In the next couple of years we intend to remodel the back of the house, put
in a downstairs shower and toilet, and do various other things.

This will include replacing the current boiler and doing something with the
hopeless hot water system - at the moment you have to run the water for a
couple of minutes before anything approaching hot water comes through.

Obvious choice is a combi boiler situated close to the kitchen and bathroom
to give short pipe runs and on demand hot water.

However this is also an opportunity to 'go green' with for example a heat
store, solar water heating on the roof, a wood pellet boiler.
This also gives the option of adding other heat sources such as a solid fuel
stove with back boiler to heat water in the winter.
In this case the pipe runs are likely to be longer but good lagging and a
pump may help the 'instant hot water' requirement.

Is this a feasible option?
It looks expensive compared to a combi boiler - at least three major
components at least compared with one - and the financial (as opposed to
moral) payback may be unrealisitically long.

Has anyone gone down this route?

Is anyone contemplating it?

For us it will be a 'now or never' thing as once the house is done we have
no intention of mucking about with it for some considerable time.

Cheers

Dave R

On 9 Sep, 11:04, "David WE Roberts" wrote:
In the next couple of years we intend to remodel the back of the house, put
in a downstairs shower and toilet, and do various other things.

This will include replacing the current boiler and doing something with the
hopeless hot water system - at the moment you have to run the water for a
couple of minutes before anything approaching hot water comes through.

Obvious choice is a combi boiler situated close to the kitchen and bathroom
to give short pipe runs and on demand hot water.

However this is also an opportunity to 'go green' with for example a heat
store, solar water heating on the roof, a wood pellet boiler.
This also gives the option of adding other heat sources such as a solid fuel
stove with back boiler to heat water in the winter.
In this case the pipe runs are likely to be longer but good lagging and a
pump may help the 'instant hot water' requirement.

Is this a feasible option?
It looks expensive compared to a combi boiler - at least three major
components at least compared with one - and the financial (as opposed to
moral) payback may be unrealisitically long.

Has anyone gone down this route?

Is anyone contemplating it?

For us it will be a 'now or never' thing as once the house is done we have
no intention of mucking about with it for some considerable time.

We have solar heating (for hot water) and it's wonderful. We haven't
had the hot water heater on since about May. Our last four or five
gas bills have been refunds (compared to our neighbours, who are
paying upwards of £1000 pa.)

We have friends who installed a ground source heat pump and they
report very good results, but you need a big garden.

In article ,
David WE Roberts wrote:
In the next couple of years we intend to remodel the back of the house, put
in a downstairs shower and toilet, and do various other things.

This will include replacing the current boiler and doing something with the
hopeless hot water system - at the moment you have to run the water for a
couple of minutes before anything approaching hot water comes through.

Obvious choice is a combi boiler situated close to the kitchen and bathroom
to give short pipe runs and on demand hot water.

However this is also an opportunity to 'go green' with for example a heat
store, solar water heating on the roof, a wood pellet boiler.
This also gives the option of adding other heat sources such as a solid fuel
stove with back boiler to heat water in the winter.
In this case the pipe runs are likely to be longer but good lagging and a
pump may help the 'instant hot water' requirement.

Is this a feasible option?
It looks expensive compared to a combi boiler - at least three major
components at least compared with one - and the financial (as opposed to
moral) payback may be unrealisitically long.

Has anyone gone down this route?

Is anyone contemplating it?

I've just done the solar panel thing (Navitron evacuated tubes) - still
need to burn gas as the weather recently hasn't been that good, but only
for 10 minutes each morning now rather than the hour or so before.

Biggest difference is probably the triple insulated tank - it's directly
heated from a conventional boiler (standard Y-Plan - not had a chance to
change that yet), and additionally heated by a back-boiler in the cooker
(Stanley range cooker - bit like a Rayburn), as well as indirectly heated
via a coil from the solar panel (which is the only pressurised bit in
the system) Internal coil/heat exchanger in the store to provide hot
water via a mixing valve to keep the exit temp to 50C

The cooker runs most of the winter, but only weekends in the summer,
(it's the only source of heat for that part of the house in winter)
so the store ought to be much more efficient at keeping the hot water
the cooker generates in a more usable state.

A future plan is to replace the conventional boiler with a log-burner,
but the issue then is how to heat the house when we're out for a day
in the winter ... I have half-baked plans to dump the store into the
radiators, but who knows yet.

For us it will be a 'now or never' thing as once the house is done we have
no intention of mucking about with it for some considerable time.

If you've got a south facing roof, then go for it. Cost of all the bits
for me was just under £2K. (Panel/tubes, tank, pressure vessel, valves
and lots of copper pipe & fittings) I only wish now I'd gotten a larger
panel and tank!

Gordon

On Wed, 9 Sep 2009 11:04:40 +0100 someone who may be "David WE
Roberts" wrote this:-

However this is also an opportunity to 'go green' with for example a heat
store, solar water heating on the roof, a wood pellet boiler.
This also gives the option of adding other heat sources such as a solid fuel
stove with back boiler to heat water in the winter.

All feasible.

Make sure the thermal store has enough tappings/coils for the
sources of heat you might use. Solar needs a coil, assuming you want
it to be on a separate circuit filled with antifreeze and
pressurised to better resist flashing to steam under stagnation.
Other sources of heat and radiators can just be on tappings.

If you are considering underfloor heating this is in many ways best
fed by a coil fairly low down the store, to get a better temperature
for it, though it is possible to mix down hotter water.

You may want a separate shower coil for mains pressure showers,
while having the rest of the hot water system as the better gravity
fed system via a separate hot water coil.

If in a hard water area plate heat exchangers are the thing to do
for, though they are more expensive.

In this case the pipe runs are likely to be longer but good lagging and a
pump may help the 'instant hot water' requirement.

Is there a problem locating the store near the kitchen and bathroom?
The pipes from solar and other heat sources can be well insulated to
minimise losses.




--
David Hansen, Edinburgh
I will *always* explain revoked encryption keys, unless RIP prevents me
http://www.opsi.gov.uk/acts/acts2000/00023--e.htm#54

On Sep 9, 11:04*am, "David WE Roberts" wrote:
In the next couple of years we intend to remodel the back of the house, put
in a downstairs shower and toilet, and do various other things.

This will include replacing the current boiler and doing something with the
hopeless hot water system - at the moment you have to run the water for a
couple of minutes before anything approaching hot water comes through.

Obvious choice is a combi boiler situated close to the kitchen and bathroom
to give short pipe runs and on demand hot water.

However this is also an opportunity to 'go green' with for example a heat
store, solar water heating on the roof, a wood pellet boiler.
This also gives the option of adding other heat sources such as a solid fuel
stove with back boiler to heat water in the winter.
In this case the pipe runs are likely to be longer but good lagging and a
pump may help the 'instant hot water' requirement.

Is this a feasible option?
It looks expensive compared to a combi boiler - at least three major
components at least compared with one - and the financial (as opposed to
moral) payback may be unrealisitically long.

Has anyone gone down this route?

Is anyone contemplating it?

For us it will be a 'now or never' thing as once the house is done we have
no intention of mucking about with it for some considerable time.

Cheers

Dave R

Solar HW usually fails to ever pay its costs off, but its not
impossible to make it work financially. Have fun designing a system
that will do so. Needles to say professional systems are the least
likely to pay their way.


NT

In article ,
NT wrote:

Solar HW usually fails to ever pay its costs off, but its not
impossible to make it work financially. Have fun designing a system
that will do so. Needles to say professional systems are the least
likely to pay their way.

I agree that if a system is "professionally" installed then the payback
time can be very long indeed - mostly due to the so-called professional
installers ripping the customers off... (IMO - e.g. a relative paid 4
times what I paid for my system, but she got a 15% grant so that was
OK. Err...)

However a DIY install, which is what I've just done ...

The capital outlay for me was just under £2K and it's already saving me
money - a mere 10 minutes of gas burn a day rather than the 1-1.5 hours
it would normally take to heat the old tank up in the morning. Today
the suns been shining all day and the bottom of the tank has gone from
27C to currently 58C and there's another 3-4 hours of usable sunlight
to go. At this rate I won't burn any gas tomorow at all.

Now, it can probably be argued that part of my savings has come from
having a much more efficient water storage system, but even so - I'm
getting free hot water today, and enough for tomorow too!

