Heating System Getting Too Complicated!!

De_man

Hi i'm getting bogged down with my intended heating system and looking for any advice..

Initially i had intended to have a Wood Pellet boiler as my primary source of heat with the solar panels as back up..."Senior Management" has now requested that we have Stoves with back boilers to supplement the heating arrangement to make the most of the stoves.

Okay...

So i'll have the WPB, Solar, Oil and two stoves to sort out:eek:

I think i've got the WPB & Solar sorted out in my head...but how
do i go about the plumbing for the oil & stoves all using the same line?

Say for example the WPB or Oil burner is "ON"... Stove 1 or 2 (or both)
are ON i want the hot water from the stove (s) to assist the WPB or OIL

Anyone know how i could arrange the switching system without
having to swich valves manually? as a couple of plumbers have run away!!

I have attached a drawing for you to have a look at....

Any ideas greatly appreciated

Thanks in advance


a pint of plain is yer only man

My system is a bit simpler than that, I have (in the hot press) a thermal store with two 3Kw immersion heaters from this I run a pipe to the UFH manifold. Hot water is via a plate heat exchanger, this part was fairly simple as I purchased the thermal store pre-plumbed, all I needed to do was connect one pipe for cold one for hot two for UFH.

Now the fun bit...

This part is still work in progress,
I have connected a flow and a return pipe via a thermostatic valve to the district heating pipe, this will "short circuit" cold water back to the garage (WPB's take upto 15 minutes to produce water hot enough to recharge the heatbank).

[planning] After building the garage I will install the WPB at the other end of the district heating pipe. I will also install solar panels on the garage roof feeding a solar cylinder, the actual plumbing is a bit vague atm but it is intended that the cylinder will be connected in series with the WPB so that the solar pre-heats the water in winter & in summer the boiler stays off when the heatbank calls for hot water.
[/planning]
In your setup, starting from the cold return from the cylinder - you could connect both back boilers in parallel each having a non return valve & pump (controlled by thermostat on stove, you don't want the water to boil in it) in circuit, then tee-d together and fed into the WBP/Oil boiler, both of these would need to be in paralled with pumps & non return valves as well. for safety you would need a bypass valve on the boilers in case both are off when a stove is lit.

Then the output of this lot going to the cylinder (with seperate solar coil).

You really need a "heating engineer" not a plumber for this job.

De_man

dolanbaker

thanks very much for the info! i was thinking about the non-return gate valves etc but imho there's too much going on with the heating WPB, OIL, Solar & 2 stoves with the boilers (could make it 3 if herself had her way).

It would be so much easier and straight forward if i used just the WPB & Oil (as a backup), Personally, i'd be able to work out the plan for that.

However, with the planned set up, i could quite easily mess up the place:eek: not to mention to have the capability to control the whole thing via X-10/SMS:)

I've had several plumbers out to the site in the last week or so "tyre kickers"
and not really interested. (i reckon they don't know how to do it)

One guy who does know his stuff has yet to get back to me his worry when visiting the site was the amount of work overall required in the house.

I agree with you, i must look for a heating engineer for this one


Thanks again

AJL

Hi
Why so many heating sources? I was advised that if you are going for an alternative heating system like WPB could you use this to just heat your water in the summer rather than laying out money for solar panels. Also with solar panels you get the most out of them in the summer when you dont need heating. I think they are ideal for DHW but possibly ont heating back up.

Why put back boilers on stoves are they not intended to heat the room that they are in?
Reading this I would be wondering how cost effective all these heating sources will be considering the amount of capital you are going to spend. Also if something goes wrong with the plumbing it maybe difficult to source the fault
I put in an air to air heat system with solar panels for the hot water. Emmersion for hot water back up.
I did start off with all sorts of ideas amalgamating different system but it turned into a nightmare!!

Best of luck with it!

De_man

Why so many heating sources?

the original plan was to have the Emersion, WPB, Solar, and the stoves with back boilers, i'm sorry but i'm not convinced yet about the WPBs but regardless i'll do my best for the environment and since the deliveries of pellets is unreliable (at the moment) for the sake of 1500euro i can install the oil boiler and use as a backup

I was advised that if you are going for an alternative heating system like WPB could you use this to just heat your water in the summer rather than laying out money for solar panels. Also with solar panels you get the most out of them in the summer when you dont need heating. I think they are ideal for DHW but possibly ont heating back up.



