Modern Stoves 200 Litre Copper Thermal Store with Built In Header Tank

A Thermal Store is a hot water cylinder, used for storing hot water for domestic consumption and to heat a central heating system, however unlike a traditional hot water cylinder the water within the tank / cylinder is never consumed. Instead of using, or consuming the hot water ...A Thermal Store is a hot water cylinder, used for storing hot water for domestic consumption and to heat a central heating system, however unlike a traditional hot water cylinder the water within the tank / cylinder is never consumed. Instead of using, or consuming the hot water within the thermal store, it is held as a reservoir of hot water that is used to heat your domestic hot water and your central heating system.

The hot water that is held with the thermal store is the same water that is pumped around the central heating system. There are a number of advantages to installing a Thermal Store over a conventional hot water cylinder. A Thermal Store will provide mains pressure domestic hot water, without the perils of having an un-vented / pressurised hot water system.

This is because the domestic hot water that goes to your hot taps is created from mains pressure cold water passing through a sealed coil within the Thermal Store. The mains cold water is heated by the hot water that surrounds the coil as it passes through the coil. This means that unlike with a conventional vented or un-vented hot water tank, you don't consume or use the hot water in the Thermal Store, and therefore there is no requirement to replace the hot water with cold mains water, which on a convention cylinder then cools the remaining hot water.

This means that recovery heat up time is much shorter as the reservoir of water within the Thermal Store is always kept hot, thus making the appliance very efficient. A further advantage of having a Thermal Store is that you can easily introduce multiple heat sources to combine their resources. For example you can link the thermal store to a gas or oil boiler and a wood burning stove with back boiler and Solar Thermal and a heat pump, therefore using different and alternitive sources of heating to suite the time of year and your preferential requirements.

Essentially you can have one, or numerous sources of heat channeled in to a Thermal Store. In addition you can connect the Thermal Store to more than one heating outlet, for example you might want to connect to an underfloor heating circuit and to a separate wall hung radiator central heating system. Thermal Stores work best when they are tall and narrow, against being short and wide, this is because the water in the tank will be hotter at the top than it will at the bottom.

When connecting underfloor heating it is preferential to make the connections lower down the tank, where the water is cooler, because typically speaking underfloor heating is most efficient at around 50 degrees. However when connecting wall hung radiators it is preferential to connect the circuit further up the tank where the water is hotter. Thermal Stores are also normally equipped with an electrical immersion heater, to allow electric heating when non of the heat sources are providing heat, or for use as a method of topping up the temperature of the Thermal Store.

How a Thermal Store Works The water in the cylinder ‘the store’ is heated to and maintained at 76 o C by the heat source which can be a boiler, immersion heaters or solar themal (NB Solar Thermal is optional and must be requested when ordering - extra £159.99). Cold water at mains pressure is fed through a heat exchanger / coil in ‘the thermal store’ (a high efficiency coil). The cold mains water is heated by the surrounding hot water as it passed through the heat exchanger / coil and is them supplied to the taps at a thermostatically controlled 51 o C.

Thermal stores are highly efficient and heat loss is kept to minimum due to the high density CFC free foam installation, meaning minimal heat loss when the thermal store is at rest. This keeps running costs very low because you only heat the water you use. The key to using a thermal store in the most cost effective and efficient manner is to maintain ‘the store’ temperature at a const