Hot water and central heating - is it possible ?

E

Elcato

Guest
This has me stumped but is it possible to instal a central heating system, in a westerly part of the country, ie NOT DUBLIN, that will allow me to have continous hot water run off the oil boiler for the central heating and then in winter have hot water and heating. I keep getting told that the only way is to close all the radiators during summer and I can have hot water from oil burner but this is a drag. I use immersion during summer.

I thought this was a case of having a few motorised valves BUT am I missing a vital technical complication??

I had gas in the UK and had a timer that said heating only, hot water only and both so it was a doddle BUT here it is a dream.

Please help?

noah

Please don't use capitals
 
combination

Since you want "continuous" hot water the only solution is a new boiler, a so called combi boiler.Manufacturers are listed at sedbuk.com/
Otherwise you could put a timer for a few €s between the plug and the socket of your boiler and turn off all radiator valves as you mentioned.
 
Re: HOT WATER AND CENTRAL HEATING- IS IT POSSIBLE?

Hi Heinbloed

To get the link to work you have to type as follows:

http://www.sedbuk.com

Each part is required to link to the site

http://
www.
the name of the site



[You forgot the www. in your first post]

[You inserted p200.ezboard.com in your secod post]


The link is not working here in this post because I turned it off to explain it.


Regards

Marion :hat
 
boiler

Combi boiler would only be suitable where water pressure is high enough - not always the case in rural Ireland. I put one in my house (again having had one in the UK) and it's terrific.
 
connection between central heating and hot water

If your programmer is controlling a GRAVITY of partially-controlled system you can't operate the hot-water on facility independently of the central heating facility. There is one common set of times for both.

However you can have hot water programmed for up to 3 times a day (or all day if that's how you chose to set your system) and exclude the central-heating by shutting the keys on the individual radiators.

If you have a FULLY PUMPED and controlled system you can programme totally different times for hot water and heating.

As far as I know this has nothing to do with needing a new boiler. It's to do with the setup of the entire system.
 
..

If you have seperate thermostats upstairs and downstairs then my understanding is that you would have motorised valves. And I think its the valves that are the key.
The boiler comes on, if its water only the valves stay closed and in effect that makes it the same as closing off each rad with a key.
 
Hot water and central heating - is it possible ?

Noahcold,
I recently built a bungalow with oil fired central heating and the plumber installed an elecrtonic valve (don't know what it is called) in the line from the boiler.This valve is operated with an on/off switch.
Switching it off diverts all the hot water to hearing the immersion tank.
Switching it on heats both the immersion tank and the radiators.
No need to go near the radiators.
I imagine any good plumber, hardware or electrical wholesalers should be able to advise you.
 
I keep getting told that the only way is to close all the radiators during summer and I can have hot water from oil burner but this is a drag.
Click to expand...
Is it really that big a deal? So you turn off the rads once the weather gets warmer around May. If you get a cold spell, you can turn on the rads in the main rooms again.

Hardly worth a big renovation job to avoid this 'drag', is it?
 
hot water and central heating

Well,if the boiler is turned on for the entire year than the pump is working all the time,day and night using up electricity.Lets assume the pump uses 80 kw/h than we have 1920 watts a day,or to round up 2kw.The 80 watts difference are easily consumed by the burner,so 2 kw should be a conservative number.
2 kw a day x 180 (for a half year in the summer) would be 360 kw.Multiplied with a price of roughly €0.14 gives us a total of €50.Further we have to keep in mind that the pumps lifetime is reduced by 50% .New pump incl. labour lets say € 200,every 5 years gives a write- off of about € 40 a year.
We are at €90 for a half year of continuous warm water availability.
But that does not incl.the extra fuel that is wasted with every start of the boiler-at every start a boiler uses much more fuel as in the running modus.And we have to take into account the radiation loss of the immersion tank,which might be a gain in winter but is a nuisance during summer.Plus losses of the pipes,the boiler switches of but the pump keeps pumping the water around the system and therefore COOLS down the immersion tank.
I would calculate as a ballpark figure a Conservative €150
just for the losses,plus the costs for the fuel (oil or gas) for the warm water that you get out of the taps...
and the extras for the chimney sweeping. The chimney is cold before each boiler start and therefore condensation/soot can be a problem because it won't get really warm in the chimney during the few minutes heating up time .
Get a new boiler.One that is running only on demand .You open the tap and get warm water.You close the tap and the boiler stops.And you can dump the hot press and have a really big bathroom.And you can forget the chimney sweeper if you get a condensing boiler.
There a combi boilers available which work on gravity systems as well. Check www.sedbuk.com
I hope the link works this time, if not check Marions post above.Thanks Marion anyhow.
 
Heating

I know nothing about heating so this might be a silly answer but we have oil heating and in the summer we use an electric immersion heater on a timer to heat our water and don't go near the heating.
 
re

I live in rural Ireland and water pressure is not great but I have oil heating and just have to flick off a switch to have hot water only and the plumber/electrican that installed it said its simple
 
What the question is...

Noahcold was asking for a central heating system(!) that allows him to have a continuous (!) "hot water run off the
boiler for the central heating".He was not asking for
a.)an immersion boiler nor a
b.)timer switch
Both methods a.) and b.) would give a result, but not the desired one.
 
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