Begetube Solar Powered Underfloor Heating

Following extensive research with renewable industry leaders Solarbayer, Begetube UK are now able to supply complete solar powered underfloor heating and hot water systems.

If you are serious about building a new house and really keeping the annual hot water and heating costs down, you should read this short article and then talk it through with one of our design team - this principal really does work.

The sun provides thousands of times more energy than we can ever hope to harness.  It’s free.  Yet we pay to use coal, oil, gas and electricity to provide our hot water and heating.  Areas around the equator receive the largest share of sunlight, yet even the Scottish Highlands receive a lot of usable solar energy.  In this area the price of heating oil is currently around 63p per litre.  Five years ago it was 30p and 10 years ago 17p.  Gas and electricity follow the same rate of increase as they, like oil, are driven by market forces.  One wonders what the price per litre will be in five or 10 years.  As it gets harder to find and extract them, oil and gas will become even more expensive,and these carbon-based fuels release Co2 into the atmosphere causing climate problems.

The idea of using free energy from the sun has been around for a long time, the problem has always been storing the solar energy until it is needed.  We are all aware that the amount of solar energy striking the earth is many thousands of times more than we could all possibly use, so how can we utilise more of this free energy, and what is most important, how can we achieve this without involving the sometimes enormous costs involved with ground source heat pumps.

Solar Thermal Panels

Solar panels intercept the energy produced by the sun and convert it to hot water.  Ideally the thermal collectors will be installed on a south-facing roof, but the system can be adapted to work with an east/west split.  Even during winter in the Scottish Highlands, although it’s very cold we tend to have clear skies, which means you can still harvest solar energy.  When outside temperatures are –5C, the sun is still producing enough energy for the solar panels to heat the thermal store to 50 to 60C.  This energy is free, clean and renewable.  Our advice is to use solar energy as much as possible and back it up with another energy source such as a log burning boiler.

Log Gasification Burners

The latest thermal storage tanks are made to accept heat energy from any source in addition to solar, So you can top up your store with heat energy from a log burner, condensing oil or gas burner.  Log burners are the greenest option as they are carbon neutral.  If you live in the country, wood is also cheap and plentiful, although it takes a bit of work to cut, split and store it.  You don’t have to burn the log burner for 24 hours to heat up the thermal store, it can be lit as and when needed just to top up to the temperature required.  log burners are much more efficient than they used to be — particularly gasification boilers.  When wood burns it gives off gases.  These used to go up the chimney. Now they go into a lower hearth where they are burned at a very high temperature to provide more energy.  Today’s log burners are 90 per cent efficient.  The latest condensing gas, oil or wood pellet burners can also be used as a back up energy source.  It’s easy to control a system like this.  The idea is to gather as much solar energy as possible.  Sensors switch in the backup heat source as required.  It’s all automatic and has weather-dependent controls to ensure peak performance at all times.  Underfloor heating is one of the most efficient ways of using heat in a property, whether it’s for an aircraft hangar or in a sitting room.  The heating system forms its own heat store in the floor, so the energy you need to achieve the room temperature you want is very small.  And once it’s at the desired temperature it only needs a small input of energy to keep it at that level.  The whole system is designed to run at lower temperatures, which means it needs less energy than a standard heating system and provides a higher level of comfort.  It is possible to retrofit a central heating system with radiators to accept solar support.  But radiators are more wasteful as they heat the air and operate at a higher temperature, which means you need a much bigger thermal store. 

Thermal Store Tanks

Using solar energy to heat water for domestic use in a hot water cylinder is a good starting point, but with the equipment and controls available now we can take this principal to a much higher level, and with an accurately designed low temperature floor heating system we can now put solar energy to work providing a comfortable environment as well as domestic hot water.

To achieve this does not involve a huge financial outlay, more a change of direction (thinking out of the box).  Water is an excellent heat storage medium, in fact it is five times more efficient than concrete.  So instead of a standard solar hot water cylinder and solar thermal panel installation, it will be far more efficient to replace that with a large thermal store and extra solar thermal panels.  Replacing the conventional hot water cylinder with a thermal store is the first step, a thermal store is the opposite to a hot water cylinder and enables different heat sources to be connected into the system.  Solar will obviously be the prime input as it is a free energy, to that end it is advisable to fit extra solar thermal capacity to enable a better input of energy in spring and late autumn.  There will obviously be times when solar input is minimal so a back-up system is needed, the best advice we can give is to use a wood burning appliance to maintain low running costs—this option is not always suitable to some people, but as this is a thermal store then anything can be connected and provide a top up of heat energy.

Domestic hot water is easily obtained from a thermal store via a plate heat exchanger or high efficiency coil, these units are very efficient and dispense with the need to store domestic hot water—it is simply hot water on demand.

The floor heating system should be controlled to respond to external temperatures, ( weather compensation ) this level of control will ensure that the lowest water temperature possible will be flowing in the floor and therefore make more use of solar energy before requiring extra heat from another source.

Further information click here for contact information and our technical team will be pleased to discuss your requirements.