sagraiasolar's activity

ah... one of those.  I'm just aiding the removal of one because as it heats fresh water there is a build up of lime scale which has clogged it up. In some ways they are like giant solar kettles. The replacement system will have some nice new panels with a pumped circuit to a coil in the new heat bank.  I digress... so back to your tank... I don't suppose you want to get on the roof to cover it.... leaving it empty will definitely damage it because the panel itself is filled with 5 litres of antifreeze/solar fluid and this will boil almost as soon as the sun hits it. All I can think of at the moment is to fit a time-switch and solenoid valve to a hot tap for a daily timed heat dump.... 300 litres into the pool?   You can convert it to a pumped circuit + (bigger) cylinder just by removing the tank on the panel, so that might be a longer term option.

... have a look at your solar controller... if it is just a simple DeltaT switch then you can get overheating problems and you might have to upgrade it to something a bit more dedicated. The better ones have a'holiday' setting where the pump runs heat back out through the panels at night so each day starts with a cool tank.  Balancing tank size with solar panels is obviously important. I'd happily comment if you give details.

There is a lot of comment on wood stove selection in the news letters on the heatingitaly web site and far too much to go into here. However - I nearly always fit the Clearview 750 (14kW)  with the 7kW back boiler and, as suggested above, use a heatbank for storage and transmission of the resulting energy and for fresh unstored hot shower/cooking water.   My all season heating model enables various house sizes to be plugged in and then a range of heating appliances can be inserted .... the annual bill is calculated automatically..... a wood stove is by far the cheapest energy source and I guess we'd all have one for the joy of it anyway but after that there is usually a gap to fill and with heat pump prices now comparable to pellet stoves I'd give serious consideration to the idea of having a small Air Source Heat Pump as well. With one of these you won't need a gas boiler and even solar panels usually give way because the ASHP is so good that the panels struggle to make up their investment. To whet your appetite for an ASHP there's an article in one of the older newsletters on how to get 6kW of heating power completely free of cost.

...yes AndyT this is a bit of a DIY job but it does the trick. Just a couple of hacked garden solar lights and a relay to connect up the immersion heater whenever the sun shines enough for the big PV panels to do free hot water.

Bunterboy -  the Clearview 750 with flat top and 7kW clip in boiler base price is £2,018 inc VAT. Colour adds £54 and UK delivery £49.  If you are buying a stove give good thought about the back boiler. The cast iron ones can crack after a few years and write off the stove... the answer is the stainless steel clip in boiler which allows the stove to last a lifetime. This stove gives 7kW to air and 7kW to water and is enought to do all the heating and hot water on most houses for about 100 quintale of wood.. i.e. about €1,200.  There is often one in the pipeline so transport costs can sometimes be shared.

Twentyknots...... very interesting views on the diesel generator.... I calculate that the running costs are in the same ball park as the dreaded gas but are you factoring in connecting the engine cooling system to your DPS tank? In theory that should make it twice as good. I have supplied loads of DPS tanks in Umbria so I'd be interested in what you propose. Most of the installations here have a DPS heat bank married to a Clearview 750 stove and they heat a whole house for €1,200 so I guess you must be nearly there in energy costs and just need to tame the electricity bills. You should have another look at PV as this will be able to make enough to pay your Enel bills and make you really ZERO COST. The reason why there are fewer industrial sized PV arrays is that it has been hard to get permission but domestic ones are just the same as before. While tariffs have fallen the PV prices have fallen in line so the return on capital is the same but the 'power for money' is miles better. eg a 6kW ground array = under €20,000. Demand for PV systems round here has never been higher so I'd check it out. If you need a local guy to talk to I could probably produce a name from the PV trusted alliance, which is a cowboy free installer list. Your immersion heater idea would be spot on as the DPS tank has a 3kW one as standard. We have done a solar switch which runs the immersion whenever the sun shines enough and that works a treat.

as a by product of installing gas free heating systems - wood - solar - heat pump - I find that a couple of bottles is enough for cooking. So you are potentially already there and can avoid the hassles and costs of a shared system.  Bombolas are old hat things where the gas companies charge you enough to recover their cost.  Our geometra installed one when the house was restored but it goes for 6 years between fill ups and is mainly used for cooking....

No mention of under-floor heating.!!!  If you want some degree of efficiency you'll need it ... the future is all about heat pumps and these run very efficiently on UFH because they don't have to push the heat so far uphill - so to speak. No doubt Badger can explain.

sorry -- seasonpass is not a VPN running on Boxee. It's actually the jailbreak recoding for an Apple TV media box (ATV2).  Before laying out a wad on a new media player I'm going to try to hack my ATV2 with ATV-Flash after the jail break... then install Boxee as a route to a VPN and endless BBC.  I think that's enough jargon for tonight.

.... hard to get this vibe over in a few words but while you are clearly 'there' with your PC there is a lot more to be had by handing over the job to a media player.... check out the latest PopCorn Hour A-300 to see what it's all about.  With a big hard drive fitted you can not only store all your movies, pics, music but other files too. You can then download many apps. including a VPN like SeasOnPass and then get beatifully presented access to the BBC i-store.