Yes, Yes, YES, and YES!!!!! That is exactly what I was trying to get across. Sorry for the confusion there.......

Yep, in direction of flow, you should always have coolest heat sources (say, solar) -> hottest sources (wood, oil, etc) -> storage -> loads in descending order of temperature need.... This will give you ultimate efficiency as you can extract the most heat possible from a given gallon of water......

Please note though, with primary secondary you can’t interface to your tank in quite so straight forward a way.. In order to use stratification to your advantage, you have to be able to change flow direction through the tank… But, for the primary/secondary to work right, the water must be drawn off of the primary pipe and returned downstream, regardless of whether you’re charging or discharging… So some sort of reversing circuit is necessary… a 4-way valve can be used, or 4 individual ball valves with actuators......

here: check this thread out: http://www.hearth.com/econtent/index.php/forums/viewthread/19476/P15/ Post number 20 has a picture/diagram of how mine is set up…

deerefanatic - 13 August 2008 10:25 PM

Please note though, with primary secondary you can’t interface to your tank in quite so straight forward a way.. In order to use stratification to your advantage, you have to be able to change flow direction through the tank… But, for the primary/secondary to work right, the water must be drawn off of the primary pipe and returned downstream, regardless of whether you’re charging or discharging… So some sort of reversing circuit is necessary… a 4-way valve can be used, or 4 individual ball valves with actuators......

Thanks deerefanatic- I realize that when it comes to maintaining stratification in the tank, I’ll definitely need to pump in opposite directions depending on whether I am charging the tank or drawing from it (and I appreciate you pointing it out/ confirming it; in these e-conversations it’s always hard to know what someone else already is or isn’t tuned into)

__ BUT__ as far as how that frequently reversing direction of secondary flow to/from storage interacts with the tees where the tank’s secondary circuit meet the primary circuit, I’ve been able to confirm that the Taco Twin Tee product, which has the secondary inlet and outlet right next to each other (side by side with a baffle in between), not one downstream from the other like regular “close tees”, solves that 100%-- see this other thread (the Twin Tees also turn out to have some nice advantages of being much more tolerant than the “traditional” close-spaced tees in terms of being able to be snugged in close together, or close to up/downstream fittings, permitting a more compact overall layout (now I just hope they aren’t prohibitively costly)(but they seem almost certain to be less costly, and certainly more reliable/ less complicated than a bunch of powered valving and associated controls)

http://www.hearth.com/econtent/index.php/forums/viewthread/20918/

true, the Twin tee is definitely the way to go.. even if you can’t afford it for the whole system, at least for your heat storage… It can save you a ton of effort..