here in the ATL..  sooo  I've been experimenting with my solar hot water system..  Here's what I've learned..  When its 102 degrees outside and you turn the circulation pump off, the water in the solar panel reaches 215 degrees..  it may actually go higher than that..  it made that temperature at two in the afternoon and I turned the pump back on.  I've also, due to the wonderful thing called freecycle, been given a 50 gallon electric hot water tank..  I removed the elements and threaded a 6 foot piece of 1/2 soft copper tubing in a coil shape in the top element hole and out the bottom element hole...  drilled the stop out of a couple compression fittings and tightened them up.  I removed the heat exchanger from my original electric hot water tank and plumbed up the new one...  within an hour, the temperature at the bottom of the fifty gallon storage tank rose four degrees..  I think this is a much better setup.  I also wrapped the insulation around the original tank as originally planned..  here's a picture of the new setup.