Anyone know a good independent domestic heating consultant?

DicDu

Indeed, is there such a thing? Like a lot of other people I am fed up with paying massive bills and I know there are a lot of technologies out there which could mae my house greener and reduce my bills, albeit with a hefty does of cash needed to buy and install a new system. Also like a lot of other people, my eyes glaze over and I start to feel pretty useless when I sit down to read about things like air source heat pumps.

So what I am looking for is a reliable, independent expert of home heating who will come and reccy my house and make some recommendations. If there isn't such a business out there, perhaps this is a business opportunity for someone.

I have been looking at log boilers, but the quotes I have received vary from £19k to a paltry £9k. Unfortunately the £9k solution would not give us enough heat and hot water on its own in cold weather, and both the solutions I have looked at would swallow up quite a lot of space - the boiler itself plus one or two massive heat stores and a pressure vessel. But it would get us off oil and gas and help reduce our electricity bills as well.

Help!!

Cardew

I would suggest that the first person you need to consult is someone with a very good crystal ball.

The problem with selecting any form of fuel for home heating is that the prices can vary wildly in a matter of months.

Oil is a good example. On this forum there were anguished posts last summer about oil costing up to 70p a litre. The latest post reports a price of 26.6p a litre.

So oil is now by some margin the cheapest CH fuel, where last summer is was well over twice the price of gas.( a litre of oil contains 10.2kWh)

Economy 7 electricity for storage heaters was around 2p/kWh not long ago and ‘suddenly’ shot up to 5p/kWh.

It is a racing certainty that if lots of people buy log burners, log prices will soar.

The point being that you, I, or the most experienced energy consultant, can make a prediction on the best value as of today, and be made look a fool tomorrow.

My gut feeling would be to stick with gas.

DicDu

Thanks Cardew. I think that anyone thinking about forking out on a new heating system must try to think about cost of ownership over a period of 20-30 years, and I reckon it's a racing certainty that oil and gas will shoot through the roof again in 2 or 3 years from now. The British economy might not climb out of its present hole for years, but others will, and demand in places like Asia will soar.

That's what my crystal ball tells me, but it could be wrong again.

Everyone's circumstances are different, just as every house is different, and where you live in the UK is another factor. We don't have mains gas, and so we also get penalised on electricity prices. But we do have a lot of trees.

My greatest hope is that someone comes up with a legal and cost-effective way of burning old car tyres and slurry. We really would be to give a two finger salute to the robber barons in the privatised utilities then.