the daydream fund challenge thread

JayneC

Cheers choille and rhiwfield feeling quite inspired now!

I've been wanting a stove for ages but just know it's going to be an expensive and major task and also has complications, such as how many radiators will it realistically serve, as I may have to get another boiler to 'top-up' as it were if it can't run the whole house. Then because I have a combi boiler at the moment I'll need a water tank for hot water and where to put it, etc, etc. However I recently had plumber out to mend my old dying boiler and discussed it with him, despite the fact he tried to put me off a bit (major works to fit, compared with replacing current boiler with another gas fired one) I feel more optomistic and am going to do further research. Hopefully current boiler will see us through this winter (fingers crossed) and I can try to save up for said stove and major upheaval before next winter as well as work out where to store the wood!!!

I'll keep you all updated!

JayneC

Ok just been musing it over in my head. I'm currently saving £200 a month in an ISA and £50 a month in credit union - supposedly for Xmas, hols, big expenses throughout the year etc BUT if I can somehow manage not to spend any of it and meet said expenses from current income (or imaginative ways to supplement it!) I will have £3000 in 12 months which should go a long way towards cost of installing stove. Actually think I may be able to do it!!! Yay!

choille

You can do it Jayne.

Winter's are for planning.
All the best.

JayneC

Have been doing some research (on a roll now) and have found a stove with back boiler that can supposedly serve up to 24 radiators!! Which should be plenty (need around 7-8), so looking good. And found details about a 'thingy' (heat accumulater I think it was called) that makes your water tank more efficient and discovered you can run underfloor heating as well as radiators, so that's something to think about, particularly thinking about bathroom and kitchen.

Won't need a central heating boiler as well but need to connect hot water tank to electric for hot water in the summer. Can hopefully connect to solar panels at some point in the future instead. (Haven't actually got a water tank so that's another expense.)

May have someone out to give me a proper quote and get some more advice.

Off to do more plotting now...

choille

Jayne - it sounds too big for your needs. over capacity.

You do get a system - a hot water storage cylinder has two sets of heating coils in it - one for solar panles & one for a stove - so you don't get heat bleed off - safer way of doing it. You can also get ports in the cylinder for immersion heaters. They are super insulated & also stainless steel - so less chance of corrosion if you are in an acidic wwater area.
Under floor heating requires water at less less temp than radiators - you really need someone who knows what they are doing & not someone who is just trying to sell you their biggest stove they have.

meanmarie

Money came through at last so panic over, but then realised that I needed to buy gas (€110), used to use just electricity for cooking so hadn't thought to budget for it, idiot! All seems to mean that there will be nothing this month for fund, could cry but seems as if that I wont need to use any of what I already have there, so that's a plus.

You are all so organised.....we seem to have had so much rain and wind that I haven't been out in the garden at all, really hope that there are a couple of fine days next week

Marie

Davesnave

Great to hear you are nearly there with the chooks Stitching Witch. You will have eggs before us! We have been taking out fences to create a chicken area, but other things, like bits of the utility roof flying away last weekend, have held us up. It was a lovely day here yesterday, but I spent most of it roofing.:mad:

Jayne, we have a large woodburner plumbed into 7 radiators, but unless we stoke it up really well, it only copes with three. Our Aga does the hot water, sort of! I can get free logs, so having a big woodburner is OK, but if I had to pay, I think I'd go for a smaller one, used as an evening feature rather than a main source of heat - tend to do that anyway.
Like yours, the system here is far from perfect & we'd probably save by pulling it to bits and starting again, but we need to sort the shape of the house out first! Tried discussing alternatives with our plumber/Aga man, but soon realised it was a waste of time as his vested interests were overriding his judgement, which was totally black & white. In my experience, things are only ever shades of grey!

Marie, we've not been on bottled gas for long and only use it for a hob, but it seems OK. We are still on the cylinder the previous owners left here in August. Now the Aga is on, it could go past Christmas, judging by the weight. 19kg of gas here is about £36.

mambury

Davesnave wrote: »

Great to hear you are nearly there with the chooks Stitching Witch. You will have eggs before us! We have been taking out fences to create a chicken area, but other things, like bits of the utility roof flying away last weekend, have held us up. It was a lovely day here yesterday, but I spent most of it roofing.:mad:

Jayne, we have a large woodburner plumbed into 7 radiators, but unless we stoke it up really well, it only copes with three. Our Aga does the hot water, sort of! I can get free logs, so having a big woodburner is OK, but if I had to pay, I think I'd go for a smaller one, used as an evening feature rather than a main source of heat - tend to do that anyway.
Like yours, the system here is far from perfect & we'd probably save by pulling it to bits and starting again, but we need to sort the shape of the house out first! Tried discussing alternatives with our plumber/Aga man, but soon realised it was a waste of time as his vested interests were overriding his judgement, which was totally black & white. In my experience, things are only ever shades of grey!

