So there are two different types of solar hot water heaters: panels and evacuated tubes. The tubes are more expensive but give more heat and are easier to maintain. Here's a cool installation video for evacuated tubes. They are installing the OverTrop model solar collector I think.

I'm interested in solar collectors as a way of augmenting my geoexchange system. The idea would be to have solar collectors which use the geothermal well as additional head storage capacity. More on this later