I have to say, one of the reasons I wanted it wasn't to just save money,
but to get-back at the greedy energy company shareholders.. Even so, I
appear to be doing both. It will take some time (and a winter) to fully
work out the payback time, but I don't care - I can see savings already,
so I'm happy.

Gordon
(OK, still cavorting about like an evangelical maniac, but I think it's
quite exciting!)

On 9 Sep, 12:21, Gordon Henderson wrote:

I've just done the solar panel thing (Navitron evacuated tubes) - still
need to burn gas as the weather recently hasn't been that good, but only
for 10 minutes each morning now rather than the hour or so before.

Hard experience is always interesting. I assume this is your £2k total
self-installed system?

Biggest difference is probably the triple insulated tank

Can you give any more information on your store (as it's easy to spend
£2k on one of those alone!) What is it? Did it have internal coils
already, did you add them yourself and were they designed specifically
for solar use? Are you monitoring tank temps in this system? Do you
see good stratification of hot & cold water, did you attempt to
encourage this, and do you think it's important in an efficient
system?

In article ,
Andy Dingley wrote:
On 9 Sep, 12:21, Gordon Henderson wrote:

I've just done the solar panel thing (Navitron evacuated tubes) - still
need to burn gas as the weather recently hasn't been that good, but only
for 10 minutes each morning now rather than the hour or so before.

Hard experience is always interesting. I assume this is your £2k total
self-installed system?

Yes.

Biggest difference is probably the triple insulated tank

Can you give any more information on your store (as it's easy to spend
£2k on one of those alone!) What is it? Did it have internal coils
already, did you add them yourself and were they designed specifically
for solar use? Are you monitoring tank temps in this system? Do you
see good stratification of hot & cold water, did you attempt to
encourage this, and do you think it's important in an efficient
system?

I got the kit from Navitron and they made (or arranged to be made) the
tank for me. I had an idea what I wanted, and arranged the details on
the phone with them.

I started with this kit:

http://www.navitron.org.uk/product_d...ID=40&catID=86

and made adjustments on the phone.

The tank is essentially one of these:

http://www.navitron.org.uk/product_d...ID=85&catID=90

It has 2 internal coils - one for the solar loop to dump heat into the
tank, and one for the hot water extraction - this is a coil that enters
at the bottom, spirals up the full height of the tank and exits at the
top. I wish I'd taken some photos through the hole for the immersion
heater now (which I fitted with a blanking plug - might put in an
electrical immersion heater in the future)

It has 2 other pairs of connectors for direct heating - 22mm and 28mm
for the conventional boiler and cooker boiler respectively. These are
approx. 1/3 down for the entry and 2/3 down for the exit, just above
the inlet for the solar coil.

And finally, it's got a cold feed and expansion bottom and top,
respectively which is connected to a small conventional F&E tank in
the loft.

So it's a thermal store as opposed to a heat bank. There is no external
heat exchanger and associated pump - it's all done via the internal coil
which is finned for maximum heat transfer. We live in a soft water area,
so I'm not concerned about anything scaling up. (8 years and the kettle
is still clean)

The cost from Navitron for the kit just was just over £1,700 - tank,
panel/tubes, pump, controller, expansion vessel and some pipe insulation
In addition, I bought 15mm and 22mm copper pipes, a few bags of elbows,
sleeves, etc. and other misc. items - everything's soldered where
possible. I upgraded some existing valves to full-bore levers, changed
some leaky pump isolators and so on. (Screwfix to the rescue!) I was able
to recycle a lot of old copper tubing from the old setup as I went though.

I have 2 temp sensors in the tank - it came with 10mm tubes fitted to
put the sensor into the middle of the tank (they're sealed at the
far-end!) The bottom one is in-between the entry & exit of the solar
coil, (which in in the bottom quarter of the tank) the top one just
under the hot-water exit. There is a 3rd sensor at the solar panel, and
that plus the tank bottom sensor is used by the controller to turn the
solar loop pump on. (Simple difference which is all programmable in the
controler) The 3rd sensor goes into the controller too, but isn't used
for anything right now, other than to display it.

I plan to use the top sensor to turn on a heat-dump pump during the summer
when the tank temp exceeds 90C to stop it boiling. (The controller can
do this)

The tank does seem to naturally stratify and I think this is good. When
it's low on heat, reducing the hot water flow makes the most of what's
left in it - the cold entering the bottom through the coil does take what
little heat is left in the bottom of the tank while leaving the top as
hot as possible. I've seen the bottom at 25C and the top at 50C when
looking. (I got the cheap controller TDC3, so I can't put it on the
house LAN to remotely check it)

Other than convection from the solar coil, water in the tank only gets
agitated by the boiler pump - so 10 minutes in the morning, and even
then, the bottom of the tank doesn't see much of an increase. (I have
the pump set to slowest speed) I've yet to see how the cooker boiler is
going to affect it though - I've only done one trial run of it so-far,
but we'll be cooking this weekend, so will find out more.

It's still very early days for this yet, so still getting "used" to it
and working out how to make maximum savings. E.g. the run to the bathroom
takes 20 seconds and it's in 22mm pipe which I can't practically change,
so we've decided that we'll wash hands in cold water rather than waste a
long 22mm pipe of hot, but we're not afraid to take hot when we need it -
the kitchen is much closer and piped in 15mm from the tank, so minimal
lag to get hot water.

Not tried filling the bath up yet - I suspect it may require a gas burn
if it's not been sunny...

Gordon

On 9 Sep, 15:02, Gordon Henderson wrote:
In article ,

NT wrote:
Solar HW usually fails to ever pay its costs off, but its not
impossible to make it work financially. Have fun designing a system
that will do so. Needles to say professional systems are the least
likely to pay their way.

I agree that if a system is "professionally" installed then the payback
time can be very long indeed - mostly due to the so-called professional
installers ripping the customers off... (IMO - e.g. a relative paid 4
times what I paid for my system, but she got a 15% grant so that was
OK. Err...)

However a DIY install, which is what I've just done ...

The capital outlay for me was just under £2K and it's already saving me
money - a mere 10 minutes of gas burn a day rather than the 1-1.5 hours
it would normally take to heat the old tank up in the morning. Today
the suns been shining all day and the bottom of the tank has gone from
27C to currently 58C and there's another 3-4 hours of usable sunlight
to go. At this rate I won't burn any gas tomorow at all.

Now, it can probably be argued that part of my savings has come from
having a much more efficient water storage system, but even so - I'm
getting free hot water today, and enough for tomorow too!

I have to say, one of the reasons I wanted it wasn't to just save money,
but to get-back at the greedy energy company shareholders.. Even so, I
appear to be doing both. It will take some time (and a winter) to fully
work out the payback time, but I don't care - I can see savings already,
so I'm happy.

Gordon
(OK, still cavorting about like an evangelical maniac, but I think it's
quite exciting!)

Just out of interest, Gordon - whereabouts are you ? It would be
useful to know if it is sunny Spain, not-so sunny Cornwall of
definitely un-sunny Scotland.

Rob

NT wrote:
On Sep 9, 11:04 am, "David WE Roberts" wrote:
In the next couple of years we intend to remodel the back of the house, put
in a downstairs shower and toilet, and do various other things.

This will include replacing the current boiler and doing something with the
hopeless hot water system - at the moment you have to run the water for a
couple of minutes before anything approaching hot water comes through.

Obvious choice is a combi boiler situated close to the kitchen and bathroom
to give short pipe runs and on demand hot water.

However this is also an opportunity to 'go green' with for example a heat
store, solar water heating on the roof, a wood pellet boiler.
This also gives the option of adding other heat sources such as a solid fuel
stove with back boiler to heat water in the winter.
In this case the pipe runs are likely to be longer but good lagging and a
pump may help the 'instant hot water' requirement.

Is this a feasible option?
It looks expensive compared to a combi boiler - at least three major
components at least compared with one - and the financial (as opposed to
moral) payback may be unrealisitically long.

Has anyone gone down this route?

Is anyone contemplating it?

For us it will be a 'now or never' thing as once the house is done we have
no intention of mucking about with it for some considerable time.

Cheers

Dave R

Solar HW usually fails to ever pay its costs off, but its not
impossible to make it work financially.

I am not sure that isn't self contradictory.

If our boiler fires once every two days in summer to heat the water, its
unusual..

Hot water is NOTHING. you spend more on kettle heating to make tea, or
cooking the sunday roast.

