Solar and UFH systems

Mr Ree

Hello to everyone. This is my first post on boards.ie and I hope someone can help me in my hour of need

I am designing an heating system with existing radiators / boiler and new under floor heating. Solar panels will be fitted for hot water with surplus solar heat going to a buffer storage. The buffer storage will heat the radiators and/or under floor heating. Anyone have experience of such systems?

I will be using a mixer valve with pump and manifold for the UFH.
I am concidering using a simple circuit as supplied by a Cork company or a more complex system with a by-pass valve, seperate 3way mixer valve and thermostatic valve with remote sensor etc.. Can anyone tell me what the advantages of the complex system are and are they of any advantage. See attachments.

quentingargan

Mr Ree wrote: »

Hello to everyone. This is my first post on boards.ie and I hope someone can help me in my hour of need

I am designing an heating system with existing radiators / boiler and new under floor heating. Solar panels will be fitted for hot water with surplus solar heat going to a buffer storage. The buffer storage will heat the radiators and/or under floor heating. Anyone have experience of such systems?

If you have other reasons to use a buffer tank, then solar may provide some small benefits, but there are other posts here about using solar for space heating.

Although I work in the solar industry, to my mind it only makes sense for providing hot water during the summer when the heating is off. During our Irish winter, we seldom get enough light for the panel to make a useful contribution to space heating - certainly it would take decades to cover the cost of installing a buffer tank just for that purpose.

We recently did a simulation using over 15 sq m of panels with a 1000L buffer tank. Data was for Cork. The result was 1,150Kwhrs contributed to space heating. At 7c per KwHrs for oil, that would save about €80 per year. Q