In the present work a time-dependent reliability model for a typical solar domestic hot water and heating system is developed using the method of Fault Tree Analysis and existing mathematical techniques. The reference system used in this analysis is a typical solar heating system. The system reliability structure has been identified with the aid of Fault Tree methods. In addition, a simulation of the solar system reliability has been performed employing the Monte Carlo method. In the computer simulation, failure rate data such as WASH-1400, MIL-HDBK-217B, and Green and Bourne are used as input data. These results show that the developed reliability model is capable of expressing the primary failure phenomena of the solar heating and domestic hot water system.