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Heating and cooling: Thermal store open vented to Plate heat exchanger sealed heating system

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  1.  
    • CommentAuthorcubbs
    • CommentTimeFeb 9th 2016
     
    Evening

    Talking to a fellow plumber today and hes fitted a Gledhill TS with a mix of open vented for the store and the UFH and then the upstairs rads are heated through a plate heat exchanger and sealed mains fed system. He was worried with airlocks on the rad pipework and Gledhill advised the heat exchanger solution.

    My set up will be a http://tmsthermalstore.com/ 500lt TS on ground floor along side one, possibly 2 of the UFH manifolds. Then the heating pipework is to run up and over two rooms in the floor joists then drop to ground floor UFH manifold under stairs so making a "goalposts" scenario. This will be very hard to vent with manual or AAv's.

    So Im thinking of having the TS open vented of course but also some of the central heating then passing rest of UFH via a plate heat exchanger but make this side a sealed system with an expansion vessel making it all easier to fill off water mains and vent etc and less chance of airlocks.

    Can any one see problems or add any comments?

    TS will initially be heated via oil boiler, then next winter a solid fuel boiler stove with solar thermal panels a few years down the line.

    Thanks
    • CommentAuthorringi
    • CommentTimeFeb 9th 2016
     
    (I assume your expansion tank will be well above the top level of all the radiators and pipework.)

    One option is to use a SpiroVent between the outlet of the boiler and the TS, this will result in there being “negative” air in the water, as hotter water holds less air. The SpiroVent removes all the small air bobbles from the water that form when the boiler heats the water.

    Then provided your pump is powerful enough and you can force all the output of the pump to go into the pipe where the air lock is to clear it, it is likely that new airlocks will not form.

    We have a normal open vented gas boiler, but our pipework is in the loft dropping down to each radiator, before I fitted the SpiroVent airlocks where common. We have not had one since apart from when we refilled the system.
    • CommentAuthorcubbs
    • CommentTimeFeb 10th 2016
     
    Hi

    I've not heard of a spirovent but most domestic heating systems are pressurised and sealed anyway so fill easily

    Ideally I do not want to be faffing around trying to blow out air locks.

    The tank will be up in loft a good few metres above the rads

    Cheers
    • CommentAuthorringi
    • CommentTimeFeb 10th 2016
     
    You will have faffing around with your plate heat exchanger, and trying to control the two pumps so as to make best use of the heat in your thermal store.

    (Once you have got the air locks out, assuming there are no leaks to let air in in I expect you will have few if any issues with air locks.)
    •  
      CommentAuthordjh
    • CommentTimeFeb 10th 2016
     
    Why will the goal posts be hard to vent? Surely a manual vent at the top of the goal would work?

    What's the advantage of having some of heating fed directly from the thermal store as well as the part fed via a PHE?
    • CommentAuthorJonG
    • CommentTimeFeb 10th 2016
     
    Make sure of the PHE sizing if you go down that route they need to be pretty big to avoid too much distortion across the primary and secondary flow.

    Why not seal the whole system and pick a stove that is suitable for such. More efficient and less risk of oxygen entrainment etc. via an open end.
  7.  
    In my experience AAVs work - they do what is says on the tin! If you are using a pumped system then with just a small amount of care with the pipework and all the air will be pushed around the system. If you put the AAV on a small upstand then all the air will collect in the upstand and disappear out of the AAV.

    Plate heat exchangers can play havoc with the stratification in a thermal store due to the high speed/volume of (hot) water stuffed back into the TS.
    • CommentAuthorcubbs
    • CommentTimeFeb 11th 2016
     
    Spirovent sounds good although pricey.

    I'll add a filling loop for faster filling. I'll shut off a couple of lever valves to TS etc, fill it up off filling loop then reopen the valves and let it all sit under tank pressure

    Thanks

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