Its the 24x7 burn to keep the house warm when there is a 35 mph -5C wind
blowing that costs the REAL money.

About a grand over the winter..in my case.

Have fun designing a system
that will do so. Needles to say professional systems are the least
likely to pay their way.

Indeed.

NT

In article ,
Rob G wrote:

Just out of interest, Gordon - whereabouts are you ? It would be
useful to know if it is sunny Spain, not-so sunny Cornwall of
definitely un-sunny Scotland.

Devon.

Gordon

"David WE Roberts" wrote in message
...
In the next couple of years we intend to remodel the back of the house,
put in a downstairs shower and toilet, and do various other things.

This will include replacing the current boiler and doing something with
the hopeless hot water system - at the moment you have to run the water
for a couple of minutes before anything approaching hot water comes
through.

Obvious choice is a combi boiler situated close to the kitchen and
bathroom to give short pipe runs and on demand hot water.

However this is also an opportunity to 'go green' with for example a heat
store, solar water heating on the roof, a wood pellet boiler.
This also gives the option of adding other heat sources such as a solid
fuel stove with back boiler to heat water in the winter.
In this case the pipe runs are likely to be longer but good lagging and a
pump may help the 'instant hot water' requirement.

Is this a feasible option?
It looks expensive compared to a combi boiler - at least three major
components at least compared with one - and the financial (as opposed to
moral) payback may be unrealisitically long.

Has anyone gone down this route?

Is anyone contemplating it?

For us it will be a 'now or never' thing as once the house is done we have
no intention of mucking about with it for some considerable time.

Cheers

Dave R

I've had solar HW installed for 2 years now. It's based on a 30 tube
Navitron panel, and a custom-made conventional (vented system) cylinder with
two coils from a different supplier. (Can't remember who, a company
recommended on here at the time)

Like other posters my boiler rarely runs over the summer, and the solar
system acts as a pre-heat on the HW cylinder over the winter, reducing the
gas used then a little.

According to it's controller, it's stored just over 5500kWh in that time,
which, assuming a 100% efficient boiler would cost £177 in gas costs with my
current supplier. I don't know what the efficiency of the boiler is, but if
I assumed around 60% (cast iron heat exchanger, non-condensing) would equate
to about £250 in saved gas costs - which agrees with the vastly reduced gas
bills. Like another poster I had bills in credit for ages until their system
& direct debit caught up with my reduced consumption.

My total solar cost was about £2k however I was replacing the cylinder with
a custom-made short'n'wide one anyway as part of a CH re-plumb, zone
split-up and airing cupboard move around so the extra cost for a solar coil
was minimal.

So... the payback time financially is long. Very long. If gas prices rise
the time will reduce, but as a money-saving method it's not really worth it.
I'm no tree-hugger and not convinced on the 'saving the planet' aspect
either - obviously there is a 'carbon footprint' in making the solar
equipment in the first place!
Going for a condensing boiler may have a quicker pay-pack time, I've not
done this as the existing one is only 8 years old, has been 100% reliable
and the location is not suitable for a condensing one (flue problems) so
would mean a major re-plumb.

Alan.

AlanD wrote:
"David WE Roberts" wrote in message
...
In the next couple of years we intend to remodel the back of the house,
put in a downstairs shower and toilet, and do various other things.

This will include replacing the current boiler and doing something with
the hopeless hot water system - at the moment you have to run the water
for a couple of minutes before anything approaching hot water comes
through.

Obvious choice is a combi boiler situated close to the kitchen and
bathroom to give short pipe runs and on demand hot water.

However this is also an opportunity to 'go green' with for example a heat
store, solar water heating on the roof, a wood pellet boiler.
This also gives the option of adding other heat sources such as a solid
fuel stove with back boiler to heat water in the winter.
In this case the pipe runs are likely to be longer but good lagging and a
pump may help the 'instant hot water' requirement.

Is this a feasible option?
It looks expensive compared to a combi boiler - at least three major
components at least compared with one - and the financial (as opposed to
moral) payback may be unrealisitically long.

Has anyone gone down this route?

Is anyone contemplating it?

For us it will be a 'now or never' thing as once the house is done we have
no intention of mucking about with it for some considerable time.

Cheers

Dave R

I've had solar HW installed for 2 years now. It's based on a 30 tube
Navitron panel, and a custom-made conventional (vented system) cylinder with
two coils from a different supplier. (Can't remember who, a company
recommended on here at the time)

Like other posters my boiler rarely runs over the summer, and the solar
system acts as a pre-heat on the HW cylinder over the winter, reducing the
gas used then a little.


Like other posters, my boiler rarely runs over the summer.

And I have no solar panels at all!


According to it's controller, it's stored just over 5500kWh in that time,
which, assuming a 100% efficient boiler would cost � in gas costs with my
current supplier. I don't know what the efficiency of the boiler is, but if
I assumed around 60% (cast iron heat exchanger, non-condensing) would equate
to about � in saved gas costs - which agrees with the vastly reduced gas
bills. Like another poster I had bills in credit for ages until their system
& direct debit caught up with my reduced consumption.



My total solar cost was about �however I was replacing the cylinder with
a custom-made short'n'wide one anyway as part of a CH re-plumb, zone
split-up and airing cupboard move around so the extra cost for a solar coil
was minimal.

So... the payback time financially is long. Very long. If gas prices rise
the time will reduce, but as a money-saving method it's not really worth it.
I'm no tree-hugger and not convinced on the 'saving the planet' aspect
either - obviously there is a 'carbon footprint' in making the solar
equipment in the first place!
Going for a condensing boiler may have a quicker pay-pack time, I've not
done this as the existing one is only 8 years old, has been 100% reliable
and the location is not suitable for a condensing one (flue problems) so
would mean a major re-plumb.

Alan.

AlanD wrote:

So... the payback time financially is long. Very long. If gas prices rise
the time will reduce, but as a money-saving method it's not really worth it.
I'm no tree-hugger and not convinced on the 'saving the planet' aspect
either - obviously there is a 'carbon footprint' in making the solar
equipment in the first place!
Going for a condensing boiler may have a quicker pay-pack time, I've not
done this as the existing one is only 8 years old, has been 100% reliable
and the location is not suitable for a condensing one (flue problems) so
would mean a major re-plumb.


WE save hot water costs simply by not having many baths.

The only slar that makes sense domestically is a heat pump.

Alan.

On Sep 9, 3:02*pm, Gordon Henderson wrote:
In article ,

NT wrote:
Solar HW usually fails to ever pay its costs off, but its not
impossible to make it work financially. Have fun designing a system
that will do so. Needles to say professional systems are the least
likely to pay their way.

I agree that if a system is "professionally" installed then the payback
time can be very long indeed - mostly due to the so-called professional
installers ripping the customers off... (IMO - e.g. a relative paid 4
times what I paid for my system, but she got a 15% grant so that was
OK. Err...)

However a DIY install, which is what I've just done ...

The capital outlay for me was just under £2K and it's already saving me
money - a mere 10 minutes of gas burn a day rather than the 1-1.5 hours
it would normally take to heat the old tank up in the morning. Today
the suns been shining all day and the bottom of the tank has gone from
27C to currently 58C and there's another 3-4 hours of usable sunlight
to go. At this rate I won't burn any gas tomorow at all.

Now, it can probably be argued that part of my savings has come from
having a much more efficient water storage system, but even so - I'm
getting free hot water today, and enough for tomorow too!

I have to say, one of the reasons I wanted it wasn't to just save money,
but to get-back at the greedy energy company shareholders.. Even so, I
appear to be doing both. It will take some time (and a winter) to fully
work out the payback time, but I don't care - I can see savings already,
so I'm happy.

Gordon
(OK, still cavorting about like an evangelical maniac, but I think it's
quite exciting!)

So instead of paying for gas and leccy, you paid other companies for
parts that were made using said gas & leccy?


NT

In article ,
NT wrote:

So instead of paying for gas and leccy, you paid other companies for
parts that were made using said gas & leccy?

Yes.

Gordon

"Gordon Henderson" wrote in message
...
In article
,
NT wrote:

So instead of paying for gas and leccy, you paid other companies for
parts that were made using said gas & leccy?

Yes.

Boom!.... Boom!

On Wed, 09 Sep 2009 21:22:22 +0100, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

Like other posters, my boiler rarely runs over the summer.

