Thermomax ruggedness [RE-wrenches]

[larry]

Gary the Thermomax I believe is made of tempered glass and is pumped down to
10-6 Torre so for all intents and purposes it is a perfect vacuum. Any
energy entering the tube has no way of getting back out. Also the tube
creates essentially a beam so with a distributed load are quite mechanically
strong.

Although they really do quite well in cloudy weather the real performance is
when it is below zero and sunny. They beat a flat plate hands down. And yes
we do get some clouds on this side of the Cascades. Unlike a flat plate the
tubes take advantage of diffuse or cloud filtered sunlight so I have seen
hot water (120 f +) in cloudy weather when a flat plate isn't even above
ambient temps.

I am now looking at using the Solamax (same as Thermomax but without the
header heat exchanger) for several in floor heating systems and with the
test data I have seen they should outperform flat plates by a very wide
margin.

You really should check them out in your cloudy coastal climate.

Larry Elliott
----- Original Message -----
From: "Gary Higbee" <gary at windstreamsolar.com>
To: <RE-wrenches at topica.com>
Sent: Friday, August 15, 2003 8:57 PM
Subject: Re: Thermomax ruggedness [RE-wrenches]


> Larry,
>
> Wow, I'm impressed. This has been a nagging question for me for some time,
> and it's great to get some feedback regarding the Thermomax tubes. I've
> always known that sphere's/cylinders were very strong, but just what are
> these things made of--Kryptonite somethingerather? I've heard that these
> tubes can extract significant heat in cloudy weather, too, though I know
> that those of you on the East side of the big hills don't see much of
that!
>
> Gary
>
> From: "larry" <larry at h2nation.com>
> Subject: Re: Thermomax ruggedness [RE-wrenches]
>
>
> > I have one customer with a 60 tube setup that is inclined about 35
degrees
> > since they wanted most of the heat in the summer.
> >
> > About 2 months ago we experienced hail of at least 1" with very high
winds
> > and I thought for sure they would be toast.
> >
> > No damage at all. I saw in a video a demo where two fairly heftey guys
> stood
> > on a Thermomax tube set between two concrete blocks with no breakage. I
> know
> > that a high impact is more important but this was impressive.
> >
> > Larry Elliott
>
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