Using a back boiler as a radiator

NerdyNed

Hi,
A friend of mine has been having trouble with rattling pipes in her house, a recent build. She has a dual system (Oil + solidfuel stove with back boiler).

She has had 4/5 plumbers come and go and nobody has solved the problem so far.

The original "plumber" set things up in a way that, when the oil burner was turned on, the back boiler in the stove gets heated up along with all the radiators.

This sounds crazy and completely wrong to me for a number of obvious reasons. Some of the plumbers she has had dont seem to worried about this. To me it seems like a half arsed approach to heating systems.

I was wondering if anyone else had come across this. I know nothing about plumbing, but I would have thought that heating a back boiler via oil would be very bad practice.

The thing is, because she cant light the stove at the minute, she is happy to heat the back boiler because it brings the room to a comfortable temperature level. This must be costing a fortune.

Ned

Antiquo

NerdyNed wrote: »

Hi,
A friend of mine has been having trouble with rattling pipes in her house, a recent build. She has a dual system (Oil + solidfuel stove with back boiler).

She has had 4/5 plumbers come and go and nobody has solved the problem so far.

The original "plumber" set things up in a way that, when the oil burner was turned on, the back boiler in the stove gets heated up along with all the radiators.

This sounds crazy and completely wrong to me for a number of obvious reasons. Some of the plumbers she has had dont seem to worried about this. To me it seems like a half arsed approach to heating systems.

I was wondering if anyone else had come across this. I know nothing about plumbing, but I would have thought that heating a back boiler via oil would be very bad practice.

The thing is, because she cant light the stove at the minute, she is happy to heat the back boiler because it brings the room to a comfortable temperature level. This must be costing a fortune.

Ned

Ned there are a number of ways of coupling stove boilers and in this case oil. Its not uncommon though basic to have this system where the stove boiler acts as another rad basically not costing her a fortune.

Like I said a number of ways to do it but maybe a problem with the rattling pipes in your opening paragraph. When do they rattle, i.e. only oil on, only stove lit, both oil and stove, etc.

The fact that a clatter of plumbers has been in and looked at the setup but not found any problems means you need to either take their word for it or get this thread moved over to heating and plumbing.

Quite a few plumbers are coming across stove installs and don't have any experience however I can't see that the 4/5 plus the installing plumber are all unaware of how the install should be set up. Though they should be able to identify and at least explain what the rattle is if it's banging and pretty violent sounding then that's a different ball game.

NerdyNed

Thanks Antiquo,
I've never come across this before and thought it a strange set-up when it was described to me.

I'm not asking for a solution to the rattling pipes problem, I just wondered about using a back boiler as a radiator (effectively).

Ned

DoneDL

Its not in any way sensible or economical to use the stove as a radiator, if the pipes are banging it`s most likely air in the system or badly installed pipework. Ask the mod`s to move the thread to plumbing and heating.

NerdyNed

The other related threads I was reading were in this section, which is why I posted here.

Mods, please move it if appropriate.

sky6

I'd be more worried about the banging pipes than I would be about the heating the Stove boiler from oil. If several plumbers walked away from it then it seems to me that you may have a badly designed system. You can design a system which both works together between oil and solid fuel or separately. It's just a matter of adding controls. However the Air in the system could be as simple as a loose joint sucking air into the system. Especially near a pump. I've seem this happen before and yet there would be no Water leaking.