®
11
As with any installation, safety is the first priority.
The department of Occupational Safety and Health Admin-
istration (OSHA) requires certain personal safety precautions to be taken by all solar installers who walk, carry or
lift anything and especially when doing so up ladders and on the top of structures. Please familiarize yourself with
and implement the appropriate safety regulations before beginning any installation.
Quick Tips
•
Suggested order of Roof Equipment installation:
Collectors → Plumbing →Penetrations → Secure Plumbing
•
Suggested order of Thermal System Plumbing installation:
Supply and Return Lines → Pool Equipment
•
The most resilient method of installing collectors requires that mid-collector anchors are measured out prior to
collector placement.
Alternatively, collector banks can be plumbed and circulated with pool water to ensure that mid-collector an-
chors are centered at operating temperature.
•
Collectors must be installed with a minimum of a 2”/12” slope to maintain uniform flow and properly drain.
•
Avoid walking on collectors wherever possible. Walking on collectors can cause damage and the potential for
leaking.
•
When laying out collectors for installation, check for miscellaneous hardware or other items which could get
caught between the roof and the collectors that may strike and damage a collector.
•
Systems installed on tile or standing seam roofs must be installed on a substrate barrier so that the collectors
are supported and protected from abrasion.
Alternatively, if wood or metal runners are installed to support the collectors, runners must be spaced no
more than 16”. Installations with runners do not require substrate to be installed under collectors.
•
It is typically acceptable to use Schedule 40 PVC for system plumbing. In extreme conditions, CPVC plumbing
may be more applicable. See
Table 4
in
Appendix C
.
•
Flush out all pipes before connecting them to collectors in order to clear any chips which may have become
trapped in the plumbing.
•
Systems with local lows in the plumbing should have a way of manually draining the line for easy winterization.
•
Banks should be mounted so that the centermost collector is fixed. This may be done by double wrapping ei-
ther side of the upper header on the panel to Fix-Mount (see
Figure
11
). Doing so will limit bank movement
when pressure and temperature cycling takes place through normal operation.
•
Banks can be installed with 3.5” couplers but need 5” couplers when connecting to plumbing supply and re-
turn lines.
•
Mid-
bank obstacles should maintain a clearance of 2” from collectors. See
Appendix C
for specific exceptions.
•
Plumbing Offsets
may be used to allow for lateral movement between SunSaver
®
banks and system plumbing as
shown in
Phase I
—
Site Preparations & Planning
Figures 6 and 7
and in
Figures 19 through 22
of
Appendix C
.
•
An expansion joint can be used to allow for both bank and plumbing movement. To use an offset for absorbing
bank movement, use the offset distance for obstacle avoidance in
Table 3
of
Appendix C
to size the offset dis-
tance needed for the selected offset method (
Tables 5 through 7
of
Appendix
C).
•
It is acceptable to utilize industry standard practices not mentioned in this text to accommodate for plumbing
expansion and contraction.
•
Movement in a straight run of plumbing more than 10ft in length should have a means of accommodating ther-
mal expansion and contraction.
•
All Flexible PVC plumbing must be thoroughly protected from UV exposure by means of paint, wrapping or
equivalent means of preference.
Safety & Disclaimer