Totally agree with you there, i have to chat with management about that:)


Why put back boilers on stoves are they not intended to heat the room that they are in?

we think we'll be living in the kitchen, (with stove on) most of the time
we thought it would be more cost & environmentally effective to have the back boilers installed to "assist" the primary heat source


Reading this I would be wondering how cost effective all these heating sources will be considering the amount of capital you are going to spend.


i'm waiting on "senior management" to withdraw all funding
the stoves with boilers are only a few hundred extra, and the oil burner say 1500. hopefully, i won't ever have to use the oil but it's nice to have a backup

Also if something goes wrong with the plumbing it maybe difficult to source the fault.....I did start off with all sorts of ideas amalgamating different system but it turned into a nightmare!!


Spent today "working on a design" so i think i have the idea in my head
sorted now as i hope to get another "engineer" to visit the house:rolleyes:

I think the main probs will the remote operation capability (via sms)
i reckon i can overcome that difficulty by using
electric non return gate valves that can control & "talk" to each other via
X-10

At least i hope that'll work

"Senior Management" reckons i'm looking for the most complicated way to build the house:rolleyes:

i'll let ye know in a few weeks with a bit of luck:D

Thanks AJL for your opinion on the Solar

towbar

Systemlink offer a very good system for zone management and for combining mutlipe heating sources. No zone valves or one way valves required just a pump on each zone or source. Search for System zone on their website www.systemlink.ie. We used it and I have seen it in quite a few other installs also.

Salmon

Towbar,

Is the systemzone and systemlink system expensive? Would you need to have it installed by the supplier or would any plumber be able to install the system? Anyone else use this system and are there any downsides to using such a system?

towbar

Most plumbers should be able to fit, dont need to use systemlink installers. I didnt use their system link wiring option either went with Heatmiser for stats and control of the pumps. If you need details let me know. Are you using underfloor or radiators? We used rads.

I cant remember the price as I got a lot of stuff in one go, I think the actual zone mixing box is about €300 and then you need a pump rather than a valve for each zone and heating input.

I still haven't figured out if I could put solar on one of the systemzone inputs, it seems maybe not as solar water temperatures can be very high compared with normal central heating, but I guess not really a discussion for this forum.

Salmon

Very interested in this system towbar! I am also installing rads, whats the system you installed like?? I was hoping to connect Solar, Oil fired Range and a Solid fuel Stove with a back boiler. I also want to have a couple of separate zones so this looks like it could do the job for me (Not sure about the solar part tho!)

towbar

towbar wrote:

Systemlink offer a very good system for zone management and for combining mutlipe heating sources. No zone valves or one way valves required just a pump on each zone or source. Search for System zone on their website www.systemlink.ie. We used it and I have seen it in quite a few other installs also.

Just had a look at the website, not a million miles away from what I dreamed up in my original reply.. Must remenber this when I do the garage.

De_man

"System Link" that'll make life very easy thanks very much towbar

towbar

Salmon,

Our system is slightly overkill! Originally we had intended to poor finished floor before timber frame was erected and the idea was to put all radiator pipes in the concrete with no joints and all pipes going back to overground manifolds at two locations. As it happens we didnt poor finished floor until everything was laid (woudl have been almost impossible to put pipes in right place) but plumber went ahead with same spec as that is what he had priced and I never even considered a simpler way once the build started, however despite alot of pipework the system has advantages.

Basically each rad is connected back to an under floor heating manifold with an actuator and each room has a heatmiser thermostat controlling that actuator. The TM1 box from heatmiser consists of a set of relays that ensures the boiler pump, zone pump and actuator are turned on when heat is required for any rad in that zone. We had one issue with actuators as they take 1-2minutes to open and so had to put time delay relay on zone pump as we didnt use a bypass valve. It works very well and the main advantage is water only flows to exectly where it is needed. We use a wpb with buffer tank so even if one rad calls for heat for 20 minutes wpb is not turning on and off continuosily. Managed to get all the stats hooked up to a PC and have very good temp monitoring for all rooms to see just how much heat we are using and how much temp varies in each room throughout the day.

