The Accidental Smallholder Forum
Smallholding => Renewables => Topic started by: Factotum on September 30, 2013, 08:44:53 am
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Anyone have experience of this technology?
We're looking at options for heating & hot water - currently we use oil but are wondering about GSHP instead.
How expensive was the installation? - we could keep that down as we have a digger and do the trenches ourselves.
If you have one - how warm is your house, how expensive is it to run compared to 'traditional' energy? We're in Moray, fairly mild climate, though Jan-Apr can be very cold, the last couple of years we had snow in May and usually have snow in April. I like the house to be toasty and wonder if a GSHP would be suitable.
Sue
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I don't have proper answers, but looked into this a few months ago before ending up with a new oil heater.
It was comming in around £12,000-£14,000, with us doing all the digging.
We only have a few radiators in the house and since the water doesn't get hot, was told I'd need to look at replacing some so that I had a bigger surface area.
I also read that its not that hard to put in yourself and started pricing up the componant parts from suppliers on ebay, and it was comming out very much cheaper, but still thousands, and even though I loved the idea of harvesting all that heat, didn't have the time left before winter or really cash flow to do it.
I'm sure others will be more helpful. :)
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We have a GSHP. We put it in when we renovated the house in 2010. I'm sure Dan will come on with more information.
The system doesn't heat the water to a high temperature so the house needs to be very well insulated; the heating is on all the time so you need to keep it in. We have underfloor heating, which is wonderful - I love it - but it was realtively easy to do that because the house was gutted anyway. We have radiators upstairs.
Our hot water is off it and is great. No idea how it works - must be some kind of heat boost because the water's hot not warm.
We have a wood burner in the living room for really cold days and for the warm glow.
Dan will know how much it cost and have a rough idea how much it costs to run - obviously that's just electric to run the pump and we have PV cells as well.
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House needs to be super insulated and either underfloor heating or oversized radiators. You need enough ground area for the coils. Total installation costs possibly in the region of 12K. It may get some subsidy under the Renewable Heat Incentive.
We looked at it during our refurbishment but discounted because of the high capital cost
i.e. if we use a few hundred extra litres of oil a year (over and above the cost of running the heat pump) it still would not make up the difference in capital costs over our remaining lifetime! The possible RHI may now make that calculation different.
Furthermore when I contacted Worcester Bosch to and got them to asses suitability they said a heat pump would be 'borderline' at best due to the large volume of air in our barn's vaulted ceiling (despite the insulation).
Lots of cowboys out there so do your research!
I found these people (as well as Worcester Bosch) talked some sense
http://www.kensaengineering.com/ (http://www.kensaengineering.com/)
but have no actual knowledge of them
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I'm sure we got a grant to install it and an interest free loan for the PV cells. But a lot changes in 3 years :)
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Hi, we have one in a new build, super insulated house with underfloor heating. It has been a nightmare, the last 2 winters electic bills have been £3000 from oct - may, each year. The unit itself cost £8000, then instulation on top. Ours is made by a company called grants, and they do not employ any engineers in Scotland so you have to wait for an engineer to be able to travel up, we have needed an engineer on at least 8 occasions and in the end had to get a new unit, so haven't tried it this year. We need to top up water temp with emmersion. This has been our biggest regret and my oh wants it changed to oil.
My advice is to think long and hard and if your passing through angus, you are welcome to pop in and see it.
Mojo
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You're also welcome to come and see ours which has worked absolutely fine since about Day 7 (there wasa teething problem). Ours was installed by a Dundee company.
Our energy bill is £1800 a year - that's all our heating, lighting and power for two houses and the outbuildings but that is linked to the PV as well.
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Thanks for the offer - at the mo we're still doing the numbers - I think everything will become clearer once we've had a EPC for the house - that should give us the heat demand and give us a better idea of costs/incentives.
We spend about £850 on oil and £680 on elec - no PV yet but hopefully we will get that part sorted soon - just in time for the winter!
Been ploughing through the latest gov info on the RHI - doesn't exactly make easy reading - still that's gov docs for you.
Really not sure about GSHP - the house has wooden floors, our lounge is upstairs in the open-plan loft space & the wood burning stove is downstairs in the dining/day room. About the only thing going for it is we have loads of sunny field just over the garden fence - and of course the chance to get away from using oil which has doubled in price in the 7 years we've been here.
