Need help setting up thermal store

pepper · 2008-12-06T21:34:31+00:00

Dear Group,Following advice from the archives of this group we've had a thermalstore installed to service our house with it's gleaming new extension.The store is a 350 litre Gledhill Torrent RE Solar in the loft, and aFerolli 25OV boiler installed in the loft too.There is a "hot water" / "heating" programmable timer that operate thetwo zone valves, (as per the Gledhill wiring diagram), and a Heatmiserprogrammable room stat in the lounge.There are 50 evacuated solar tubes installed on the roof for the solarside of things, along with their associated pump, controller etc.The system is built pretty much as per page 4 of the Gledhill manual; with no underfloor heating circuit).What I'm looking for is advice from those who've been there on how toset up timers, bypass valves etc, so as to best utilise the system.I think I'm fairly clear on what needs to happen in the summer; Myidea is to set the "hot water" to come on before sunrise for half anhour or so, to ensure that the store is adequately charged for morningablutions, and then hope that the sun fully charges the storethroughout the day.The quandry is what to do in the current, wintery climate? The systemis currently wired as per page 9 of the above manual, with the storethermostat set to 75C, and it seems to me that the problem with thissetup is that the boiler only fires, (and hence the store only heats),when the room stat calls for heat. This means that once the roomtemperature has been satisfied then the store may be left onlypartially charged, thus potentially compromising the ability toprovide hot-enough DHW. (and IIUC also doesn't help prevent the boilercycling that thermal stores are supposed to help with).Is the answer to have the store permanently charged, and just use theroom stat to operate the heating zone valve?i.e either set the "hot water" timer to be on whenever the heatingtimer is on, or alternatively wire the "heating timer" to operate thepump/cylinder stat, and have the programmable room stat...

M

mike.peppert 17 years ago

How does that work then? - If the cylinder is in the loft and the rads are on the floor below then how can thermosyphoning happen there?... I thought the whole point was that the hot water could only rise?

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D

Doctor Drivel 17 years ago

How does that work then? - If the cylinder is in the loft and the rads are on the floor below then how can thermosyphoning happen there?... I thought the whole point was that the hot water could only rise?

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M

mike.peppert 17 years ago

Excellent - my all singing and dancing thermal store could act as 'air conditioning' in the summer too.... fan 'kin tastic!

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D

Doctor Drivel 17 years ago

Excellent - my all singing and dancing thermal store could act as 'air conditioning' in the summer too.... fan 'kin tastic!

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Need help setting up thermal store

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