I get the impression that you live on your own or use another means
of heating water. When I lived on my own I put the boiler on for HW
when I needed it which was about every two days. The water stayed hot
enough in the well lagged tank for washing. I started this when the
time switch broke and the (much reduced) gas bill arrived before I
got around to fixing it, so I didn't bother...

I'd be happy to still work on that system now but the with a SWMBO'd
and two kids it wouldn't work. They are far to used to hot water as
and when they want not in 30 to 60 mins time.

--
Cheers
Dave.

On Wed, 09 Sep 2009 21:22:22 +0100, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

Like other posters my boiler rarely runs over the summer, and the solar
system acts as a pre-heat on the HW cylinder over the winter, reducing the
gas used then a little.


Like other posters, my boiler rarely runs over the summer.

And I have no solar panels at all!

Same here. My boiler has been on 4 times since late April and then only to
spin the pump.
Gas cost=0.
--
Peter.
The head of a pin will hold more angels if
it's been flattened with an angel-grinder.

"David WE Roberts" wrote in message
...
snip
However this is also an opportunity to 'go green' with for example a heat
store, solar water heating on the roof, a wood pellet boiler.
This also gives the option of adding other heat sources such as a solid
fuel stove with back boiler to heat water in the winter.
In this case the pipe runs are likely to be longer but good lagging and a
pump may help the 'instant hot water' requirement.
snip

Thanks for all the replies so far.

For those who don't run the boiler in the summer - neither do we as the
effeciency of the hot water system is so dire that we don't like to use it.
When we need hot water (not often) we boil a kettle.

We do like to shower every day, though, which is O.K. at the moment because
we have an electric shower but we would prefer a shower with a higher flow
rate which means a combi boiler or a tank and shower pump. We have
experience of both - previous Suffolk house had a big tanks and pump which
ran two showers. Berkshire house we fitted with a new combi boiler.

Siting the hot tank near the kitchen and bathroom is tricky - the airing
cupboard is over the stairs and towards the front of the house and there is
no obvious place at the back of the house where the kitchen and bathroom are
to put the tank. The situation could be improved by replacing the old tank
with a modern fully insulated one and lagging all the pipes under the floor.
If we went that way we would put in a much larger tank and a shower pump.

However if we install a combi boiler we get all the storage space in the
airing cupboard plus the tank space in the loft and shorter pipe runs as
well because the boiler will be in the kitchen and close to the bathroom.

So the choice initially is stored water or combi, with a lean towards the
combi.
However the stored water option does allow solar heating and part time solid
fuel devices to be added to the equation.

Nobody so far has responded about wood pellet boilers.
Has anyone any experience of these?
Soilid fuel is generally a pain in the ass compared to gas, but burning wood
could be a greener option.
Wood burning as a main source of heat tends to cost in more if you have
enough land to grow your own wood, though.
Loads of wood for a wood burner tend to cost at least as much as a gas bill
to provide the same level of heating.
We used a log burner (open fire) then wood burning stove because we like a
'real' fire but it doesn't seem to provide cost effective heating if you
have to buy your wood from third parties.

Cheers

Dave R

Dave Liquorice wrote:
On Wed, 09 Sep 2009 21:22:22 +0100, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

Like other posters, my boiler rarely runs over the summer.

I get the impression that you live on your own or use another means
of heating water. When I lived on my own I put the boiler on for HW
when I needed it which was about every two days. The water stayed hot
enough in the well lagged tank for washing. I started this when the
time switch broke and the (much reduced) gas bill arrived before I
got around to fixing it, so I didn't bother...


Not at all. two of us who dont take baths the whole time, and a well
insulated tank.

Plus dishwasher and washing machine with cold only feeds.


All I am pointing out is that hot water here, a large and very under
occupied house - is the least of my worries, and barely takes any
energy at all. I probably have more hot water via the coffee kettle,
than via the hot taps.


Lets say I have to use 100 liters of 60C water every day. and it comes
in at say 10C. so that's 5MJ a day? a bit over a kilowatt hour. now on
oil thats about 5-10p a day. Depending on oil price and boiler eficiency.

DOES ALL YOUR HOT WATER (nearly) claim the solar guys.

Big ****ing deal. I've got a 12 KW boiler, so it fires up for just ten
minutes a day to heat the tank.

Compare and contrast the energy calcs for the whole house at -5C
outside. 10Kw, or 240Kwh/day. something like TWO HUNDRED TIMES more.

My oil bill is about £2000 a year of which about £1300 is in December
January and February. The rest is in the spring and autumn, and in
summer,(June July and August) it uses almost nothing. At the most I
estimate my hot water is £100 a year.

My father in law was conned into a £3k solar water installation. Even
using the MOST optimistic figures from the SUPPLIERS THEMSELVES his
rather largest three generation household, with great addiction to
showers, saves £180 a year.

And he is delighted when he sees 70C influx temperatures, despite my
saying that he can see 240v on his mains without drawing any power off
it at all..


The fact that a boiler fails to fire up in summer to heat water is
totally unsurprising. heating water is utterly trivial in the quantities
we use it, and takes almost no power at all. Its about 30p a bath I
would say.

Now, lets go back to that hot water. Aa kilowatt hour per day. so about
50W continuous.

I wonder how many of these stupid solar installations would sell if they
said 'produces enough energy to keep a single 60W lightbulb burning day
and night, all year round' 'saves you 30cc of oil EVERY DAY'.

Mind you,its more than a domestic windmill does.



I'd be happy to still work on that system now but the with a SWMBO'd
and two kids it wouldn't work. They are far to used to hot water as
and when they want not in 30 to 60 mins time.


So get a bigger tank and fit an immersion heater.

If I want to save 50W, I simply turn off the computers overnight..

On 10 Sep, 10:09, "David WE Roberts" wrote:
"David WE Roberts" wrote in ...
snip However this is also an opportunity to 'go green' with for example a heat
store, solar water heating on the roof, a wood pellet boiler.
This also gives the option of adding other heat sources such as a solid
fuel stove with back boiler to heat water in the winter.
In this case the pipe runs are likely to be longer but good lagging and a
pump may help the 'instant hot water' requirement.

snip

Thanks for all the replies so far.

For those who don't run the boiler in the summer - neither do we as the
effeciency of the hot water system is so dire that we don't like to use it.
When we need hot water (not often) we boil a kettle.

We do like to shower every day, though, which is O.K. at the moment because
we have an electric shower but we would prefer a shower with a higher flow
rate which means a combi boiler or a tank and shower pump. We have
experience of both - previous Suffolk house had a big tanks and pump which
ran two showers. Berkshire house we fitted with a new combi boiler.

Siting the hot tank near the kitchen and bathroom is tricky - the airing
cupboard is over the stairs and towards the front of the house and there is
no obvious place at the back of the house where the kitchen and bathroom are
to put the tank. The situation could be improved by replacing the old tank
with a modern fully insulated one and lagging all the pipes under the floor.
If we went that way we would put in a much larger tank and a shower pump.

However if we install a combi boiler we get all the storage space in the
airing cupboard plus the tank space in the loft and shorter pipe runs as
well because the boiler will be in the kitchen and close to the bathroom.

So the choice initially is stored water or combi, with a lean towards the
combi.
However the stored water option does allow solar heating and part time solid
fuel devices to be added to the equation.

Nobody so far has responded about wood pellet boilers.
Has anyone any experience of these?
Soilid fuel is generally a pain in the ass compared to gas, but burning wood
could be a greener option.
Wood burning as a main source of heat tends to cost in more if you have
enough land to grow your own wood, though.
Loads of wood for a wood burner tend to cost at least as much as a gas bill
to provide the same level of heating.
We used a log burner (open fire) then wood burning stove because we like a
'real' fire but it doesn't seem to provide cost effective heating if you
have to buy your wood from third parties.

Cheers

Dave R

Pellet boilers are not suitable for living areas - they are too noisy!

Thermal stores are a waste of time unless you are rich and can put a
huge one in an outbuilding along with your log/pellet boiler.

If you want to install a solar thermal system, that actually works, is
reliable, and will require a minimum of maintenance, then add 5k to
whatever water storage system you decide upon. People will claim they
DIY'd their own for less and that it works, but plenty also paid more
for poor systems.

My heating is all wood, though my boiler/stove can take coal if
necessary, and my dry stove/cooker could also (though it is not
certified for coal). It is a faff, but I enjoy it. I particularly
enjoy lighting fires, sharpening my axe and chainsaw, lugging large
pieces of wood around, and splitting logs with my maul. This is just
as well as wood is significantly more expensive than gas if you buy
it.

