Getting Advice on the Best Heating/Hot Water System For Our House

Cellan

My family and I recently moved to the Isle of Anglesey. Our new home was built in 2005. It doesn't have a traditional Central Heating system. Instead it has a combination of alternatives that were installed when the house was built. We have a wood/coal Rayburn (Cooking, some heating and hot water), a wood/coal stove (Some heating in a large sitting room), Solar Panels (Generating electricity for immediate use - no battery storage or feed into the grid),  Solartwin PV panels (hot water), Electric underfloor heating (bathrooms only), Electric Panel Heaters (in some rooms, mainly upstairs,  not all the Heaters work) and an Electric Heat Recovery System (not linked to all rooms). The EPC provided by the previous owners states that the house has a floor space of 315 square meters. It also has high ceilings throughout.  Estimated energy to heat the property per year is 24,934 kWh for Space Heating and 2,838 kWh for Water, according to the EPC. Thankfully, the house was well insulated and draught proofed. The windows and doors are fully double glazed. 

Already I can see that the existing systems could be costly to run in terms of electricty, coal and logs. I believe that we are using them all correctly. Currently, they don't generate enough heat for the whole house, when the cold months of winter are still some way off. I don't want us to be shivering in January but, simply, I don’t know what to do for the best and how to obtain impartial advice on our options. We don’t qualify for help under the Welsh Government’s Nest Scheme which seems to provide that. All the other sources of guidance I have researched seem specific to installing a particular system (e.g. Solar or Heat Pumps).  We aren’t necessarily looking for anything innovative or eco-friendly, or even to upgrade what we have already,  just something that provides the heat and hot water that we need without costing a fortune to instal or run.. A Central Heating system could be the solution (no mains gas supply), but what type of boiler should we buy; oil, LPG, biomass, electric or something else?

Can anyone please help? Can you recommend someone who could visit us, explain the options/costs and help us decide which would suit us and the house the best. I am grateful for any assistance that the Forum can provide.

QrizB

315 square meters is a large house, roughly 2x the average detatched home (and 3x the average semi). with that in mind your energy needs seem relatively reasonable. (I'm surprised you have solar electric panels without a grid feed; this must make for some unusual wiring! Do you know the reason for this?)

It seems to me that your main source of heat is intended to be electricity, but you don't have any storage heaters. Peak-rate electricity is the most expensive mainstream means of heating and, as you need around 30,000kWh per year, that could cost you £6000 pa. In the short term, get intimately acquainted with your solid-fuel stoves and buy a few more jumpers.

Longer term, is this a "forever home" or do you expect to move again in a couple of years? Fitting a conventional wet central heating system fuelled by LPG, oil or a heat pump is likely to be the most cost-effective to run in the long term but, if I was to hazard a guess, you're looking at £10-25k to install it and a lot of disruption. Once installed it might save you £3-4k pa on your bills.

Cellan

Thank you for your reply. 
I don't know why the solar panels don't feed into the grid. It isn't what I would have chosen, but we are where we are! We will be here for at least 5 years, but it may not be a "forever home". Do you have any thoughts on the relative merits of LPG, Oil and Heat Pumps to fuel a boiler? 

Reed_Richards

I'm not aware of any service that makes home visits to give impartial advice on this sort of question.  LPG, Oil and Heat Pumps installed to provide a wet central heating system currently have broadly similar running costs (in my opinion).  A heat pump would be more expensive that an LPG or oil boiler but might attract a government subsidy.  Properly specified, any of these three options could provide you with all the warmth and hot water your home requires  so you would not have to use the expensive-to-run panels heaters or electric underfloor heating. 

An electric boiler would cost you approximately 3 times more to run than a heat pump; I don't know enough about biomass boilers to comment.      

Cellan

Thank you for taking the time to reply.. I'm grateful for your help.
I've noted all your thoughts, particularly about the running costs of the various options for heating a boiler.

Ebe_Scrooge

Cellan said:

Thank you for your reply. 
I don't know why the solar panels don't feed into the grid. It isn't what I would have chosen, but we are where we are! We will be here for at least 5 years, but it may not be a "forever home". Do you have any thoughts on the relative merits of LPG, Oil and Heat Pumps to fuel a boiler? 

