The Efficient Home Forum

Hello Everyone,

I searched on this forum and others without much success. So apologies if this has been asked before and I am hopeful the community can help me.

I have an old, fairly large house that costs a fortune to heat. Installed EvoHome 2 years ago using TR92s for every rad (usually 2 per room) and zoning them. Definitely helped in the cost reduction...

We replaced and moved the boiler a year ago and moved the EvoHome with it. That helped further. We put in an Ideal Vogue Max 32 System Boiler that feeds CH and HW separately.

Next up is the hot water tank. My plumber reckons the current tank is about 30 years old. Hot water certainly cools quickly enough to suggest he's right. He suggested upgrading to a Thermal Store as in future, I'd consider solar and/or log burner with a back boiler to heat water. I can't find much online about EvoHome with a Thermal Store.

Has anyone done this and with what results? Any additional energy feeds into the thermal store?
If I am barking up the wrong tree completely and should just go for a regular hot water cylinder, any in particular that would work well for the system above?

And any other system changes/efficiency tuning I could do in the meantime, I'd love to hear from those more expert than me (pretty much everyone!)

Cheers
Matt

Hi Matt,

Well thermal stores need to remain 'hot' to provide the home with hot water. This lowers condensing boiler efficiency massively and for the small proportion hot water verses heating requirements, it normally isn't worth it.

Personally, I would always design gas boiler systems with hot water cylinders as dual flow temperatures, to be able to maximise condensing boiler efficiency and recover the hot water effectively. If you have a stove, then there are products out there that allow you to combine them without using a thermal store (buffer cylinder maybe).

I hope that helps?

It does, thanks for the reply. I've also gone off the log burner idea with recent news...

What kind of cylinder should I be looking at that has the recover facility?

Right now my Evohome setup has the separate hot water unit/circuit and is setup as a 2/3 port valve system.

Thanks