We needed to get our hands on some silver solder, suitable flux, and black glazing mastic...
OK, Fry's 99C Solder Wire isn't silver solder, although that's what I asked the nice man for. It's an alloy of 0.45% - .9% copper; the remaining constituent is tin.
Arboseal. A black bitumen glazing mastic. (A sticky product that doesn't have a web page devoted to it!)
...was straightforward. Getting the parts to effect the repair was not so easy. Forget the DIY sheds - go to the specialist plumbers and glaziers.
We failed to track down any silver solder locally. Instead we used 99C lead free solder. 1% copper, 99% tin.
If we're going to have further failures, we'll have them now, please. We don't want failures when the panels have been mounted on a roof!
The repaired panels were subjected to some abuse. They were overheated with no water - then running cold water through. We also made use of some overnight frosts to freeze them up solid!
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Steam abuse. pouring cold water into an overheated panel produces an impressive amount of steam and boiling water. |
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The series configuration. The two final
panels have been rotated to receive the direct sun an hour later than the previous
panels (15°). Further details to follow. |