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Solar Space Heating

Typical combined water and space heating systems from us have 20-40m2of SOLAR ROOF >, which is ideally at least 50% of the floor area. A 30m2system will cost around £5500 plus installation. The output from this will be around 7,500kWh/year, saving £440 electricity, or £350 LPG, or £315 of oil, or £215 of gas.

Underfloor heating is recommended for solar space heating, as this works more efficiently than radiators with solar heating. Systems are designed to provide hot water as well as heating from the same solar roof area, and will integrate with all commonly used heating systems.

Solar space heating systems require a large capacity heat store to even out day-night and day-to-day solar fluctuations and heating demand. This heat store may be either:

• A thermal store (a large water tank)
• A concrete floor slab

Using a thermal store - typically 1000 - 3000 litres for a domestic system - has the advantage that the one tank can provide outputs for underfloor heating, radiators and hot water, and will take several heat inputs, including solar roof, boilers and wood stoves. This system is simple and efficient in operation. Alternatively, using a floor slab to store the heat has the advantage that it takes up no space, and often effectively costs nothing, although it will not work quite so efficiently as a thermal store system, as the heat output is not controllable.


System Designs
The most common system design is:

• A large thermal store heated by the solar collector and the boiler. Outputs are taken from this for the underfloor heating and radiators. Hot water for washing is heated instantaneously in the top part of the cylinder.


Other system designs are:

• A flat plate heat exchanger in the underfloor heating circuit, fed by the solar collector, with hot water heated separately in a cylinder, or

• A twin insulated floor slab/screed system with the lower slab heated by the solar collector and used as the store, and the upper screed used to output the heat.
• A wall mounted fan convector heated by the solar collector, with hot water heated separately in a cylinder. Note, there is no heat storage with this design, but the system is simple and relatively inexpensive.

 













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