Real world heating cost

[Woodworks]

I would be careful what you say on the net remember what happened to Ratners when he said his jewellery was crap

 

Don't know what you mean. Logs have been and always will be the cheapest bestest way to heat your home whatever they cost

[woody3]

Difflock - I researched ground source heat pumps at length and was put off by what I found.

 

Most, if not all, of the companies had no real grasp of what they were selling and couldn't answer even simple technical questions (once most had got my details I had constant hard sell from idiots). The technology has been successfully used in Scandinavia / N. Europe for decades, but as usual, we Brits can't help fiddling around with a proven technology to make it 'better' - for which read more complicated and likely to break.

 

I'm sure there's a WHICH? report that identifies that 80% were incorrectly installed. Suggested figures of a 1-4 return (i.e. 4kw of heat for every 1Kw of electricity put in) were actually only 1 - 1.3.

 

Finally, it was apparent they only work with very well insulated houses (i.e. current standard or better, with heat recovery / vent systems). They do not retro-fit into existing houses very well.

 

Tread carefully...

 

my cousin is a architect, built his own home, highly insulated with a ground source heat pump and worked fine until march this year when it got cold again, the problem was they had taken all the heat out of the ground:lol:

[TGB]

As I see it, unless you want or have to live off-grid as the Yanks like to put it, you're storing trouble if you put all your heating eggs into a single source basket. Be it Gas, electric, logs, oil, solar or air/ground source-source-heat-pump. If your chosen mollusc fails, either due to market forces, strike action, downed wire, local/national weather conditions or other, then you're stuffed in the rusty tin of doom.

 

Even logs have their downside. But if you have enough dry logs and you can access them, at least you're not going to freeze and maybe you can cook too. However, I still think it wise to mix and match.

[ThrustSSC]

As I see it, unless you want or have to live off-grid as the Yanks like to put it, you're storing trouble if you put all your heating eggs into a single source basket. Be it Gas, electric, logs, oil, solar or air/ground source-source-heat-pump. If your chosen mollusc fails, either due to market forces, strike action, downed wire, local/national weather conditions or other, then you're stuffed in the rusty tin of doom.

 

Even logs have their downside. But if you have enough dry logs and you can access them, at least you're not going to freeze and maybe you can cook too. However, I still think it wise to mix and match.

 

Diversification. Well put. Crucial if you're off-grid, IMHO. The only question I have is what to have as backup if we convert our place to entirely-biomass? If biomass prices go completely silly (will they? how can we be sure they won't?) how do we then cope?

 

I suspect the answer still lies in producing firewood as a sideline - it means we get it at very low cost. That doesn't obviate the question of what to do if we can get more selling it than the alternatives cost us!

[New Forest DEAN]

Difflock

 

Sounds like you know what you're doing! (I'm sure we've spoken on a Landy website?). Sorry to be lecturing.

 

My eventual decision with GSHP was why spend £10 - £15K on something that only works a bit. Even if it would get the house up to, say, 14 deg C, which then had to be topped up, there still seemed to be a better use of the money, particularly if its going to break down and still need electricity to run. £10K was based on me doing most of the installation as well.

 

TGB - If someone sold a good complete off-the-grid system, I would buy it. The solar thermal is brilliant - £2500-£5000 installed and we have 'free' hot water from April until Oct / Nov', plus a bit in winter.

[difflock]

NFD!!

 

Land Rover!!

Hawk an Spit, an wash yer mouth oot with soap

 

"G" Wagen man that I am.

 

Actually going to speak to a guy the brother is friendly with, who installed his own GSHP in a new build, some years ago.

Ps

CHP+GSHP=ideal, using the power to drive the GSHP, and the high temp exhaust and cooling water from the engine for domestic hot water.

I feel a Heath Robinson solution coming on.

 

Then I could also have 3 PH to drive a bandsaw mill etcetc

[teepeeat]

Heating systems have to be flexible, because different fuels will change in relative cost over time.

One other certainty is that all fuels will go up due to increased demand from an increasing population.

Gas will run out and even if the shale gas numbers do actually pan out (personally think it unlikely), that will only last so long as well.

 

Reducing demand is key, so insulate,insulate, insulate.

When we renovated the house a few years ago we put in 2,5 times the required insulation (oh how they laughed at the time) and just as important, installed it correctly and now run a 200m2 house on an 8kw stove in the winter - supplying hot water and heating from on average 2 small builders buckets of seasoned wood a day.

Only problem we find is we got the balance a bit wrong as the stove gives of too much heat to the room when trying to get some heat into the thermal store to give enough hot water. (exagerated because two children and the missus arnt very efficient at using hot water - hrumph)

 

Our achilles heel is electricity - cant run our stove without it as went for high efficiency system requiring pumps, sensors, controllers etc. Have wired all the essentials into a separate circuit in case we need to resort to a genny at some point. Our electricity supply is a spur off a spur through the woods to our place and the neighbours so physically a bit vulnerable without even getting into the whole national supply debate.

 

@ Difflock

Has there been much advance with CHP. A few years ago when I looked, they could barely supply enough power to run a torch , let alone cover the peak demand of a GSHP on start up.

Edited November 8, 2013 by teepeeat

[Commando]

I'm thinking of adding Solar Thermal to my existing Thermal Store (its set up ready). I'm running on oil and a log burner, both feeding the store at the mo. Is solar thermal really that good/efficient? Worth the extra expense (I have a south facing roof and am in West Devon)? Have had all the facts from installers but they also told me the GSHP 1:4 figures!

 

 

Difflock

 

Sounds like you know what you're doing! (I'm sure we've spoken on a Landy website?). Sorry to be lecturing.

 

My eventual decision with GSHP was why spend £10 - £15K on something that only works a bit. Even if it would get the house up to, say, 14 deg C, which then had to be topped up, there still seemed to be a better use of the money, particularly if its going to break down and still need electricity to run. £10K was based on me doing most of the installation as well.

 

TGB - If someone sold a good complete off-the-grid system, I would buy it. The solar thermal is brilliant - £2500-£5000 installed and we have 'free' hot water from April until Oct / Nov', plus a bit in winter.

[Woodworks]

Difflock

 

Sounds like you know what you're doing! (I'm sure we've spoken on a Landy website?). Sorry to be lecturing.

 

My eventual decision with GSHP was why spend £10 - £15K on something that only works a bit. Even if it would get the house up to, say, 14 deg C, which then had to be topped up, there still seemed to be a better use of the money, particularly if its going to break down and still need electricity to run. £10K was based on me doing most of the installation as well.

 

TGB - If someone sold a good complete off-the-grid system, I would buy it. The solar thermal is brilliant - £2500-£5000 installed and we have 'free' hot water from April until Oct / Nov', plus a bit in winter.

 

It's not been like that for me Dean. Cost was about 4k total with me doing the installation but I except you would be hard pushed to buy our unit for that now. Heats house up to 21c without breaking sweat whatever the weather. Worked faultlessly for 6 years and does our hot water as well. No annual servicing other than check the filter on the ground loop which takes me 5 mins.

 

Commando.

 

I recon ours is working close to 4:1 we are also in west Devon

Edited November 8, 2013 by Woodworks

[teepeeat]

We put in solar thermal and saved by installing it ourselves.

Your thermal store is already to take the feed so that is a good start.

 

We get 'free' hot water from mid march to mid october generally, requiring no other energy input (obviously lecky for the pump:001_rolleyes:). It does contribute a bit through the winter but not much, but then we specifically optimised it for summer.

 

As with everything, some solar gear is good some not so good, so do your research before you spend.

 

As with all these building energy issues, the Navitron & the Green building forums are a useful source of info.