It might not have won an Oscar at last month’s Academy Awards,
but a new FSEC video is winning lots of praise from code
officials, contractors and consumers.
“Inspection
of Solar Water Heating Systems,” a training video tutorial on
how the International Codes apply to solar domestic hot water
systems, has been written by Mark Thornbloom, Jim Huggins
and John
Harrison of FSEC and produced by Nick Waters and other members
of FSEC's Graphics Department to show building inspectors how solar
systems work and how the individual components function. It’s
also been proven to be of great interest to contractors and
homeowners who want to know more about their systems.
Huggins, interim director of the center’s Testing & Operations
Division, explained that the project started about a year ago when
Sandia National Laboratories asked FSEC for help in meeting the training
needs of code inspectors around the country. “Many code
inspectors have limited experience working with residential solar
systems,” he explained, “so they need some training in
how the individual components as well as the complete system work. Most
of these offices hold monthly training programs, and Sandia felt that
a video would be easiest for them to use in their training. We
put the complete hour-long program on our website and on the Solar
Rating & Certification Corporation site so it’s easy to
get to and easy to use.”
Huggins added that “Most places in the U.S. rely on the International
Code Council (ICC) to set the codes, so we geared the video to mesh
with them. What’s really neat about the program is that
a code official could sit and view the whole thing or could go right
to an individual component section if he just needs some information
on one thing. The sections are relatively short and easy to
navigate.” For example, there is a 6-minute segment on
materials, two minutes on insulation, one minute on multiple collectors
and one minute on certification issues.
The program is organized into four sections. The first provides
an introduction to the video. Then there is an overview of solar
water heating systems, a look at the solar equipment that would be
installed on the roof or other location outside of the home, and a
final section on equipment installed indoors in the utility room,
laundry, garage or basement. The video is provided in multiple sizes
to work with different computer connection speeds.
If you’re curious about the workings of a solar water heating
system, view our Solar Inspector Video. You’ll note that you can even print out
a transcript of the text used in the various sections of the video.
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