Wood pellet boiler

motorguy

saverbuyer wrote: »

So has the price gone up as the price of oil goes up?

Do you fill the hopper up when it's cheap?

It tends not to track the exact price of oil and from memory they only change it once or twice a year and they *might* give you advance notice - i cant remember.

We've a storage bin built behind the boiler house / utility room on our garage, which can store about 10 tonnes. We generally get a four tonne load just when its running low, so the max we would have would be maybe 5 tonnes.

If we knew in advance there was going to be a price increase then we could theoretically get a double load, but we'd be laying out maybe £1500 which is a big outlay.

saverbuyer

Cheers for the info.

The in-laws are looking at getting this installed and I'm trying to work out if it's worthwhile. Their heating bills are horrific.

saverbuyer

Looks like you are paying £150 a tonne. I actually thought current prices were around £220. Makes a better case for the wood pellet burner.

motorguy

saverbuyer wrote: »

Looks like you are paying £150 a tonne. I actually thought current prices were around £220. Makes a better case for the wood pellet burner.

Sorry, to clarify - we are paying around £735 for 3.5 tonnes, so thats about £210 / tonne. Cant remember exactly - my wife does the ordering and it comes out of her account! :beer:

So thats about £420 for 2 tonnes. 2 tonnes has the same amount of energy as 1000 litres of oil, which is around £630 delivered, so pretty much 2/3's of the price.

If your folks are using a collossal amount of fuel then you would be better to look at how their heat is escaping. You can get a thermal image of the house done to understand whats happening. This will give you an indication of where you could upgrade insulation. Likely places are doors, windows, window frames, roof space.

Also an air tightness test would help too.

Looking at zoning the house or using time switches could also be an option.

If they're currently running on oil, they may be running an old ineffective boiler. A new condensing boiler will have an efficiency rating of 94% which compares very favorably to the efficiency of the best wood pellet burners. The piping from the burner to the house could be poorly lagged - thats where you'll see a dry or damp strip from you're garage to your house if its been snowing.

I would definitely talk to someone like Green Energy though and get expert advice. You would definitely be best to focus on where they're losing all that heat at this stage, rather than just pumping cheaper heat in.

saverbuyer

You don't know what the craic is with RHI for domestic customers?

If it was available, then biomass burners would be a no brainer.

motorguy

saverbuyer wrote: »

You don't know what the craic is with RHI for domestic customers?

If it was available, then biomass burners would be a no brainer.

There was talk of it coming here, but i think the grant is the current plan in place OR if you're building new and build it to 'zero carbon' standards then you can get rate relief for a period of time.

saverbuyer

motorguy wrote: »

Sorry, to clarify - we are paying around £735 for 3.5 tonnes, so thats about £210 / tonne. Cant remember exactly - my wife does the ordering and it comes out of her account! :beer:

So thats about £420 for 2 tonnes. 2 tonnes has the same amount of energy as 1000 litres of oil, which is around £630 delivered, so pretty much 2/3's of the price.

If your folks are using a collossal amount of fuel then you would be better to look at how their heat is escaping. You can get a thermal image of the house done to understand whats happening. This will give you an indication of where you could upgrade insulation. Likely places are doors, windows, window frames, roof space.

Also an air tightness test would help too.

Looking at zoning the house or using time switches could also be an option.

If they're currently running on oil, they may be running an old ineffective boiler. A new condensing boiler will have an efficiency rating of 94% which compares very favorably to the efficiency of the best wood pellet burners. The piping from the burner to the house could be poorly lagged - thats where you'll see a dry or damp strip from you're garage to your house if its been snowing.

I would definitely talk to someone like Green Energy though and get expert advice. You would definitely be best to focus on where they're losing all that heat at this stage, rather than just pumping cheaper heat in.

Fantastic advice there Paul. Thanks.

We've looked at the insulation which needs upgraded. There's also the issue of the rather large aga.

motorguy

victorfirst wrote: »

We heat the the house 24 hours aday with the stats turned down at night so the the house can never be below 16 degress at any time. We buy the bags of pellets at 2.35 per bag (minium order at this price is 2 tonnes).There is an interim grant available of available £2500.Very pleased with it at momement. Bear in mind when comparing oil that you will have to buy an oil tank

Ah - your post read like your heating was ON 24x7 for £20 a week, as opposed to your house being warm 24x7.

Yes, thats the way we set ours. Minimum of 16 degrees (although with good insulation its rare heat is on those rooms at all), and 19 degrees for the rooms we use regularly although its rare the heat is needed for more than a couple of hours.

So basically we'll have the kitchen / snug on for a couple of hours mid afternoon, then the lounge for a couple of hours late afternoon, then the bedrooms for a couple of hours in the evening. Thats about it really. Weekends the kitchen / snug would be on a bit more.

The exception to that is we have a granny flat in which the heat is on a lot more for my wifes parents - the lounge and the kitchen would be set at 20 degrees morning to night.

We get our pellets pumped into a storage bin direct.

candyflossco

Hi , new to this thread , was wondering has anyone had faulty pellets ? we have a hooper system, last year we got pellets from balcas and there was a lump of wood that got stuck in the auger ( they paid for this to be fixed ) this time round pellets seem to be like dust , and now have caused the motor to burn out , was just wondering has anyone else had any issues , thanks

motorguy

candyflossco wrote: »

Hi , new to this thread , was wondering has anyone had faulty pellets ? we have a hooper system, last year we got pellets from balcas and there was a lump of wood that got stuck in the auger ( they paid for this to be fixed ) this time round pellets seem to be like dust , and now have caused the motor to burn out , was just wondering has anyone else had any issues , thanks

Yes. We've had substandard pellets from Balcas.

Last year we got a batch that broke up into dust and blocked the auger / hopper. They refunded us for the tonne or so we had remaining but not for any of the amount we'd burnt through - it took us a while to twig it was the pellets were the problem (auger clogging daily).

Their customer service is fairly dire - no real apology or "ownership".