Situation - We have an oil fired boiler which heats our central heating and hot water. We also have an open fire, with a 16" Dunsley backboiler (no idea how old this system is as have just moved here).
We have a hot water tank (also with immersion switch) in the spare room, and cold water tank in the loft. The backboiler heats the hotwater, but we havent noticed radiators becoming hot. There is a switch for the backboiler pump next to the fire. We have turned this on, on a few occations, but havent noticed the radiators warming, although new to fire building, the fire hasn't always been very hot
Problem - As oil is so expensive we wanted to use the backboiler as much as possible to heat our water and also all the radiators (5 in total). We wanted to work the two systems independantly so we can choose to either heat the water and CH using the oil fired boiler, or by using the backboiler.
We would like the backboiler to heat the CH and have had a few plumbers come and have a look but they seem a bit confused about the set up and havent known much about the backboiler. One plumber noticed that there is no thermostat, he told me not to use the backboiler without one as this could be dangerous... is this the case?
Questions
How can I/a plumber link the backboiler with the CH system - is this easy? How much should we expect to pay for something linke this?
How can we ensure it is a safe set up?
Do we need to have the back boiler serviced and if so how can we find someone to do this?
A plumber told us we would need a Honeywell pipe thermostat to solid fuel pipework and quoted £195. What is this, is the price about right? Would this make the system safe to use?
Also our hot water tank has cracked, and needs to be replaced, we wanted to move it to the loft but have been given different advice ranging from - it will solve all our problems to it will cause water pressure to drop Any advice?
We have a hot water tank (also with immersion switch) in the spare room, and cold water tank in the loft. The backboiler heats the hotwater, but we havent noticed radiators becoming hot. There is a switch for the backboiler pump next to the fire. We have turned this on, on a few occations, but havent noticed the radiators warming, although new to fire building, the fire hasn't always been very hot
Problem - As oil is so expensive we wanted to use the backboiler as much as possible to heat our water and also all the radiators (5 in total). We wanted to work the two systems independantly so we can choose to either heat the water and CH using the oil fired boiler, or by using the backboiler.
We would like the backboiler to heat the CH and have had a few plumbers come and have a look but they seem a bit confused about the set up and havent known much about the backboiler. One plumber noticed that there is no thermostat, he told me not to use the backboiler without one as this could be dangerous... is this the case?
Questions
How can I/a plumber link the backboiler with the CH system - is this easy? How much should we expect to pay for something linke this?
How can we ensure it is a safe set up?
Do we need to have the back boiler serviced and if so how can we find someone to do this?
A plumber told us we would need a Honeywell pipe thermostat to solid fuel pipework and quoted £195. What is this, is the price about right? Would this make the system safe to use?
Also our hot water tank has cracked, and needs to be replaced, we wanted to move it to the loft but have been given different advice ranging from - it will solve all our problems to it will cause water pressure to drop Any advice?