A gas boiler is a no-brainer! If you have space for a hot water tank
somewhere, and have decent water pressure in your area, then you will
be amazed at the performance on an unvented cylinder. Otherwise go for
a combi. Personally, I'd fit a tank if it is at all feasible.

If you have a flue (lining cost ~ 1.5k) or can fit a double walled
stainless steel one (cost ~ quite a bit more) and a place for a dry
stove (cost ~1k), and can afford delivered logs (cost ~ more per kWh
than gas), then you can have a useful extra source of heating, which
will also help keep your gas bill down!

T

David WE Roberts wrote:

We used a log burner (open fire) then wood burning stove because we like
a 'real' fire but it doesn't seem to provide cost effective heating if
you have to buy your wood from third parties.

No, it does not.:-(

If space heating a large area is what you want.

We use wood and it is cost effective in our open fires only because it
means we can drop the whole house temp down, and heat as and when needed
for comfort.

And we like the smell and the look.


Wood burning STOVES are very nice as room heaters, but I would never
ever use a sold fuel CH boiler of any description. I grew up with them,
and the last experience in the 70's of a coal burning blast furnace of a
boiler, left me dirty, tired and irritable every time I wanted to be
clean, relaxed and happy. You cannot ever expect to go away a day and
come back to a warm house..

If I were to do it all again, I'd go for a heat pump for CH with
appropriately sized pipes and radiators or UFH, Immersion heated water,
bloody big tank mains pressure so could use off peak electricity and
have enough for the day, preheated by the heat pump as we don't use much
anyway, plus Id keep the oil aga we have as general 'living area'
heating, and use wood stoves or open fires in more places., for
'occasional' rooms that are not in constant use.


Where we are, if the electric goes, so does the CH cos its pumped, but
we can still cook on the aga and stay warm, and light fires in the bedroom..


Its not ideal, but we dont freeze..

The aga spits out 600-800W which is perfect from spring/autumn almost
whole house heating.Its the winter months where peak requirements of ten
times that are needed that cripples the bank account..

Cheers

Dave R

On 9 Sep, 11:04, "David WE Roberts" wrote:
In the next couple of years we intend to remodel the back of the house, put
in a downstairs shower and toilet, and do various other things.

This will include replacing the current boiler and doing something with the
hopeless hot water system - at the moment you have to run the water for a
couple of minutes before anything approaching hot water comes through.

Obvious choice is a combi boiler situated close to the kitchen and bathroom
to give short pipe runs and on demand hot water.

However this is also an opportunity to 'go green' with for example a heat
store, solar water heating on the roof, a wood pellet boiler.
This also gives the option of adding other heat sources such as a solid fuel
stove with back boiler to heat water in the winter.
In this case the pipe runs are likely to be longer but good lagging and a
pump may help the 'instant hot water' requirement.

Is this a feasible option?
It looks expensive compared to a combi boiler - at least three major
components at least compared with one - and the financial (as opposed to
moral) payback may be unrealisitically long.

Has anyone gone down this route?

Is anyone contemplating it?

For us it will be a 'now or never' thing as once the house is done we have
no intention of mucking about with it for some considerable time.

Cheers

Dave R


I would encourage you to do it. The'payback' is irrelevant, whatever
replacement system you use will have a capital as well as a running
cost. If you're concerned about more important issues go for solar and
wood burning, especially if you have some access to 'free' timbers.

We installed a solar water heating system some years ago - Solartwin -
we did it ourselves in January of that year, it cost about £2,000
including piping and new cylinder. On the first day the mains water
temperature rose from 4C to 30C. Before then we'd had a multi point
water heater. Our gas bills dropped unbelievably - the meter reader's
computer centre wouldn't accept the readings. We didn't do it on
economical grounds but I reckon that it will indeed pay its capital
costs in our lifetime - which could be short. Even when the sun isn't
shining the mains water temperature is raised so that if we need water
hotter than that in the tank (rarely) the gas boiler doesn't have to
raise the temperature by as much.

A few months ago we replaced a gas fire (old and irreplaceablet Gas
Miser for which there are no spares) in the dining room with a
'Yorkshire' wood burning stove. It cost about £1,000 and we had to
line and insulate the chimney. It's the only one allowed to be used in
a smoke control area (we're in inner city Leeds, Yorkshire). So far we
haven't lit it but we have at least two years' worth of logs which
we've harvested from our own garden and those of friends and what we
pick up from other locations. I reckon that the comfort of the new
stove will far outweigh the ugly gas fire and that we shall save on
the fuel. I hope to do the same in the sitting room ...

There are always know-alls who are antagonistic towards new systems
and claim to prove their opinions by figures but those of us who have
installed solar water heating and wood burning are happy. We have the
experience. others don't.

Heat exchange systems are wonderful if you're starting from scratch -
as a new-build - but inconvenient, disruptive, expensive et cetera in
an established property.

It's up to you, I suggest that you ask suppliers for addresses of
others who have used the systems you're thinking about and go to see
them, ask for hard evidence of economy and opinion of comfort and
satisfaction. We did.

Mary

On Thu, 10 Sep 2009 10:17:20 +0100, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

I've got a 12 KW boiler, so it fires up for just ten minutes a day to
heat the tank.

Small boiler, ours is 38kW and that can struggle to keep this place
warm when the wind is up and the temperature down.

My oil bill is about £2000 a year of which about £1300 is in December
January and February. The rest is in the spring and autumn, and in
summer,(June July and August) it uses almost nothing.

I'm surprised a 12kW boiler can burn that much oil. B-) We get
through 4000l/year, so depending on the price anything from £2000
down to £1200 a year. And yes it is space heating that gobbles the
oil up; more or less 25l/day in the winter and 25/lweek in the
summer.

So get a bigger tank and fit an immersion heater.

A bigger tank in the form a heat store/bank is on the cards to go
with the wood burner and once that is in solar panels may as well be
added.

I had toyed with the idea of a windmill and dumping any excess into
the heatbank before selling to the grid. That was before I plotted
estimated power generation v useage the other day. A fairly windy day
with the 6kW unit producing full output for several hours did produce
a significant surplus (50kWHrs, about 2 1/2 days consumption) but
since then (the 8th) it's been calm... The 2.5kW unit would struggle
to meet our base load most of the time let alone generate a surplus
to be dumped into the heat bank or sold.

--
Cheers
Dave.

On 10 Sep, 11:17, Recyclist wrote:
On 10 Sep, 10:09, "David WE Roberts" wrote:



"David WE Roberts" wrote in ...
snip However this is also an opportunity to 'go green' with for example a heat
store, solar water heating on the roof, a wood pellet boiler.
This also gives the option of adding other heat sources such as a solid
fuel stove with back boiler to heat water in the winter.
In this case the pipe runs are likely to be longer but good lagging and a
pump may help the 'instant hot water' requirement.

snip

Thanks for all the replies so far.

For those who don't run the boiler in the summer - neither do we as the
effeciency of the hot water system is so dire that we don't like to use it.
When we need hot water (not often) we boil a kettle.

We do like to shower every day, though, which is O.K. at the moment because
we have an electric shower but we would prefer a shower with a higher flow
rate which means a combi boiler or a tank and shower pump. We have
experience of both - previous Suffolk house had a big tanks and pump which
ran two showers. Berkshire house we fitted with a new combi boiler.

Siting the hot tank near the kitchen and bathroom is tricky - the airing
cupboard is over the stairs and towards the front of the house and there is
no obvious place at the back of the house where the kitchen and bathroom are
to put the tank. The situation could be improved by replacing the old tank
with a modern fully insulated one and lagging all the pipes under the floor.
If we went that way we would put in a much larger tank and a shower pump.

However if we install a combi boiler we get all the storage space in the
airing cupboard plus the tank space in the loft and shorter pipe runs as
well because the boiler will be in the kitchen and close to the bathroom.

So the choice initially is stored water or combi, with a lean towards the
combi.
However the stored water option does allow solar heating and part time solid
fuel devices to be added to the equation.

