Looking for advice on central heating / hot water.

DataMonkeyAG

Hi all,

Looking for some advice.  Just moved into a new house out in the country.  We have mains electricity, but no natural gas.  Currently the heating and hot water is generated using a dual fuel burner.  We are currently using kiln dried hardwood and smokeless coal nuggets.  It does the job, but it's a lot of work and takes planning to know when to start the fire so it's got enough time to bring the temperature up.

I'm looking for advice on what would be best to switch to.  I've considered:
1 - Keeping what we have and just putting up with it.
2 - An air sourced heat pump, but I've been told that doesn't work that great in Scotland
3 - Switching to an electric boiler.
4 - Switching to LPG using an underground tank.
5 - Using Option 3 but installing a wind turbine and / or solar panels to help with the costs.

Anyone got any advice on what would be the best balance between cost and ease of use?

Thanks

Alex

Robin9

Don't do 3 - like burning £20 notes.(at present rates £50 notes !)

Do 5 whatever you do

Gerry1

Don't even think of an electric boiler, nothing is more expensive !

Oil is probably the best choice, but using oversized radiators and pipes so that it will be ready for a heatpump (preferably GSHP) when the boiler becomes life expired or is taxed to make it uncompetitive.  By then heatpumps are likely to be cheaper in relative terms with far more installers with appropriate knowledge and experience.

lohr500

I would agree with Gerry1's comments. Oil is still a good option and if you already have pipework and radiators in place linked to the duel fuel burner it may not be a big job to install an oil boiler. If your duel fuel burner is inside the house, you may even want to consider getting an external oil boiler installed.

We had an external oil boiler fitted early this year, replacing an ancient oil boiler that was hidden in a cupboard in our kitchen. It was possible for us to locate the external boiler directly on the other side of the external wall to the internal boiler and use the internal boiler flue hole to run the pipework through. Quite handy as it's an old Yorkshire farmhouse and the stone walls are very, very thick!

We went for a Grant Vortex Blue boiler which comes with a 10 year parts and labour guarantee so long as it is serviced every year.

I looked at air source heat pumps, but even with the grant, it just didn't make economic sense in our case. My thinking was that I might as well stick with oil for the time being and have peace of mind in a 10 year warranty. As Gerry1 also comments, in 10 years time heatpump costs will probably be less in real terms ( and technology improved) so if I live that long, it is my plan B for 2031 if oil is banned by then   

The thing I like about oil is that there are many suppliers so you can shop around and get the best price each time. I understand  LPG supply is more restricted.

If you do go for oil, depending on your property and the size of boiler required, I would go for an oversized tank. The tank costs aren't much more for the larger ones, but if you can buy 1000+ litres at a time you tend to get better prices. Ours is 2500 litres and I get a 1500 litre delivery as needed. 

Reed_Richards

1)  Possibly the cheapest option if you buy the wood in bulk
2)  Air source heat pumps are very common in Sweden; is Scotland colder?
3)  Don't even think about it.
4)  Why LPG rather than Heating Oil?
5)  Solar panels won't give you significant electricity in winter, particularly in Scotland where winter days are short.  Wind turbines need to be huge to be economic; you'd need a lot of land  

gm0

If house not yet suitable for low temp greenery. Think about how that might be done and sequence of jobs. e.g. don't lay lovely floors and then dig them up to fit UFH obviously.  Or allow for bigger thicker rads if sticking with those when remodelling. Attend to insulation, draught proofing, windows, roof etc in terms of what's practical, allowed (listing/conservation) and cost in your context.

If you can do enough of them now - you will end up with a low temperature electric heating option i.e. ASHP or GSHP and it will work.  But if you bolt one on a poorly insulated house with unsuitable rads it won't work well - efficiency down, not warm enough, high costs.

So an option would be to stick an oil boiler in for 10 years on existing heat distribution (if this is viable and won't kill the boiler with rust/dirt as your solid fuel thing and its heat exchanger may be old and more "tolerant" of gunk.  This needs checking properly.  It may be that you could end up with Oil (for peak winter) and a heat pump (for most use). And then try and offset a chunk of electric usage with solar and other stuff which will work in the summer for DHW but not in the winter for CH.  This is more servicing and of course space.  Better to end up with one system in the end once proven on the site.

If you find you need rads to do anything - think about the future and lower temperature distribution.  The UFH digging or Stelrad K3 or similar as rads.  Triple, finned.  As large as your space/walls/apertures sensibly permit.  Radiator output goes down a curve (off a cliff) with lower temperature so for the same rate of heat into the room it needs to be a bigger better emitter to run at or below 40C (heat pump land)

BUFF

Depending upon where you are & how much space you have it may be worth also looking at a biomass boiler (very debatable how green they are) as there may be grants available.

How old is this "new" house & how well insulated? see gm)'s post re. thinking about planning upgrades to the existing ch system but don't ignore insulation improvements if needed/possible.

matelodave

We had the same dilemma eleven years ago when we bough a run down 1986 detached bungalow out in the fens of Cambridgeshire which needed  refurbing and replacement of rusty manky storage heaters - the previous owner had given up with them and was using LPG cabinet heaters, so there was mould everywhere as well.

 It's quite large at 140m2, very exposed and with indeterminate cavity wall insulation, its got 300mm+ in the loft and none under the suspended wooden floor (although it's something I regret not doing but we were running out of money an time). The double glazing is around 25 years old with narrow gas, not up to current standards.

The choices were LPG tank in the garden, Oil tank in the garden, replacement storage heaters or go revolutionary and get a heat pump (air to water as SWMBO would not entertain air-air diffusers either on the wall or in the ceiling). We didn't want to lose garden space to either an oil or gas tank nor the faff of replenishing it several times a year.

 Biomass was also an option but we didn't have space to store the pellets (they need to be kept clean and dry so would have need a shed or similar) nor di we want to lug bags of pellets around to keep it topped up (we are now in out mid 70's and could see that we might not be able to manage it as we got older). Biomass boilers also didn't have a good reputation for reliability eleven years ago - that might have changed.
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We plumped for a heatpump and as we had to sort out about 30% of the floor we also went for overlay underfloor heating which eliminated the need for radiators. I got several quotes and visited a couple of suppliers who had systems set up and working to demonstrate and I spent a fair amount of time discussing our options before they even came to survey our place.

The whole set up cost us £14k all in, of which £7k was for the u/f and £7k for the heatpump and tank. An oil boiler and tank would have cost around £4k, dunno about LPG but I guess not a lot less so the heatpump really only added about £3k-£4k to our installation costs. 

We've got just over £5k back in renewable heat incentive payments and this will be the first year that our total leccy bill will exceed £1000 and that's due to the collapse of SYMBIO and the rising cost of energy. We cook, clean, produce hot water and heat all with leccy so we don't reckon that's too bad.

We are more than happy with our system, it keeps us warm and cosy and TBH the only drawback is its slow heating response time, but that is mainly due to us running at very low temperatures and the underfloor heating. Running it hotter with correctly sized rads would make it much more responsive but, as we are at home all day most day days, we don't need quick responses.