Future Firewood Demand Optimism?

[Billhook]

1 hour ago, Woodworks said:

According to the link below a GSHP costs you 6.6 pence per kWh.   350% efficiency is pretty fair and a top quality unit in well insulated house would perform better than that

 

A wood burner on their figures would cost 7.27 pence per kWh. That is cheap logs and ours would cost 9.6pence per kWh

 

To be honest its closer than I would have thought but you heat pump still wins for the time being

 

Edit. Sorry just missed your post 

 

Energy Cost Comparison – Nottingham Energy Partnership

NOTTENERGY.COM

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Visit the post for more.

 

 

Bet that a wood burning boiler gives better heat in cold conditions!  Plus being quiet and pleasant to look at

I forecast a hard Winter!

[Woodworks]

1 hour ago, Billhook said:

Bet that a wood burning boiler gives better heat in cold conditions!  Plus being quiet and pleasant to look at

I forecast a hard Winter!

No problems with noise but no denying a stove is far cheaper to buy and instal.

 

Having both has proved a perfect combination for us. Run the heat pump for low background heat as its most efficient the cooler you run it and top up the heat in the sitting room with the log burner in evening. 

[daveatdave]

saw something the other day on tv they were drilling into a old coal mine and were going to recirculate the warm water out to provide heating for houses then it went back into the mine it did not go into details 

[trigger_andy]

Bet that a wood burning boiler gives better heat in cold conditions!  Plus being quiet and pleasant to look at
I forecast a hard Winter!

Seen snow on the hills behind my house yesterday, we’re not even in the highlands and it’s not even November yet. I hope your forecast is correct, not had a real winter in years.

[Billhook]

7 hours ago, daveatdave said:

saw something the other day on tv they were drilling into a old coal mine and were going to recirculate the warm water out to provide heating for houses then it went back into the mine it did not go into details 

Water in the underground mine workings of the former Caerau colliery has been naturally heated by the earth, and as a geothermal source of energy, Bridgend County Borough Council is investigating how it could be extracted, using heat pump technology and a network of pipes, to warm around 150 nearby homes.19 Jan 2018

 

EU boost for £9.4m project will use Caerau's mine-water to ...

https://gov.wales › eu-boost-ps94m-project-will-use-caera...

[Billhook]

39 minutes ago, trigger_andy said:

 

 

Seen snow on the hills behind my house yesterday, we’re not even in the highlands and it’s not even November yet. I hope your forecast is correct, not had a real winter in years.

 

 

Full moon and clear skies here but outside temp on my window gauge is 6.7 degrees so some way to go yet!

[Billhook]

8 hours ago, Woodworks said:

No problems with noise but no denying a stove is far cheaper to buy and instal.

 

Having both has proved a perfect combination for us. Run the heat pump for low background heat as its most efficient the cooler you run it and top up the heat in the sitting room with the log burner in evening. 

I think that our wood heat here may be slightly different to many as we have an Aarrow Stratford 30kw boiler stove and the main floors downstairs are underfloor with insulation which gives a lower temperature background heat and because heat rises and most people like the warm feet cool head idea, it works well.  Certainly lovely to come into the kitchen with bare feet on warm tiles on a cold day!  So I can see heat pumps working well in a new build with insulated floors and maybe a borehole type ground source if limited by small garden.  Not suitable in many towns I suspect.

The other good thing about underfloor heating is that it acts like a large heat sink and the effect lasts for sometime.

The Stratford has a large glass window so the additional visual benefit when sitting in the same room.

[openspaceman]

4 hours ago, Billhook said:

The other good thing about underfloor heating is that it acts like a large heat sink and the effect lasts for sometime.

AFAICS there's not much not to like about underfloor heating apart from, perhaps, places that are only occupied for a short while, village halls, scout huts etc.

 

I was working at a large townhouse yesterday, cutting some ash from the felling of an open grown tree about a year ago, sizes were from 4" to 18" in a neat stack of about a cord. Split faces were about 36% mc on my meter,Took me 4 hours and three tanks of fuel but that won't last their 2 stoves and jetmaster long.

 

Anyway the house was 50 metres from the gas main and would cost £6k  for the connection so when the new owner moved in he elected for an air source heat pump.

 

It looked like 4 of those fan-coil air conditioning units you see on office buildings. A bit incongruous on the outside of a Victorian, flint knapped building. I'm biased but thought it looked worse than the 16 solar panels I have on my house.

 

He did say that he was surprised at how much electricity he was using but wouldn't go into detail, I imagine it was still using radiators.

[Billhook]

2 minutes ago, openspaceman said:

AFAICS there's not much not to like about underfloor heating apart from, perhaps, places that are only occupied for a short while, village halls, scout huts etc.

 

I was working at a large townhouse yesterday, cutting some ash from the felling of an open grown tree about a year ago, sizes were from 4" to 18" in a neat stack of about a cord. Split faces were about 36% mc on my meter,Took me 4 hours and three tanks of fuel but that won't last their 2 stoves and jetmaster long.

 

Anyway the house was 50 metres from the gas main and would cost £6k  for the connection so when the new owner moved in he elected for an air source heat pump.

 

It looked like 4 of those fan-coil air conditioning units you see on office buildings. A bit incongruous on the outside of a Victorian, flint knapped building. I'm biased but thought it looked worse than the 16 solar panels I have on my house.

 

He did say that he was surprised at how much electricity he was using but wouldn't go into detail, I imagine it was still using radiators.

Definitely seeing more negativity around heat pumps on the web, but I remain open minded as these things are in their infancy and like cars, you may have had a bad experience with a 1960 Mini but a 2021 version is a bit different!

One other factor I might have to contend with is not just the cost of replacing my gas boiler for a heat pump or a hydrogen powered boiler, but also my cookers and maybe upgrading all the pipelines to be compatible with hydrogen  or buying a new electric cooker.  And I love cooking with gas!

[openspaceman]

10 minutes ago, Billhook said:

Definitely seeing more negativity around heat pumps on the web, but I remain open minded as these things are in their infancy and like cars, you may have had a bad experience with a 1960 Mini but a 2021 version is a bit different!

Yes but fundamentally they are the same a fridges  so I expect only minor tweeks. They will be "tuned" to give the best result (Coefficient of Performance)  at a given output temperature and temperature of whatever the collector is outside. This is unlike to exceed a COP of three and a bit  most of the time, so if  we ignore the substantial capital and replacement cost with electricity at 22p/kWh the heating won't get better than 7p/kWh. Drop to a delta T of over 20C then what happens?

 

So it looks like the intention is to let gas rise from the current 4p/kWh (I still pay 3p till April) to above 7p/kWh.

10 minutes ago, Billhook said:

One other factor I might have to contend with is not just the cost of replacing my gas boiler for a heat pump or a hydrogen powered boiler, 

 

If you accept the grant for a heat pump then you lose your gas connection forever. As to hydrogen; I do not think it can use any current gas grid as it finds leaks much better than methane.

 

I do wonder why the capital invested in the natural gas network  is not worth  finding a way to synthesise  methane from all this hydrogen we expect and carbon from plants or indeed oil.

 

With the move to electric cars I think  a domestic CHP becomes worth looking at even if it is internal combustion based I bet the constant running for short periods charging a battery will compensate for the varied conditions a IC car has to deal with  and running on methane it will be very clean plus heat the house.

10 minutes ago, Billhook said:

 

 

but also my cookers and maybe upgrading all the pipelines to be compatible with hydrogen  or buying a new electric cooker.  And I love cooking with gas!

 

 

See above and for the small amount cooking uses LPG will be around for a while.

 

A decent induction hob should be up with gas for better heat control