I am considering a bank of evacuated tubes to supply passive heating in the house or a toss up between a 6metre by 2.6 metre solar absorber.

Idea was to use a car radiator and fan and small pump,power supplied by solar panel if I use evacuated tubes, No storage tank, just slowly circulating hot water.

I have forty tubes already to heat my hot water so I know they work.

I feel they would work better than a large solar absorber but what to do with all that heat in the summer?

I know there are large waste heat chiller systems and really what was a Kero or gas fridge any way.

Is there any one working on a system that could use the heat of say 60 to 100 evacuted tubes for home cooling.

This would make the tubes work all year round by isolating the cooling from the heating, where once the weather gets hot they would need to be covered.

I have considered a Glass covered solar absorber as a way to heat and in the Summer add a black painted chimney to draw heat from the house, that would be the benifit of the flat absorber over tubes.

I am not considering any heat storage systems at all as they are expensive, this would just supplement woodheating. I also like systems simple with out creating more expenses than I need.

I would appreciate any thoughts on the idea, I would have thought as the world is rushing into carbon abatement that some one would have a reasonanbly cheap system already.