Can anyone tell me the most efficient way of heating and using hot water. Hopefully not a daft as sounds is it better to heat it to sun surface temp and use sparingly diluted with cold or have a roof collapsing quantity of warm cylinders in loft.I currently heat (heating) with log burner boiler and have recently installed tandem hot water system running off gas combi when cold and cylinder when hot.Havent had system in long enough for comparisons but thinking of solar heat pump as well for summer use. Remember at school heating water 1degree per minute etc etc are results linear? is there a good bit of graph? is it better to be very hot but small or cooler and large for heat loss values? can you mix hot water output from tank straight into thermo mixer (thus making mega hot water go further)? sorry for myriad of questions but results required for heat pump trials many thanks CT1
tony
17 Sep 2009, 9:36 PM
In terms of heat lost from a hot cylinder the lower the temperature of the stored water the less heat will be lost
A lot of people talk about bacteria forming in hot stores but I have my thermostat set to 50 C and have for at least 25 yrs so do most of North America.
Low is most economic
The heat lost goes into the house so may be heat losses are not so important as we make out as the heat not lost would have to provided some other way.
Then there are risks fro scalding
heinbloed
25 Sep 2009, 9:30 AM
Since you're loking for a definite answer("..the most efficient way of heating ..) you will have to employ a heating engineer. Check the yellow pages, try the chamber of trades.
