Solar water heating and compatible thermostats

zorber

Im buying a house which has solar water heating. Whats the best remote app based thermostat that can control the house heating and hot water with this system? I currently have Hive and a combi boiler!

zeupater

zorber wrote: »

Im buying a house which has solar water heating. Whats the best remote app based thermostat that can control the house heating and hot water with this system? I currently have Hive and a combi boiler!

Hi

If it's a standard solar thermal installation the control is likely completely stand-alone.

If there's GCH in the house the hot water cylinder will likely have two integral coils, one for the solar (normally the lower one) and the other to transfer heat from the gas boiler as would be the case in normal cylinder based heating systems. The solar water heating simply works when there's enough sunlight to provide heat & when the water is hot enough, it normally stops pumping & 'stagnates' ... effectively the control system is the sun & clouds so intelligent automation is totally unnecessary.

If the DHW isn't hot enough for you at the end of the day, you can set the normal heating controls to top-up the temperature as necessary ... it's usually done by setting the DHW temperature for the solar heating to be higher than that for the GCH, in which case the boiler shouldn't need to be used much during the summer months, but progressively more as daylight hours shorten, but that depends on the type & size of the collectors you'll have and your hot water usage ...

To give an idea of the contribution of solar towards hot water requirements throughout the year, have a look at this short article on Solar PV & thermal seasonal variability ...

HTH
Z