[HesterF]

Help! We're currently on oil with an old(ish) boiler and a large house to heat. We've been here 8 months and have used over £2k worth of oil so annual costs are about £3k. We're also applying for planning permission to convert one of our outhouses to a holiday cottage and to convert two others into usable, insulated, heated buildings So we'll need to heat and have hot water for those buildings too.

We've got enough land to consider other options - wind power (gather not so great in terms of returns), solar power (won't be allowed them on the roof but space in the garden to have them), ground source heating, biomass heating, probably others. But how do I start to assess what will work for us? I don't even know where to begin - how to assess our energy needs, how to find out what each of the options will generate, what sort of boilers that can work with. It's all like a foreign language to me. Are there energy consultants who would come and advise me? Are they worth it?

Oh, and on the subject of water...our plumber had a suggestion to collect the rainwater from the various roofs into a huge underground tank - he reckoned it would be better value than a borehole since most of it is for watering anyway. Anybody got any experience of this?

Thanks!

H

[mojocafa]

Do not think about air source....it's crap and we are paying horrendous electric bills to keep it running

[HesterF]

Air source = wind turbine? Had heard it wasn't worth it unless you've got a huge, commercial level turbine. OK, that's one down.

[lachlanandmarcus]

I wouldnt rule out a new oil boiler - ours is outside (in the Cairngorms, it has a little insulated house and a frost theormostat) and our bills are a LOT lower than yours. Also consider having a wood burner/multi fuel stove that feeds into a couple of key radiators and hot water tank - this can save a lot of money and ours (wood stove) also does some of the cooking at the same time (and works in a power cut).
If you want to go for a solution for the properties together then  a log/woodchip/pellet boiler might be viable. Bear in mind the best solution for the full time house (eg underfloor gentle heating) might not be the most suitable for the intermittently occupied holiday cottage where more instant response heating options might be better and also easier to charge for if thats relevant.
And solar would be a good top up - even if you dont do it day one make sure the water tanks are specified with fittings so that you can plug it in later.
Ground source might be worth considering BUT payback would not be short and its a lot of groundwork, also where we are we wouldnt want the ground any colder than it is already (sort of permafrost)
Air source heat pump I investigated but didnt like the noise, the reliance on expensive electricity at the points at which it is most needed (when its cold!)

[Whistlin]

I would echo the very good advice already given above.

We've just been through this process and chose an automatic 40kW pellet biomass boiler to replace existing LPG and provide heating and hot water. It's housed in an old byre and is fed off a 4t silo. The pellets arrive by lorry and are a relatively quick blown delivery into the silo. I would say this wouldn't I, but I've been hugely impressed by it. It effectively just plugged straight into our existing heating system.

Chose this as whilst there is room for ground source, the solid stone nature of the walls and the extensive and intrusive remedial work required to the house (in terms of either changing all the radiators or installing underfloor heating) made it uneconomical. The biomass was the easiest way to improve the running costs of the house. We didn't of course ignore insulation and installed quite a lot of sheeps wool in the lofts to a depth of 400mm - what a difference that made!

The biomass was also done on the basis that the renewable heat incentive for domestic properties will come in next year, and we should see a relatively quick return on investment from that. For commercial premises the RHI already exists, and I think is a very good deal and a mini district heating scheme might be good for your cottages.

[HesterF]

Thanks All,

You've started me on the biomass route a bit more seriously. I don't think we'll ever get more than the low level FITs because we have a poor EPC and as a listed building, we're limited in what we can do to improve it (although I'm sure loft insulation can be improved - haven't even been up there yet!).

Ground source heating could be installed - I can see how it would fit quite easily but it does seem to have a huge start up cost and limited benefit in our case (not sure the gentle approach for our house). I realise what you mean by air source now & don't like the sound of it (no pun intended but I gather it's noisy).

Solar would be interesting as a top up at a later date (logistically it's harder because the best place for the panels would be at the top of the field which is really quite a long way from the house). There's a company not far away that is registered for solar and biomass so I'll have a chat to them and see if they can come round and do an asssessment (hopefully in the form of a quote and therefore for free).

Also need to look into the planning aspects.

Thanks,

H

[jaykay]

We scared ourselves with the amount of oil we used in our first year here.

Then we stopped trying to live in the same way as we had in our modern house previously.

The thing that made the biggest difference was shutting doors and only heating the rooms we were using (ie not the hall). Putting on an extra jumper. Topping the background heat up with the woodburner in an evening.

It's all certainly made a difference to the bill.

[lachlanandmarcus]

just a word on sheeps wool insulation - it is very effective but untreated and the treated stuff put in until fairly recently has been having significant issues with it being eaten by moths /insects (to the point where it disappears!) - google for more info before installing.
 
 

[HesterF]

We've certainly had a temperature shock from our ground source heated, triple glazed, amazingly insulated Swiss house that never dropped below about 23° to this house that got down to 10° before I decided we were taking the scrooge act a bit far. We need to get another woodburner and kitchen range sorted to try and get some heat centrally in the house (we have one woodburner but it's in the playroom which is below the guestroom so not much use of an evening). The other chimney is out of action at the moment until we start building work because there are currently bathroom pipes running through the chimney higher up. I've tracked down a local heating company that does biomass so we're going to cost that vs. juggling the oil system. Sounds like the start up costs of biomass could be huge in which case the payback is not great although with the oil costs continuing to rise....

