In practice, solid fuel installations are less easy to get away with imperfections in design than the other varieties. I'm not an expert on wet solid fuel heating systems yet, but I have an interest and a few thoughts.
At the Centre for Alternative Technology, they have an HDG log batch boiler. While it modulates to some degree, their engineering department decided it would run more efficiently if run flat out and dumping its heat into a large thermal store. Apparently it is 90-something percent efficient. The designer of the installation there said he felt that buffer tanks, or heat accumulators (i.e. thermal stores) were a solution to (nearly) every problem.
More primitive stoves (compared with computerised log batch boilers) generally do not tend to allow the heat output to be varied. The presence of a water chamber next to the firebox means that the fire only really burns well at high outputs otherwise it is difficult to achieve the right temperature for efficient and clean combustion.
So if the stove has enough heat for all the radiators, it may not work so well when some of the radiators are starting to shut down on their TRVs. Conversely, a system that has the stove sized for not running all the radiators at once might actually be more practical if you aren't actually hoping to heat every room at once.
To put things into perspective, I once lived in a house with a 13kW output gas boiler. Although there were about 7kW of radiators in total, the house was not heated to the design temperature of the system, nor was the weather often at the design outdoor temperature (-1°C). Also, most of the radiators were oversized to allow for a faster warm-up in the morning or for when I got home after work. Once the house was up to temperature, the use of zone valves and thermostats meant that 1kW was probably the typical requirement for space heating during the day, with a 3kW peak requirement in the early morning when the system first fired for the day. I think the design constant heating requirement for that house at design temperatures was around 5.5kW. The design on that system was a compromise dictated (largely) by budget, but also a need to fulfill both my specific requirements and the probable requirements of future occupants.
Back to your house, I reckon you have the space for a thermal store and a log batch boiler?
At the Centre for Alternative Technology, they have an HDG log batch boiler. While it modulates to some degree, their engineering department decided it would run more efficiently if run flat out and dumping its heat into a large thermal store. Apparently it is 90-something percent efficient. The designer of the installation there said he felt that buffer tanks, or heat accumulators (i.e. thermal stores) were a solution to (nearly) every problem.
More primitive stoves (compared with computerised log batch boilers) generally do not tend to allow the heat output to be varied. The presence of a water chamber next to the firebox means that the fire only really burns well at high outputs otherwise it is difficult to achieve the right temperature for efficient and clean combustion.
So if the stove has enough heat for all the radiators, it may not work so well when some of the radiators are starting to shut down on their TRVs. Conversely, a system that has the stove sized for not running all the radiators at once might actually be more practical if you aren't actually hoping to heat every room at once.
To put things into perspective, I once lived in a house with a 13kW output gas boiler. Although there were about 7kW of radiators in total, the house was not heated to the design temperature of the system, nor was the weather often at the design outdoor temperature (-1°C). Also, most of the radiators were oversized to allow for a faster warm-up in the morning or for when I got home after work. Once the house was up to temperature, the use of zone valves and thermostats meant that 1kW was probably the typical requirement for space heating during the day, with a 3kW peak requirement in the early morning when the system first fired for the day. I think the design constant heating requirement for that house at design temperatures was around 5.5kW. The design on that system was a compromise dictated (largely) by budget, but also a need to fulfill both my specific requirements and the probable requirements of future occupants.
Back to your house, I reckon you have the space for a thermal store and a log batch boiler?