Marie, we've not been on bottled gas for long and only use it for a hob, but it seems OK. We are still on the cylinder the previous owners left here in August. Now the Aga is on, it could go past Christmas, judging by the weight. 19kg of gas here is about £36.

not been on for AGES as not a lot has really happened here. I have two greenhouses now just waiting to be put up. DH has been so busy at work and with the extension that I really can't moan. Might be up and running for summer next year!! LOL!

I just wanted to comment on the woodburner/back boiler debate. We have a medium sized woodburner and it is enough to heat the lounge and take the chill out of the air upstairs but we don't use it for main heating as it is very expensive on logs if you don't have access to free wood like some others on here. We use the c/h in the morning, only ever set to about 16 deg, and the woodburner in the afternoon/evening when I have more time to deal with it.
We did have an old rayburn which had to be taken out as it was !!!!!!ed which did have a backboiler but even that only ran about three small rads on a gravity system (sound like I know what I;m talking about doesn't it!!) but these were only ever warm to the touch and really didn't do much.
We are about to put an oil fired boiler in as we currently have an electric boiler in the loft and this is much more expensive than oil. New oil boilers are more efficient than older ones and to keep the costs down we are installing underfloor heating in the extension (about 60m sq). We did think about underfloor in the rest of the downstairs but the idea of digging up however many inches of concrete and then finding bare soil under that...... Well you can imagine my response to DH!!!
Heating, I think, is a difficult one to get right because what works for one, doesn't for another.
Jayne, get someone in who knows what they are talking about, preferably get a few people in and compare their recomendations to your own research. You never know it might be better for you to install a new boiler, get a woodburner for the evenings. Oh and don't forget the bigger the w/b the more heat it produces. My neighbour has a HUGE one (cos it fitted in the inglenook and they have their front door open cos it gets too hot downstairs and not very warm upstairs! You will need to really feed it to get any decent heat out of the rads but you will prb melt in the process!!!
Can you get any grants to help with the replacement costs? Worth having a look at.

Stitching Witch..... not fair! I want want some chickies! I will have to wait until the garden is sorted and I can afford to get the run, coop etc!

Davesnave.... hows life in devon?? You seem to be getting into the swing of it!

Anyway, I;m off to the delight of food shopping in the big town with two hyped up under 5's! Oh, the life!

Hope everyone else is keeping well.....

Mambury

Lotus-eater

I can only agree with the above. If you have gas mains, go for that as main heating...unless you have access to free wood and somewhere to keep it and a means to constantly chop and saw it up. AND be happy about constantly feeding the fire.

A woodburner is not a moneysaving jobbie, not unless you get free/very cheap wood and only then over the long term.

A woodburner is a nice way of heating your house though.

I've had a rayburn, complete with back burner and I couldn't wait to get rid of it! I considered going the woodburner back boiler way and I'm so glad I didn't. A small woodburner and oil heating works best for us. The oil heating is set to 15 and we top that up with the woodburner when we want to. Not at the moment as it's not cold enough.

JayneC

Thanks for all the responses - must admit my head's spinning a bit!!

I've been reading up a bit about people's experiences (found a few threads on MSE) and it seems that a lot of people have found that their system doesn't heat all their rads very effectively which is why I looked at a the boiler that claims to cope with double the numbers of rads I actually need it to! Interesting to hear that underfloor heating doesn't need as much heat.

I'm not just thinking about money as I guess a new gas boiler would be much cheaper to install and quite efficient, at the moment anyway. But I am concerned about sustainability and gas/oil/electric may become much, much more expensive in the not too distant future, whereas wood is much more accessible and sustainable. The boiler i looked at is actually multi fuel so can top up with coal to produce more heat if needed. I'm not in a smokeless zone so can pretty much burn whatever.

And I love stoves too .

I have quite a large living room - it's 2 rooms knocked into one and I may open up the kitchen area too, to have a more open plan downstairs area. So a large stove will be needed.

I'm going to get a couple of local companies in for quotes and thought i might contact energy saving trust for advice about grants (and any other advice they might be able to give!)

If anyone else has any advice, hints or tips please join in.

Cheers,

Jayne