Wet Under Floor Heating Systems

If you are fitting out a large area, or want to convert your entire home, then the best approach is the wet option. An Orpington Plumber can fit wet UFCH. It means you just have to extend your CH system but with two issues:

1). How to lay the pipework?
2). How to control the temperature?

Point 2 first, the way to achieve a steady temperature is to use a ‘Blending’ valve. With this, the boiler will continue to create water at about 80 degrees C but is kept from the under floor heating system. Instead the valve monitors the temp of the water in the UFCH (under floor central heating system), adding a small amount of CH water as required to keep the temp at 35-40 degrees C.

Ina small UFCH system, the same can be achieved by using a thermostatic blending valve. In lager systems a thing called a manifold is needed. This is a combination of circulating pump, plus a blending valve and series of valves to isolate the heating in certain rooms and manage whole system flow.

In even larger systems it reduces the efficiency of the system as the boiler is turned on and off every couple of minutes in order to top up the UFCH. For this a thing called a ‘buffer tank could be added which is a thermal store, basically a large body of water kept at the correct UFCH temperature and would sit in between the boiler and the manifold. With this arrangement the boiler heats the thermal store and the store provides the heat for the manifold. Orpington Plumbers fit manifolds.

The store loses heat quite slowly, therefore can keep heating the manifold for a long time without help from the boiler (saving energy). It is good for systems that use an air source heat pump, in which you can run the heat pump during the day when it is cost effective to heat the ‘buffer tank’ and then use this hot water to supply the UFCH at night when the pump runs less efficiently.



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