The main disadvantage of this system is there is a fair bit of pipe work and almost the same functionality could be achieved with motorised valves on each radiator. Wire the zones valves back centrally though so you can turn on the zone pump when heat required. While this does mean water is moving around the whole system even for one rad it would be a much neater soluton and probably slighty cheaper.

Overall it cost about 2-3k more (incl stats) than a plain rads solution but definetely cheaper than ufh and significantly greater control.

If you want to talk through it send a pm or if you want to see it I'm in the North East.

towbar

Salmon,

Our system is slightly overkill! Originally we had intended to poor finished floor before timber frame was erected and the idea was to put all radiator pipes in the concrete with no joints and all pipes going back to overground manifolds at two locations. As it happens we didnt poor finished floor until everything was laid (woudl have been almost impossible to put pipes in right place) but plumber went ahead with same spec as that is what he had priced and I never even considered a simpler way once the build started, however despite alot of pipework the system has advantages.

Basically each rad is connected back to an under floor heating manifold with an actuator and each room has a heatmiser thermostat controlling that actuator. The TM1 box from heatmiser consists of a set of relays that ensures the boiler pump, zone pump and actuator are turned on when heat is required for any rad in that zone. We had one issue with actuators as they take 1-2minutes to open and so had to put time delay relay on zone pump as we didnt use a bypass valve. It works very well and the main advantage is water only flows to exectly where it is needed. We use a wpb with buffer tank so even if one rad calls for heat for 20 minutes wpb is not turning on and off continuosily. Managed to get all the stats hooked up to a PC and have very good temp monitoring for all rooms to see just how much heat we are using and how much temp varies in each room throughout the day.

The main disadvantage of this system is there is a fair bit of pipe work and almost the same functionality could be achieved with motorised valves on each radiator. Wire the zones valves back centrally though so you can turn on the zone pump when heat required. While this does mean water is moving around the whole system even for one rad it would be a much neater soluton and probably slighty cheaper.

Overall it cost about 2-3k more (incl stats) than a plain rads solution but definetely cheaper than ufh and significantly greater control.

If you want to talk through it send a pm or if you want to see it I'm in the North East.

davidoco

I'm not a plumber but personally I would ditch the idea of using solar for any sort of space heating unless of course you only intend to use it for the hot water which as you know is fairly straight forward.

If your thinking of using multiple boilers (solid/pellet/oil) have a look at http://www.dunsleyheat.co.uk/linkupsys.htm

While it's not the se%y solution the NEUTRALIZER is a lot simplier than the Systemlink products SystemZone and System Lex.

If you look at the drawings for the neutralizer you can see that it uses standard controls like pipe stats that generally work well. They suggest a three channel programmer and Horstmann now sell a four channel programmer which would be perfect for the job.

Remember that using solid fuel you cannot use a sealed circuit for your heating system. Also solid fuel should be treated like a small bomb when it comes to heating water in your cylinder as any fault in the system components could lead to a dangerous overheating situation.

Consider a creating a circuit for your solid fuel stoves which a plate heat exchanger to your sealed oil system with a simple stat that runs a pump on the solid side and kicks off the pump on the oil/pellet side. You will loose some efficiency if one stove is off and you are passing water through it but it’s a small price to pay. I have left some stuff off the drawing for clarity and I know I have too much time on my hands.

towbar

davidoco,

I know most people say solar cant be used for space heating and indeed all are probably right but it just seems a pity to not be able to take advantage of that heat. For hot water only payback on solar for wpb users is long and barely makes sense.

My reasoning for solar is in summer time I expect to need a very small space heating top up late evening and maybe in the shower rooms early morning. If solar could heat my 500l buffer tank once a day to about 60/70 degrees that would give me enough to heat our hot water and provide a small bit of space heating and means (in theory) I could turn the pellet boiler off completely during the main summer months.

In an ideal world I would connect the solar to the systemlink and use a small programmer to first heat the hot water through the existing (unfortunately) single coil and then when that tank hot run the excess heat to the buffer tank getting the best of both worlds but as I say cant find out if that is technically possible as the immediate reaction is you cant use solar for space heating. This would also save buying a dual coil cyclinder which is well over €1000 at this stage.


