Banging pipes and trouble heating water

[Deaglan1985]

Hi everyone, really hoping someone can help me as I’m a complete novice.

I moved into a house over a year ago. The house has an open fire, and oil heating.

however if we have the fire lit or oil heating on it has never heated the water. Every day we would need to switch on the electrical socket in the kitchen if we wanted hot water. However this has put our energy bill up by unbelievable amounts. So I’m keen to see if there is an easy fix to all this.

So I’ll start with the fire. Every time we lite it and pull out the damper, you can hear the roar as it is pulled up the back, but within 5 or 10 minutes the banging from every pipe in the house is unreal, it actually scares us as we think something is about to blow up. So we always push it back in for fear of what might happen if we leave it pulled out.

The oil heating heats the radiators no problem but doesn’t seem to heat the water, now if we leave the oil heating on for an hour, one of us might be lucky enough to have just enough Luke warm water for a 3-4 minute shower.

I have attached two pictures to this post. The first picture shows two pipes going into the hot press tank, now both of these valves are fully open.
On the second picture, this pipe is coming down from the loft and doesn’t seem to be connected to the hot press tank at all, it runs from loft straight down through the floor boards, again their is a valve on it but this is fully closed. Tonight when the pipes were banging like crazy after I pulled damper out from having fire lit (no oil heating on) I have to confess that I opened this valve and heard water gushing down it from the loft and the pipe became scalding hot so I quickly closed it again incase I do any damage. So clearly the fire is heating the water tank in loft, but I’m confused as to why this water is not making its way to the taps?
I am considering getting a plumber out, but don’t want to be hit with a big bill (never called one before but heard horror stories of plumbing bills, even though they may be online myths), so I’m posting here in the hope that some of you may have any advice. Especially if these valves are in the correct positions.

thanks in advance

 

[gingalig]

You need a plumber/engineer, preferably one with experience of heating water with a fire. If the system is linked to your boiler you should have a neutraliser like a dunsley or a thermal store, neither of which are cheap, but leaving the current system in place could prove very expensive if it's not correctly piped, you may have someone be able to get it running as intended but it could be potentially dangerous if done incorrectly or very expensive if you have a pipework failure. This isn't a job for the faint hearted and you definitely need some one with experience.

 

[centralheatking]

I would get a Hetas engineer out to have a look. Playing with open fires which are connected to a water heating system is very dangerous, I would not light the fire at all water turning to steam can and has exploded. If you live in a rural area there will be reliable engineers experienced in solid fuel and oil burners. Centralheatking
If you put up roughly were you live on this Forum there are engineers on here with this sort of experience

 

[bear]

I think your fire heats the hot water and the boiler the heating. Those valves should be open. But you would need a plumber to check. The expense of the plumber will be cheaper in the long run than high electric bills.