I'm an end user with limited knowledge of plumbing and just trying to get an understanding of options available to me. We currently have a Valiant Combi Boiler Sealed Unvented Heating system. It was installed 3 years ago and works perfectly well for both CH & HW. Recently we built an extension which is largely glass on the ground floor and this resulted in little space for rads in the main living area downstairs, for this reason and also wanting to reduce our carbon emissions, we have now fitted a Pellet Stove which is capable of heating the downstairs space and also can output hot water to the Solar Ready Thermal Store which we have also installed. The installation isn't complete and so we are now considering how we can retain the use of the gas boiler as a backup system for the pellet burner and also for hot water in the summer. At this stage the Pellet Burner hasn't been commissioned / used. We know that we can operate it on hot water output only but we're not sure how much of an ambient temperature output this will create and whether this will be practical in the summer. Solar Heating is a possibility but it's some way ahead for us for a number of reasons. In any event we are wanting to keep the gas boiler operation for the time being. We're also introducing 2 zone valves off the thermal store which will be controlled by Nest Learning Thermostats and these will control the rads upstairs and also in downstairs bedrooms. The Thermal Store is a Joule 2.0 Solar ready, it has a sophisticated external fresh water mixing module. I'm told that it should be possible to have another manual zone valve to switch between Gas Boiler and Pellet Burner Hot water and if switched to the Gas Boiler input then the gas boiler will only heat the water passing through the fresh water module rather than heating up the whole 300l capacity in the Thermal Store. Are there any other recommended ways of doing this ? Can we get smart with the zone valve between Gas Boiler and Pellet Burner HW input ? I'm just wanting to learn enough to make the right choices that's all - I'm not going to install this myself. Thank you.
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