Heat pumps - I have no personal experience, but several people in my village have them.  The general consensus seems to be that they're fine in the summer, but in winter they drink electricity like nobody's business.  Caveat - we are in very rural Scotland, and in the winter we regularly have long spells where the weather is well below zero.  You also need to make sure your insulation is tip-top - although that's no bad thing no matter what heating system you choose.

Oil vs LPG - in terms of running costs, broadly similar.  The downside of LPG is that you're often tied into a single supplier, with oil you own the tank and you're free to shop around every time you fill up.  This can be an important consideration - every time I need oil, I phone around about 6 or 8 local suppliers.  The difference between the cheapest and most expensive can be 10 or 12 pence per litre - if you're buying 1000 litres, that's a lot of money.

If you did decide to go for oil, install the biggest tank you can (you'd have to check the regulations as to what the maximum size allowed is).  But the bigger the tank, the less often you need to fill up - so you can, to a large extent, buy when it's cheapest (typically during the summer, though obviously it varies with global oil prices), and with any luck you'll not be forced into buying when it's most expensive if you can store enough to last you a year.

Reed_Richards

Ebe_Scrooge said:

Cellan said:

Thank you for your reply. 
I don't know why the solar panels don't feed into the grid. It isn't what I would have chosen, but we are where we are! We will be here for at least 5 years, but it may not be a "forever home". Do you have any thoughts on the relative merits of LPG, Oil and Heat Pumps to fuel a boiler? 

Heat pumps - I have no personal experience, but several people in my village have them.  The general consensus seems to be that they're fine in the summer, but in winter they drink electricity like nobody's business.  Caveat - we are in very rural Scotland, and in the winter we regularly have long spells where the weather is well below zero.  

This is completely true in relative terms because the colder the outside temperature then the less efficiently an Air Source Heat Pump will run.  However in absolute terms my ASHP is costing me a similar amount to run tan my oil boiler used to.

Ebe_Scrooge said:

If you did decide to go for oil, install the biggest tank you can (you'd have to check the regulations as to what the maximum size allowed is).  But the bigger the tank, the less often you need to fill up - so you can, to a large extent, buy when it's cheapest (typically during the summer, though obviously it varies with global oil prices), and with any luck you'll not be forced into buying when it's most expensive if you can store enough to last you a year.

Unfortunately an oil tank is quite a big one-off expense.  When it eventually wears out you will have to pay again for a new one and pay for the old one to be taken away.
  

matelodave

As said above, yes, a heatpump does use a lot of leccy in the winter, much the same as a gas, oil, lpg or any other sort of boiler use more fuel in the winter months. It's mainly because it's cold outside and people want their houses warm. You have to look at your energy costs over the whole year rather than focussing on the very cold day before Christmas.

Gnerally however people with heatpumps take a lot more notice of their leccy consumption than those with gas or oil, mainly because leccy costs around times that of other fuels even though a heatpump problably consumes one third of the energy of an oil, lpg, biofuel or gas boiler (12,000kwh of gas or oil is roughly equivalent to around 4,000kwh of leccy)

Correctly specified, installed and operated, a heat pump is probably no more expensive to run than oil or lpg but will alway cost more than mains gas when mains gas is so much cheaper than leccy.

All fuels have their pro's and cons' whether it's cost or convenience or even whether it suits your lifestyle. We chose to have a heatpump eleven years ago because we didn't want an oil or gas tank, dont have space to store biomass pellets and wanted rid of eight rusty old storage heaters. 

We are home all day, the heating runs virtually continuously because SWMBO wont put up with a cold house. It's only this year that our total annual leccy bill will exceed £1000 and that's because our supplier has just gone bust and the cost of our leccy has gone up by around 70%. However the price of gas has also gone up by a quite a lot and it's not inconceivable that oil, lpg and biomass wont follow suit.

Cellan

Ebe_Scrooge said:

Cellan said:

Thank you for your reply. 
I don't know why the solar panels don't feed into the grid. It isn't what I would have chosen, but we are where we are! We will be here for at least 5 years, but it may not be a "forever home". Do you have any thoughts on the relative merits of LPG, Oil and Heat Pumps to fuel a boiler? 

Heat pumps - I have no personal experience, but several people in my village have them.  The general consensus seems to be that they're fine in the summer, but in winter they drink electricity like nobody's business.  Caveat - we are in very rural Scotland, and in the winter we regularly have long spells where the weather is well below zero.  You also need to make sure your insulation is tip-top - although that's no bad thing no matter what heating system you choose.