Nobody so far has responded about wood pellet boilers.
Has anyone any experience of these?
Soilid fuel is generally a pain in the ass compared to gas, but burning wood
could be a greener option.
Wood burning as a main source of heat tends to cost in more if you have
enough land to grow your own wood, though.
Loads of wood for a wood burner tend to cost at least as much as a gas bill
to provide the same level of heating.
We used a log burner (open fire) then wood burning stove because we like a
'real' fire but it doesn't seem to provide cost effective heating if you
have to buy your wood from third parties.

Cheers

Dave R

Pellet boilers are not suitable for living areas - they are too noisy!

Agree, our school has a huge 250kw one, makes a racket, the caretaker
was telling me he can't hear his phone, radio or anything when he's in
the plant room, hopefully I'll be going to the plant room again so
I'll get to hear it. Apart from that the boiler needs to be cleaned
every week and the poor caretaker has to practically go inside the
boiler, after that he get's breathing difficulties for the next two
nights despite wearing proper masks etc, this cleaning task takes the
best part of a day. Then the boiler creates a lot of dust in the room
which gets into the pumps causing them to become very noisy and
unreliable, there are cyclonic separators and various dust extraction
equipment. A slight reduction in quality of fuel will result in huge
clumps of ash sticking to the burner. Luckily there a 6 Hamworthy
Wessex 200kw gas boilers to compliment the biomass boiler and these
are sufficient to heat the school on their own, when the biomass
boiler is working there are usually about 2-3 gas boilers on.

Dave Liquorice wrote:
On Thu, 10 Sep 2009 10:17:20 +0100, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

I've got a 12 KW boiler, so it fires up for just ten minutes a day to
heat the tank.

Small boiler, ours is 38kW and that can struggle to keep this place
warm when the wind is up and the temperature down.

My oil bill is about £2000 a year of which about £1300 is in December
January and February. The rest is in the spring and autumn, and in
summer,(June July and August) it uses almost nothing.

I'm surprised a 12kW boiler can burn that much oil. B-)

in really cold weather, it stays on continuously. The rated heatloss at
20c interior and -5C exterior is 10Kw. the mass of the flooring screed
means that that carries us through the peaks BUT when its that cold, it
is not possible to e.g. switch it off at night and expect it to be warm
in the mornings.

Taking oil at around 5p/kilowatt hour, and maybe 7.5p in terms of
useable output, that mens we are probably using an average of 8KW over
the winter, day in and day out.


Actually I think exaggerated..at todays oil prices its more like 700
over the winter 3, and 700 for the rest of the year combined ..

So about 4.5 KW average. Thats sounds more like it, as teh duty cycle
varies from 'that boiler has been on continously for two hoursm, and its
just cut off for 25 minutes and now its on;' to 'the boiler seems to be
on for 20 minutes and then off for 20 minutes'


We get
through 4000l/year, so depending on the price anything from £2000
down to £1200 a year. And yes it is space heating that gobbles the
oil up; more or less 25l/day in the winter and 25/lweek in the
summer.

So get a bigger tank and fit an immersion heater.

A bigger tank in the form a heat store/bank is on the cards to go
with the wood burner and once that is in solar panels may as well be
added.

I had toyed with the idea of a windmill and dumping any excess into
the heatbank before selling to the grid. That was before I plotted
estimated power generation v useage the other day. A fairly windy day
with the 6kW unit producing full output for several hours did produce
a significant surplus (50kWHrs, about 2 1/2 days consumption) but
since then (the 8th) it's been calm... The 2.5kW unit would struggle
to meet our base load most of the time let alone generate a surplus
to be dumped into the heat bank or sold.



exactly. I think I worked out my average total power consumption was
3Kw. Varying from about 300-400W in summer, to 12Kw in winter.

The overwhelming cost is winter space heating.

Currently the cheapest way is oil (no gas) , and whatever free wood I
can acquire. Wood is not a lot different to oil at the moment!
But if I were doing it again, its fractionally cheaper to use a
heatpump. More so as oil rises over $55 a barrel, which is the sort of
breakeven point.

The lowest carbon way of heating it is definitely a heatpump and a
nuclear power station. Fortunately there is one down the road ..

As I have said many times and oft, there are only two techniologies that
really deliver a lower carbon foot[rint - nuclear power and heat pumps.
Everything else is impractical expensive and unreliable.

David wrote:

Pellet boilers are not suitable for living areas - they are too noisy!

I think you overstate this slightly but agree it's not the sort of noise
you'd want in a living room and watch the telly. The fans aren't much
different from a condensing boiler, the irritating bit is the auger motor.
I have had one of the first we imported in the living room (temporarily)
for 12 years now but only run it daytime if anyone in home, we expected the
uptake to be by things like church halls and scout huts but had no success.

Agree, our school has a huge 250kw one, makes a racket, the caretaker
was telling me he can't hear his phone, radio or anything when he's in
the plant room, hopefully I'll be going to the plant room again so
I'll get to hear it. Apart from that the boiler needs to be cleaned
every week and the poor caretaker has to practically go inside the
boiler, after that he get's breathing difficulties for the next two
nights despite wearing proper masks etc, this cleaning task takes the
best part of a day.

I stillservice a 500kW(t) wood chip boiler and rodding the 60 tubes once a
fortnight takes about an hour, though I do about 10 and then move onto a
lighter task for a bit, the other peripherals bring the total severvice up
to 4 hours if I'm quick. As a precaution I do wear a mask but because the
cleaning cycle sets the id fan running very little gets into the room, most
gets caught in the extraction system cyclone.



Then the boiler creates a lot of dust in the room
which gets into the pumps causing them to become very noisy and
unreliable, there are cyclonic separators and various dust extraction
equipment.

Dust can be a problem but it's not something I have found with big
installations, far worse is with my Jotul in this room and that's ash dust
created when I load or de ash it, commercial systems are generally sealed
ash extraction.

Dust from a comminuting machine at a large retail store where they ground up
returns and incinerated them in a small ancillary boiler was far worse it
filled the whole room and settled on all the equipment. I made a little
demo of a candle with a puffer in a whisky bottle container to show the
danger of a dust-air deflagration but they didn't believe me enough to
even allow the demonstration.

A slight reduction in quality of fuel will result in huge
clumps of ash sticking to the burner.

Yes this is a perennial problem with poor wood fuel in general, contaminants
like chalk will lower the fusing temperature of the ash and cause this
slagging (clinker) not a problem with pellets made mechanically with pure
sawdust but a big problem with these new mini pellet mills where some sort
of ligno-sulphite ( a by product of paper making) is used as a binder.

Biomass boilers tend to be configured to run base load as they don't like
being switched on and off and they have limited modulation, so in the
absence of massive thermal inertia, they often run with gas or oil boilers.
Mind I do think councils foisted woodburners on schools because it was an
easy target for their green policies.

There have been a few changes recently in how the EA view wood burning and
virgin wood has been removed from the waste incineration directive but
they've become more restrictive on other wood, such as demolition waste,
so treated (not creosoted) wood can now only go to recycling as particle
board, land fill or a permitted incinerator ( think gate fee of
GBP60/tonne). This is because of the risk from flue discharges of lead
(from old paint) and other heavy metals from things like cca treated
building timbers. OTOH there is no restriction of burning these at home.

AJH

We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the
drugs began to take hold. I remember Gordon Henderson
saying something like:

Solar HW usually fails to ever pay its costs off, but its not
impossible to make it work financially. Have fun designing a system
that will do so. Needles to say professional systems are the least
likely to pay their way.

I agree that if a system is "professionally" installed then the payback
time can be very long indeed - mostly due to the so-called professional
installers ripping the customers off... (IMO - e.g. a relative paid 4
times what I paid for my system, but she got a 15% grant so that was
OK. Err...)

However a DIY install, which is what I've just done ...

It's no use trying to talk sense to him about diy solar - I would 't be
at all suprised if he's in the pay of BNFL to promote nuke power and he
certainly has a severe wasp up his arse every time someone mentions
solar.
Funny, last time I pointed out this was a diy group and I was diy-ing
solar, he shut up.
Glad to see someone else doing it and putting the nay-sayers' gas at a
peep.

We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the
drugs began to take hold. I remember NT saying
something like:

So instead of paying for gas and leccy, you paid other companies for
parts that were made using said gas & leccy?

Christ, but that's pathetic.
Where's your fire, man? Get in there and promote nukes, or coal-burners
or some other manky old technology that will make you money on your
shares.

In article ,
Grimly Curmudgeon wrote:
We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the
drugs began to take hold. I remember Gordon Henderson
saying something like:

Solar HW usually fails to ever pay its costs off, but its not
impossible to make it work financially. Have fun designing a system
that will do so. Needles to say professional systems are the least
likely to pay their way.

I agree that if a system is "professionally" installed then the payback
time can be very long indeed - mostly due to the so-called professional
installers ripping the customers off... (IMO - e.g. a relative paid 4
times what I paid for my system, but she got a 15% grant so that was
OK. Err...)

However a DIY install, which is what I've just done ...

It's no use trying to talk sense to him about diy solar - I would 't be
at all suprised if he's in the pay of BNFL to promote nuke power and he
certainly has a severe wasp up his arse every time someone mentions
solar.
Funny, last time I pointed out this was a diy group and I was diy-ing
solar, he shut up.
Glad to see someone else doing it and putting the nay-sayers' gas at a
peep.

Heh... Intersting to read the other comments while shutting up for the
past few days... I find it intersting that no-one actually asked me
what I think about it all, nor why I was doing it, but rather assumed
I'd been conned by the greenies, or hype surrounding it all. Ah well.

All I'll say is that I'm a Geek, Engineer and Scientist in that order,
and leave it at that.

Now, anyone replaced central heating system with a home-made controller
based round e.g. Arduino? I've only recently realised how crude central
heating systems really are regarding their controllers and choices made
in them. Must have been a genious of a madman that invented the 3-port
valve! MOMO valves would appear to be the way forward, but I guess 30
years ago were quite expensive...

And now to have a free hot bath, heated by the sun and by-product of the
cooker. Spent the day with the chainsaw filling the wood store (we have
2 wood stoves, thinking of a 3rd)

Gordon

Gordon Henderson wrote:
In article ,
Grimly Curmudgeon wrote:
We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the
drugs began to take hold. I remember Gordon Henderson
saying something like:

Solar HW usually fails to ever pay its costs off, but its not
impossible to make it work financially. Have fun designing a system
that will do so. Needles to say professional systems are the least
likely to pay their way.
I agree that if a system is "professionally" installed then the payback
time can be very long indeed - mostly due to the so-called professional
installers ripping the customers off... (IMO - e.g. a relative paid 4
times what I paid for my system, but she got a 15% grant so that was
OK. Err...)

However a DIY install, which is what I've just done ...
It's no use trying to talk sense to him about diy solar - I would 't be
at all suprised if he's in the pay of BNFL to promote nuke power and he
certainly has a severe wasp up his arse every time someone mentions
solar.
Funny, last time I pointed out this was a diy group and I was diy-ing
solar, he shut up.
Glad to see someone else doing it and putting the nay-sayers' gas at a
peep.

Heh... Intersting to read the other comments while shutting up for the
past few days... I find it intersting that no-one actually asked me
what I think about it all, nor why I was doing it, but rather assumed
I'd been conned by the greenies, or hype surrounding it all. Ah well.

All I'll say is that I'm a Geek, Engineer and Scientist in that order,
and leave it at that.

Now, anyone replaced central heating system with a home-made controller
based round e.g. Arduino? I've only recently realised how crude central
heating systems really are regarding their controllers and choices made
in them. Must have been a genious of a madman that invented the 3-port
valve! MOMO valves would appear to be the way forward, but I guess 30
years ago were quite expensive...

And now to have a free hot bath, heated by the sun and by-product of the
cooker. Spent the day with the chainsaw filling the wood store (we have
2 wood stoves, thinking of a 3rd)

Gordon

Someone asked on Any Questions 'what are you doing about climate change,
personally'?

For anyones information, THIS is what I am doing about climate change,
personally, telling the facts.

If solar hot water made the slightest sense economically in this
country, or saved any significant fraction of CO2 emissions, I'd be for
it, even if it was not completely and utterly misleadingly missold.

I am ****ED as hell because some smart talking salesman sold my father
in law 2 grands worth of kit, on the promise it would save 'up to half
his heating costs' (which run about £2500 a year) when the brochure
itself and the figures it quoted showed it would save at most £150 a
year, and moreiussu overhauling either.


I am ****ED as hell because it does NOT have an energy meter on it. Just
a temperature gauge. He still thinks that because he is 'getting 70C' on
the roof, it actually means something. It is a carefully crafted CON
trick and he has been ripped off of savings that he really cannot afford
to lose.

So yes I DO have a wasp up my ass.

Ad far as nuclear power goes, I am for it because my training as an
engineer, my ability to actually do sums and also my time managing
financial affairs for businesses show that it is actually the ONLY power
generation technology of sufficiently low carbon cost, low actual cost,
scalability and energy density to actually SOLVE the problem of the
countries energsy needs without wrecking the planet completely.

All other technologies, apart from heat pumps, are simply incapable of
supplyinmg more than a very small fraction, and in most cases, at vastly
higher costs, and in the case of the so called renewables, at such low
energy density that literally MILLIONS of square miles of the country
would be needed to be completely covered with them in order to get
anywhere near the output thats few nuclear sets could give.

I didn't write it, but I was instrumental in getting it published,
because it is the first book that actuality tells the facts:-

www.withouthotair.com

Do yourself a favour, in your smug self righteous selfishness, that you
have stuck two radiators on your roof and saved yourself £50 a year, and
actually start taking an interest in the real issue: whether or not you
or your descendants will be alive in 50 years time.

The FACTS say that without massive nuclear power, you or they will *not* be.

On 12 Sep, 11:37, andrew wrote:
David wrote:
Pellet boilers are not suitable for living areas - they are too noisy!

I think you overstate this slightly but agree it's not the sort of noise
you'd want in a living room and watch the telly. The fans aren't much
different from a condensing boiler, the irritating bit is the auger motor..
I have had one of the first we imported in the living room (temporarily)
for 12 years now but only run it daytime if anyone in home, we expected the
uptake to be by things like church halls and scout huts but had no success.

What does the auger motor do?

All I've heard from outside so far is a noise that starts of really
loud and goes quieter and quieter and more low pitched then it goes
away.




Agree, our school has a huge 250kw one, makes a racket, the caretaker
was telling me he can't hear his phone, radio or anything when he's in
the plant room, hopefully I'll be going to the plant room again so
I'll get to hear it. Apart from that the boiler needs to be cleaned
every week and the poor caretaker has to practically go inside the
boiler, after that he get's breathing difficulties for the next two
nights despite wearing proper masks etc, this cleaning task takes the
best part of a day.

I stillservice a 500kW(t) wood chip boiler and rodding the 60 tubes once a
fortnight takes about an hour, though I do about 10 and then move onto a
lighter task for a bit, the other peripherals bring the total severvice up
to 4 hours if I'm quick. As a precaution I do wear a mask but because the
cleaning cycle sets the id fan running very little gets into the room, most
gets caught in the extraction system cyclone.

What model is the one you service?

The one my school has is a Herz Austrian made one.


Then the boiler creates a lot of dust in the room
which gets into the pumps causing them to become very noisy and
unreliable, there are cyclonic separators and various dust extraction
equipment.

Dust can be a problem but it's not something I have found with big
installations, far worse is with my Jotul in this room and that's ash dust
created when I load or de ash it, commercial systems are generally sealed
ash extraction.

This is a 1.45MW heating plant, I believe the installation is a total
cock-up and there are many companies involved which is why there is a
big dust problem. Apparently the design of the hopper (4 tonnes I
think) causes the dust, normally fuel would be in another room but in
this installation the hopper is directly above the boiler


Dust from a comminuting machine at a large retail store where they ground up
returns and incinerated them in a small ancillary boiler was far worse it
filled the whole room and settled on all the equipment. I made a little
demo of a candle with a puffer in a whisky bottle container to show the
danger of a dust-air deflagration *but they didn't believe me enough to
even allow the demonstration.

A slight reduction in quality of fuel will result in huge
clumps of ash sticking to the burner.

Yes this is a perennial problem with poor wood fuel in general, contaminants
like chalk will lower the fusing temperature of the ash and cause this
slagging (clinker) not a problem with pellets made mechanically with pure
sawdust but a big problem with these new mini pellet mills where some sort
of ligno-sulphite ( a by product of paper making) is used as a binder.

Biomass boilers tend to be configured to run base load as they don't like
being switched on and off and they have limited modulation, so in the
absence of massive thermal inertia, they often run with gas or oil boilers.
Mind I do think councils foisted woodburners on schools because it was an
easy target for their green policies.

