Disappointing solar heater experience

Whenever I see adverts of solar water heaters I feel that the consumer is being taken for a ride. Consumers are made to believe that their electricity heating bill will be halved and now I even read that maybe the energy needs of our country will be solved by installing these systems.

Well, when I bought my solar heater I was assured that I would have hot water all year round and that it would be a real surprise if I had to switch on the back-up system more than once a year. Surprise surprise, I had enough hot water to sell in summer when I did not need it but warm water from September to May. And, of course, there is no hot water in the morning.

As I have a busy lifestyle I could not stay checking the weather every day to see if I would have hot water in the evening and as my wife did not take kindly to me timing her showers, so I fitted a timer to the back-up heater to keep the peace.

Another surprise as this effectively doubled my electricity bill. Now, after the third plumbing alteration, we simply use the warm water from our solar heater to fill up the normal electric geysers. My model is around six years old and maybe today's models are more efficient.

However, I think that when calculating savings consumers should keep in mind that they will have a lot of unneeded hot water in summer and tepid/warm water in winter, which means that the savings in summer will be very low as hot water is not needed then.