best wood Pellet store / Hopper?

[Deleted User]

RHI may apply summer 2013 but I wouldn`t hold my breath

http://www.rhincentive.co.uk/RHI/regulation/residential/

don`t forget that minimum standards of insulation will apply in order to get the rhi

sorry about the problems lostinrates, very annoying

re damp, yes it does happen as the pellets absorb moist air rapidly. We always completely empty the hopper and auger for summer and that is in a warm dry house

grahamc2003

Really interesting posts. I'm sure many on lpg or oil will be looking at pellet boilers and/or heat pumps as a replacement system due to the rhi.

I'm getting heat pump quotes at the moment but also considering pellet boilers of the 'see the flame' decorative type, to go in the kitchen. At the current level of research (I have a fair idea about heat pumps, but little about pellet boilers to the level I feel comfortable with which, as an engineer, is deep).

Atm I see pros and cons for each, as you'd erxpect - just my views atm which may change, appreciate comments

Electricity cost will rise at a fair rate, but won't rocket out of control, pellets could.
No storage/lugging/co/fire risk/reordering with electricity.
Not sure which is better for reliability or maintenance costs.
Pellet heating is quicker to heat rads from cold, so can be turned on and off - ASHPs just run most of the time, and when high rate of heating required, the costs go up.
Pellets heat in freezing weather, ashps performance drops with lower temps, and need defrosting, so I'd say 'struggle' at below freezing temps (say <-5c).
Possibility of noise with ashp (since it would go next to living room), no noise probs with pellet stove in kitchen (?)
Pellet stove is a feature, ashp isn't.
rhi greater for pellet.
Not sure of running costs for each.
Not sure of purchase/install costs for a pretty pellet stove, but about £8k-£11k for a 15kW ashp.

Anymore comparisons to be made? Atm, looks like 6 one one half a dozen of the other.

lostinrates

theballboy wrote: »

Sorry to hear your had such a hassle. Really shouldn't be like that when your dropping so much cash on a new system. Definitely disheartening

A a matter of interest can you advise which boiler you decided to go with and why?

Mcs registered installer?

Mcs reg installer, yes.

I will share the name of the boiler etc when I feel that we are certain not to go into a legal dispute with the supplier. ATM its far from certain.

lostinrates

grahamc2003 wrote: »

Really interesting posts. I'm sure many on lpg or oil will be looking at pellet boilers and/or heat pumps as a replacement system due to the rhi.

I'm getting heat pump quotes at the moment but also considering pellet boilers of the 'see the flame' decorative type, to go in the kitchen. At the current level of research (I have a fair idea about heat pumps, but little about pellet boilers to the level I feel comfortable with which, as an engineer, is deep).

Atm I see pros and cons for each, as you'd erxpect - just my views atm which may change, appreciate comments

Electricity cost will rise at a fair rate, but won't rocket out of control, pellets could.
No storage/lugging/co/fire risk/reordering with electricity.
Not sure which is better for reliability or maintenance costs.
Pellet heating is quicker to heat rads from cold, so can be turned on and off - ASHPs just run most of the time, and when high rate of heating required, the costs go up.
Pellets heat in freezing weather, ashps performance drops with lower temps, and need defrosting, so I'd say 'struggle' at below freezing temps (say <-5c).
Possibility of noise with ashp (since it would go next to living room), no noise probs with pellet stove in kitchen (?)
Pellet stove is a feature, ashp isn't.
rhi greater for pellet.
Not sure of running costs for each.
Not sure of purchase/install costs for a pretty pellet stove, but about £8k-£11k for a 15kW ashp.

Anymore comparisons to be made? Atm, looks like 6 one one half a dozen of the other.

Pellet costs could go down too. At, a fair amount is imported (and we export some, it all seems very not green as it stands. I know ATM research is going into other pellet sources, like manure. For us this would make all the difference, as it would for many small holders, famers and horse keepers. Though, for rhi, the pellets would have to pass muster, not just be home produced rubbish.


There is tremendous scope for expansion of pellet production within the uk which would be good for uk business too.

For us, once rhi was announced it was non sensical financially not to get one ( presuming it works eventually) even though I really would have prefered other sources. ( fwiw we plan to multi source with solar thermal and gshp too)

theballboy

kittie wrote: »

RHI may apply summer 2013 but I wouldn`t hold my breath

http://www.rhincentive.co.uk/RHI/regulation/residential/

don`t forget that minimum standards of insulation will apply in order to get the rhi

sorry about the problems lostinrates, very annoying

re damp, yes it does happen as the pellets absorb moist air rapidly. We always completely empty the hopper and auger for summer and that is in a warm dry house

Yeah just finished getting the loft up to 300mm insulation. Cavity ready has 40 mm in it. Once accepted for the interim grant, automatically transfer to the rhi once launched.

