Since I last entered anything on this blog I had twin girls and my baby is now almost four years old.  How time flies!

Today I plugged in the Grundfos pump and after a few minutes felt the return pipe get very hot.  It was a cloudy day here in SF, so I took that to be a good sign.  Shortly after the pipe heated up, the flow dropped to zero even as the pump worked hard to move the water.   At this point I had only added five gallons of tap water.  The drainback tank is 7.5 gallons, the heat exchange loop in my SunEarth tank is 2.2 gallons and the balance of piping is maybe another 0.5 gallons.  That makes around 10 gallons of water to fully fill the drainback tank, which is above the height of the heat exchanger, pump and balance of piping.  After adding another ~5 gallons, the water flowed once more and the bubbles began to get smaller, then mostly disappear.

I used tap water to simply flush the system of flux and 'funk' before adding distilled water.

I found that I needed to run the pump awhile to fully charge the system.  I suspect air gets trapped here and there, and needs a good push to get evicted.

All the plumbing is finished.  I now need to:

1. Insulate the the inside piping.
2. Solder the temperature probe on the roof to the bell wire that I've run up to the panels and run that to the array outlet.
3. Find a source for outdoor grade pipe insulation and install.
4. Add Reflectix insulation to exposed parts of the drainback tank and add a layer of it to the storage tank.
5. Test the Steca controller and then choose settings for it.

woO!