Rayburn for central heating

[jsee]

Hi

I've been asked by a friend to install a Rayburn multifuel in a french property of his. I have the following questions:

1) He already has a cylinder for the hot water installed with immersion heater which he says he wants to leave. So the system will be just the central heating. Are there any problems with this? Is it more advisable to have a gravity run to the cylinder as a "heat bleed".??

2)If I run 5 large radiators off the Rayburn in a fairly standard 2 bedroom house what pipe sizing would you recommend? 22mm for the main flow and return and 15mm for the radiator runs? The system will be pumped.

3) He says I can just plug the pump in, are there any problems with the pump being permanently on (whilst the rayburn has fuel in)? I can see problems if the pump is on a stat - the heat won't dissipate from the Rayburn so I can't think of another solution other than manually switching the pump on and off. What fuse size for the pump inside the plug -3 amps as that's all central heating usually has??

4) If I was to use gravity, what pipe sizes would I need? How much extra warm up time would there be?

5) He wants to use car antifreeze in the system as the property will be hardly used in Winter. Any problems with that?

Thanks to any replies!!!

Jon

[Chris Bacon]

Do you know the model of the Rayburn?

... he's fitting an entirely separate system for the CH?

That is what he ought to have.

Seems normal... the output of a Rayburn Supreme, which is what I have installed, is 35KBTU. To maintain that needs a bit of care - if ash builds up or fuel gets low it will produce a good deal less heat. How large are the radiators? How large is the 2-bed house? BTW, it can get through 25Kg of Anthracite a day if you go at it.

Has this Rayburn got a thermostat? If so, that and the heat sink will be OK.

28mm from the boiler. Depending on how much water is in the system , the fuel, and the size of the house, it could take a couple of hours (or so!) to have the system at running temperature from lighting up.

Not at first sight, but I'm sure others will know better...

[J B]

I presume this means solid fuel

Maybe the bathroom rad on the gravity circuit? That's what we have on our gas model.

[owdman]

Rayburns and Agas are actually not very good for cooking or central heating - with solid fuel you would need to stoke continuously in a cold spell! You could employ a stoker I suppose. I'd advise your friend to buy a proper cooker and a proper central heating system - much cheaper to buy and run and much better at both functions.

cheers

Jacob

[Chris Bacon]

Erm, they're very good (when they've been fired and adjusted properly for cooking, and at least two planets are in conjunction).

Same as above (the moon needs to be in the right phase as well).

Three times a day is OK.

Probably not needed if you're AB., although a cleaner would be worthwhile.

Certainly cheaper to run, & far more conveniently controllable.

However, I like my Rayburn, although it's a PITA, isn't really up to the job, and ash gets all over the place.

[owdman]

Actually I quite like them too but I wouldn't choose to have one if it wasn't already there. They are a bit like running a vintage car - lovely walnut dash and leather upholstery but basically v expensive, unreliable and impractical.

cheers Jacob

[Chris Bacon]

You can get a genwine 2-hand bargain for a couple of hundred pounds. Anthracite is a bit dear, though. I hope it won't go up proportionally to gas! About £155 per ton at the moment.

As in "prone to breakdown" or "difficult to keep going consistently well"?

Argh! No programmer on the solid fuel ones to say "Come on 1/2 an hour before I'm likely to come back in after visiting the pub on Friday". That *is* an issue, yes.

[Howard Neil]

I agree about the solid fuel Rayburns. I had one at first but soon got rid of it and installed an oil burning one. There is no similarity between the two models (other than quality of build). It is cheap to run, efficient, and controllable. On top of that you get the superb cooking ability of a Rayburn.