Cylinder in Garage, Heat loss issue.

Chimpster

Folks,

I have a plumbing question. My plumber is uncontactable at the minute so thats why I am posting.

My cylinder is in my garage as the solar panels are located on garage roof. There is a 15 metre run from the garage to the house and district heating pipe was used to minimise heat loss.

Here is my problem. We use HW at various time during the day as my wife is working parttime so there is no real pattern to usage times. There is a timer on the circulation pump that circulates the water from the garage to the house. To keep herself happy the pump runs most of the time with the net result that temp of the water drops due to constant circulation in around the house and back put to the cylinder. So when it comes to taking a shower the temp of the water is not whats needed.

Whats the correct way to rectify this issue? There has to be a better way and I just want to brush up before I contact another plumber to rectify it.

Thanks in advance.

whitelightrider

Chimpster wrote: »

Folks,

I have a plumbing question. My plumber is uncontactable at the minute so thats why I am posting.

My cylinder is in my garage as the solar panels are located on garage roof. There is a 15 metre run from the garage to the house and district heating pipe was used to minimise heat loss.

Here is my problem. We use HW at various time during the day as my wife is working parttime so there is no real pattern to usage times. There is a timer on the circulation pump that circulates the water from the garage to the house. To keep herself happy the pump runs most of the time with the net result that temp of the water drops due to constant circulation in around the house and back put to the cylinder. So when it comes to taking a shower the temp of the water is not whats needed.

Whats the correct way to rectify this issue? There has to be a better way and I just want to brush up before I contact another plumber to rectify it.

Thanks in advance.

We have the same setup. All we do is turn on the pump before we need to shower and turn it off again afterwards. A bit of a pain, but the only other option is to run the hot tap until the hot water feeds through.

heinbloed

There could be several points which might need to be looked at:
First: there might be a mixing valve involved, an automatic valve which mixes hot and cold water to the desired temperature to avoid scalding at the tap. If this mixing valve is placed in the garage straight behind the cylinder the set temperature might be to low.
This would be easy-set the temperature higher.

Second: the energy losses from the piping (15mx2) might be to high. Change the piping , better: bring the storage tank closer to the point of demand. It might be better run the collector's energy a long way to the storage tank than to run the storage tank's energy a long way to the tap.

Third: the total solar harvest might be to low, the ST system a toy but not a tool working efficiently.

Fourth: the circulating pump might not be able to pump the water fast enough, it cools in the before it reaches the tap.

Fifth: the heatexchangers might be wrongly designed.With a very well designed heatexchager (water to water type) about 5 degrees of temperature (5 Kelvin) are 'lost' in transmission. The more heatexchangers are involved the less will be transmitted.

Your plumber did obviously something wrong. Are you sure he's a plumber? Every good plumber should leave an emergency number to contact if things fail. Get a heating engineer to look at the situation. A plumber's job does not only contain the combining of taps and pipes but to deliver a satisfying situation. If the ST system doesn't deliver enough warm water (during these sunny spring months, with far more sunshine above average) it is not worth to look at it.

To dig deeper into the situation here at the forum it would be helpfull to post a diagram, a drawing, showing what material is chosen in what dimensions. Flow rates, temperatures, collector certificates and so on.