summer heating

doningtonphil

Hello


We live in a small 1 bedroom semi detached bungalow. Built 1836 with solid stone walls. Half of the house has a flat roof. Overall floor space is approx. 80sq m.


We have a multi fuel boiler stove and a 140 litre thermal store (hot water created with mains cold water passing through heat exchange coil). We have a radiator circuit (2 large radiators a small one and a 1500mm ladder towel warmer).


As it stands, our only source of heating is the stove heating the thermal store or 1 of 2 3kw immersion heaters heating the store.


At times of the year like now where we are starting to run down our stove use what would the best system be for ancillary room heating/water heating?


The thermal store does have a 1.2m2 'solar coil' in the bottom of it.


For heating, would a small heat exchange 'air conditioning' unit work. there is one in my office at work. It is a wall mounted cartridge that seems to heat up pretty quickly, with an externally mounted fan unit. We could quite easily install this under the living room window with the internal and external units almost back to back (if you see what I mean?)


Another option is solar thermal.


The thing is, funds are tight.


Can anyone give any suggestions?


Many thanks


Phil

Martyn1981

Hiya Phil. If you're considering solar thermal, then it might work out (financially) better to install solar PV, then divert excess leccy to your thermal store.

Have a read of this recent thread:

Solar water heating

and, since you mentioned an A/C unit run as a heat pump, you could use the PV to help run this too. In fact, there's a thread on that very idea here:

Discussion ... ASHP(Air/Air) with Solar pv ....

I appreciate you said that funds are tight, but PV shouldn't be all that much more than ST, ok perhaps twice as much, but the income side is much higher.

Lastly, just a thought, and again I appreciate the funds issue, but if you have solid walls, then heat loss must be a pain. Does your property have any restrictions (conservation area etc) concerning the outside, or perhaps is very pretty. If not, then external wall insulation (EWI) may be beneficial, and would turn your walls, into a giant thermal store ....... once you've warmed the house up. You may be eligible for funding, green deal etc, I'm not really sure.

Mart.