So yesterday I mentioned how my Father-in-Law was discussing Legionnaires disease being caused by stagnant water in car washer bottles and how I’d seen this article about avoiding Legionella bacteria in solar hot water systems.
Basically, the advice was to make sure you kill off any nasty lurking Legionella, you should be setting your normal hot water system to come on for an hour in the winter when the solar panels might not heat up the water to the required 55 – 60C.
The article on YouGen also advised timing this for the evening to give your solar panels the whole day to raise the immersion tank water as much as possible, cutting down on the length of time you’ll need to fire up your normal heating arrangement for.
Ask your solar panel installer about the Microgeneration Certification Scheme (MCS) as accredited installers have to prove they are reducing the risks of such bacterial infections as part of being an approved installer.
photo credit: kalbara87
