termocucine

I am after a bit of advice. We're thinking of running our central heating from a termocucine.  We want one that does sanitary hot water as well as heating. We've been looking at Lanordica (Italy Termo Built-in) and De Manincor (either EKB110 or FK110P or FK110P or EK900). The reason we're so confused it we don't  understand the technical stuff and the info for the layman is sparse to say the least.

This is what we really want:
1. Wood burning cooker to give hot sanitary water and hot water heating (probably radiators)
2. Ideally we'd like it to be autonomous in the sense it doesn't need a heat store but we  have the option to use one in the future as when we get the money we'll get solar for the summer hot water.
3. Shouldn't give too much heat to the kitchen. 3/4 kw is fine. This is why we discounted a wood burner. 
4. In a perfect world it would be great if it could run without mains electricity as we're in the country and aiming for self - sufficiency
5. Lastly, we don't have a massive Marchigiane house,  just a little Liguria stone one.

We saw there is the all - inclusive DSA module that Lanordica do but can't figure out if we'd need it or not. Plus they seem to require all sorts of extras whereas De Manincor don't mention this.

All advice and comments gratefully received.

Hi Admin,  It may help you get some ideas if you trawl some of the back issues of 'heating news' which now reside on www.originaltwist.com  There are some important decisions to be taken here - not to mention expensive - so I'll give the heat bank rationale.
Stoves and cookers usually just make hot water, often connected directly to a radiator circuit, This is dirty water and not for showers. Direct connection means that the rads have to be on when the stove is lit and they have to be on a functioning gravity circuit so it doesn't all boil when there is a power cut. At this time of year you might want the rads off but an evening stove to make showers... so ..DHW for showers etc needs to be stored and extracted from the dirty water so some sort of tank is essential.
The Italian solution to get DHW is to have a tank within a tank where the dirty hot water surrounds a smaller tank containing fresh water. = very poor recovery times, limited DHW storage, fresh oxygenated water in a steel tank promotes corrosion, hot water is stored which promotes bacteria.
A stainless steel heat bank is simply an empty tank barring one coil for the solar circuit.  Everything is directly connected to this tank so inputs might be gas, ASHP, pellet, wood, immersion htr and solar ..  outputs might be rads, towel rails, ufh and of course DHW.
The latter is done via a tiny but powerful heat exchanger. Hot water from the top of the tank is pumped through it and this applies a staggering 130kW to the incoming fresh water which gives multiple (and fresh) showers ... the incoming water never sees a tank and is pressurised just as it is delivered.
If the heat bank is slightly higher than the stove then it will work without a circulation pump so power cuts will leave you warm and cooking.  There's a good description of the 500 litre heat bank on the web site - it is known as 'The Italian Job'.
Solar goes very well with this system and might not be as expensive as you think.  e.g large 3 panel kit with all the circulation parts, fluid etc for exactly €2,000.  Good luck and feel free to ask any questions.

Thank you very much. We've had a good talk about it today and I think we've had a change of mind (partly due to your excellent information). We're leaning towards a Klover KLB 29 which we can put in the cantina. We like it because it has no moving parts and can run with no electricity. Also we can use initially with no heat store and later add one when we get the cash. In fact the boiler is so well-priced we might be able to do it sooner!
Have you ever had experience of them or heard good or bad?

Sorry no experience with the Klover.... I try to go with stoves in the salone if poss rather than a cantina job where you have to go out into the cold to fuel it up.  N.B. these furnace jobs are better suited to running hard and loading up big tanks.  The power rating you'll notice is huge ... my self imposed limit is 14kW which would easily suit a smallish house and needs as much wood stacking as a sane person can stand... actually it sounds as though 12kW might suit you ... I heat quite a large house with a 12kW Clearview and most of the time it tickles along except when it gets really cold and it gets thrashed long and hard.
If you want to do things in stages you could get a Clearview 750 or 650 and run it without the clip in back boiler at first - then go for tank later... the stainless back boiler bolts in in a matter of minutes and is the reason why I like these stoves as opposed to cast iron ones where a cracked boiler = a dead stove.

Well, the theory is you run it once a day without a thermal store and as little as once every 3 days with one. It's domestic hot water we'll need as we'll have a campsite. Our house is small so the heating part required is not much but we'll get through a lot of hot water with 19 people showering. If it's in the cantina we can run it in summer too. We have free wood :-).

Plus it's a lot warmer here in winter - no snow for example!

Admin wrote:Well, the theory is you run it once a day without a thermal store and as little as once every 3 days with one. It's domestic hot water we'll need as we'll have a campsite. Our house is small so the heating part required is not much but we'll get through a lot of hot water with 19 people showering. If it's in the cantina we can run it in summer too. We have free wood :-).

Everything you say points to large storage tanks ... I have a chum with a wood furnace intermittently run and he has a pair of 1,000 litre tanks and that would support massive solar for multiple showers.

Is he happy with it?

Admin wrote:Is he happy with it?

Yes he loves it ... but then he'd have to .. it's a Kloben tank(s) with immersed coil for heat extraction which works adequately until they cake up ... never as good as a plate heat exchanger which sucks out the last drop of hot out of the top of the tank and by the same reasoning gives very fast recovery times.  My preference for twin tanks is for a 500 litre heat bank with plate heat exchanger fitted (the Italian job) but fed by the second 500l tank via an immersed coil.(not so mission critical)... also solar power fed in selectively via my own 'stripper circuit' ... sorry getting a bit esoteric ... just off line for a few days in a minute or two so won't reply.