Hot Sun Industries Inc., San Diego, California presents...........

Powerstrip Solar Pool Heaters

The headers are only 12-1/2" long and they are 1.5" nominal diameter. $10 each delivered. They are a made of a high grade thermo-plastic capable of withstanding stress at boiling temperatures. The resins used are automotive grades well proven over time for superior weatherability. They are also special in that you can glue pvc plumbing to them AND we can also glue-on our Geon tubing meaning the tubing slips on easily without busting your knuckles- so easy you can do this in the field. With Powerstrip-Geon you can build the system on the roof to fit the roof.

You can do it yourself and save a lot of money but that's not why you're here. You're here to do it right and to achieve this kind of esthetic.

We offer several options for the tubing itself. Geon is a high grade thermoplastic extrusion well proven in outdoor applications with absolutely no risk of chemistry problems from pool water. Our unique header composition has allowed us to be able to glue this tubing to the headers making for a very strong long term connection. $5.50/sq ft or $161 per 88' roll (4" wide so 3 of these strips go on a header) $161 including shipping within the continental USA. Geon is more flexible than rubber so following the wave of a tile roof is more practical with Geon in most situatons, however the EPDM synthetic rubber does have its place in the market and we do offer EPDM tubing in some situations. Geon is easier to field assemble and Geon is softer so it will follow the waves of a tile roof better and it doesn't pull as hard when it contracts. On concrete or flat tile roofs Geon is proven to be a very workable solution and the look is amazing.

Most of the competing flexible collector systems on the market are EPDM rubber pushed onto polypropylene header pipes. Polypropylene is a cheap resin but it is proven long term in the solar application and it does have good high temperature capability. On the negative side you can't use an adhesive on it so you have to rely on EPDM tubing stretched onto the nipples and you can't glue pvc fittings directly so you have to use adapters and rubber couplings meaning you waste a lot of space and have to use a lot of plumbing trying to fit a system to a roof.

The Powerstrip system allows us to space around obstructions with 1.5" pvc plumbing pipe. We can glue 1.5" pvc pipe into the female end of a Powerstrip header or we can glue a fitting on the male end. Because we can plumb directly to the header on either end (glue pvc to it without adapters) we can space the headers around vents precisely and to fit rows of tiles when we're gluing the system to a tile roof.

It comes in 88' rolls of 6 tubes finned together in a "strip". Three of these strips make up a 12-1/2" wide section fitted to one header pipe. If the system is going to be an uniform bank of panels where there is a header top and bottom we'll glue the two female ends of each header together and you'll join the male ends every 2 feet with rubber couplings. Alternatively you can just glue the male ends.

On a torch on or membrane roof or a flat roof you can just lay this stuff out. It's a good idea to place aluminum waer plates or asphalt shingles under the headers so nothing digs into the sensitive roof surface as the headers change length with temperature. The tubing sitting right on the flat roof does no damage to the sensitive roof. On low pitch and flat roofs you need the flexibility because you can't get all the water out and freeze damage would occur if the collector wasn't flexible enough to expand and accommodate the expansion of water as it freezes. You still have to empty the headers and rigid plumbing. We'll strap it down if we feel the wind may rearrange it. On the tar and gravel roof shown below we straddled the system over an east west roof and strapped it down this way. We extended straps so we could secure the ends off the roof where we could make a solid connection without penetrating the roof membrane. We'll work with you to come up with the best scheme for your situation.

This product can be glued horizontally in 1' sections to wavy s-tile roofs. We originally developed it specifically for tile roof installs because they are so common in new construction in the sunbelt but we realized it worked better on many situations where the limitations of a 4x12 grid were too prohibitive. It looks so good.

You glue it at the crests of the tiles so that as it contracts with temperature it just lifts up from the roof a little at the troughs. On wavy tiles we can do this with epdm or Geon but it has to be done hot for the epdm to follow the wave. This is usually the way to go on a wavy tile roof because it looks so good and it fully uses the available space. Look at this series of pictures showing the system from several angles. It looks good and it's almost invisible from many commonly visible angles.

There really are a lot of ways to set a solar heater up wrong where you will have problems especially after a few years. We at Hot Sun have all the options in our arsenal so we don't have to defer to default options. We manufacture the Powerstrip ourselves because we just weren't satisfied with the non-EPDM rubber options available to us only from Australia. Would you believe the only solar products used in North America are flexible EPDM or rigid polypropylene grids like our Powerpro? Hot Sun originally manufactured Powermat which used a material very similar to Geon, in fact the header pipes were Geon. Then we re-invented the system as Powerstrip after we had 18 years experience figuring out what we wanted exactly. If you're a solar dealer selling a polypropylene grid style collector you owe it to yourself to try Powerstrip in the many situations you'll encounter where it is clearly the better choice.

Another situation where this product adapts nicely is any situation at all where there is limited roof space and we need to fit the collector to triangular roof spaces and around skylights and roof obstructions. You can jog each header with 2 elbows and short pieces of pvc pipe and fit these systems to make best use of limited space. We can fit this to an angled ridge line to not waste any space and we can bend around corners using all the space available which is very commonly the issue in markets with lots of wavy tile roofs.

Lastly when you can do long collectors you avoid all the plumbing and it looks so much better than banks of 4x12s one above the other. We can supply this product with a strap down mounting system identical to what you see us using on polypropylene 4x12 and 4x10 collectors. Here's a large commercial system where we fit the collectors to a weird space between rafters and made them 21' long to fully use the available space. The owner shown in the photo says he saved $2000 in October with this system. Installer was Andy Young of AY Solar in Vestal NY.

If this looks like the right system for you mention that on the question on the form you'll find under sizing. That's where you can communicate directly to me the system particulars so I can finalize a price and answer any questions you might have.

Download the Powerstrip installation manual

Sizing your solar collector system.

Back to home page