heating / hot water - whole new system

What I did was.... Get a decent combi based not on heat out-put but water flow capacity. i.e. big enough to drive 2 showers at once. This gave me a boiler with more than enough capacity to meet current (time of install) and future (the new extension that wasn't on the cards at the time) demands.

IIRC my boiler is 36Kw which is plenty man-enough to give 2 good showers simultaneously. Fitting something like "Mira Eco" shower heads to both showers come in at a miserly 7 litres/minute draw per shower with the "feel" of a much larger flow due to aeration of the water.

Weather compensation on the boiler is a must-have in my mind and if you can run your system at UFH temp and still maintain comfort levels you're onto a winner BUT if you find you have to run significantly hotter you've got that big-boiler backup and you'll still modulate down to UFH temperatures during spring and autumn anyway.

Planning a system based on the most extreme conditions expected is completely wrong to me. If you're charging someone to do their heating then yes it makes sense as you'd not want people saying their house is too cold even if it is just a week every 10 years but doing your own system then I'd base it on a much leaner figure that covers 95% of the heating requirement from an economy and more importantly an aesthetical point of view. Who wants to buy a house with the biggest radiators in the world dominating every room? Screams of expensive house to heat with very ugly rooms to the future buyer.

IMO of course IANAPP :)

Reply to
www.GymRatZ.co.uk
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Interesting and useful. I'm at the 'pre-planning' stage of modernising my late mother's bungalow. Two medium sized bedrooms, kitchen, bathroom, front hall, back lobby, L-shaped footprint, the lounge/diner and one bedroom have three outside walls. Urea-formaldehyde foam insulation in the cavity, installed ~1975, a thin scattering of vermiculite in the loft, to be replaced by something effective. Mild climate. Central heating and plumbing both need completely stripping out and modernising. I'll be getting it all done professionally, as there's quite a lot of other stuff to do as well.

You say about a boiler "Use the manufacturer tables to ascertain power output and then double the size over what it needs to maintain steady state (or what you think it needs)", and you also give ball-park suggestions for the wattages needed to heat some rooms, e.g. 3-4kW for a large bedroom. Do those figures include the doubling factor, or should I double up the sum I get for the bungalow, which is approximately 18kW on the basis of your numbers as they stand? I must say, doubling that to 36kW seems a bit excessive for a small bungalow.

Reply to
Chris Hogg

yes - that's includes padding. I *can* maintain a bedroom on 1kW on a moderately cold day (if the other heaters are keeping other rooms warm) but 1kW from stone cold needs to be run flat out for a day to get the room even remotely warm from a standing start.

2kW (heater max setting - I don't like leaving them on remote control on this setting, hence the 1kW earlier) gets the job done faster, but it's still hours.

Actually, I just dug out my spreadsheet based on the biggest rads I can get in without compromising space or aesthetics and these are my working figures at delta-T=50C (the usual dT to calculate at):

Main bedroom = 2.4kW Daughter's bedroom = 2.8kW Son's = 2.1kW Kitchen/diner (2 external walls, large) = 3.8kW Hall = 1.7kW (long, 2 external doors) Lobby (2nd side "hall" with stairs, lots of cold here) = 2.7kW Upstairs dormer (large open single space over whole floor) = 5.6kW

Conservatory UFH = 2kW (will maintain steady state at outside temp = about 5C) Conservatory Myson wet air fan = 4.6kW (this is worthwhile - fast heatup when needed for short periods in winter)

Shower room UFH (off "lobby") = 300W

Bathroom (off main hall) towel rail - 700W

I'd like more in the main bedroom so will play with some different rad types. However, I think I could reduce the upstairs a LOT - 3kW would be enough as I've observed a lot of heat rises from the ground floor and the solar gain is pretty good up there.

The kitchen really needs 3.8kW to get it going from cold.

The bathroom needs nothing much if the hall is heated (fully islanded). The shower room is under powered - might need a small rad there too.

The conservatory will be run to just keep the floor tepid in winter and the air blower used to fast heat when needed (not that much obviously). In spring/autumn, the UFH should manage quite well for much higher occupancy as it's will be our day room then. Winter, we'll be sensible and not use it much, but UFH ticking over will help keep things dry.

The idea above is that the sheer power is available on cold days and returning from breaks to get the place nice FAST, also in mornings (we like to sleep nice and cold). But most of the time I reckon we could turn the water temperature right down to a delta-T of 40C or less (or rather the weather comp could).

That's a total load of about 30kW.

or

Reply to
Tim Watts

Thanks. So a 20kW boiler will be just fine.

Reply to
Chris Hogg

+1 (although I am on gas and only have one shower).

If you are not going for a mains pressure cylinder (more expensive, more to go wrong) you will benefit from a double impeller shower pump for the top floor. Don't economise, get a Stuart Turner. I suspect that a single

3 bar pump might be sufficient for all three showers. Certainly I normally throttle the flow on my 2 bar one. Might be worth plumbing the shower feeds in 22 mm?
Reply to
newshound

He has 3 floors, he doesn't need a pump

NT

Reply to
tabbypurr

Plus hot water :)

I'd say 20kW will be too weedy.

Reply to
Tim Watts

Might do on the top floor, especially if not much of a loft. And if you pump one, you might get better flow when more than one is in use by pumping them all.

Reply to
newshound

I've always said they are fine, e.g. in a small holiday cottage which I use sometimes use. But they are *hopeless* in a larger family house.

Reply to
newshound

I'm sure they're great, but if the O/P wants something with less brass, for less brass, I've not had a peep of a problem from my Salamander in nearly 7 years ...

Reply to
Andy Burns

Hmm...I hadn't thought to include that, I must confess, but there will be an insulated DHW tank in the airing cupboard, and an 'S Plan' system, and there will only be two of us when we move in, both elderly (in our 70's), and we're not fanatical about all-over washing on a daily basis!

Reply to
Chris Hogg

I had a 12kw boiler in a 2000 sq ft house.

And all the hot water I could handle. Mains pressure tank and decent insulation.

Reply to
The Natural Philosopher

My main complaint would be that the reliability isn't as good as a system boiler. And with a storage system you can have an immersion as a backup for not much money.

Easy enough to heat a room with a fan heater or whatever if the boiler fails, but getting enough hot water by boiling kettles etc a real pain.

Reply to
Dave Plowman (News)

You don't use 22mm to a kitchen tap from a storage system. Only to a bath or a high volume shower.

Reply to
Dave Plowman (News)

We have a combi, and our backup is an electric shower. The dishwasher heats its own water, so not many kettles of water needed in the kitchen. A few oil-filled radiators and the fireplace in the living room, can keep the place warm.

Reply to
S Viemeister

Ah - right. My shower is an ancient Aqualiza low pressure high flow type. Lovely shower - but not exactly energy efficent. But then the shower cubical is lit by halogen. ;-)

I don't possess a dishwasher. Do it all by hand. ;-) But different for a family.

Yes - generally not expensive to get electric heaters for an emergency. Running them, a different matter. I've got fan heaters as they're small to store.

Reply to
Dave Plowman (News)

or indeed in the same cubicle simultaneously

Robert

Reply to
RobertL

Our largeish 3 bedroom is heated by a conventional 18kw oil boiler. The house is not particularly well insulated. A combi would need to be larger to supply hot water for a bath. In the evening the sitting room is kept at 22C.

Reply to
Michael Chare

That's what you want. Combination of IR heating plus light ;)

Andy

Reply to
Vir Campestris

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