Check Valve

Today I worked for an hour or so adding a swing check valve upstream of the three way valve.  The top of my storage tank has a nice spattering of solder.  It relies on gravity to stay closed when water is not flowing in from the cold supply.  Like the double wall on the heat exchanger, this is another system component that  ensures that water will never work backward into the city water supply.  The unsoldered 90 between the labelled ball valve and check valve will actually be a couple 45's which will clear a the upper vent pipe in the background without resorting to 180 degrees of bends.  The less pressure drop around this system, the better!

Valve Manifold

Last night I started plumbing in valves and pipe on the top of the SunEarth 80 gallon storage tank.  I took it slow as making a mistake here would be messy and slow to undo.  I cut and pieced together all the fittings, sliding the tank back against the wall to make sure that the manifold cleared the 4" vent pipe that it needs to fit beneath.  Then I trebly checked the valve arrangement against the system schematic.  This was made slow and somewhat confusing because the component placement and orientation of my schematic differs from how the system is actually coming together.  Below is the manifold all sweated together.

With any great luck all the sweated fittings are water tight.  Going copper to copper is easy for me.  Going from copper to chunky brass and bronze valves has caused problems for me in the past.  I've had ball valves `pop' apart into two pieces hitting them with too much heat.  They've leaked horribly when not heated enough.  So, I made sure to first diligently clean them with a tubing brush, flux, then I hit them pretty hard with heat and used plenty of solder.  To keep the PTFE valve liners from melting, I used a wet towel to bring the valve bodies down below 100 C immediately after sweating on the fittings.  Only putting this all under city water pressure will I be sure that I did a proper job.

In the back, upper left gloomy portion of that picture I added a ball valve above the drainback tank.

A couple week ago, I sweated and secured the piping in the attic.  I've not yet flashed it in and the panels are still just sitting on the roof propped up on bricks. I hope to bring in a buddy from GRID Alternatives to help me rack the panels "real soon now".

 Here's a pic of the secured pipes in the attic.  The `From Collector' pipe looks like it has a section of it that is not sloped enough to allow drain back.  It actually is, but the picture would have you believe otherwise.  Until I've run water through these pipes, I'm not going to insulate them.  Getting around this cramped attic, with it's live knob and tube wiring and itchy piles of fiberglass is no fun, but with any luck, I'll only have to visit it one more time.

Next move is to cut into the existing cold water supply line, drain the line, add a ball valve and enough tubing to `stub out' the run to the 3-way valve in the above photo.  I'll not hook this up until I'm ready to put the storage tank in place against the wall.  When this will happen is unknown because I have to wait for my wife and child to `step out' for a bit before I can turn off the house supply.  All for now.