Solar Hot Water secondary hot water circuit

[apoulton]

I am installing a solar hot water system with a thermal store in a fairly large house.
The kitchen and one of the bathrooms  are a good distance away from the cylinder,  my plumber says we need a secondaryhot water circuit to circulate the water to the furthest point.
He is not  familiar with thermal stores and wonders where to fit the  return pipe at the cylinder end bearing in mind there is a blending valve outlet
Can anyone help
Thanks

[kristen]

How do you get how water (quickly) to those taps now?

I have a big house too, and the original design has towel rails that cause a gravity loop so that hot water is gently circulating, and that means that running a tap doesn't take long.

The towel rails are in a loop, returning to the hot water tank (currently).  They will use up all the heat in our hot water tank in about 8 hours - i.e. tank wil be stone cold by then.  Huge waste in the Summer!

If I turn off that loop it takes a full FIVE minutes to run hot water at the far end of the house.

If you don't have ANY loop at present you are going to have to plumb a return route from any/all dead-legs.  Unless you are rebuilding the house majorly that is going to be a lot of disruption! so hopefully you already have a circular loop for the hot water, rather than dead legs.

I reckon you need an on-demand pump (i.e. when you turn a tap on the pump starts running triggered by the pressure drop), and recirculate it through the coil in the thermal store

                         Tank Coil
Mains in --(V)--> T -----$$$$$$$ ------> Hot water taps -----\
                  |                                          |
                  \-----(pump)---<<< return <<<--------------/

you probably need a non-return valve at (V)

Kristen