Oil vs LPG - in terms of running costs, broadly similar.  The downside of LPG is that you're often tied into a single supplier, with oil you own the tank and you're free to shop around every time you fill up.  This can be an important consideration - every time I need oil, I phone around about 6 or 8 local suppliers.  The difference between the cheapest and most expensive can be 10 or 12 pence per litre - if you're buying 1000 litres, that's a lot of money.

If you did decide to go for oil, install the biggest tank you can (you'd have to check the regulations as to what the maximum size allowed is).  But the bigger the tank, the less often you need to fill up - so you can, to a large extent, buy when it's cheapest (typically during the summer, though obviously it varies with global oil prices), and with any luck you'll not be forced into buying when it's most expensive if you can store enough to last you a year.

Thank you for these wise words. I'm grateful for you sharing the benefit of your experience. 

gm0

The life of a new boiler system should be 15-25+ years (depending upon whether it is maintained like a grandfather's axe) or dumped early for something better.  Plumbing and rads are at the longer end maybe 25-40+ years perhaps depending upon the technology.  Radiator TRVs don't last forever (why are they so terrible it's mad).  Fans are going to be another weak spot if you have them so they had better be a standard part or from a major manufacturer.  Stylish and serviceable don't always go together.
In my view ultimate longevity/serviceability of ASHP and GSHP is not *yet* as well established as for older gas or oil burners or electric heating - but it is getting there - early adopters getting punished by rapid technology change, obsolescence and vendor failures is receding. And all the technologies have good and bad suppliers with terrible or reliable products.  I'd be happy to (carefully) buy an ASHP now.  Controls - keep it simple. But if you really must have smart - try not to buy a big expensive component with quick to obsolete smarts feature integrated into it. Modular - so that any smart mobile phone tech bit can be replaced much earlier than all the rest with anything from anyone. Not an obsolete module from a boiler manufacturer who dabbled.

For the OP's use case - evaluating a new wet system against electric heating - we are well into green energy transition timescales by 2040-2050 well within the life of a new system. Nobody knows the mix of carrots and sticks and energy type levies that will be applied in the next decade or what global markets will do to underlying prices.  This is a problem many of us face with what to do and when to do it in the next few years.

So what can we say - personal (strong) opinions follow:

LPG and Biomass seem to me to be fairly tied or controlled markets via a limited choice of cartel local suppliers/duopolies. Little competitive pressure.  Is price discovery really happening.  Not convinced.  Personally I wouldn't touch either.  Biomass had a moment in the subsidised sun but energy density vs kerosene is laughable so the volumes to be delivered and to be stored are extremely high (space or frequency of tanker blowing chips runs).  The burners themselves seem OK.

With no Gas piped in that leaves Oil (Kero) and the various electric options. GSHP, ASHP, Caldera (time shift electric wet heating - efficiency worse than electric direct but can time shift unit price which may help or not - nobody knows over 20 years. E7 storage heaters, Direct.

If fitting new wet distribution but not pulling the trigger on the GSHP or ASHP then there needs to be an eye to what comes later If you can't face digging out and insulating floors and fitting wet UFH then Fitting low temperature capable radiatiors (bigger where possible, triples, taking a view on fan assist based on how big, how many, your rooms), carefully fitted fat plumbing for low temperature decent flow rate later. And absolutely no microbore. 

If it was me I'd get quotes to fit low temperature capable distribution to part of the house and an ASHP to drive it. Putting it alongside what is there now for redundancy and resilience - some heat - fuel diversity to power cuts. 

Your advantage is that you have some other options to boost a given size ASHP if it is lacking in the worst of weather but cost effective the rest of the time.  If I wanted to wait for clarity on subsidy or I didn't like the heat pump installers who I could find locally - then *very reluctantly* I'd find an oil boiler heating installer to fit relatively future proof low temperature capable rads and plumbing and stick in an oil boiler at a location where it makes sense now (tank oil supply pipe, flue regs, condensate exit will impact this) and sense for later - the plumbing won't move - fitting the outside bits of the ASHP at the same point on the building where external ASHP noise isn't a nuisance and there is routing for a suitably fat electric supply from your consumer unit.  So consider both scenarios and their needs before running any copper for wet plumbing and put it in the right place.

Cellan

This is a really thorough analysis of the options. I'm very grateful for the time you have taken to send it.