DIY Doctor UK DIY Forums

Hi all
This might be a first? on this forum anyway.

Basically iam in the process of building my ageing father a small annex which is self contained it is adjacent to our un-heated swimming pool and I would like to install an oil boiler in a outbuilding near the pool and housing the pump and filter. The general idea would be to heat the pool in the summer and provide heat and hot water to the annex year round.

I have spoken to a couple of local heating engineers who have both
suggested an S plan system? I would be interested to hear from anybody that has seen anything like this or could provide me with a schematic, I can work out my rad sizes from this site to cover the annex, but the pool is 12000galls and I dont know how to work out the btus for it or what size heat exchanger and other equipment i might need ? so that I can at least look like I know what to ask for. :oops:

I think oil is not the way to go with this.

The running costs are only going to rise with time and the heating may become unaffordable.

Oil heating systems use to be cheap to run but with oil reaching $100 a barrel, most people using them are asking for replacement systems.

From Jan 08 has a company we are not installing any oil heating systems, there are better systems available that may cost more to install but have far lower running costs.

Further to peters post I am quite intrigued as to what fuel he has in mind to replace oil in areas not supplied by mains gas which is cheaper, ground source, air source and solar heating are options with very limited capacity, certainly not able to cope with anything on this scale. All fuel prices will rise including mains gas, currently the cheapest, with oil being 2nd cheapest. Be very aware that with LPG the tank rental/maintenance must be included with running costs to give an overall cost, lots of companies do not include this in their forecasts

I did see a similar job to this one in the summer.

They used a ground source geothermal heating system and costs £10,000 (8kW system)

We all stood round and look at it; we all said it was never going to work.

But its performance was a surprise and I understand it was being power by a 200-wat pump.

That was a new pool and they put the heating pipes inside the walls and base.

I look at this one last week and I could see the steam coming off of it and the guy who owns it was very happy with it.

Has we all know with boilers, people do turn them off, the house cools down, and then we need that big 35kw boiler to knick in and warm up the house fast.

With ground sourced heating its better if you leave them on all the time and they work best with under floor heating systems.

But you don’t get hot water from them, but they will pre heat the water supply reducing the costs of any electric “on demandâ€

I think there are valid points in all these replies.

My preference, certainly for the pool heating would be a solar roof if you are building and extension and there is a south facing section. The minimal cost would be greatly offset by reduced need for conventional roofing materials. We supply and install these and can give you more details if you are interested.
Dave

thanks for the feedback guys, dont think i made it very clear. The building is in place, and all pipework etc etc and I have to go for an oil boiler because thats what i have already for the main house,we have only lpg as an alternative and i dont fancy that. The flow and returns are in barrier pipe from the boiler house to the annex together with 2 four core swa 1.5 cables to operate the thermostats etc. What i would like is a sketch of what is needed to complete, based on an oil boiler. thanx in advance :wink: