I know these are dumb questions - I have asked for quotes (and system advice) from two heating engineers - locally both are so busy that we have waited 2 months for a date for a visit & will wait another month at least for a quote. In the mean time I need to work out whether what we want to do is at all affordable.
At present we own 2 buildings, one with 22 rooms all with radiators & supplied by an LPG boiler, working well but pricey. The other building has 57 rooms only 15 of which have radiators (others had no heating or night storage heaters, now removed). Existing radiators & hot water tanks fuelled via oil boiler (also effective but pricey, plenty of capacity left). Oil boiler currently has no heating controller at all, just an on & off switch. We're renovating the building so we can manage with this but plan to fully sue the building next year.
Plan is to install 42 more radiators. All fine so far, can be connected into existing system & our onsite plumber & electrician suggests we should zone these via valves & control each valve via a sensibly situated thermostat for each zone. Combine this with a decent heating controller on the boiler (that could cope with 6 zones) and we'll be able to programme different timing for radiators in each zone, which is what we want to do. Sounds straightforward & not too costly.
But we eventually want to replace LPG & oil with biomass (will leave existing boilers as backup). We've had a range of biomass quotes (have posted elsewhere about that) and one seems to suggest that for each zone we need to install a "variable temperature heating circuit which would consist of a low energy circulation pump, three port temperature blending valve, flow temperature sensor and a digital room sensor." Adding these in 6 zones adds about £35k to the biomass quote (parts + labour), which puts it out of our budget.
So my question is, what do I need to get the system (a) working via oil and (b) able to work via biomass as soon as we can get that funded & installed?
Em
At present we own 2 buildings, one with 22 rooms all with radiators & supplied by an LPG boiler, working well but pricey. The other building has 57 rooms only 15 of which have radiators (others had no heating or night storage heaters, now removed). Existing radiators & hot water tanks fuelled via oil boiler (also effective but pricey, plenty of capacity left). Oil boiler currently has no heating controller at all, just an on & off switch. We're renovating the building so we can manage with this but plan to fully sue the building next year.
Plan is to install 42 more radiators. All fine so far, can be connected into existing system & our onsite plumber & electrician suggests we should zone these via valves & control each valve via a sensibly situated thermostat for each zone. Combine this with a decent heating controller on the boiler (that could cope with 6 zones) and we'll be able to programme different timing for radiators in each zone, which is what we want to do. Sounds straightforward & not too costly.
But we eventually want to replace LPG & oil with biomass (will leave existing boilers as backup). We've had a range of biomass quotes (have posted elsewhere about that) and one seems to suggest that for each zone we need to install a "variable temperature heating circuit which would consist of a low energy circulation pump, three port temperature blending valve, flow temperature sensor and a digital room sensor." Adding these in 6 zones adds about £35k to the biomass quote (parts + labour), which puts it out of our budget.
So my question is, what do I need to get the system (a) working via oil and (b) able to work via biomass as soon as we can get that funded & installed?
Em
