Solar water heater installer we recommend

[DonJuane]

So the way they install these here is installing a valve where you are working either/or with the solar unit vs. the regular tank water heater and there is no series connection where the solar simply preheats the source input of the gas heated water tank, which means it is a self sustaining unit on its on and the gas never has to be lit unless you go for a few days with no sun and then manually trip the valve over to the old plumbing configuration?

I haven't looked at solar water heat in years but have for a long time been curious about all these stainless tanks with the side glass tubes that I see everywhere here and one doesn't see in the US.

A couple of years ago I looked at Don Pedro hardware in San Miguel dA and they offered the old style that used to also be of a style originally published as a do it yourself kind of kit in Popular Science from many years ago, were a glass covered a square of a corrugated piece of black metal which blanketed the water, the glass held the heat in and the metal heated the water. Now I see about all they sell is the stainless tub with glass arm models. I also see Rick over at Casa Z has probably some very old versions of the flat panel design to heat his pool setup but I am sure his has been installed long before I arrived to comment on them.

Now I am guessing these new tank with glass arm designs must be more efficient? With that I am guessing that the new style has a way to capture and retain the hot water in the attached tank, where the old school could only heat water as if flowed by, thus only providing "assisted" water heating to a regular gas tank setup. Again - just guessing.

Now if all this speculation is true, it seems that putting one of these new style tank and glass arm solar heaters as the source for a tankless water heater might be the ultimate lazy man's and cheapskate's answer to never having to do anything and always having very hot water at the least cost. Still I would bet also that the tankless is really not equipped to handle the input being pre-heated to a "near perfect" level and that setting it up this way might play havoc with the thermostat and/or to cause the fuel to constantly jettison off and on, perhaps using up even more gas than if the solar didn't exist. Regardless this tankless/solar concept seems quite silly for someone on a limited budget like a certain someone I know every well. My mind is always just curious how something does or could work with a little tweaking which is probably the only point of my continued ramblings.