First house in Scotland
fitted with groundbreaking
“Heating with Ice” Technology
Stommel Haus, premium manufacturer
of offsite manufactured homes in
Germany, equips a private dwelling in
Aberdeenshire with ground breaking
“Heating with Ice” technology by
Viessmann.
The innovative ice store system is
installed in a very energy efficient eco
timber house from Stommel Haus
becoming the first of its kind in Scotland.
This ground breaking technology
recovers energy from only renewable
sources, such as the sun, the ambient
heat and the soil, to heat and cool a
building and provides hot water for the
house.
Drawing energy from ice to heat or cool
a house sounds a little bit like science
fiction, but over the past 4 years Stommel
Haus already installed many such systems
in their eco houses in Germany. The ice
storage system which consists of an
underground water tank, solar thermal
panels and a state of the art heat pump
supplies energy to the heat pump which
generates the hot water and the heat
for the under-floor heating on all storeys
of the house. It also cools the house in
summer!
The heat pump extracts energy from the
water stored in the ice storage tank which
is installed under ground. The energy
used to provide the heat slowly turns the
water in the underground tank to ice.
Additional energy is obtained from the
freezing process of the water - therefore
the term “ice store”.
Freezing is an exothermic process, i.e.
as liquid water changes to solid ice,
crystallisation energy (latent heat) is
released. This latent heat is retained in the
ice store system.
A heat source management system
integrated in the heat pump draws
energy from either the ice store or solar
thermal panels on the roof. The ice store
also draws energy from the surrounding
ground to regenerate heat.
In summer the ice store can be used to
provide natural cooling: At the end of the
heating season, the water in the store
is turned to ice. The ambient summer
heat around the store, the solar thermal
energy and heat which is drawn from the
system via an extraction heat exchanger
melt the ice in the ice store and cools the
heating circuit of the house.