Future Firewood Demand Optimism?

[Billhook]

1 hour ago, Baldbloke said:

A very good question to which I’d struggle to accurately answer due to the oil tank being partly full and still using oil for its all too easy usability through the spring. Probably a couple of grands worth being a tight arse.

What additionally complicates things is an oil Aga running most, if not all of the year.

Our elderly neighbours admit to an annual oil bill of 7k for their pile.

 

 

 

I am guilty of something similar. In the 1980s I built this house as part of a redundant brick windmill and being in a remote spot, had no electricity.  However the gas main ran 100 yards away on the minor road.  At first they would not connect me but in about1986 they relented and said the connection would be £70 but I would have to pay for the trench and pipe to the house or for £200 they would take the high pressure pipe to the house.  I obviously went for the latter. 

Gas fridge freezer and cooker which replaced the Bosky that seemed to be state of the art firewood cooker/boiler at the time. (It never did either the cooking or the heating satisfactorily.)  The gas was so cheap then that I used to leave the condensing boiler on the whole time and the bills were minimal compared to my parents big old farmhouse heated with oil.  Things are a bit different today and thank goodness for wood and the Aarrow Stratford .  The gas boiler has not been fired up for ages.

With no mains electricity and a Lister Startamatic I was thinking a lot about windpower especially after a few Winters here and I realised why there has been a Mill here since the late 1200s, there is nothing between me and Scandinavia!

So I set up a 24 volt system  with nickel cadmium batteries, inverter and a small Rutland windcharger plus the Lister also charging when it ran.  Sort of did the job but limited to 3000 watts.  But the whole system was a pain compared to mains.

A few years ago the electric board wanted to renew the 33kva line across the farm and also wanted to change its route.

Managed to have a little compensation in the form of and underground 3 phase cable all the way to the Mill.

Well I did have to wait 35 years for it!  Now I will not be able to afford the electric bills for that either!

Wood burning generator anyone??

[Baldbloke]

I’m sure heat pump efficiency has improved vastly over the years, but my experience of them about 18 years ago was not good. A scout building was considered too expensive to heat for its limited use plus a grant was available at the time too. 10 k worth of equipment was installed and ran until the first quarterly bill came in at over £800.00.
The heat pump was removed shortly after that.

[Billhook]

 

[Woodworks]

I put a meter on our GSHP some years back.

 

It does all our hot water and much of the space heating. Thats heating a barn conversion of approx 160 m2 built to comply with 2010 regs

 

From the 31/12/2013 until now its used used 18490 kWh hours of electricity. Thats doing all our hot water and much of the space heating. Thats 94 months averaging 197 kWh per month. Take the average cost of electric over that time at say15 pence per kWh? it works out at just under £30 per month.

[Billhook]

2 minutes ago, Woodworks said:

I put a meter on our GSHP some years back.

 

It does all our hot water and much of the space heating. Thats heating a barn conversion of approx 160 m2 built to comply with 2010 regs

 

From the 31/12/2013 until now its used used 18490 kWh hours of electricity. Thats doing all our hot water and much of the space heating. Thats 94 months averaging 197 kWh per month. Take the average cost of electric over that time at say15 pence per kWh? it works out at just under £30 per month.

Thanks for that Woodworks, we need more of these details from Arbtalkers  now that the cost of energy is so high so that we can work out a sensible price for firewood

[Big J]

17 minutes ago, Woodworks said:

I put a meter on our GSHP some years back.

 

It does all our hot water and much of the space heating. Thats heating a barn conversion of approx 160 m2 built to comply with 2010 regs

 

From the 31/12/2013 until now its used used 18490 kWh hours of electricity. Thats doing all our hot water and much of the space heating. Thats 94 months averaging 197 kWh per month. Take the average cost of electric over that time at say15 pence per kWh? it works out at just under £30 per month.

 

Thanks for posting the figures.

 

There is so much misinformation and fear mongering about heat pump systems in the UK at the moment. I think the primary issue is that they serve to highlight just how shocking our insulation levels are here. Of course they aren't going to be economical in your average UK home with average insulation. We insulate our homes like we insulate our cattle sheds. 

 

We have a Swedish friend a few miles away whose parents don't like to visit (Devon) in winter. They are from Mora, which is at the start of the mountain chain that divides Norway and Sweden. The beginning of the wilderness really. And they say they find it uncomfortably cold inside and out here in winter. 

