Potential Boiler / Heating Options Going Forward

725 Posts

Hi All
Just after a bit of advice in general in the very early days of replacing a boiler. Some basic facts to start - I'm fortunate enough to live in a large house (Joys of being in Wales with its property values) which is 5/6 bedrooms, 2 en suite, one master bath and a downstairs toilet. Theres also a kitchen, a large living room and 3 "additional" rooms, dining room, "sitting room" and a study. Currently the house is supplied by a Greenstar Highflow 440CDi boiler, that ive been told is "fine" and will last for "years" - but I'm looking towards the future as I dont ever intend to move from here untill I'm going to the forever home in the dirt.
I've been reonvating over the last year we've been here, and replacing the 30+ year old pipes and rads etc, aiming to give each room enough BTUs to eventualy cope with a heatpump, and turning down the locksheilds. Looking forward, we are having a 7.7kw solar array fitted early next year and I've been wondering how to possibly utilise the "spare" generation in the summer for my hot water needs. I've replaced the en-suite shower with an electric shower anyway (Mainly for redundancy should the boiler decide its had enough) but was thinking of a hot water storage cylynder that would somehow use the excess generation to pre-heat? I assume this wouldnt work with the existing combi and would need a "normal" boiler and Cylynder setup?
Can anyone advise on how I might get started with looking into things? How to compare efficencies etc? Assuming we are looking at a 5 year timescale before the change (lots of renovation, limited time and budget) is there anything else I need to be doing "now" to prepare? I've allready upped the CH feeds to larger bores etc to cope with the heatpump needs, should I be doing anything with the hot water feeds?
Thanks In Advance
Paul
Thanks In Advance
Paul
1
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Treasure the moments that you have. Savour them for as long as you can for they will never come back again.
If it breaks, well it wasn't working right anyway.
then you can look at using the panels to heat the cylinder via the immersion as well.
Thanks - This is sort of what I was hoping for - I should have mentioned that we are also getting batterys for the solar install, so there will allready be a diverter - do you happen to know if its possible to "daisy chain" devices? The installer informs me that the Energy generated by the panels will first be "used" by any devices drawing power, then fill the batteries, then export whats left, idealy I'd like the "water" to be last on the list before export? Is this something I need to discuss with the installer in advance?
Treasure the moments that you have. Savour them for as long as you can for they will never come back again.
We are also considering installing a diverter at some point, as we have panels- maybe next year.
There are some clued-up installers on YouTube (eg. "Urban Plumbers" and "Artisan Electrics") covering PDHW, ASHP and solar installs.
From what I see on Youtube, people are realising that ASHP are not quite good enough in British winters to be used in older houses without requiring secondary heating and gas boilers are being used for that! The alternative of a 3kW+ electric water heater built into the ASHP unit itself is just too expensive to run...
If you are combining ASHP with a gas boiler as backup/supplemental heating then some sort of manifold/low loss header seems to be needed to combine the flows and avoid them pumping water to each other.