Froling / Vesta installation

[Nofossil]

I'm starting a new thread here to avoid blatant thread-hijacking. I've included a plumbing schematic below. Here's the link to the live display as well.

That's big storage.

May I ask what is that big blue lined thing with the two pumps and temp indication on the left side of the diagram? It's what the customer wants, but would it be nice to see the boiler temps too? Do the lines change color?

The blue things with the lines on the left are two arrays of solar hot water panels - I think there are 12 panels at 10 square meters each, evacuated tubes. We modulate the Grundfos 15-58 circulator that pulls heat off the solar panel heat exchanger so that the water going into storage is at the temperature we want.

The lines don't change color, but a couple of the long thin rectangles are live bar graphs. The small squares (in the live version) do change color to indicate whether a valve or circulator is on or not.

 

[velvetfoot]

Ahhh, solar panels.
And, now I know the meaning of the squares.

 

[huffdawg]

What temp is hot enough for the hotter tank , wouldn't it have been better to heat the pool with the cooler tank?

Huff

 

[Nofossil]

That's an error from the original pre-Vesta design. We didn't have an unlimited budget to fix everything. As it turns out, the pool is never heated from the hot tank - only from the solar panels, and even then usually only as a heat dump.

 

[Nofossil]

The target temperature for the hot tank varies depending on the season. It needs to be a good deal hotter in the winter as some of the heat loads (in two of the three buildings) are baseboards. In summer, the heat loads are only radiant floor and DHW, so the storage target is lower. The Froling delivers hot water at around 185, but the solar panels deliver water at whatever the target temperature is. I believe that we're using 180 as a winter target and 160 as a summer target. We also decide how much hot water to push into storage from the Froling based on the time of year, and eventually we'll also consider time of day and solar forecast.

 

[huffdawg]

The two pumps on the left side of the two storage tanks, I'm guessing have the checks removed ? That must be a pricey bank of evac. tubes also.
I'd love to incorporate some solar energy into my system.

 

[Nofossil]

No, those pumps have checks. The lower one is only there in case the upper one fails.

I have poor man's solar hot water that takes care of 90% of our DHW needs during the spring / summer / fall.

 

[jeffesonm]

cool, thanks for sharing