Sue
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Thanks for the offer - at the mo we're still doing the numbers - I think everything will become clearer once we've had a EPC for the house - that should give us the heat demand and give us a better idea of costs/incentives.
We spend about £850 on oil and £680 on elec - no PV yet but hopefully we will get that part sorted soon - just in time for the winter!
Been ploughing through the latest gov info on the RHI - doesn't exactly make easy reading - still that's gov docs for you.
Really not sure about GSHP - the house has wooden floors, our lounge is upstairs in the open-plan loft space & the wood burning stove is downstairs in the dining/day room. About the only thing going for it is we have loads of sunny field just over the garden fence - and of course the chance to get away from using oil which has doubled in price in the 7 years we've been here.
Sue
I would in your position go for the PV which would be the easiest and biggest quick win and then see if anything further stacked up, it may be that gives you such a big benefit that anything else is marginal.
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We've got a Nibe Fighter 1245 8kw pump. Total cost including the ground loop was £9175 three years ago.
As Rosemary says it works brilliantly for us, in our situation. The house was taken back to the stone anyway so is very well insulated. We have the heating on and hot water charging during the day, when the PV is generating, and off at night, which keeps the electricity costs down.
HTH. Energy Saving Trust were a great help especially for accessing grants, if you haven't already had them out it might be worthwhile.
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:o :o. :o
Apologies, apologies, apologies!
My unit is air source not ground source so forget my tuppence worth!
Mojo
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Ground source heat is not a cheap option to install as people have said although there are grants available.
You can either install in coils in the garden approx 0.50-1.00m below the ground or get boreholes drilled (preferably two one to draw from and one to return to cost approx 4-5K for the boreholes)
Watch out if boreholes are done and the depth to groundwater is beyond 40m as will be costly to draw the water via a pump which increases the running costs.
If staying in the property for long term will be cost effective generally but may get get the investment back if moving on in less than 5-8 years for example
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There is a barn in France I was half considering . It is about 200m floor area and one first floor bedroom space. The wall wold be stripped back to stone buy unplastered and I could put in some good roof insulatione I think.
The garden area is not huge, but it is not far from the eas so presumale some wind power possibility and obviously some solar possibilites - I thin its meant to be one of the sunnier areas of France
If it was somewhere to live in the autumn spring (might go further south in coldest months) and let off in the holiday season I was thinking maybe underfloor heating with heat pump would do swimming pool in summer and house hot water, then maybe just heating in winter.
Am I possibly on the right lines with this idea
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Yay our LPG being replaced by GSHP next month :excited:. Ground floor radiators will be replaced by underfloor heating. Our first floor comprises of two bedrooms. We're not getting underfloor heating on first floor so need to replace existing radiators will massive radiators. Anyone here got a recommendation of the most suitable brand/type of radiators? A quick Google has resulted in radiator websites rather than a buyer's guide. Also, who knew radiators could be so pretty?
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Have you thought about other options?
We have a biomass boiler (burns logs) which is great. You need a bit of space for the boiler and a big (2000L) tank but we only burn around 3tons of logs a year - that's all our heating and hot water for about £75 a year (plus some petrol for the chainsaw and a day or two fetching and cutting logs). Admittedly we have a well insulated modern house.
You would be welcome to have a look if you're interested. By the sounds of it you could do a road trip round Scotland visiting TASers heating systems!
Tim
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We put a ground source heat pump system into our red brick 1950s farmhouse about 10 years ago. We had underfloor pipes run under all the floors (who led bloody cold winter with no heating while it was fitted) but it has been well worth it. The warmth is right across the house and you don't have the hot and cold spots you get with radiators. 150m coil runs under a paddock. It does trip off two or three times a year, probably be a use the start up current is high.....but then so do most systems it only takes a couple of minutes to restart. Replacing the old double glazing units and front door made a big difference last year but realistically you need to draft proof to get the best from any heating system. The cost savings are as others have given.
As a retro fit doing under floor is very disruptive but it is a huge benefit getting rid of radiators, it frees up a lot to of space. We reckoned a 12 year pay back when we did ours, but missed out on grants. When outside temp drops below freezing if we are lounging about we top up with an open fire.