Case Studies
Grade 1 Listed Manor House
This Grade 1 Listed Georgian manor house had an inefficient oil and electric fired heating system with oil tanks in the vaulted cellar feeding two oil boilers in the adjacent boiler room.
These boilers supplied a heat load of approx 52kW and were controlled by just one single room thermostat. The domestic hot water was from a single 250 litre domestic hot water cylinder with a secondary pumped feed that was permanently on. Additionally, two 6 kW hydro electric powered boilers fed directly into the primary heating circuit.
The whole system was inflexible, inefficient and produced considerable carbon emissions and so the new owners wanted to replace it with a new one producing CO2 emissions as close to zero as practical. Another factor was the existing radiators and distribution in the house had to remain intact, so all alterations were all to be made from the boiler room with no impact to the look of the building.
The Windhager Solution
Two x 26 kW ‘Windhager BioWIN Exclusiv' wood pellet boilers were installed to the boiler room in replacement of the old oil boilers.
A bespoke twelve tonne capacity waterproof rubber pellet storage tank with automatic hopper refill was fitted into the damp vaulted cellar to automatically refill the boilers when required.
These boilers directly charge a 1000 litre ‘Windhager CaloWIN Premium' accumulator with the existing 2 x 6kW hydro electric boilers supplementing into a separate indirect coil to the accumulator.
A solar thermal evacuated tube system mounted on an ‘A' frame is hidden from view on the inner flat roof area heats a separate 500 litre twin coil solar cylinder to supply the domestic hot water this is then backed up from the ‘CaloWIN' when required.
The secondary pumped hot water is now controlled by a time switch allowing sensible circulation times and again reducing energy demands by not cooling the cylinder when hot water is not required.
The whole system is now managed as four separate areas with independent time and temperature weather compensated controllers on each zone. All works were completed from the boiler room with no impact on the house at all.
Conclusion
The system performs well and is now cheaper to run than the old oil system with almost no carbon emissions. Overall control is vastly improved adding further savings to fuel costs with the owners having the benefit of a much improved domestic hot water supply.
System installed by: Solar Thermal Ltd in Chippenham www.solarthermal.co.uk