Thanks for the heads up on sheeps wool - maybe we'll just go with more artificial fibres rather than feed even more critters.

H

[Donald]

Then we stopped trying to live in the same way as we had

You nailed it. But then on a global scale.


Concerning the sheep wool insulation though my experience is different. I have had some in the floor were it has a lot of - to much -   exposure to moisture, and elsewhere now for three years, have kept an eye on it as well as I could even to the extent of pulling it out at one place in the floor where I could get at it, and even though it was wet - uniquely sheep wool will still provide some insulative values when wet, where other insulation will fail - I dried it out and it was as good as new and I stuffed it all back in there. Really, I have not noticed any sign that the sheep wool is suffering any degradation. Still not satisfied by my empirical evidence? It's understandable. Forget the sheep wool but before jumping right to rock wool or the other forms that require more energy to produce and market than they will ever save, and then be thrown out in a remodeling job to remain in a landfill or be incinerated, polluting the air, consider a cellulose based insulation like henep, flax, or wood fiber.


Greetings,


Don Wagstaff

[HesterF]

Just an update on this. I've looked into pellet boilers and, sadly, I think it's a non-starter. Huge (£60-£80k) start up costs which just won't pay back - ever - plus lots of logistical issues like we'd have to have a separate building for storing the pellets and not sure where we could put that so that it could have pellets delivered by the tanker. I do think they look brilliant - if we were doing a new build, that would certainly be the way to go.

So to reduce our reliance on oil/electricity, I think we'll go with a pellet fed range in the kitchen plus (at least) two wood burners and then at least we don't need quite as much oil.

Air source sounds interesting for the future when the technology here is a bit more established and there's enough technical support to get it set up properly. Meantime I've heard other stories like Mojocafa's. Ground source is a big start up cost and won't work for our big, old, hard to insulate house but may work for other stuff in the future (when we'll be doing lots of ground work anyway). Solar stuff is a definite for phase two of our plans - won't work for the main house but will be brilliant for some of the outbuildings.

Thanks for all your advice,

Hester

[FiB]

blimy - £60K???  We were quoted about £12K installed - autofeed, but decided against it for that reason!  We went for a giant (12KW) woodburner (Bulgarian make - Prity, £400)plimbed into our wet central heating and its brilliant - has reduced our lpg bill by 3/4 (which we still use for a blip in the morning to save us having to get up at the crack of cawn and light fires.  I would have had a range if we could have a) afforded it and b) got it up the stairs!!!!
 
Seeing that we will probably keep the gas boiler Im going to look into changing that boiler for a more efficient one next.  We looked at ground source, but it didnt seem like it would work very well in our old stone house (which we are still trying to chase down drafts and improve inulation in) (we had a guy from CAT do a survey for us) AND we didnt want to loose soil temperature in our fields (no such thing as free energy - there is always a consequence somewhere!!  We are currently looking into DIY small sacle hydro to dump some electricity into storage heaters - will keep TAS posed on that.  Good luck.

[Smallholder Sam]

In terms of wind turbines an engineer from CAT was telling me that they only become worthwhile financially if they're 15kw or larger. There's a FIT available for new turbines as well which helps in terms of recouping financial outlay - some of the larger commercial turbines achieve this in just a couple of years - but for smaller ones this will take longer.

It's worth noting that not every location is suitable for wind turbines - you need an average windspeed of 5-6m/s I think (might be recalling incorrectly). Monitoring potential sites for at least 6 months is more or less essential (a year would be much better) and I guess it would probably be a requirement if you're financing through a bank anyway.

Then there's the issue of planning permission...

[marjories wee acres]

buy whole family thermals !
once you are all warm do the same to the house !!
 you can never do too much in this area
it doesn`t matter what fuel you are going to use it costs , admittedly some are less than other but all have costs wood pellets and wood burners are great just now but how long til their popularity causes the price of logs to rise , in scotland more and more wood is driven down to england to either power a power station or to be turned into pellets etc gas and electric are just going to go up and up .
 quick word about ground source pumps chap along the road put one in and the results haven`t been very promising as the pump has to keep running all the time and the temp is never high enough which is then brought up to usable temp by a bloody great 8kw immersion. Try lateral thinking our big wood burner can make the sitting room too hot while next door the bedroom is like the artic so i put electric fan in top corner of adjoining wall result warm bedroom and more through air in sitting room so it doesnt get so stuffy  anyways tell us know how you go cheers

[nicandem]

we have an everhot range and removed the kitchen door.... what a difference this winter    the temp has not gone below 15 deg over last winter.... we only have a wood burner (prity bulgarian burner with oven) to heat the house
the only other thing that seemed to really help is an ecofan on the stove top.... you dont notice it in the room, but do in others as the air circulation swarms the rest of the house.