Thermal stores and solar

[Doctor Drivel]

again........."I can't speak garbled Essex."

[Doctor Drivel]

Not on my part. I find it irritating that a know-it-all amateur knowingly posts garbage about something they know nothing. That is fine, but it is when others actually believe them, and the know-it-all persists wanting to make out he has some brains or experience or whatever.

In the case of thermal storage, some fools think the store is merely an alternative to a vented cylinder (bathroom changing plumbers recommend these as well). They are not when the CH is run of them as well a anti-cycle stats are fitted they start to shine. You can have all rads with TRVs and a Smart pump run the CH. If the CH system only needs 0.5kW injected into it, the store gives it and the boiler is never compromised on efficiency on heat as it is decoupled from the heating circuit.

I once tried to help this Rumm fool. At first he was receptive then the know-it-all attitude came out so I cut him off.

Some truth in that. In your case. But there are some system that are just plainly better than others in most aspects.

Look at the market. Stores are cheap enough. And no extra G3 costs or explosion potential. Unvented cylinders are NOT DIY items. Try Advance appliances who make S Steel stores.

An unvented cylinder is NOT a thermal store or direct replacement for one. Stores are very different. The hard of thinking on these forums do not understand that. Jobbing, bathroom changing plumbers know little about them either. I would avoid an unvbnetd with a solar coil. Extra expensive overheat mechanisms have to be installed. Keep it vented. A vented store still give mains pressure DHW. The best of both worlds.

[Tim Streater]

Translation: I can't so I'm going to bluster as usual (and hope no one notices).

[Tim Watts]

That's like trying to not notice Cthulu eating your head...

[meow2222]

Go back to the doc and get your thorazine

[Doctor Drivel]

This man is an idiot.

[Doctor Drivel]

A senile old hippy here. Yer Man....

[Tim Watts]

Yes, we know you are...

[Doctor Drivel]

This man is an idiot.

[geoff]

In message , Doctor Drivel writes

You total minging moron - has nursey gagged you as well as putting you in that straitjacket ?

>

[Steve Firth]

Indeed you do.

[John Rumm]

Well what you write reads like like a load of advertising bull from the

70's, so you either need to justify it with a rational argument, or be content with looking like an out of date catalogue fondler.

Which is it to be?

I can find plenty of expensive stores and cylinders etc, and yet you claim you can apparently find very cheap ones. Yet you can't actually provide a link... why is that, incompetence, or simply deceitfulness?

Here is where your lack of any deep understanding is showing you up. If you understood why boiler cycling was particularly inefficient in the past, you would comprehend why it is far less significant now.

Alas you can't really get that from a catalogue can you?

Perhaps a physics primer book would help you avoid writing nonsense like that?

That makes no sense. If you think about it, you should see why.

Lets assume that the rads go from cold to 70 degrees, instantly (to save worrying about just how good your store is). Does that mean the house is also instantly warm? Of course not - lots of properties with a large thermal mass will take half a day or more to reach target temperature. The few mins you can save getting the rads warm makes little difference.

In my house (21 rads) about 30 mins from properly cold. The house will then take *significantly* longer to heat up after that. The rad heating time is of little relevance to the over all picture.

(before arguing - do the sums - else you will look like a knob again)

However, as pointed out before, with optimisation it does not really matter.

Try harder.

So you don't actually know. That's fine, you can admit it.

You are deluding yourself

A bog standard system with rads driven directly from a modulating condensing boiler and a modern prog stat, will achieve a good level of comfort (give or take 0.5 deg C typically) at over 92% efficiency averaged year round (i.e. even with the less than optimum part load situations). Even if you could make the system perfect (and you can't) the best you could hope to achieve would be less than 5% improvement, and in reality less than that.

So what can you save off a large gas bill? £50/year if you are lucky.

On a more "normal" gas bill, even less.

The extra cost is probably at least 100% for a DIY install and three or four times that if paying for it to be installed. The benefits it seems to be are negligible. If you want to argue, provide figures to back up your claim.

Funny how you were claiming that short life span boilers were simply old wives tales not so long ago... yet now all of a sudden they are unreliable again. Where were you wrong, then or now?

like someone else that goes on and on....

Go read the test methodology and you will see they are a good approximation of real world scenarios. They are not simply trying to reproduce manufacturers best case figures.

I gave you an explanation of why cycling is no longer a big efficiency loss. Which bit did you fail to understand?

Make your mind up.

More willy waving...

The only reason I respond to the likes of you is so others do not take you seriously.

[harry]

If you have proper arrangements, you need pay nothing.

[Doctor Drivel]

This one is so witless.

[harry]

over good insulation.

onefor that kind of budget. Even hardcore DIY, taking my panels and other b= uy-in costs out of that small a budget doesn't leave me enough to build one= .

Thermal stores for heating are pointless. They would need to be huge and the heat has leaked away by the time yo need it.

