On Wed, 30 Mar 2005 02:58:54 +0100, (Steve Firth)
wrote:


Up front, dIMM can **** off, I'm not interested in what he has to say.

My place in Italy is going to have several heat sources. Wood burner,
solar and possibly an LPG boiler of some sort. A thermal store therefore
seems like a good idea, particularly because SWMBO has decreed that the
ground floor *will* have underfloor heating.

However there's a weeny problem or two, both electricity and water
supplies are variable, and of course lack of availability of one has no
relationship to the other. All of the thermal stores I have looked at
are pumped, with three pumps on the majority of systems. That would mean
no hot water on days with no electricity.

Is it possible to get a thermal store that will heat the incoming cold
water mains without needing a plate exchanger?

It may work out cheaper to get one of those little £44 generators from
Makro to run the pump on the rare occasions the mains supply goes
down.

sponix