Has anyone ever considered purchasing solar panels or heat pumps to use for central heating? There definitely seems to be some sort of renewable energy bandwagon going around and I was wondering whether I was missing out. A family friend of ours suggested I check out this website: http://www.intelligentenergysolutions.com/heat-pumps---air-source_c124.aspx but I'm not too sure what to think, it's all quite pricey.
Any opinions welcome.
Anne
This stuff is still all being developed, so there's some danger that you install expensive kit which takes you down a blind alley. If you're doing a major chunk of building work then underfloor heating or even whole wall radiators can be part of the work. Otherwise installation is prohibitive. Ground source generates slightly warm water while conventional boilers use very hot water - so the distribution around the house is very different.
With ground source and air source the efficiency is measured as the ratio between the energy you have to put in against what comes out. Five to one is very good, but I suspect hard to achieve except in new builds.
A friend has just installed quite a complex system which has a number of heat sources feeding a very large, extremely well insulated hot water tank. He can use wood, solar, gas or electricity to heat the tank, and the tank then feeds the central heating with water at about 90C tho' I think there may be a heat exchanger between them. He said running cost were down by three quarters, but he also installed an astonishing amount of insulation into the place.