Solar hot water for working engineers — from the resource and the collectors right through to sizing, commissioning and working a fault on a system already installed.
Built for plumbers and heating engineers working with solar hot water — whether you are studying for a qualification or already installing and want the sizing and commissioning detail straight.
✓ You're working towards a solar thermal qualification.
✓ You want to size an array and a store properly, and know when to stop.
✓ You'd like the calculations — demand, flow rate, wind uplift — to stick.
✓ You want to work a fault from the symptom rather than by swapping parts.
Forty-four lessons across seven modules, from the solar resource right through to diagnosing a fault on an installed system — with a quiz, flashcards and a short-answer check on each.
What solar thermal actually delivers, the UK solar resource, orientation and shading, and the two collector types — with the difference between aperture and overall area.
Direct against indirect, fully filled against drain-back, the primary circuit and its flow rate, the pump station, differential control, and cylinders and coils.
Which Parts of the Building Regulations apply and which do not, MCS and MIS 3001, planning and permitted development, Water Regulations and legionella, working at height and safe isolation.
The site survey, roof coverings and their defects, structural loading and wind uplift, hot water demand, sizing the array and the store, and the MCS energy calculation.
Mounting systems, weathering and penetrations, pipework and insulation, the pump station and expansion vessel, cylinder and sensor positions, and the electrical connection.
What to check before you commission, filling and purging, pressure and freeze protection, setting the controller and verifying flow, and the records the customer goes away with.
Routine servicing to BS 5918, stagnation and fluid degradation, and fault finding worked from the symptom — including the callouts that turn out not to be faults at all.
Eleven hands-on boards built into the lessons, alongside 280 quiz questions, flashcards and AI-marked short answers.
Eleven hands-on boards are live and open to everyone, no account needed. Size an array and a store, set a design flow rate and check the velocity against BS 5918, work out the ballast a flat roof array needs and whether the roof can carry it, and diagnose five callouts — two of which turn out not to be faults.
One in-depth article per module of this course, free to read, each ending in a 10-question mock test. They cover the same ground as the lessons, so you can see exactly what the course teaches before you buy it.
Work the lessons in order, or dip into the module you need. Everything is saved as you go.
1 Read the lesson, then take its quiz and the short-answer check.
2 Work the interactive board attached to it, if it has one.
3 Use the revision section — flashcards, key facts, games and the mock exam — to consolidate.
4 Track what you have passed, and go back to whatever is still open.
Buy this course on its own, or take the full suite and get every course for a year.
Every live course now, plus each new one as it launches.
Get the full suite →The solar thermal course on its own, with everything in it.
Get the solar thermal course →No. It is a teaching and revision course, written to cover the ground a solar thermal qualification expects — so you arrive at the assessment knowing the material rather than meeting it for the first time.
Yes. The course is written around MIS 3001 and the MCS standards, BS 5918 and the relevant British and European standards, and covers the design, installation, commissioning, maintenance and fault-finding ground both syllabuses expect.
Enough to matter. Hot water demand, sizing the array and the store, flow rate and pipe velocity, and wind uplift and ballast all have their own interactive board, and each one tells you which mistake you made rather than just marking you wrong.
Yes — all forty-four interactive tasks are free and open to everyone, with no account needed.
forty-four lessons, 280 questions and forty-four interactive tasks — collectors through to fault finding.