just wondering where your water comes from, is it a town supply, or perhaps a well? had a problem on a job where the water came from a creek running off hills with lots of limestone and there was a lot of CO2 held in solution in the water caused heaps of air locks and could only be solved by having an open vent to allow it to off gas.

Just brain storming.

Hello Badger.( Better not go to England. You'd be at risk of being exterminated - even with Brian May sticking up for you.) Thank you for brainstorming - exactly what I was hoping for! Brains being used! We live in a rural township and are on the town supply. I don't know what the pH is. Good point. We are first off the supply and we tend to get air bubbles every time they do work on the waterworks and indeed when there is a power cut. They are a nuisance, but they have never caused trouble.

The solar system was working just fine all summer and went odd very suddenly, so I don't think it can be dissolved gases. When this trouble started I assumed it was due to council work. But it didn't settle down and I asked a contact I have there to get some facts. There was no work being done and the pressure had not been changed. My meter was checked to see if there was a spike and it was normal. They have since put in something at the toby to try to reduce the problem.

BTW I never thought I'd ever be a junior member of a Plumbers' Forum. My husband is very impressed!

Hi Corylus, I am from Wales and could do with Brian May's help hahaha.....welcome to the forum.

When your hot water comes out of the tap is it milky, but clears over ten mins from the bottom to the top? best seen in a clear glass

The job I was on about was on a rural town supply, also whenever they worked on the filters down stream air/gases would come through to the dwellings.

May be the gases are accumulating at the top of your panel/collector, but this would only happen on a open system, not a sealed system.

Good point with the pump Badger, very true.. Sorry bad habit with "panel" I meant the solar panel/evacuated tubes. Your right Corylus the water pumps through the manifold back to the HWC.

Hello Badger. Are you a Queen fan then?Thanks for the welcome.  Our water is clear - except we had  one episode of sediment at Xmas. My daughter in law wasn't pleased when she saw what she'd been drinking through the night. Once in twenty years though - not bad.

The thing to get hold of about this problem is that it arrived suddenly. We had a trouble free summer (for once), possibly because we were at home all day. Then mid Feb we were once more able to go to town and a couple of times came back and found it up to its old tricks, screeching and bubbling. Then this problem appeared between breakfast and lunch one day - again when we were out. And it has been like that ever since (25 Feb), gradually getting more difficult to manage. I have to screw the Ajax down eight and a half turns now. Talk about a screw loose. The point is - something changed and we need to find out what that was. And it's looking like a blockage preventing an adequate flow from the HWC to the pump.

As a customer, I have this odd belief that the thing is not fit for purpose if you can't leave it. Can't wait for Integrated to tell me how he manages to keep his solar from overheating. We get long hot sunny days here, and if we are not around to run some hot water off, we are likely to get steam backing into the HWC which doesn't like it.

As a matter of interest, how do you suggest looking after the S.O.B when we go on holiday mid summer? I was stunned when it was suggested we go up on the roof and put a tarp over it. The problem is, when you buy state of the art tech - you don't know what questions you should be asking. I know them now! There are several reasons why I would not have bought this system. Any one of them would have been enough - this being one of them. Seems to me that an automatic sunshade wouldn't be too difficult to incorporate into the design.

It must be quite a challenge for you guys having to fit high tech systems to existing elderly hot water systems, which I suppose you must have to do. We got a new HWC to try to avoid this problem as far as possible - but now I discover there are HWCs and HWCs. I seriously doubt this one has baffles. Certainly the old one didn't. I know that because I had it cut it up lengthwise and made a couple of splendid planters out of it. And I suspect this new one is of a similar kind.

Time will tell if I can ever find a plumber. This one isn't answering his answer machine. Perhaps he likes his weekends free and sticks his phone in the sock drawer.

I was shown how to bleed the pump - but not warned about the risks. Thank you for pointing them out. I've never done it. I just put the controller off for a while, set the pump on 3 and hope to belt the bubble out of the way when I put the pump on. Sometimes it works, Sometimes it doesn't. I expect that's bad practice. But it's a bad system so I'm not about to feel guilty. To be honest - I'm seriously thinking about putting an advert on Trade Me that says whoever will pay to have it removed and have me restored to the Ripple System can have the damn thing. Any offers?

Hi all,
 the way I see it is with all the variables involved in this situation, the best course of action for a safe and positive outcome is to get a  solar experienced plumber to look at it.