How We Generate The Most Efficient Hot Water On EARTH

Unlock the ultimate efficiency secrets for hot water cylinders in our latest 2 part video! Join Adam as he unveils the steps to creating the most efficient cylinder...in the world. Make sure to watch part 2 for the full picture!

Part 2 ‘Controls’ - coming soon!..

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[yixfjeu]

Seriously, this man should be in line for an OBE. Over the last few years he's been dragging the culture of air2water heat pump installation in the UK (kicking and screaming?) into the place it needs to be - where it's trusted, efficient, and reliable. If this was left to the government, we'd be years behind - just look at the miserably low standards of MCS for heat pump installations. And all done for the right reasons - 1. because we need low carbon home heating; 2. giving installers the self-respect and pride that comes with doing a top notch job where they actually understand what they are installing, and 3. helping interested home owners understand their own heating systems.
Massive respect and gratitude.

[upnorthandpersonal]

Here in Finland, I use a different approach: the heat pump is directly coupled to the storage tank without heat exchanger coil. The domestic hot water is extracted from the tank with a coil. This means that the water in the buffer (in my case, 3000L - yes, thousand, not hundred) together with the heat pump circulation and the underfloor radiant forms a closed system (and contains propylene glycol antifreeze as well). The stratification principle is used by putting the domestic hot water coil all the way at to the top of the tank. The heat pump always gets the coldest water from the bottom of the tank. I'm off-grid, so there is also a wood gasification boiler coupled to the tank for those months where I don't have enough solar to heat (no sun in December and -30C), but otherwise this time of year (still close to and below freezing) I just dump all the excess solar power into the tank with the heat pump and I don't need any wood.

[robwoodcock]

I was involved with a company which invented Heat Pumps to cool Cellars (mainly pubs) and heat water . We used various cylinder designs. We could provide all the hot water for 12 bedroom hotels and busy pub kitchens just from one cellar!

[metalhead]

"We encourage other manufacturers to take our design and improve upon it" Does that mean you're going to open source or licence your design to these manufacturers? :) I love the collaborative approach you have embraced to push the whole industry forward! Keep up the great work!

[fugazi]

Amazing work, definitely up for one of those cylinders when I have my ASHP put in later in year. Well done. You are the Martin Lewis of Heating Engineers!

[albex]

I use a heatpumpboiler. It's set to 52 degrees in the night. In the morning it goes to 60 degrees. Even in the winter, my solar panels give enough power to give me free warm water.
Most is controlled by Home Assistent and Shelly controls.

[robandrews]

Ive been interested in heatpumps for over a year now, watching your videos along the way, finally starting to see some real difference going on lately, keep going guys!!!

[Koopris]

Recently retrofitted a Willis heater to my vented cylinder to dump excess solar. Beautifully simple design working on natural thermosyphon. Heats from the top of the tank down, maintains stratification due to low flow rate. Also ensures that what excess solar you have goes to usable hot water in contrast to a traditional immersion element.

[hughrattray]

Excellent work - I would add another requirement for the ideal tank and that is the ability to see how much hot water is in the tank.
I find myself having to do hot water boosts just in case we might run out - this is a waste of energy if there is enough left in the tank.

[aerenewables]

brilliant video as usual !! fitting that cylinder tomorrow can't wait to see how well it performs😀

[BristolHeatPumps]

We include these in most of our quotes now, such a great bit of kit and much better than alot of manufacturers own brand of cylinders.

[wardy]

My parents have just had one of these installed, so far the performance is very impressive.

[johnh]

That's interesting Adam. My natural instinct would have been to think that a de-stratification pump would increase thermal transfer and efficiency - but as you say, it's better for the heat pump transfer from the coil if it's in the coldest water. Following that but less significant would also be that the flow enters the lower end of the coil and exits its top.

I'm glad I don't have a de-strat pump now.

I have a tall 300 litre Joule cylinder specifically designed for heat pumps with a bigger coil. I've set up my Midea heat pump to heat to 50°C during cheap electricity times at night and once a week to 60°C for Legionella - avoiding use of the immersion heater which is only 100% efficient.

I did get an Eddi solar diverter but since the export tariffs pay at least twice the cheap rate now (e.g. 15p/kWh export and 7.5p/kWh import on Octopus Intelligent Go) it makes no sense to heat the hot water with solar PV using the only 100% efficient immersion heater. Although it's "free" it would just stop the tank heating from the heat pump at night because it would already be hot and I'd lose out on the 2:1 tariff profit advantage which if I'm running a COP = 3 effectively means a COP = 6 in cost terms.

The Eddi is now only used to monitor the tank temperature at the top (the heat pump monitors the bottom) and timed to top up the end of the Legionella cycle if the heat pump can't quite get to 60°C but it usually gets to 58°C or so so there's little point in topping it up.

[xxwookey]

I spent a lot of time looking into stratified cylinders back in 2008, mostly from the point of view of maximising solar thermal input. The only tanks one could buy with the right characterisitics (internal stratifiers, input diffusers) were German, Dutch, Finnish and mostly huge and expensive. (Consolar, Solvis, wallnoefer, Tiso, Akvaterm etc). I considered making my own as no-one was selling a UK-sized tank designed to stratify nicely (for less than 3 grand), but didn't trust my welding skills enough. So I ended up just using a side-mount plate heat exchanger to load a standard domestic cyclinder from the top. This has actually worked pretty well for the last 15 years. You get less total energy transfer but more useable hot water without having to turn on additional heat inputs. So 3/4 of the year 40 tubes does all our hot water (2 people), and the entire solar thermal system plus tank mods cost about £1000.

[DACH]

Bravo - I wish I had found you 5-6 years ago !! Could have saved us so much cost, frustration and increased our scop !!
Having had 2no 13 kw SE GSHP installed - now trying to get a heat geek round to review & refresh & maybe install a energy monitor -

[metalhead]

From looking at the open energy monitor dashboard the minimum cop for DHW was in February at 3.82 and maximum was in December(?!) at 4.90 with an overall cop Jun - Apr of 4.54

[HorizonimagingCoUkPhotography]

A fascinating, well-presented and feature-rich video as always! Thank you HG! 🙏🏻

[DerrickChow]

Excellent explanations, and another informative & interesting video. The logic further reinforces why I've had poor performance with my 200L HORIZONTAL tank. There is essentially no destratification in the horizontal position. I'm further guessing the heat exchanger is going along the inner circumference of the tank (up-down), thus not transferring to the coldest water in the tank. Possibly great distortion but at the cost of lukewarm water when cold water mixes so well that it decreases overall tank temperature quickly. For tank design, besides tall-skinny-vertical, it may further help to have baffles to reduce cold water convection at the water-in.

[brp]

I have one of these cylinders, along with a Vaillant 7kW, being installed in 2 weeks by WDS Green Energy.
Quite excited really.

[anthonysalisbury]

Another really good video and really informative. Always thought no one really has a handle on the "engineering" of these systems, loads of opportunities to become more efficient. I have a solar coil in my tank but never used really thought about plumbing it together with the main coil to increase the surface area 🙈