Heating system for our single-family house!

Thank you for your assessment

Does anyone have experience with the combination system gas-solar-fireplace?

We had also considered a water-bearing fireplace. The result was that it will probably never pay off. Even a stove builder advised us against it, as the acquisition costs (stove, pipes, pressure monitor, labor costs, etc.) are hardly likely to be recovered. For it to be worthwhile, you would have to get wood very cheaply and, above all, have the stove/fireplace on for a very long time. However, in a new building, this would probably cause the living room to overheat completely.

Recommendation from the stove builder for new construction: Choose a small stove/fireplace with low heating output and no frills.

Brief question for understanding: Is the heating also supported by solar, or is it only used for warming the water? Is the heat from the summer somehow stored to be used in the winter?

Circulation pipes can be omitted in a single-family house, then it simply takes 5 instead of 2 seconds for hot water to come out of the tap. One less part that can break.

I can't really confirm that... we have a circulation pipe in the kitchen and the upstairs bathroom... the pump runs on a timer. There the hot water comes quickly. But if the pump is "off" and we want water from the kitchen (about ten meters of piping), it takes quite a while.

In the downstairs bathroom we didn't have a pipe installed. The plumber said, "The room is right next to the utility room, the supply line is so short, we don't need one"... But here it’s not the mentioned 5 seconds, more like 10+ seconds... and that's quite annoying.

Quick question for understanding: Does solar also support the heating? Or is it only used to heat the water? Is the heat from the summer somehow stored to be used in winter?

Solar heats water for bathing and such. The sun’s position allows this 100% from the end of February to the end of October. Otherwise, the gas heating has to assist. Solar heating support is possible but unprofitable in terms of cost savings. Nothing is stored over a long period. Either you use your water or it is warmed up for nothing. K.

Regarding circulation lines:

This is a simple comfort question. If you always/want warm water at the tap immediately during peak times, circulation makes sense. If the house is really well designed so that the hot water pipes are quite short, you could do without it. But the water coming immediately is rarely the case. Due to our house geometry, the main shower is about 15m of piping away from the hot water tank. If I shower at an unusual time, it takes almost a minute until the water finally comes out.

With the 300l hot water tank, you don’t have to worry about running out of hot water with gas. Even if you completely empty it once, it can be set so that reheating takes place at a certain temperature anyway, which works quite quickly with the gas boiler.

Regarding solar:

Economically speaking, it’s nonsense. A solar system for hot water costs at least 4-5k€ to install. With about 150-200€ annual savings, you can do the math. But the law requires you to do something regenerative if you still want to heat with gas, and the solar system is the first option.

Are you getting a ventilation system? It might also be possible to cover the regenerative share through heat recovery from the ventilation system so that despite gas you can do without solar, but that would have to be calculated. That’s how we solved it, since the controlled residential ventilation was already a given. Heating is only with gas, without solar, without stove.