Not sure if this is gone way off topic for this forum, apologies to forum readers if it is.

jones085

I would spend a large amount of time as part of my day to day work advising people on these kind of systems and or trouble shooting when going wrong, and thought you may like to consider some ideas and thoughts.

It is fair to say that buy doubling your heat sources does not necaseraly double your saving and certainly doubles your troubles.

The simple rule of thumb when designing an efficient system is to get your priorities streight. Firstly efficient design,fabric and layout of the building. Ie solar gain, insulation, Thermal mass etc. etc.

Secondly efficient control and delivery of heat. Underfloor/radiators? No. Zones? Control of said zones. Ventilation and air tightness(the new watch word in the industry)

The last thing on the list if you like is the heat source itself.

In my experience getting these first two correct is not only hard enough in their own right but essential. If you are to set your house up to addapt to new technologies and or except multiple heat sources these have to be in place.

A thought......
An avarage house hold of four poeple will spend in the region of 500 Euros of oil a year. If a solar system can provide on avarage 70% of the housholds needs. Then a saving of maybee 350-400 a year could be reasonable giving a pay back on capitol outlay of around 10-15 years. If your water is costing you around 100-150 a year beacause you have a cheap heating source Ie Geothermal or wood pellets then HOW LONG WILL TAKE TO SEE A RETURN ON YOUR INVESTMENT?

Different heat sources produce different heats and controlablity. Be very carefull how you combine.

Basically my advice would be this. Get the infrastructure right and put in place the pipe work to build on the sytem over a period of time.

There are only two renewables capable of providing complete solutions, Geothermal and wood pellets. Solar wind etc are variable add on's range cookers, back boilers are asthetic but rarly provide functionalty to system.

Good luck;)

Vertical

I'd try and keep things simple. The more complexity there is the more there is to go wrong.

Take your oil boiler for example, if you're installing it as a backup there is a possibility that you will never normally use it, this may lead to maintenance problems and a failure to work when you eventually switch it on. I don't know how long diesel oil lasts just sitting in a tank, but it may become useless over a long time, or worse cause problems when it is fed to a boiler which has been gathering dust.

You're right to try and future proof, however too much future-proofing of a mechanical system can get expensive and the only thing your sure of is that you can't tell the future! We may all be heating with "cheap" nuclear-generated electricity in twenty years time...

By the way I'll be installing solar myself, for DWH only.

towbar

jones085

Are you saying an average 4 bed house uses less than a 1000l of oil a year?

jones085

No not at all. If you take an avarage energy use per year of around 20,000kwh. This would be at standard figure used by the likes of SEI and others. It would represent a houshold of four in a 2000 sq/ft house for example. The oil bill at present would be somwhere between 1500 and 2000 euros a year.

It would be reasonable to assume that approx one quater of this would be spent on hot water production. Ie around 500 euros.

Regards

Simon.:)

towbar

Sorry misread your first post. I'd even say €500 for hot water is high. Certainly if you are using bulk pellets payback on solar will take alot longer which is why there is very little value to me in using solar for dhw however if I could turn the boiler off fully for 4 months and use solar for hot water and a slight heat top up in evenings then I could see solar paying for itself sooner especially if I only have to buy panels and not change existing hot tank etc-

Intend to monitor very accurately the heat requirment in the house from May to End Aug to see if a single heating of the 500l buffer tank per day will suffice.

De_man

jones085 wrote:

It is fair to say that buy doubling your heat sources does not necaseraly double your saving and certainly doubles your troubles.

The simple rule of thumb when designing an efficient system is to get your priorities streight. Firstly efficient design,fabric and layout of the building. Ie solar gain, insulation, Thermal mass etc. etc.


I agree fully, but for me personally the system isn't about doubling savings
it's about doing my best for the environment and having greater flexibility due to the poor supply of pellets on the market at the moment.

my house for the most part is solar passive, orientated south,
windows etc etc, Roof to be double battened

Secondly efficient control and delivery of heat. Underfloor/radiators? No. Zones? Control of said zones. Ventilation and air tightness(the new watch word in the industry)

Intend to use "normal" rads but i'm looking into the "SOLO" system aswell. Unfortunately i've had a few nightmares over the UFH in sisters house and found that it's too difficult to control.

