Legionnaires disease in solar hot water systems - part 2

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.

Read more by clicking here.

photo credit: kalbara87

Can solar hot water systems be prone to Legionnaires disease?

I was discussing with my Father-in-law his new car and he mentioned that he'd read somewhere that 1 in 5 cases of legionnaires disease is caused by stagnant water in a cars windscreen washer bottle.

And it makes perfect sense really.... warm conditions, a bottle always topped up so any dregs infected mix with the fresh water.

It's then squirted onto the windscreen and the vapour in the air is sucked through the air fan and blown into the car's sealed environment.

Funny that we were discussing that only the other day when I came across a blog post regarding legionella and bacterial infections in solar hot water systems.

More on that in tomorrow's post.

TTFN.

photo credit: hamed saber