Apricus Solar Evacuated tube System

Ron Huber_2

The copper heat pipe leaks. Installers have been told to once taken out of the package, hold the heat pipe up to the sun, if it does not get hot, discard the pipe and use the extra one (if it is good) to take it's place. Viessmann does not have to send you extra tubes, never had one (in 6 years+ of using them) be bad out of the gate.
Come here in December and January and give us an update, you cannot tell what the heating system is going to do if you are looking at performance here at the end of JUNE! You may be getting down to 50 at night, but your house still does not use any heat right now.

Delmas_2

Apricus Solar systems

Does anyone here have any experience with Apricus solar systems? These systems are made in China.

tony_40

I have two 30 tube modules on my house on Vancouver island it supplies hot water to two 120G tanks which then heat DHW and RFH. The units I personally believe are better than the thermo max or Viessmann due to the fact that there is no major structures ie the absober and heat pipe located inside the vacuum zone, therefore it is simpler to seal and hold vacuum. Also Due to the absorber coating covering the whole inside of the inner tube you generate heat at very low side angles ie sunrise and sunset which you can not do with the flat style absober plates.For those who don't know the majority of chinese evac tubes are double glass wall construction where as the thermomax and Viessmann are single glass wall. In New Zealand Apricus is the major system for evac tubes.

Delmas_2

Tony,
Thanks for responding.
How long have you had this system?
Delmas

tony_40

Has been running three months. My brother in New Zealand has had his running for 2 years

Ron Huber_2

3 months?

April May and June. Let me see? Vancouver Island in the spring and summer, pretty moderate climate to begin with. New Zealand? So basically the Vancouver system has no performance data in the winter. Two 30 tube systems on a 120 gallon tank would be a great DHW system, two 115 tanks are basically a slightly undersized DHW system or an oversized DHW system for an average family, . Forget the space heat. There is an outfit up here in NH that has been putting in the Apricus system and they do not get that great of a performance. The manufacturer sends them extra tubes with each order because some tubes have lost their vacuum between the factory and the end user. Check out their rating at the SRCC website.
Do not even try to compare these tubes to Viessmann or
Thermomax, Apricus cannot take any stagnation without a dump zone, I would look very carefully at the information that you get on the internet, check the facts.

jp_2

Ron,

its Viessmann and Thermomax one in the same vacuum tube? from pictures they look identical?

Ron Huber_2

same tube

But different manifold. Viessmann manifold is a double pass manifold, the supply and return comes out the same side. The Glycol/water way wraps completely around the condenser barrel.
They both have the thermal disc to protect the tubes from overheating during stagnation, no other tube has this feature.
The Viessmann/Thermomax tube is not double wall, because the absorber and heat pipe are in a true vacuum, you do not need two layers of glass. Most of the other tubes have the vacuum between the two layers of glass, and the absorber/heat pipe is not in a true vacuum and many of the sealing systems used in these tubes are prone to failure, one uses cork as the seal.

Dobber

Comparisons

Where are the side by side comparisons? I have heard of Viessman seal failures between the glass and steel seal due to different expansion ratios. The cork seal you speak of is the EOS tube. I'm just getting into solar and I don't want to go through the same guinea pig trials that I went through with mod-cons.

Dobber

Ron Huber_2

llink

http://www.solar-rating.org/ratings/ratings.htm

Delmas_2

Any reaction on Oventrop versus Viessmann - Ron

I saw you said that Viessmann and Thermomax are the only ones that have the thermal disc to prevent overheating. Apparently Oventrop does not have this?Delmas

hot_rod

Oventrop and Thermomax

do have much nicer mounting brackets and header wrap. Two of the China imports evac tube systems I have installed recently had sharp edges and mounting brackets that needed field adjustments (bending to align).

I also broke two tubes removing them from the box, in one case. Most send spares tubes.

With over 300 companies in China building evac tubes currently, I suspect you will see a wide range of quality and after the sale service. I have installed 4- Sunda evac tube systems I was pleased with their quality, built in China, I believe. Possibly the same manufacturer as Oventrop?

Shop for brands that present top quality fit and finish and people you know will support you. In the rare, unlikely event a tube should break, of course.

hr

tony_40

Ron how can the apricus tube fail, as it is built just like a vacuum flask ie all glass construction and sealing nothing to fail unless you break the glass. Yes the heat pipe is sealed into the inner chamber with a plastic bung but that is fine as it is not in the vacuum.

On the stagnation temperature issue yes thermomax and others have shape metal temperature discs, but I got around this issue on the apricus by building a backup power system and over sizing the storage.

Typically the manufactures recommned 80 gal min per 30 tube panel for DHW so 2 30 tube modules is oversized for my DHW so that's why two 120 gal tanks for storage.

My RFH is currently coming off of warm weather shutdown every night as the outside air temperatures are still dropping down to 50F then the floor typically runs at 77F water temperature to maintain house temperature of 72F, so the 240gal of solar heated water at 113F provides all of the heating overnight.

hot_rod

I had a 10 pack of evac tubes on my truck

for several weeks before the roof was ready. We hauled them into the job and Max set one box on my foot. I slid my foot out quickly, the box dropped about 2" to the floor and I heard 2 of the bottom tubes shatter. Go figure!

A 2" fall to their death after weeks of truck travel!
Come hail, hell, or two people standing on them, as in the ad. A 2' drop was all it took. Luckily two extra tubes were sent with the order as common practice.

tony_40

On the apricus tubes that little nub at the end of the tube where they sealed the tube after pulling the vaccum worried me enough that I had my contractor build a tube holder out of PVC pipe so that they could handle the tubes with out worry of breaking the nub on the bottom of the tube or having the tube start to heat up and not being able to suff the heat pipe into the manifold due to it thermally expanding.

Ted_5

Same tube

but, Viessmann uses the higher temp one. The lower temp tube that Thermomax offers is much cheaper. If you look at the SRCC ratings, Thermomax is not close to the Viessmann.

Ted