Monday, May 14, 2012

Pipes in the Attic

I worked on the system for ~100 minutes today.  In that time I managed to puncture the roof with the two pipes that will carry the heat exchange fluid from panels to storage tank.  The top pipe pictured below is the return and the bottom one is delivery to the panels.    That's Bayview Hill in the background for scale (hehe...).

The spacing of the pipes should work with the Oatey brand flashings that I've purchased.  I'm not sure what roofing products I'm going to use to create a sound seal around these pipes yet.  It's definitely a bit foolish to put holes in your roof before you have the products you're going to use to seal them.  This will motivate me to get those products!

The next two pictures below show the run in the attic at both the point where it penetrates the roof decking and where it comes up from the garage.    You can also just barely see the `bell' wire hanging down from the upper pipe in the first picture.  This is temperature sensor line that goes to the Steca controller.  I plan on running this through the rubber gasket on the Oatey flashing with the return pipe, then running it under the outside pipe insulation.

The above photo shows, from top to bottom, the 3/4" EMT conduit (future PV?), return and delivery lines.  That 10" galvanized stack vents our gas furnace and hot water heater. This attic is very low, full of itchy fiberglass and has knob and tube electrical lines that make an electric fence that I'm forced to limbo around.  I can't wait to be done up here!