Any plumbers out there? Solid fuel rayburn

[Stereo]

We have a big old barn we run our business from with offices and some work areas which need to be kept warm. It's pretty rough and ready. We are looking at alternatives to heating with electricity this year as it cost us a grand last winter and came up with the idea of an old wood fired Rayburn off ebay with boiler hooked up to some rads. I own a woodland so have plenty of access to firewood and see the work gathering it as excersize so it's essentially time I would spend in the gym (or drinking beer on the sofa).

 

Main question is do we need to vent the system? Surely we should? Most of the rads will be above the rayburn except one in the loo on the same level which we thought could be on the return run.

 

I have a plumber up the road we use but he's away at the mo. I've got a load of spare rads but what else would we need? Hot water would be useful if cheap enough but not a requirement as it's only hand washing really and we could keep the small leccy on demand heater we use for that.

 

We are looking to do this on a budget aside from the new flu pipe which luckilly one of our suppliers do in SS and vitreous.

[windfall]

Old rayburns were designed for open/vented systems. I seem to remember you need a small water tank at the highest point of the system.

 

Its really easy to have hot water cylinder and rads, my mates home system is set up so if the hot water gets too hot or is not used he can dump it into the rad system so the hot water is not wasted.

 

You are forgetting one thing.. having a rayburn will also mean you can cook bacon butties etc and the kettle is always hot!

[Tom D]

You will deffo need a vented system, if there is a power cut all valves must fail open so that the system can blow off. Its not that hard, you need a hot water cylinder on a gravity feed and a pumped CH circuit, you can fit a venturi type connector to ensure that the HW still gets some flow when the CH pump is on.

[Stereo]

The bacon butties and kettle are obviously the real motivation here:laugh1:

 

Right, off to look on eBay for a decent copper cylinder. Are they all the same? I see some direct and some indirect! I guess I need a direct one for this?

 

I appreciate the need for the system being able to vent in the event of a power cut.

[Tom D]

You need an indirect one.

 

Choosing a hot water cylinder

[chipper wallah]

Check out stovesonline they have some good diagrams of all the basic systems

[chipper wallah]

Its boilerstoves.co.uk just checked and worth a look.

[Stereo]

Thanks, I'll check it out.

[treequip]

Well worth springing for a steel header tank, if the system does boil over a plastic one will probably not take the heat. If it does fail it will dump water into the attic and the ball valve will probably just keep dumping water in.

[Stereo]

Yeah, we had to do this with our Esse in the house. It's never got near boiling but the installer said the header would melt if it was plastic!