Our Wood Pellet Boiler decisions.........

Sorry to hear that you are having to resort to trading standards over your MCZ boiler. Do you have any more details on the igniter issues you have had? I spoke to someone in Wales at the weekend who has had Compact 18 for just over a year and she said that she started to get A01 errors and her installer replaced the ignition igniter's as they had failed before 2,000 ignitions had taken place. From what I understand the igniters need to be replaced every at 2000. You can get information from the boiler readout on how ignitions have taken place. Keep us posted on your progress.

Paul

The lady i spoke (last weekend) who had failed igniter's (on her compact 18), got them supplied and fitted for free as they had failed within a year and had performed less than 2000 ignitions.

I'll be interested to hear how much they are to replace too.

Paul

Hi

We have had a pellet boiler for a year now and have reduced our heating costs by at least 50%, having originally been using oil. The property is a large listed 16th century farmhouse so we haven't got up to date insulated walls or double glazed windows. Where possible we have insulated as much as possible (600mm in loft spaces) and have draft proofed everywhere. Wood burners were installed where we had open fireplaces and we have installed good quality radiators that retain the heat for a long time after the heating has been switched off. Our estimated annual usage for the government RHI was 63,000KW, which reflected the age of the house and the unavailability to us of such things as double glazing and cavity wall insulation!!! There is no way we use this much energy in a year.

Depending on the size of your house and estimated KW of energy you'll use, my advice would be to invest in a separate hopper. We have a 3.5 tonne hopper so always manage to get approx 3 tonnes delivered when we still have a .5 tonne as back up. It costs £205 per tonne to have blown in. In our first year we used 11tonnes but given a harsh winter I would anticipate using 13 tonnes. Basically it is costing us between about £2.5 - £3k per year to centrally heat and hot water. Our oil costs would have been £6k. Some friends of ours have a pellet boiler and didn't get a separate hopper. They really regret that now. They are forever having to fill it up and in winter were filling every other day. It is easy to forget to fill it too!!

We also have a 500 litre buffer which is superb. There is always a massive store of hot water available and this can be called on 24 hours a day. Once up to temperature (76-80 degrees C) it takes very little energy to keep it at that level so you don't need to have the boiler running at max for that long at all. You will need space for the buffer alongside the boiler.

The system fully installed with hopper and buffer cost £16.5k and is located in an outbuilding. Our RHI payments started last month and we receive just under £8k per annum, pretty much paying for the system over two years.

As I said before if you have the space, get a 3.5 tonne hopper and a buffer. You won't go wrong. The extra £1300 or so you will have to pay for the hopper is money well spent. You will make that back quickly with the RHI payments and will save money over time on the pellet delivery costs. More importantly you will save yourself a hell of a lot of hassle with having to fill you boiler up all the time. You will also need to have a large dry storage area for all the 10kg bags of pellets.

Hope this helps!