Storage of pellets is a big concern for me at the minute. Has pt with having to feed the hopper manually but I ro have a problem with the price differential to buy pallets of bags.
On the another hand, I've no problem paying for a 3ton hopper thatll pay for itself in a couple of years with savings but i do have a problem with it not doing thd job properly.

Been offered by an installer to have a bespoke one built for me using marine ply. Circa £1k. Might be a goer if no matter what you go with they all get damp. Thing is I'm learning towards installing the grant "spira" and any store other than one recommended by them will invalidate the warranty

theballboy

As far as I know pellets will always undercut the price of oil and must only track it by a specific price

For us it's nonsensical financially not to get one either with grant , rhi and pellet savings costs.

We had considered getting a dry stove also in the sitting room (5kw or so) and I thought it may as well be pellet stove also but they are much more expensive than the multifuel stove offerings.

theballboy

grahamc2003 wrote: »

Really interesting posts. I'm sure many on lpg or oil will be looking at pellet boilers and/or heat pumps as a replacement system due to the rhi.

I'm getting heat pump quotes at the moment but also considering pellet boilers of the 'see the flame' decorative type, to go in the kitchen. At the current level of research (I have a fair idea about heat pumps, but little about pellet boilers to the level I feel comfortable with which, as an engineer, is deep).

Atm I see pros and cons for each, as you'd erxpect - just my views atm which may change, appreciate comments

Electricity cost will rise at a fair rate, but won't rocket out of control, pellets could.
No storage/lugging/co/fire risk/reordering with electricity.
Not sure which is better for reliability or maintenance costs.
Pellet heating is quicker to heat rads from cold, so can be turned on and off - ASHPs just run most of the time, and when high rate of heating required, the costs go up.
Pellets heat in freezing weather, ashps performance drops with lower temps, and need defrosting, so I'd say 'struggle' at below freezing temps (say <-5c).
Possibility of noise with ashp (since it would go next to living room), no noise probs with pellet stove in kitchen (?)
Pellet stove is a feature, ashp isn't.
rhi greater for pellet.
Not sure of running costs for each.
Not sure of purchase/install costs for a pretty pellet stove, but about £8k-£11k for a 15kW ashp.

Anymore comparisons to be made? Atm, looks like 6 one one half a dozen of the other.

Having spoketo a deti rep (running rhi scheme for Northern Ireland) they made me aware (as i was gonna install a wet mcs stove) that it would be my eesponsibility to demonstrate to rhem that thos was now my main heat source and if i had oul installwd that mu be difficult. This then might be reflected in the payment tariff. Something for u to check out

[Deleted User]

theballboy wrote: »

Been offered by an installer to have a bespoke one built for me using marine ply. Circa £1k. Might be a goer if no matter what you go with they all get damp.

no the bagged pallets don`t get damp if they have been bagged properly. We store pellets for a year in an ouside garage and they flow freely when opened. We use balkan brites because I, a small woman, can easily handle the bags

I wouldn`t be surprised at all if RHI doesn`t happen for domestic installations. There are lots of whispers to that effect on the net

grahamc2003

kittie wrote: »

no the bagged pallets don`t get damp if they have been bagged properly. We store pellets for a year in an ouside garage and they flow freely when opened. We use balkan brites because I, a small woman, can easily handle the bags

I wouldn`t be surprised at all if RHI doesn`t happen for domestic installations. There are lots of whispers to that effect on the net

While it's of course a possibility that domestic rhi won't go ahead, I'd say there are so many dependencies (jobs, meeting eu targets, expectations) on the rhi that it almost certainly will go ahead in some form or another. (btw, I'm against these types of subsidies, so I'd prefer it not to go ahead - it's just that I think it must). Like you I don't think they'll be as generous as the business rhi, I expect the rate of the rhi at the end of the day will be at or near the lower end of the published ranges. As with any political decisions, impossible to predict one way or the other imv.

Having seen what's currently mcs approved, it's quite a hard job to find anything British in there. It would be good imv to stimulate UK manufacturing with a differential rhi tariff favoring uk hardware, but I expect that would be against a multitude of eu rules.

As to future pellet prices (one of my concerns) - yes they could go down as well as up - it was just the likely volatility of retail pellet prices vs electricity prices which is, imo, a slight advantage for ashps over pellet boilers. I have in the back of my mind some analysis I saw a couple of years ago stating that wood burning is fine while on a small scale in the UK, but it wouldn't take a great increase before net uk consumption exceeds UK production of wood (and wood products). So then we have to take on the risk of transportation/import tariffs/world prices etc.

theballboy

grahamc2003 wrote: »

I have in the back of my mind some analysis I saw a couple of years ago stating that wood burning is fine while on a small scale in the UK, but it wouldn't take a great increase before net uk consumption exceeds UK production of wood (and wood products). So then we have to take on the risk of transportation/import tariffs/world prices etc.

In that case it would really serve them well to start looking at the production then. I can see more and more people turning to wood (especially those not on gas grid) and definitely if rhi launches (it better)