I’m after some advice or experiences with setting up a new heating/DHW tank and also to supplement with solar evacuated tubes.
We have no gas in the village. The current system runs from an oil Rayburn Nouvelle.
This is partnered with a Gledhill Boilermate2 200L thermal store system. The shower is fed from the mains pressure hot water, not electric. There is one bathroom and 1 en-suite shower. Bath used rarely. Only 2 of us, no kids. 10 rads of varying sizes in the 3 bed property. Our roof at the rear faces mainly South, but part is South East.
Although the boilermate comes in for some stick, we have found it works very well, and having mains pressure hot water is great. We’ve had the usual problems with the PCBs and Blending valves, but it’s easily maintained. It’s very hard water round here, but we’ve never had to descale the Boilermate coil yet (about 17 years old). We don’t maintain the heat in the thermal store as designed, but only run the Rayburn boiler when the hot water is not sufficient or we have the rads on in winter. The cooker in the Rayburn is on 24/7 so maintains some measure of heat in the thermal store.
We have found running it this way is significantly cheaper than permanently heating the thermal store how it’s designed, yet we still get what we need from it. Roughly halves yearly oil costs.
The missus loves the Rayburn so not yet keen on removing that. I’m not too concerned about initial setup costs of replacing the store and solar panels. I can afford it now, but want to mainly reduce the oil costs for the future and obviously be more energy efficient. Possibly even turning the Rayburn off completely in the summer and using electric for cooking. We could supplement solar with immersion for those periods of summer where some additional heated water might be required.
Any suggestions on the best kind of thermal store? We want to retain mains pressure hot water and make use of the Rayburn cooking heat. I had a look on the web at the Gledhill Torrent RE, but want to see if there are better/more suitable systems out there for our scenario.
I rang a number of local heating engineers, and most don’t seem too keen to offer advice or state they have no experience of this kind of setup. I’m assuming it can’t be that unusual in the sticks. I’m not proposing to do the work myself, but just wanted to initially research the options. Solar installers often want to try the hard sell on their solution, so engaging them will be the next phase after I’m better clued up.
We have no gas in the village. The current system runs from an oil Rayburn Nouvelle.
This is partnered with a Gledhill Boilermate2 200L thermal store system. The shower is fed from the mains pressure hot water, not electric. There is one bathroom and 1 en-suite shower. Bath used rarely. Only 2 of us, no kids. 10 rads of varying sizes in the 3 bed property. Our roof at the rear faces mainly South, but part is South East.
Although the boilermate comes in for some stick, we have found it works very well, and having mains pressure hot water is great. We’ve had the usual problems with the PCBs and Blending valves, but it’s easily maintained. It’s very hard water round here, but we’ve never had to descale the Boilermate coil yet (about 17 years old). We don’t maintain the heat in the thermal store as designed, but only run the Rayburn boiler when the hot water is not sufficient or we have the rads on in winter. The cooker in the Rayburn is on 24/7 so maintains some measure of heat in the thermal store.
We have found running it this way is significantly cheaper than permanently heating the thermal store how it’s designed, yet we still get what we need from it. Roughly halves yearly oil costs.
The missus loves the Rayburn so not yet keen on removing that. I’m not too concerned about initial setup costs of replacing the store and solar panels. I can afford it now, but want to mainly reduce the oil costs for the future and obviously be more energy efficient. Possibly even turning the Rayburn off completely in the summer and using electric for cooking. We could supplement solar with immersion for those periods of summer where some additional heated water might be required.
Any suggestions on the best kind of thermal store? We want to retain mains pressure hot water and make use of the Rayburn cooking heat. I had a look on the web at the Gledhill Torrent RE, but want to see if there are better/more suitable systems out there for our scenario.
I rang a number of local heating engineers, and most don’t seem too keen to offer advice or state they have no experience of this kind of setup. I’m assuming it can’t be that unusual in the sticks. I’m not proposing to do the work myself, but just wanted to initially research the options. Solar installers often want to try the hard sell on their solution, so engaging them will be the next phase after I’m better clued up.
