What will happen to rural (off gas) heating options? What should I go for??

shinytop

Unique_Username said:

Advice please 🙂 -

3) Change to Air-source or Ground-source heat pump system. My understanding is that these don't work very well on non-new builds and particularly not with traditional radiator systems? These then effectively require for all of your floors to be ripped out and underfloor heating installed in order to be effective. Of course I've only recently installed the downstairs flooring 🙄. I believe that these will also require some sort of a gas or electric boiler system as well, as they only do heating and don't do hot water properly? Cost = £15k to £30k depending upon which and the amount of making-good required.

We had an ASHP installed in our all electric 1990s bungalow.   Our EPC was D with a heating requirement of about 20,000 kWh/year.  We had no radiators or pipes and an old HW cylinder.  The total cost for everything was £16.5k.  Thats's the ASHP, 250l cylinder, 12 radiators, pipes, labour, controllers, the whole lot.  We'll get about £11k back over 7 years from RHI.  The rest we'll save via cheaper heating.  It all works fine so far with a warm house and lots of hot water and we won't need any other backup system (although we do have a log burner).  It's likely to cost about the same as an oil system to run but more than gas (which we don't have) would.   

lohr500

What capacity is your oil tank? The quote you have received to replace the single skin tank with a fire resistant tank sounds expensive. From your description it sounds like you would need a 30 minute protection tank would be needed as it is not located inside a building. To give you some idea of cost, a tree fell on our old 2500 litre single skin tank last year. It was almost full of fuel, badly distorted and showing cracks on the walls, but fortunately nothing leaked.
To replace the tank with a regular double skinned bunded tank of the same capacity cost £2600. This included pumping the fuel into temporary holding containers, removing the old tank, enlarging the base to accommodate the larger footprint of the double skinned tank and then pumping the fuel back into the new tank.
A 2500 litre standard bunded tank is around £1400 to £1500 on line. A 30 minute fire rated 2500 litre tank is £2250. So I would expect to pay a premium of around £900 for the fire rated tank. In this case our replacement cost would have been £2600 + £850 = £3450. And  that's with a larger than average 2500 litre tank.

We also looked at alternative heating options to kerosene earlier this year as our 35 year old oil boiler was past its best and hopelessly inefficient. I considered ASHP and Biomass. To heat our old farmhouse the ASHP surveyors concluded we would need two 13kW units running together, nearly all the radiators changing and upgrades to the house mains power supply to get three phase electric to the ASHP's. Total cost in excess of £24k. The economics of it didn't make sense even with the full RHI grant which I think is capped at somewhere around £13k from memory. I ruled out Biomass out as we didn't have space for a building to put the plant into with an automated feed, etc. 

In the end I concluded the best thing to do was to just replace the old boiler with a new highly efficient condensing boiler as with no access to mains gas, oil is still the cheapest option. After carefully balancing the system to optimise flow and return boiler temperatures and having the old gravity fed hot water system upgraded to valve control, I have seen a 38% saving in oil consumption (measured with an in line flow tally counter) over comparable external temperature conditions with no changes to the timer programmes. 

Until the pricing comes down on alternative ways to heat our house and/ or I can't replace the new boiler when it finally packs up, I'm sticking with oil.

danrv

shinytop said:

Unique_Username said:

Advice please 🙂 -

3) Change to Air-source or Ground-source heat pump system. My understanding is that these don't work very well on non-new builds and particularly not with traditional radiator systems? These then effectively require for all of your floors to be ripped out and underfloor heating installed in order to be effective. Of course I've only recently installed the downstairs flooring 🙄. I believe that these will also require some sort of a gas or electric boiler system as well, as they only do heating and don't do hot water properly? Cost = £15k to £30k depending upon which and the amount of making-good required.

The total cost for everything was £16.5k.  Thats's the ASHP, 250l cylinder, 12 radiators, pipes, labour, controllers, the whole lot.  We'll get about £11k back over 7 years from RHI.  

