Vacuum tube solar collectors.

Are you implying qualifications=credibility? If you are, that is an interesting connection worthy of investigation :-).

Not implying anything: just aaking a question.

Which you failed to answer.

Others will draw whatever conclusions they will, from that.

Seems strange that you're paying the (surprisingly high, IMHO) cost of a heatbank, but not for the solar panels. Thermal store costs are what's making me wary at the moment,

It appears we've just bought the place, so this stuff isn't quite as academic as last week. Over 1,000 sq ft of sheds! W00t!

Andy Dingley coughed up some electrons that declared:

Mostly for other reasons, including mains pressure hot water (cue Drivel and advice to fit 2 combis) and having a simple way to run a very small part of the central heating plus hot water off 6-9kW worth of immersion heaters if the boiler dies at an inopportune moment (been there, with a baby in the middle of winter with 1 fan heater to hand and no immersion heater, no fun).

Fringe benefits of longer boiler burns and sizing the boiler to meet average demand rather than peak might count, but it's a bit hearsay as I haven't verified whether either theories hold water (sorry)

I'm not sure if solar is worth it *today* for my installation, but it might be in x-years, where x isn't large, so leaving the option open may be prudent.

On an aside, I was looking at the roof again on Friday. I have more slope left either side and under the dormers all on the south side than I initially thought (plans on paper can be so misleading), so I might well be able to get 4-6kW (peak) worth, perhaps more, of solar tubes on the slope, which avoids some of the fitting problems I was worried about.

I've got potentially, a scary amount of renovation work to do (rewire, replumb, couple of new short internal walls, modify couple of openings, refit bathroom, kitchen and new shower/bog not to mention decorating, so I've got to be careful to do important stuff first, but leave options open for roundtuits later, where there's reasonable merit.

Unless some b***ger buys the place for more than tuppence ha'penny in the next month, it looks like the project is on. A trusted builder reckons 24k all in would sort it out well enough to rent out. Very rough costings indicate 25k+/-5k materials, tools, machine hire will sort it out well enough to be my home.

The difference is the "rental job" is refit what's there where absolutely necessary. The "home job" is modify the place a bit to deal with some evolutionary silliness in the layout and use decent materials as opposed to adequate.

It's an interesting project, and although I've touched most of the trades in a minor way in my life, it's very much "in at the deep end". D-Day level planning and getting on a couple of courses will be the order of the day.

Wife reckons my brother-in-law might be up for helping as he's got quite a bit of experience in various things.

Lucky s*d! Good on you, I'm sure you'll put them to excellent use :)

Cheers

Tim

I know very little about thermal stores and heatbanks, as for some years I've been killing threads that attracted Drivellings. Now I find I need to start learning about them.