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System performance of a solar water heater depends upon collector and storage tank design (dimensions, insulation, pipe connections, etc.) and weather conditions (solar radiation intensity and ambient temperature).A tropical country like Malaysia has widely fluctuating and intermittent solar radiation.It is neither practical nor feasible to conduct outdoor tests such as that proposed by International Standards.Indoor collector tests are expensive to conduct and would not provide meaningful information to the domestic or commercial end user.Outdoor system tests would be more informative to consumers who would like to compare the water temperatures that could be achieved in order to choose from the wide range of commercial products available.This paper reports the results of outdoor tests conducted on a natural convection solar hot water heating system incorporating an array of evacuated glass tube U-tube solar collectors.The collectors were of the "balcony" type and mounted in a near vertical position with the solar tank located a short vertical distance above.Because of the vertical mounting of the collectors, system performance would depend upon its orientation.Tests were conducted with the solar collectors facing North, South, East and West and the results compared.