That’s a good payback. I suppose the amount or percentage depends on various factors.

shinytop

danrv said:

shinytop said:

Unique_Username said:

Advice please 🙂 -

3) Change to Air-source or Ground-source heat pump system. My understanding is that these don't work very well on non-new builds and particularly not with traditional radiator systems? These then effectively require for all of your floors to be ripped out and underfloor heating installed in order to be effective. Of course I've only recently installed the downstairs flooring 🙄. I believe that these will also require some sort of a gas or electric boiler system as well, as they only do heating and don't do hot water properly? Cost = £15k to £30k depending upon which and the amount of making-good required.

The total cost for everything was £16.5k.  Thats's the ASHP, 250l cylinder, 12 radiators, pipes, labour, controllers, the whole lot.  We'll get about £11k back over 7 years from RHI.  

That’s a good payback. I suppose the amount or percentage depends on various factors.

It is and it does. The formula is:
annual payment = (1-1/SPF)*EPC usage*tariff
SPF = seasonal performance factor (aka SCOP) - this is the kWh heat energy produced/kWh electricity input.  This number is produced  as part of the MCS certification process.  It's normally a little over 3 these days (mine is 3.3)
EPC Usage - this is the annual kWh for heating and HW on your EPC.  It's capped at 20,000 for RHI
tariff = a rate defined by Ofgem, currently 10.92p
The tariff goes up each year by CPI.  
link here
https://www.ofgem.gov.uk/system/files/docs/2018/07/factsheet_tariffsandpayments_july_2018.pdf

lohr500

@shinytop. I guess the proof of the pudding will be over a few years running with the system and seeing if you do get an SPF of 3.3. My fear with ASHP is that the efficiency won't be close to the theoretical SPF and that running costs will be higher than expected. Especially in winter when the ASHP will need to work hardest.

shinytop

lohr500 said:

@shinytop. I guess the proof of the pudding will be over a few years running with the system and seeing if you do get an SPF of 3.3. My fear with ASHP is that the efficiency won't be close to the theoretical SPF and that running costs will be higher than expected. Especially in winter when the ASHP will need to work hardest.

I don't expect to get an SPF of 3.3, although it would be nice;  I'm expecting 2.5-3.  Not sure if you know but RHI uses the 3.3 whatever is actually achieved so all that's at risk is the running costs savings.  I'm coming from storage heaters so unless SCOP/SPF is less than about 1.5 I'll still be saving money.  

Reed_Richards

Even at a SPF of 2.5 you are still doing your bit to save the planet by using 1/2.5 of the energy you would otherwise have done and quite a lot of that energy being "green".  Lots of people are buying electric cars despite never achieving a payback over the cost of an equivalent ICE vehicle; you could achieve a lot more by putting that extra £10,000 towards the cost of a heat pump.

Phil3822

Many oil companies are working to get a sustainable heating oil replacement that will be able to be used with oil boilers. Worth a read.
https://www.futurereadyfuel.info/

https://www.oftec.co.uk/future-heating

Reed_Richards

Unfortunately bio-fuels have to be grown instead of food crops and the world as a whole is not brimming-over with food as it is.  Then there is still processing and transport.  And at the end of it you have an oil boiler than is at best 90% efficient versus a heat pump that is maybe 300% efficient. 

matelodave

Phil3822 said:

Many oil companies are working to get a sustainable heating oil replacement that will be able to be used with oil boilers. Worth a read.
https://www.futurereadyfuel.info/

https://www.oftec.co.uk/future-heating

Sounds like a lot more rainforest having to be decimated to provide it.

As R_R says, it needs to be grown, processed and transported which means lot more land to be given over to "renweables" rather than food and quite a lot of it being used to transport and deliver it.

Not sure that I'm in favour of hundreds (if noth thousands) of acres of solar farms which also reduce the land available for crops whether for food or biofuel

What with the push towards plant based food rather than meat, I wonder where or who is going to grow it all and at what cost