I intend to have 8 Zones in the house
doing my best with air tightness, installing a heat recovery system (this is an after thought only decided a few weeks ago)


The last thing on the list if you like is the heat source itself.

Senior management got the bill for the roof slates today:D
Solar is being put on indefinite hold:rolleyes:

However, i'm going to continue OIL, WPB and the stoves, but i'm going to run the pipes for Solar to be installed at a later stage.

Also intend to set up a separate fuse board for Wind turbine (next year)
(see set up on surfacepower.com)


Different heat sources produce different heats and controlablity. Be very carefull how you combine.
Basically my advice would be this. Get the infrastructure right and put in place the pipe work to build on the sytem over a period of time.


I agree with you, we've now seemed to be able to sort out
the heating system (with manual control) the X-10 system with GSM interface is going to be more difficult to sort out...

davidoco thanks for the heads up on the NEUTRALIZER system but i reckon for automation at first glance the Systemlink products might have the edge
but i'll contact them and see what they have to say

Thanks again

towbar

de_man,

To my mind there seems no difference between neutralizer and systemzone except that systemlink also offer the wiring but you wont be able to get an 8 zone systemlink so you'll need some other wiring control along with systemlink anyway.

Since you are using rads technically you only need 2 zones one for hot water and one for heating and then control each rad to create seperate heating zones however apparently building regulations require 2 seperately pumped heating zones and seperate hot water and unfortunately therefore I dont think that individual radiator controls count as seperate zones.

I'd recommend you look at Heatmiser as it will control up to 8 circuits on each zone. If you need documentation or diagrams PM.

BTW, to save money you can buy a second hand oil boiler about €200 connect to a 20 gal barrel and save the expense of a full blown installation - its a backup after all.

De_man

Towbar

thanks very much again for the heads up on the "heatmiser"
the plumber (who i think i'll go with) has recommended that system.
it looks as if it'll sort out my probs

all the extra hassle over a few stoves:(

Thanks again

towbar

Good stuff , if you run into any questions feel free to give me a shout, also Heatmiser tech staff are helpful.

When you get it up and running and if you want to really play with it give me a shout and will show you how to get all the stats connected to a PC. Its only then the real fun starts!!

De_man

When you get it up and running and if you want to really play with it give me a shout and will show you how to get all the stats connected to a PC. Its only then the real fun starts!!


Thanks Towbar this forum is a great resource to have
i'm looking forward to playing with the stats, at least i'll be in out of the rain:D or knowing my luck it'll be raining inside:D

mfenton

Hi guys,

I'm thinking of heat pump for a new house build. I'm considering the options for the collector and one particular supplier is pushing a bored well water to water heat pump over the horizontal collector. Apparently, as the temperature of the well water would lend itself to a greater COP (12C well water - 6.5 COP). Two other heat supplier companies are set against this system - they think that it is too much trouble installing, requires far more maintenance, higher costs for drilling etc (although my thinking is that I'll be boring a well anyway) and there are risks of water contamination. The reasons why I'd opt for the bored well heat pump is that I would expect this costs to be lower given that there would be no site excavation as there would be for the horizontal collectors.

What do ye think? I went back to the first supplier and he claims that these companies are simply just trying to sell more pipe etc. This supplier is heating his 6100 sq ft house with one bored well heat pump. I did visit another installation and he was quite happy with the system - installed 2005.

This supplier also claims that aluminium rads (sized for 40C) would keep the electricity running costs lower that that for under floor whereas the other companies say the under floor is better. In any case I will at least go for under floor in part of the house as I have reduced space for rads.

Any thoughts are appreciated.

Cheers,
Martin

muffler

mfenton, you have posted your query here, you have started a new thread with the same query and you have dragged up a thread that is nearly 3 years old on another forum. Once is enough to post a query or a question.

I was going to give you the benefit of the doubt as you are new here but you are obviously not new to discussion forums when you have the ability to spam as outlined above.

Im going to give a red card here and also delete your new thread. The mods on the gardening/DIY forum may well add to that.