Gas is banned

[difflock]

Heating with kero, and a 2250litre fill does over a 12month, driving the thick slab (and my intention when installed) "storage heater" underfloor for background heat, agumented by a woodburning stove heating the 75m2 of semi open-plan kitchen, living room and  garden room.

These rooms sit about 25-28 Deg, with a 9" solid wall between them and  the rest of the house at about 15-18 deg.

The 9" wall was needed to support the Bison units for the upstairs floors.

 

[kevinjohnsonmbe]

14 minutes ago, difflock said:

Heating with kero, and a 2250litre fill does over a 12month, driving the thick slab (and my intention when installed) "storage heater" underfloor for background heat, agumented by a woodburning stove heating the 75m2 of semi open-plan kitchen, living room and  garden room.

These rooms sit about 25-28 Deg, with a 9" solid wall between them and  the rest of the house at about 15-18 deg.

The 9" wall was needed to support the Bison units for the upstairs floors.

 

25-28 degrees ?

 

Avoid all strenuous activity and strip down to undercrackers!

[openspaceman]

54 minutes ago, difflock said:

(i) The biggest issue with the Solarbayer was getting it lit, look for the boilers with the third door, or middle door  for lighting purposes, or even the expensive/swish gas/electric ignited ones.

Isn't it possible to retrofit an electric lighter and a timer? They're fairly basic and if the stove has an induced draught fan  wouldn't need their own? Then the stove could be cleaned out and loaded up at the same time.

54 minutes ago, difflock said:

 

(II) Take a long hard look at how one accesses and cleans the firetubes, some are BLOODY tedious/akward.

It's not a job I did on the two I dealt with (a Kob cordwood gasifier and a Kunzel logwood gasifier running on oak offcuts from a timber framer) as the boss came down from Scotland once a year to service those but on the big Talbot and Kobs I always intended to use the electric drill but sweated it out and did it by hand instead, about an hour on the 1MW and 500kW Kob at Milton Keynes IKEA.

 

I don't disagree with the  rest of your post, especially about the installers, we had one who cost the council that installed one of the Kob 500KW over £300k by poor specifying and workmanship plus fiddling with the ignition sequence, it was decommissioned and sold for £8k at 4 years old, when the site was redeveloped.

 

The big problems were where biomass burners had been dictated from above and the people on site hated them, where people had wanted them (this all being prior to grants) we had few problems other than routine maintenance.

[difflock]

24 minutes ago, kevinjohnsonmbe said:

25-28 degrees ?

 

Avoid all strenuous activity and strip down to undercrackers!

Nearly correct!, 'cept the bedroom bes kept at 15-18 deg to encourage strenuous heat-inducing activities!

[Alycidon]

I installed a 25kw pellet boiler in 2005, I did after jumping through some insulation hoops get a gov't grant of around 700 pounds. This replaced a 19kw oil boiler that was well beyond its best. We had also added an extra 6 rads in two extensions. At the time oil was 50p a litre and rising, pellets were around 140 a tonne, costs were like buying oilnat around 35 ppl..   Today oil is the same price but pellets are 275 or so a tonne. My boiler was chosen as I can retro fit oil burner to it, if pellets continue to rise I may do that.  Gas is far cheaper and a lot easier to use.  

Edited December 29, 2019 by Alycidon
Oil not animal burner,= !!

[kevinjohnsonmbe]

40 minutes ago, Alycidon said:

I installed a 25kw pellet boiler in 2005, I did after jumping through some insulation hoops get a gov't grant of around 700 pounds. This replaced a 19kw oil boiler that was well beyond its best. We had also added an extra 6 rads in two extensions. At the time oil was 50p a litre and rising, pellets were around 140 a tonne, costs were like buying oilnat around 35 ppl..   Today oil is the same price but pellets are 275 or so a tonne. My boiler was chosen as I can retro fit animal burner to it, if pellets continue to rise I may do that.  Gas is far cheaper and a lot easier to use.  

Won’t make you overly popular with the vegan / ALF brigades and (apart from the moral dilemma) not sure how cost effective (or neighbour friendly) it would be.....?

 

Is the livestock subsidised by some sort of CAP subsidy??

[gdh]

2 hours ago, Alycidon said:

I installed a 25kw pellet boiler in 2005, I did after jumping through some insulation hoops get a gov't grant of around 700 pounds. This replaced a 19kw oil boiler that was well beyond its best. We had also added an extra 6 rads in two extensions. At the time oil was 50p a litre and rising, pellets were around 140 a tonne, costs were like buying oilnat around 35 ppl..   Today oil is the same price but pellets are 275 or so a tonne. My boiler was chosen as I can retro fit animal burner to it, if pellets continue to rise I may do that.  Gas is far cheaper and a lot easier to use.  

We originally looked at pellet boilers when we put our 200kw (commercial) boiler in but we went with chip in the end. Apart from space it was the far better option and with pellets now twice the price of chip I'm glad we did.

 

I'd be interested to hear more about the animal boiler. Is it slaughterhouse waste? I imagine that would be a nightmare with transport and paperwork but a good renewable resource if it worked.

[gdh]

1 hour ago, kevinjohnsonmbe said:

Won’t make you overly popular with the vegan / ALF brigades and (apart from the moral dilemma) not sure how cost effective (or neighbour friendly) it would be.....?

 

Is the livestock subsidised by some sort of CAP subsidy??

I'm going to take a guess that it's a waste product not a herd of cows that are walked in one at a time. ? 

 

Edit: Thinking about it I expect it will be fat like the cars that can run on chip shop waste.

Edited December 28, 2019 by gdh

[doobin]

I’d go with an oil burner, and auto correct ?

Edited December 28, 2019 by doobin

[Stere]

Quote

So it begs the question instead of heat pumps (air or ground) should we be looking at pellet boilers ?

How about solar PV and solar thermal with a battery bank for DHW?

 

Telsa power wall