[Doctor Drivel]

Maxie, this is bad news. You were on good recovery and things were getting right for you - down to 15 pints of Guinness on a Saturday night from 25. Being in a Paddy band and wearing a new donkey jacket, having a new polka-dot frock all that - so encouraging.

Now what do we see? Total babble from you. And chasing young pretty girls in the street. The police pull in fat men doing that. So disappointing. Maxie, pull yourself together man !!!! You are falling back to being a basket case.

[Doctor Drivel]

You haven't a clue about thermal storage. That is obvious. BTW, 1980s they came out with a deal with British Gas and Geldhill.

Having a rational argument with an ill-informed know-it-all with an attitude is waste of time. I tried that in the past and failed.

None are cheap, but many well priced. You do not look. You held up the most expensive as the norm.

My God ! You do not nned a physics book to understand that.

Duh ! Not when the heating is off overnight it will not. It is like talking to children.

A thermal store will have the rads hot within "minutes", NOT 30 mins.

I will - you haven't a clue. You are dabbbling in a fiedl you not not much at all passing yourself off as an "expert".

Where did you get the 92%? Sedbuk of course, who have their own perfect rad system in a lab. In reality it will be in the low to mid 80%. You are reading stuff from the Internet , not real life testing.

The boiler life and controls are seriously reduced when a boiler is on a directly coupled rad system.

On part load, not running flat out, the efficieny drops like a stone.

Total tripe a DIY DHW only heat bank can be zipped up not much at all. The extras are: a pump, flow switch, blending valve, plate heat exchanger and cheap F&E tank. But you save by having a "direct" cylinder. Compare that to an unvented cylinder and the G3 installation and service costs.

YOU HAVEN'T A CLUE ! A know-it-all.

It is when they are fitted properly with buffering.

YOU WERE PATTTLING BOLLOCKS are usual.

The only reason I respond to the likes of you is so others do not take you seriously. You do actually think you know what you are on about. That is the sad part. You are trying to pass yourself off as an expert in a game you have no connection or experience and little comprehension.

[Doctor Drivel]

Harry, after you were doing so well on other threads, you revert to prattling total s**te !! What a let down. Stores are super-insulated and the heat lasts days.

I had a thermal store fitted in a house. The house was two floors with a basement. Boiler and T-Store in basement. Customer wanted a simple reliable system. He wanted a gravity system as once he had gravity heating and DHW in a house - very simple with few parts. He asked if that is still possible these days with new condensing boilers. I said yes in his circumstances - to his surprise.

The T-Store and boiler are below the ground and first floors - ideal for gravity. Two zones were taken off the store using 28mm and then 22mm to all rads with tee-off to rads 15mm. Bends used and elbows to a minimum. TRVs on all rads. No pump used only two "motor on, motor off" 2-port zone valves for each zone (mo-mo valves), so no electricity is used when heating once the store is up to temperature. Both CH zones are fed via gravity from the store. A little slow in initial heat up for CH but fast enough and faster than direct rads heated from the boiler. A condensing boiler heats the store which uses a DHW coil not a plate as he wanted simplicity. This also maintains cylinder stratification a good advantage.

The only complexity is the two cylinder stats and the small latching relay and the self-contained boiler controls themselves. A simple, ultra reliable Intergas open vented, condensing boiler was used to heat the store - it only has a few moving parts.

He took it under the deal that if the gravity circulation did not operate fast enough a pump would be installed. No need for the pump. So no noise in operation either. Also full electric backup for CH & DHW if needed.

The T-Store acts like an old large cast iron boiler, which had a very high water content and operated much like small T-Stores.

I visited the house after installation Some Points:

- A advantage of thermal stores is that the rads are hot in a few minutes on start up as the pump pumps all the hot water to rads instantly. With gravity CH off the store this was not going to be the case. The warm up time is slower but quicker as a perfectly matched CH boiler heating rads from cold. So not a problem in warm up time.

- A disadvantage in thermal stores (which can be got around easily, so this disadvantage is usualy down to ignorance), is that when CH is called and working up to temp, and a large bath is drawn off the store cools quickly. Then a slug of cold water is pumped to the rads. Usually this is not a problem when the store is sized properly or annextra stat is fiitted to ensure only hot water is pumpsed to the rads. Also the store reheats quite quickly and recovers quick enough as the hot water in the rads is pumped back to the store aiding the reheat. However, in this house when a large bath is drawn off and the store cools off, the gravity stops working, or slows up quickly, so naturally and automatically throttles back with no slug of cold water being pumped to the CH circuits - and no electronics to do it, which costs to buy and may fail in future and adds complexity.

[harry]

There is no point in having a 92% efficient boiler and trying to store heat. Heat just leaks away. Heat should be produced as needed/on demand. The boiler works most efficiently when running continuously. The boiler should be as small as possible. Thermal stores only make sense if the heat source is (near)free and intermittent. eg solar.

[harry]

The waterways in condensing boilers are too narrow to allow gravity operation. Most have a circulating pump insidethe cabinet anyway. All completely pointless see previous post.