Yes this one provides the heating base load and and hot water in
summer. All the new schools here seem to be getting a Biomass system.


There have been a few changes recently in how the EA view wood burning and
virgin wood has been removed from the waste incineration directive but
they've become more restrictive on other wood, such as demolition *waste,
so treated (not creosoted) wood can now only go to recycling as particle
board, land fill or a permitted incinerator ( think gate fee of
GBP60/tonne). This is because of the risk from flue discharges of lead
(from old paint) and other heavy metals from things like cca treated
building timbers. OTOH there is no restriction of burning these at home.

AJH

All very interesting.

On Sun, 13 Sep 2009 22:56:44 +0100, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

I didn't write it, but I was instrumental in getting it published,
because it is the first book that actuality tells the facts:-

www.withouthotair.com

And I see the author is just about to take up a government post as an
advisor in the Department of Energy. I just hope he has the guts and
strength of will to kick the politicians into actually doing
something that will produce real results instead of just pandering to
the media and lining their own nests.

And I suspect Miliband may well regret making this statement "There's
no danger of power cuts in the next decade."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/8253078.stm

--
Cheers
Dave.

On Sun, 13 Sep 2009 18:56:30 +0000 (UTC) someone who may be Gordon
Henderson wrote this:-

I find it intersting that no-one actually asked me
what I think about it all, nor why I was doing it, but rather assumed
I'd been conned by the greenies, or hype surrounding it all. Ah well.

It is the nay-sayers' loss, you have the hot water no matter how
loudly they shout. The sad thing is that the nay-sayers might
influence some people.




--
David Hansen, Edinburgh
I will *always* explain revoked encryption keys, unless RIP prevents me
http://www.opsi.gov.uk/acts/acts2000/00023--e.htm#54

David Hansen wrote:
On Sun, 13 Sep 2009 18:56:30 +0000 (UTC) someone who may be Gordon
Henderson wrote this:-

I find it intersting that no-one actually asked me
what I think about it all, nor why I was doing it, but rather assumed
I'd been conned by the greenies, or hype surrounding it all. Ah well.

It is the nay-sayers' loss, you have the hot water no matter how
loudly they shout.

well if you hadn't spent the money on it, you would still have the
money, no matter what the greenycons shout.


The sad thing is that the nay-sayers might
influence some people.


The dangerous thing is that the greenycons DO influence a LOT of people.

It wouldn't be so bad if

(a) the world could afford it
(b) it actually solved the CO2 problem

Not only does it do neither, it also prevents attention being directed
at real solutions.

Greenpeace are, by and large, traitors to the human race.

David wrote:

What does the auger motor do?

It delivers the pellets to the fire pot by screwing them up a ramp from
which they drop into the fire. On mine it rotsates the screw 1/4 turn and
stops, the mark space ratio is what modulates the rate of feed. So it makes
an annoying regular on off hum.

All I've heard from outside so far is a noise that starts of really
loud and goes quieter and quieter and more low pitched then it goes
away.

This sounds more like the id fan being started flat out and then slowing
down as the feedback mechanisms come into play.

What model is the one you service?

The one my school has is a Herz Austrian made one.

Kob which is also Austrian

This is a 1.45MW heating plant, I believe the installation is a total
cock-up and there are many companies involved which is why there is a
big dust problem. Apparently the design of the hopper (4 tonnes I
think) causes the dust, normally fuel would be in another room but in
this installation the hopper is directly above the boiler

I'm amazed that a boiler this large would have such an arrangement, the
1MW(t) one I used to service and snag was 2.5m tall freestanding with a 40
tonne store adjacent.

Yes this one provides the heating base load and and hot water in
summer. All the new schools here seem to be getting a Biomass system.

I would have expected two boilers in this situation and wouldn't have
thought the DHW load was sufficient to justify keeping such a large boiler
online for. Mind I do also help out with a solar heated system with a
25kW(t) pellet boiler where the pellet boiler runs flat out year round
because the cut in thermostat for the boiler has been placed too far down
the thermal store so the system wakes up in the morning at a higher
temperature than the sun can deliver with little demand till evening when
the sun goes down. I think my mate must be on commission for the
pellets ;-)
AJH

"David WE Roberts" wrote in message
...

"David WE Roberts" wrote in message
...
snip
However this is also an opportunity to 'go green' with for example a heat
store, solar water heating on the roof, a wood pellet boiler.
This also gives the option of adding other heat sources such as a solid
fuel stove with back boiler to heat water in the winter.
In this case the pipe runs are likely to be longer but good lagging and a
pump may help the 'instant hot water' requirement.
snip

Thanks for all the replies so far.

For those who don't run the boiler in the summer - neither do we as the
effeciency of the hot water system is so dire that we don't like to use
it. When we need hot water (not often) we boil a kettle.

We do like to shower every day, though, which is O.K. at the moment
because we have an electric shower but we would prefer a shower with a
higher flow rate which means a combi boiler or a tank and shower pump. We
have experience of both - previous Suffolk house had a big tanks and pump
which ran two showers. Berkshire house we fitted with a new combi boiler.

Siting the hot tank near the kitchen and bathroom is tricky - the airing
cupboard is over the stairs and towards the front of the house and there
is no obvious place at the back of the house where the kitchen and
bathroom are to put the tank. The situation could be improved by replacing
the old tank with a modern fully insulated one and lagging all the pipes
under the floor. If we went that way we would put in a much larger tank
and a shower pump.

However if we install a combi boiler we get all the storage space in the
airing cupboard plus the tank space in the loft and shorter pipe runs as
well because the boiler will be in the kitchen and close to the bathroom.

So the choice initially is stored water or combi, with a lean towards the
combi.
However the stored water option does allow solar heating and part time
solid fuel devices to be added to the equation.

Nobody so far has responded about wood pellet boilers.
Has anyone any experience of these?
Soilid fuel is generally a pain in the ass compared to gas, but burning
wood could be a greener option.
Wood burning as a main source of heat tends to cost in more if you have
enough land to grow your own wood, though.
Loads of wood for a wood burner tend to cost at least as much as a gas
bill to provide the same level of heating.
We used a log burner (open fire) then wood burning stove because we like a
'real' fire but it doesn't seem to provide cost effective heating if you
have to buy your wood from third parties.

Cheers

Dave R

Look at current thread:
Recommendations for a decent boiler with external temperature control?

And look at this,
A DIYer did a SS pressurised heat bank. Worth looking....piccies too.
http://www.diynot.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=137289
He was guided through on the forum. His comments on its performance is worth
noting. Some aspects I would have done differently, but an excellent job
from his angle.

Get back to me for Qs.

On 14 Sep, 22:16, andrew wrote:
David wrote:
What does the auger motor do?

It delivers the pellets to the fire pot by screwing them up a ramp from
which they drop into the fire. On mine it rotsates the screw 1/4 turn and
stops, the mark space ratio is what modulates the rate of feed. So it makes
an annoying regular on off hum.



All I've heard from outside so far is a noise that starts of really
loud and goes quieter and quieter and more low pitched then it goes
away.

This sounds more like the id fan being started flat out and then slowing
down as the feedback mechanisms come into play.

What model is the one you service?

The one my school has is a Herz Austrian made one.

Kob which is also Austrian

This is a 1.45MW heating plant, I believe the installation is a total
cock-up and there are many companies involved which is why there is a
big dust problem. Apparently the design of the hopper (4 tonnes I
think) causes the dust, normally fuel would be in another room but in
this installation the hopper is directly above the boiler

I'm amazed that a boiler this large would have such an arrangement, the
1MW(t) one I used to service and snag was 2.5m tall freestanding with a 40
tonne store adjacent.

Perhaps I might be wrong, I'll ask the caretaker next time I get to
see talk to him.

The plant room is smaller than most and everything is crammed in and
not so easy to access.



Yes this one provides the heating base load and and hot water in
summer. All the new schools here seem to be getting a Biomass system.

I would have expected two boilers in this situation and wouldn't have
thought the DHW load was sufficient to justify keeping such a large boiler
online for. Mind I do also help out with a solar heated system with a
25kW(t) pellet boiler where the pellet boiler runs flat out year round
because the cut in thermostat for the boiler has been placed too far down
the thermal store so the system wakes up in the morning at a higher
temperature than the sun can deliver with little demand till evening when
the sun goes down. I think my mate must be on commission for the
pellets ;-)
AJH

;-) Interesting.