Delta Municipal Hall Is One Of A Kind In Lower Mainland

Evacuated tubes on Delta's Municpal Hall roof

The Corporation of Delta didn’t waste any time taking advantage of grants for municipal solar hot water projects. They recently installed a solar hot water system with the help of SolarBC Registered Installer MD Energy.

“It looks great,” says Mike Brotherston, Manager of Climate Action and Environment. He says Delta’s incentive to install the system was part of their Climate Change Initiative to be more efficient and reduce green house gases. They also wanted to provide a high profile location for promoting solar hot water as an initiative for residents and other municipal buildings. And even though the municipal hall isn’t a huge hot water user, Brotherston says they are already meeting a high percentage of their hot water requirements.

“It’s already showing very good results and meeting almost all the requirements on sunny days,” he says, adding that they’ve installed a meter inside the building for staff to view for themselves how well the system is working. “Everyone can see the temperature of the water coming from the system and returned to the system and see the energy savings, which has been helpful.”

There were challenges they had to overcome. They had originally been told by the plumbing inspectors that they needed a reduced pressure backflow assembly, but upon further review the inspectors removed the requirement because of the double-walled heat exchanger that met necessary requirements. “They realized the backflow was extra conservative,” says Brotherston. “In the end it was an added expense we didn’t need to go through.”

However, the other positive gain that came from the solar hot water install was the experience the inspectors received. It also gave their local plumbers, TAG Plumbing - who played a key role in the installation - an opportunity to work closely with MD Electric and learn the ins and outs. “The partnership worked out well,” says Brotherston.

While time will tell the long term performance of the system, he says for them the reward is in making it easily accessible as a demo project to show people who are interested in knowing how a system works.

“There’s been a lot of interest,” he says. “People want to take a look at it.”