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Solar panels / heat recovery from attic space

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  • 08-10-2008 1:29pm
    #1
    Tenshot
    Registered Users Posts: 648 ✭✭✭


    We're well into a big rennovation project on our new house, and hoping to add some evacuated solar panels to boost the hot water cylinder. House size will be around 2600 sq ft when complete, with five bedrooms and four bathrooms.

    Separately, we are converting the attic to a computer room/study. I expect this will get rather hot, from the combination of underfloor heating on the ground floor rising up through the building, sunshine coming in through two large Velux windows, and additional ambient heat from a number of computers & servers.

    Is there any magic system which will take heat from the attic and add it to the heat collected from the solar panels, so that we get a cooler attic and warmer hot water without having to simply throw away all the excess heat energy?

    Failing that, what is the best way to keep the attic from getting too warm? (Opening the veluxes is obviously the easiest way, I suppose. Air conditioning might be an option, but seems very wasteful.)

    The house itself is around 60 years old. We're re-insulating, and it's terraced on two sides (originally a semi-D, but extended over the garage 15 years ago). Two open fireplaces. A full heat-recovery ventilation system is probably overkill.

    With regard to solar panels, we'll have two power showers and so want a decent sized hot water cylinder - 500L seems about right. Most of the solar panel offerings seem to offer a 300L HWC. We plan to heat it using a gas boiler, with an immersion top-up for when the main heating is turned off.

    I've seen other threads here mention that you should increase the number of solar panels accordingly to suit a larger tank. Is this just to get maximum efficiency, or is it a case of not having enough panels to suit the tank size would make the system so inefficient as to be a waste of time?

    And finally (whew!), our rear roof is facing due west (according to Google Earth), which is not optimal for solar panels. We do have quite a big roof, even with velux windows taking up a chunk of it.

    Any thoughts on what we should or should not be spending money on would be welcome -- it's proving very difficult to get my head around all the variables!

    Thanks,

    Eddy


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    #2
    CJhaughey
    Registered Users Posts: 14,906 ✭✭✭✭CJhaughey


    Tenshot wrote: »

    Is there any magic system which will take heat from the attic and add it to the heat collected from the solar panels, so that we get a cooler attic and warmer hot water without having to simply throw away all the excess heat energy?
    You could install an Air-to-water heat pump.
    They make small ones that would be suitable for this kind of installation
    Tenshot wrote: »
    Two open fireplaces. A full heat-recovery ventilation system is probably overkill.
    Not to mention that it will not work with open fireplaces. Roomsealed stove yes, open fire, No.

    [/QUOTE]


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