Property Developments & Alterations - Energy Efficiency Legislation
SANS 10400-XA stipulates that all buildings, including alterations and additions, where plans need to be submitted, have to be designed and constructed in an energy efficient way, so that they can help to contribute to the reduction of greenhouse gases.
All new buildings will have to comply with the performance requirement based on 6 different climatic zones for South Africa, which means that insulation will have to be installed to achieve the required R-Values.
It is further required that “50% (volume fraction) of the annual average hot water heating requirement shall be provided by means other than electrical resistance heating including but not limited to solar heating, heat pumps, heat recovery from other systems or processes and renewable combustible fuel”.
With retrofit installations being a cheaper installation, developers are opting for the retrofit systems but are unaware that the installation will not be compliant as per the requirements of SANS 10400-XA.
The standard requires that the solar water heating system must comply with SANS 1307 (which includes the 2 main components – the collector and the storage tank, as well as all the prescribed control and safety valves, pipe-work thermal insulation), and secondly the solar water heating system installation (which covers many aspects as well) must comply with SANS 10106.
However, SANS 1307 compliance cannot be achieved by combining individual components tested on their own but requires a solar water heating system to be tested in full.
There is no test in any SANS standard for the thermal performance of the collector on its own. You cannot therefore test a collector on its own and then mix and match it to any other storage tank and then prove or certify compliance of such a combination as a SANS 1307 compliant system.