Some might find this interesting. We've just completed a hot water system in the Delta for the staff village of a guest lodge. 4500l Thermocube Tank with heat exchangers. Heat supplied by 2 x 24kw ITS heat pumps and 12 x 20 tube evac solar tubes in series. A 300m ring main feeds 24 tap off points supplying hot water for about 50 staff at a time and their kitchen and the camp laundry. 

Interesting. Do you circulate the water through the ring feed to keep it hot close to point of use?

Yes, there is a small Grundfos circulation pump doing that. Other than the tanks, everything is in pairs, one duty and one standby.

I believe Stellenbosch University has a similar setup for feeding hot water to residences. Sometimes a number of nearby residences even share a heat source in this manner. The heat is circulated to keep it hot at the point of use.

When I was there so many years ago, I remember how our residence NEVER ran out of hot water. My girlfriend (now wife) on the other end of campus wasn't as lucky though: They had geysers, and being girls and all, they ran out of hot water frequently :-)

plonkster, maybe that is more an indication of the difference in bath frequency and duration rather than the performance of the geysers. I know hygiene was not a very high priority for some of the guys when I was at US.

I remember taking a 1.5 hour shower at 3am because I was drunk outa my skull and felt like death itself. Worked so well I attended my math class at 8am next morning. Me and 7 other nerds. First and last time I was ever that inebriated. Really don't understand how some people do it every week... :-P

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Update: I've just returned from a site visit and instead of 50 people using the system, there are now 90 people using it daily. They have used 244000l of hot water in just over a month (no water restrictions there!) so we are pretty chuffed that the system has held up with the added demand.

Nice installation!