Linked Heating System

[Linesman1]

I have an H2 panel linking a conventional oil fired boiler to a wood fired rayburn.

Piece of cake to install, both mechanically and electriclly. works fine.

[MikeM]

Hi Linesman

 

read your post with interest. I'm looking into replacing a small stand alone morso stove with a bigger stove and posssibly a back boiler to ease the financial pressure of trying to provide heat and water for a large family in an old pile with large single glazed windows with oil and a couple of small stoves alone.

 

The options I am considering are

 

- Installing a biggger stove and leaving the door of the room where it is situated open to try and get some heat around the house.

 

- a back boiler independently running a couple of rads in the hall and landing and linked into a dual coil hot water cylinder

 

- a fully linked system

 

The last is my preferred option but I am concerned about cost and complexity. The oil boiler runs on a timer. Ideally I'd want the stove providing some background heat to the system whenever it is running with the boiler kicking in for a couple of hours morning and evening, as it does currently. Can a linked system be configured to run in this way?

 

Any advice gratefully received.

[Alycidon]

Hi Linesman

 

read your post with interest. I'm looking into replacing a small stand alone morso stove with a bigger stove and posssibly a back boiler to ease the financial pressure of trying to provide heat and water for a large family in an old pile with large single glazed windows with oil and a couple of small stoves alone.

 

The options I am considering are

 

- Installing a biggger stove and leaving the door of the room where it is situated open to try and get some heat around the house.

 

- a back boiler independently running a couple of rads in the hall and landing and linked into a dual coil hot water cylinder

 

- a fully linked system

 

The last is my preferred option but I am concerned about cost and complexity. The oil boiler runs on a timer. Ideally I'd want the stove providing some background heat to the system whenever it is running with the boiler kicking in for a couple of hours morning and evening, as it does currently. Can a linked system be configured to run in this way?

 

Any advice gratefully received.

 

See my post and link earlier on the Esse Centrailser, you can download the info and show it to your plumber. I think the Dunsley is a similar idea but I have not familier with it.

 

A

[Linesman1]

The beauty of a fully linked up system is if you run out of wood, can't be ar*ed to keep feeding the fire or it's too cold for your stove to cope then the oil boiler will automatically cut in (providing you have the controls on). I have mine configured so that the rayburn supplies all the energy it can but in the mornings or when it's really cold the oil boiler kicks in.

[Stereo]

We have a gas combi, an Esse W23 wood fired range with boiler and a Heat store tank. The water in the body of the tank runs through the underfloor heating and also through the Esse so is heated directly by the fire. As a backup, the tank has a coil which is connected to the gas boiler. This cuts in when the water in the tank gets to 40 degrees to boost it up. Domestic hot water is provided by mains cold which runs through a heat exchanger in the tank.

 

In theory it's all great but there are some niggles. In our set up the Esse doesn't provide enough heat in the winter so the gas is always kicking in to keep the tank warm. Granted, the output is the output so we need more heat sources and we can also connect up a solar water panel and are looking at a proper wood boiler such as Eco Angus, especially with the RHI stuff.

 

Second niggle is that to have domestic hot water in the summer time you need a big tank of hot water sitting there doing nothing. Our choice is either light the Esse every night to boost it or keep it hot on gas. Either way, it makes the bedroom it's in even hotter and costs wood or gas. In terms of cost, a solar panel would solve this largely as during the summer, it should heat the tank up every day.

 

I would say go for it but be aware that a halfway house solution is almost as useless as no solution at all. Personally, the economic climate put the brakes on my system, leaving me with something which is not really ideal at any time of the year but I feel if I add a proper wood boiler and a solar panel, we can really become free of gas. At the moment we have spent a load of dosh and the combi is still cutting in every hour or so (except at the moment as I have turned it off altogether and we just run a pallet through the Esse every other night. )

[Tom D]

There are a few myths to bust here, first, why have a combi boiler if you are having a HWC? combi's take mains water and heat it on demand what you need is a conventional gas boiler. A dunsley neutraliser or similar will mix water from your boilers, it is vented so it can blow off if necessary.

 

I have a gloworm boiler, a rayburn and an aarrow stove all linked to a dunsley. The system works as follows, if rayburn and stove arent lit then gas boiler will come on and heat hot water, if central heating pump comes on it will heat that too (it all comes through the dunsley anyway) The thermostat on the gas boiler is set lower so that once either wood burner is lit the gas boiler will shut down.

If rayburn or stove are lit (or both) then the heat rises to the dunsley (by gravity) and from there to the HWC again by gravity, once HWC temp hits 70deg a valve closes to stop the HW hetting too hot and so the heat builds up in the dunsley. When the dunsley temp reaches 80deg the central heating comes on automatically to get rid of the excess heat. In the event of a power cut we still get HW and if there is too much heat the dunsley would blow off.

 

This system works well for us.

[Stereo]

We had a combi installed first. The Esse and Heat store came later. We had to find a way to make the exsiting combi heat the tank when the Esse wasn't doing the job so a coil was the answer. Not ideal at all and as soon as HSBC have stopped raping me on a daily basis, it'll be sorted.

[Alycidon]

We have a gas combi, an Esse W23 wood fired range with boiler and a Heat store tank. The water in the body of the tank runs through the underfloor heating and also through the Esse so is heated directly by the fire. As a backup, the tank has a coil which is connected to the gas boiler. This cuts in when the water in the tank gets to 40 degrees to boost it up. Domestic hot water is provided by mains cold which runs through a heat exchanger in the tank.

 

In theory it's all great but there are some niggles. In our set up the Esse doesn't provide enough heat in the winter so the gas is always kicking in to keep the tank warm. Granted, the output is the output so we need more heat sources and we can also connect up a solar water panel and are looking at a proper wood boiler such as Eco Angus, especially with the RHI stuff.

 

Second niggle is that to have domestic hot water in the summer time you need a big tank of hot water sitting there doing nothing. Our choice is either light the Esse every night to boost it or keep it hot on gas. Either way, it makes the bedroom it's in even hotter and costs wood or gas. In terms of cost, a solar panel would solve this largely as during the summer, it should heat the tank up every day.

 

I would say go for it but be aware that a halfway house solution is almost as useless as no solution at all. Personally, the economic climate put the brakes on my system, leaving me with something which is not really ideal at any time of the year but I feel if I add a proper wood boiler and a solar panel, we can really become free of gas. At the moment we have spent a load of dosh and the combi is still cutting in every hour or so (except at the moment as I have turned it off altogether and we just run a pallet through the Esse every other night. )

 

 

 

The W23 had a 23,000 BTU (around 7kw) boiler in it, it was replaced some time ago by the W35 with a bigger 33,000kw (10kw) boiler in it. 10kw would be enough for a 120 litre DHW tank and 3 or 4 big double rads.

 

For DHW only there is a WD model with a small 7000 BTU boiler, (just over 2kw).

 

A