Hot water heating devices

Imagine, on a cold winter day, you enter a beautiful, tastefully decorated mansion with luxurious interior decoration and feel that you absolutely do not want to take off your fur coat, and your only desire is to leave this house as soon as possible, because the temperature inside is about 11 degrees below zero. What do you think only happens in a nightmare? Not necessary.

During the construction of a country house, much attention is often paid to interior decoration and decor, while the planning of utilities remains for later, although in fact the interior is only an external component of coziness and comfort. Therefore, when making an estimate of construction costs, do not forget to allocate about 10-15 percent of the total project cost for the construction of utilities, in particular the heating system.

Heating systems are water, air, electric, including those with a heating cable embedded in the floor of heated rooms. In this article, we will focus on the main devices used in autonomous hot water heating systems, as the most common in central Russia.

Hot water heating systems consist of boiler equipment (which includes boilers, boilers, burners and boiler room controls), heating devices (radiators, convectors, underfloor heating) and pipelines.

To begin with, consider the existing boiler equipment today, the main element of which is the boiler. Modern boilers differ in both the principle of operation and the material from which they are made. Cast iron boilers have a high heat capacity, but due to the fact that their mass is much higher than steel boilers, there are some restrictions on the premises in which they are installed.

In particular, the floor must be very solid, otherwise additional foundations may be needed. It should also be borne in mind that if 2 – 3 people are enough to move the steel boiler (its weight is about 100 kg), then rigging with a cast iron boiler can be a problem. In addition, some boilers have the ability to prepare hot water for domestic needs (the so-called sanitary circuit).

According to the principle of operation, boilers are divided into capacitive ones with heating of the coolant (water, antifreeze) inside the tank and flowing ones, in which the coolant is heated in a special coil (a tube bent to obtain greater heat transfer through which the coolant passes). Capacitive boilers are simple and reliable, because their principle is based on the usual heating of water (like in a kettle), in parallel, water is heated for household needs. If you choose a boiler with a large reserve of capacity, then even with an increased consumption of hot water (for example, guests have arrived or you need to wash the car), you will not be left without heat. The disadvantages of this system are large dimensions and inertia, that is, it will take a long time to reach the operating temperature. Also, there are usually more problems with registration in the gas service.

Flow-through boilers They differ in their relatively small dimensions and weight, the possibility of wall installation and, importantly, the simplicity of their official design (they can be arranged as ordinary gas water heaters). The negative properties are the rapid contamination of the coil and, as a consequence, its failure due to overheating, the high dependence on the gas pressure, as well as the practical impossibility of using such a system for additional heating of water in large rooms, because the heat capacity of such a boiler is very small. To prepare hot water in such systems, additional devices are usually used..

There are much fewer options for boilers than boilers, so choosing them is easier on a subjective basis – the more expensive, the better. Good boilers always have high-quality thermal insulation, that is, from the outside they are kind of soft to the touch (you need to pay attention to this). Coils in boilers must have a sufficient diameter and be made of appropriate material, in principle, this is implied by leading manufacturers by itself. It should be remembered that rigging work must be carried out especially carefully to prevent damage to the thermal insulation.

Boiler room burners are usually purchased separately. They can be injection-ventilated or atmospheric and have the following differences – injection-ventilated ones can run on diesel fuel (do not forget that only winter diesel fuel must be filled into the fuel tank). The advantage of these burners is the ability to suck fuel from the depth, if the storage tank is buried, also in gas heating, if the gas pressure is insufficient, then burners of this type will compensate for the deficit due to vacuum vacuum. With the correct setting, the burners require practically no maintenance, they can be changed from diesel to gas and vice versa. Also, compared to atmospheric burners, they have a much higher efficiency. However, there are also some disadvantages. This is the need for a constant connection to the power source required for the automation system, the presence of one or more circulation pumps for supplying diesel fuel, the complexity of starting and adjusting and, finally, the high price.

Atmospheric burners are used only for gas operation, their advantages are low price, simple connection, sometimes there is no need for a power supply, but, unfortunately, they cannot be used in conjunction with diesel fuel. Also, with insufficient gas pressure, the service life is severely limited..

The control system of boiler equipment, depending on the purpose (heating only one building, heating and hot water supply, the presence of underfloor heating circuits), can vary from the simplest, made on thermostatic regulators, to quite complex with computer control. It all depends on the owner’s desire (as well as on the cost) and on the manufacturer of your preferred boiler equipment. The choice of the manufacturer and the heating system control algorithm occurs at the design stage..

So, in this article we looked at the possible equipment systems for your home boiler room. In the next publications, we will continue the series of publications on this topic, where we will examine existing heating devices and pipelines, as well as some of the tricks associated with their use.