In a few months time I will be moving to a new house. I am trying to make it as self sufficient as possible but there are a few challenges that I need to overcome.

Firstly the temperature. I am moving to Sweden and the Winter can get as low as -20 C. The house is pretty well insulated as it is solid wood construction about 30cm thick with exterior and interior cladding on the walls. I will have to do a little more draft proofing but not too much.

Secondly we are only connected to electricity at the moment, not even a phone line but that will have to come soon. We have our own well and septic system. The heating in the house is mostly wood fired with some electric heaters and electric hot water. This is where I want to make some improvements if possible so any help here would be great.

We do have a wood burning range which has a side water heater. At the moment the main living areas of the house can be kept warm by the range, a "tile oven" as they are called in Sweden which is an open fire but the hot air goes up inside a chimney covered in tiles inside the room, this gets hot and heats the room. Finally a wood burning stove in one of the bedrooms upstairs.

I am planning on trying a bit of engineering and convert this side water heater to provide hot water for radiators. The plan I have is to try and fill the space as much as possible with coils of copper pipe. To then fill the rest of the space with something to transfer the heat efficiently to the pipes, but I don't know what the best material for this will be. Unfortunately this is were I get a bit vague so suggestions would be welcomed. The rest of the plan would be then use a hot water cylinder to store the heat and then pump the heated water around to 6 radiators. The system would have to be on the same level as the stove so I am thinking of pumping the water both to the stove and radiators with standard central heating pumps. If the system has enough heat capacity I may also try to use it to heat some of the hot water through a second cylinder to supplement the electric hot water heating, possibly through preheating the water from the cold tank.

It is a large project but we hope worth while. I am interested in any suggestions people have thoughts, comments etc, especially if it can help the project along.

Thanks for any help you can give

Phil


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