I am new to this forum and trying to gather information to make informed decisions about how to approach the planning of our heating system. So I will be extremely grateful for any helpful comments. It may be that we need to find a reliable someone to pay for the design of the system but, here too, help would be gratefully accepted as i have no idea where to find a reliable accredited someone.
We are in the process of rebuilding a house in central italy. the construction is reclaimed stone from the original demolished building on the outside face, then anti seismic poroton bricks, 10 cms of insulation and another thin inner layer of poroton finished with cement plaster. the house will end up being 190m2 finished internal size. the house is on a south facing hillside.
We are planning to use underfloor heating and want to use use wood as our primary heating source as it is plentiful and cheap there, supplemented with solar panels for summer hot water (and hopefully contributing to winter space heating). We are considering either a 'Vulcano' fire insert with a back boiler which would be sited in the living room or a wood gassification boiler (in an outhouse) from either Viessman or alternatively Kotly from eastern europe since it is far cheaper and we are being crippled by the fall in the value of the pound. I have heard that we could have issues with the overproduction of hot water in the summer if we have enough solar panel size to make a generous contribution to winter space heating. How does one overcome that one?
Should we use flat plate or vacuum tube collectors? Or what about the Solartwin option including a PV pump?
What size thermal store would we need and would we need a separate store/ accumulator for DHW ?
Would it be a good idea to buy all our equipment including the UFH from Viessmann since it seems to be a co-ordinated system?
Does anyone have any experience importing from Kotly?
Does anyone have recommendations either generally or specifically regarding the type of products to use?
And finally ANY contributions will be very gratefully accepted
It is difficult to find people in our area of Italy who are really familiar with and competent to install a system along these lines. We are getting masses of conflicting information and everyone wants to charge us a fortune. Our budget is limited and shrinking due to the aforementioned fall of the pound. We would like to make the system as efficient as possible obviously but also as simple as possible.
Thanks.

<blockquote><cite>Posted By: sanje48</cite>Should we use flat plate or vacuum tube collectors? Or what about the Solartwin option including a PV pump?
What size thermal store would we need and would we need a separate store/ accumulator for DHW ?
Would it be a good idea to buy all our equipment including the UFH from Viessmann since it seems to be a co-ordinated system?
Does anyone have recommendations either generally or specifically regarding the type of products to use?
And finally ANY contributions will be very gratefully accepted
It is difficult to find people in our area of Italy who are really familiar with and competent to install a system along these lines. We are getting masses of conflicting information and everyone wants to charge us a fortune. Our budget is limited and shrinking due to the aforementioned fall of the pound. We would like to make the system as efficient as possible obviously but also as simple as possible.
Thanks.</blockquote>

Firstly, source EVERYTHING in Italy, preferably made by an Italian company, otherwise you'll have big problems getting your plumber to work with your components, and they'll probably not sign off the work in order to get your habitation certificate.

Flat plate. Yes, you can run a PV pumped system. I do. However, for the reasons above, I'd avoid Solartwin.

I'm further south than you, and my experience has been that even tradesmen that claim to understand things like woodburner DHW and solar system do not. You have to decide what you want, then explain it to them along with your reasons. Then watch them like a hawk when they're working to make sure they do what you agreed. If you're Italian or dialect isn't up to it, you're really going to struggle without a bi-lingual, clued-up, geometra - and they're like hens teeth.

Yes, stuff is expensive here, unless you [i]fai da te[/i]. You just have to take ownership of the system (from sizing to implementation) and not let yourself get swayed by spurious red herrings. I must have had to take back at least 70% of the parts of my hot water system because people thought they knew better. Anything related to solar carries a surcharge - the €4 air valve next to my panel is exactly the same as one marked as Solare which someone tried selling me for €90.

This is an Italian article on their new high standard of energy friendly house - including the essential ventilation and heat recovery requirement. I suggest you shove this under the nose of your Geometra and ask him to advise whether he can do anything about getting anywhere near these standards and if so how much it will cost. Good luck