New House Planning - Help!

JenJen83

Hi,

My husband and I are in the process of buying our first house - hurrah!

It's a 3 bedroom mid-errraced property, the property is currently on electricity only on an Economy 7 tarriff. There are 2 night storage heaters downstairs and 1 wood burning stove. There is no gas supply and no oil tank.

What we want

• a range in house either woodburning or other
• A way to heat water
• A way to heat the house

Any advice gratefully recived! We'd liek the perfect balance of initial cost, subsequent costs and being environmentally friendly.

Smiley_Dan

We'd liek the perfect balance of initial cost, subsequent costs and being environmentally friendly

You might need to provide some guidance as to what's the highest amount you'd pay in initial costs.

I assume that, when you say there's "no gas supply", there's no gas supply to your street (so you cannot be connected). Because if you can that's likely to be your answer if cost is the primary driver.

matelodave

If you are mid-terraced do you have easy access to the rear of your house and space to store the best part of 4-5 tons of wood. A small wood burning stove gets through a fair amount on it's own, but trying to heat the whole house & water with one means you'll get through quite a bit. You'll also need an immersion heater for the summer months unless you are hoping to be using a wood burning range to do your cooking as well, which will use even more wood and keep your kitchen nice and cosy during the summer.

You need to think about how you are going to cook, heat water and heat the house. You need to know how much you can afford and how much disruption you can put up with. A water based central heating system needs pipes all round the house with radiators, probably a new hot water tank.

Electricity is the easiest to install but possibly the the most expensive to run, however storage heaters & adjusting your lifestyle to do washing, tumbledrying, dishwashing and water heating during the cheap period of the E7 tariff can be quite economical.

Anything else means that you'll have to get and store fuel whether it's gas (LPG cylinders or a bulk tank) Oil requires a bulk tank and wood or coal needs somewhere dry and sheltered. All of these need facilities & access for delivery as well - hoses for oil or bulk LPG (which come in big lorries) and a wheelbarrow or trolley for LPG cylinders or wood which can also come in big lorries. A possible alternative is an air source heat-pump driving a wet heating system (radiators or underfloor), but you'll still need somewhere to put it (adjacent to the house so the plumbing can be connected).

How old is the house and how well is it insulated, has it got double glazing have you got solid or suspended floors on the ground floor - pipework can be hidden under suspended floors otherwise it has to run round the wall or drop through from upstairs.

Robwiz

I would suggest you get as much information as you can from the current residents – find out how they heat the house at what times and ask to see their energy bills.

Then live with the house over a winter and find out how you get on with what's installed. You will also know how much heat you require to feel comfortable, what it costs you and you can assess the cost of replacements.

The storage heaters will take the chill off the house for the morning and lighting the woodburner in the evening (and leaving the doors open) could be enough to keep the house cosy. If you need extra heat in the bedrooms, experiment with small electric heaters using timer plugs to switch them on before you wake up. That will help you size your radiators and boiler if you want to go that way.

I looked at a wood burning range for the kitchen but apart from all the work and wood storage hassle, the cost of the flue priced it out of contention. Also, you would probably find a range puts out too much heat in summer so a back up stove would be needed. We bought an Everhot, which plugs into a 13A socket. It uses about 15 units of electricity per week more than our previous cooker but that's a fair trade-off for the benefits we enjoy.

I have found that using my immersion heater (we have a 1kW element so that it uses solar PV) costs less than the gas boiler to heat water (100,000 btu, 78% efficient and very long pipe runs to the cylinder). Most families shouldn't need to use more than 6kWh per day to heat hot water. Ours is set to come on for 3 hours in the morning for showers and then again for 3 hours around midday to top up using electricity generated by the panels on the roof.

I would also suggest you think about installing air to air heat pumps (mini split) - air conditioners operating in heat mode. There's plenty of discussion on the forums here. We have a 2.8kW unit which yesterday kept our four bedroom house warm using 10 kWh electricity (outside high/low temps: 10º/5º). For a similar heat demand day (14 Nov 2013) the gas central heating used 166 kWh – undoubtedly the house was warmer back then, but a lot of that heat was wasted.

Here's an example of a terraced house heated by an air to air heat pump.