Solar Heating

[Geotherm]

Originally Posted by Luce Dell'Amore

As we are talking about the effectiveness of different types of heating, I have noticed adverts in several UK house building mags showing heating tubes in skirting as a space saving alternative to rads. Do they work and are they available in Italy? Down here in Puglia if you have a trullo space is limited and if you are keeping the original chianche flooring (as we are) then U/F heeting is a no no.

You could always go for wall panels, just underfloor fixed to a wall basically!! Obviously more expensive than underfloor, but another option.

[Kerry & Susan]

Hi All

Are any of you good people with solar heating suffering with too high temperatures in the system now it's summer? I'm planning a solar system to hopefully make some difference in the colder months but to do that a number of panels are required. Looks like this would result in lots of very hot water through the summer, do you have heat dumps integrated into the system?

Thanks

Kerry

[Giles and Sarah]

Hi Kerry and Susan
Have a look at this link, it is a forum for a solar panels etc, hopefully it will answer your questions.
Cheers
Giles
Set Search Parameters

[Kerry & Susan]

Hi Giles

Thanks for that. I've seen the site and have lots a great info from it, cheers. I know a heat dump must be required in Italy but was wondering if anyone had first hand experience. I've been playing with figures and it seems that with the position of our place a 40 tube system could be kicking out as much as over 50,000 Btu's in the height of July. That's a lot of heat to get rid of in the middle of summer, especially if there're periods when the house is empty so none is being used each day. Unless I've got my figures completely wrong which could be true

Thanks

Kerry

[NickZ]

Bigger tank then normal.

On heat dump. Hot tub

[timwills]

I have 6 panels and a 1,000 litre tank for a 400 m2 house (though we underfloor heat and live in 100 m2 in the winter).
From May - October I max the tank at 85c. Expansion tanks and valves take care of the rest. I do have to top up the 'closed loop' from the panels into the hot water tank in the autumn.
We bought the system direct from Germany.
Hot baths are encouraged!
Best of luck.

[simone-non-martini]

Sorry to sound so out of touch, but by "underfloor heat" do you mean that you can also centrally heat your house with just solar energy and if so is it enough (for the 100 sq. m)?

[timwills]

My apologies for the lack of clarity.
We do have underfloor heating (which is the most efficient way whichever way you heat the water). The solar panels have significantly cut the cost of heating. Due to the extreme variations of the last few years it is hard to say by how much.
We supplement the solar heating with gas. Before we fitted the system we spent over €3,000 p.a. for an oil fired boiler (and were still cold).
After we fitted it we were warm (in our 100 m2) for €400 the first year and €1,200 over the last year, that includes hot water all year round and gas for cooking.
It made sense for us as we excavated downstairs and made a heavily insulated apartment, so the additional cost of putting in the underfloor plus solar panels was about €15,000.
We reckon this will pay for itself in about 7 years.
This may not work for everyone and for people with open land or ponds geothermal may be better. The really important parts are the underfloor (if you start from the foundations up!) and the insulation - which we had from an apartment which is mostly underground.

[Kerry & Susan]

Thanks timwills, a big enough system to make a difference in the colder months I think. Just got to think of something useful for all that hot water in the middle of summer....pool, hot tub, turbine running a genny?

[NickZ]

This is the sort of system I'm working towards. It's in Italian but includes pictures -)

Impianto solare termico per acqua calda e riscaldamento

In my small place with the sort of winters we get here I think wood will handle most of the winter for not much. But the solar will heat the place outside of those real cold weeks.