 

It's the driven rain and damp that means we really do need good insulation here. The heat loss from a wet wall is extraordinary. The best way to illustrate this is to stick your hand out of a car window at 50mph when it's cold outside. First do it with a dry hand, then with a wet hand. 

 

I wish more people took the climate in the UK more seriously. We seem to deny that we need proper insulation or heating, and then on the flip side endure weeks and sometimes months without A/C in summer because "it doesn't get that hot in England".

 

The funniest thing I saw recently was a reply to a comment I made on a Guardian article about heat pumps. I raised the issue of insulation, and that we need a lot more of it. A chap replied to me saying that if he insulated his house more then the heat wouldn't be able to get out in summer and he'd overheat. 

 

It really was a Picard faceplant moment. 😆

[Puffingbilly413]

We run an ASHP that does hot water all year round and some heating in the winter (we have 2 wood stoves too).

 

It's hard to separate out the cost of running the heat pump from those of the washing machine and dishwasher, which with a young family seem to be eternally on, hammering the electric bill in the process.

 

I reckon we're on about £2-2.5k per year for electric (minimal gas as only have a hob).

 

Given our bills were much lower pre-heat pump (and family demand for electricity otherwise unchanged), it seems the heat pump is seriously expensive to run.

 

It cannot also cope with cold winters (it's in the small print) - it also can't really do heating and hot water simultaneously ie you have to stagger it.

 

If it weren't for the money coming back to us from the RHIP, the ASHP would be too expensive to run.  Ours is 5 years old now, so I'm not sure how much they have improved.  Sounds like GSHP might be more efficient?

Edited October 25, 2021 by Puffingbilly413

[Woodworks]

1 minute ago, Big J said:

 

 

 

The funniest thing I saw recently was a reply to a comment I made on a Guardian article about heat pumps. I raised the issue of insulation, and that we need a lot more of it. A chap replied to me saying that if he insulated his house more then the heat wouldn't be able to get out in summer and he'd overheat. 

 

It really was a Picard faceplant moment. 😆

Its not difficult to see why the UK is in mess is it 😂

 

Completely agree with about the poor levels of insulation in UK homes. There have been grants to help with costs of insulation but take up was not great. We seem to a be a nation who has a very short term view and always want 'jam today' 

[Puffingbilly413]

7 minutes ago, Big J said:

 

Thanks for posting the figures.

 

There is so much misinformation and fear mongering about heat pump systems in the UK at the moment. I think the primary issue is that they serve to highlight just how shocking our insulation levels are here. Of course they aren't going to be economical in your average UK home with average insulation. We insulate our homes like we insulate our cattle sheds. 

 

We have a Swedish friend a few miles away whose parents don't like to visit (Devon) in winter. They are from Mora, which is at the start of the mountain chain that divides Norway and Sweden. The beginning of the wilderness really. And they say they find it uncomfortably cold inside and out here in winter. 

 

It's the driven rain and damp that means we really do need good insulation here. The heat loss from a wet wall is extraordinary. The best way to illustrate this is to stick your hand out of a car window at 50mph when it's cold outside. First do it with a dry hand, then with a wet hand. 

 

I wish more people took the climate in the UK more seriously. We seem to deny that we need proper insulation or heating, and then on the flip side endure weeks and sometimes months without A/C in summer because "it doesn't get that hot in England".

 

The funniest thing I saw recently was a reply to a comment I made on a Guardian article about heat pumps. I raised the issue of insulation, and that we need a lot more of it. A chap replied to me saying that if he insulated his house more then the heat wouldn't be able to get out in summer and he'd overheat. 

 

It really was a Picard faceplant moment. 😆

The insulation point is a good one and certainly is a factor in the winter re money spent on heating.  That said, there have been certain points this summer when I have been glad of the cooler temperature inside an old stone built house.

[Puffingbilly413]

2 minutes ago, Woodworks said:

Its not difficult to see why the UK is in mess is it 😂

 

Completely agree with about the poor levels of insulation in UK homes. There have been grants to help with costs of insulation but take up was not great. We seem to a be a nation who has a very short term view and always want 'jam today' 

I did try to get our loft re-done through one of the grant schemes but when they came round to assess the job, the cost of ripping out the old loft boarding and re-doing it (not that old either) would have fallen on us and we simply couldn't afford to do it at the time so we let it pass.  I think we'll have to revisit the idea though.