Solar Building

1. Free Hot Water, 15th St. Solar Thermal+PV Project

Firm: Free Hot Water
Project: 15th St Solar Thermal+PV Project
Project Owner: Private Person

The 3-story, 19,260 sq. ft. renovation project, located at 1731 15th St, will serve as a 50 one-bedroom student apartment complex located near the Mission Dolores section of San Francisco. The building is being completely renovated to reduce its energy usage and carbon footprint. By utilizing solar hot water, solar space heating, and solar electricity, the building will exceed California’s energy efficiency building standards under Title 24 at price that is competitive with traditional gas heating technologies before incentives.

Free Hot Water worked with the building’s owners and project architects to design a comprehensive solar energy system that would reduce the costs of heating the building’s apartments and provide domestic hot water. Additionally, a 9 KW solar photovoltaic (PV system) will offset electric pump stations used for the solar thermal installation, as well as a portion of the building’s costs for lighting hallways and other common areas.

As part of the overall system design, Free Hot Water included an integrated control panel that will let building managers monitor the solar PV, solar radiant heat, and solar hot water systems from a single dashboard. This dashboard is compatible from any web-enabled device, allowing the building’s owners to view solar operations on-the-go and address any problems.