 | Home > Off Topic > Air source heating. Any feedback? |
 
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| LandRoverAnorak Member Since: 17 Jul 2011 Location: Surrey Posts: 11324  
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I know of several quite large biomass installations that have never been used beyond their initial commissioning. They are, generally, just too much trouble to operate. They also have very questionable green credentials when it transpired that the pellets were imported from somewhere like Canada. Darren
110 USW BUILD THREAD - EXPEDITION TRAILER - 200tdi 90 BUILD THREAD - SANKEY TRAILER - IG@landroveranorak "You came in that thing? You're braver than I thought!" - Princess Leia |
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9th Jan 2021 3:33pm |
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| camelman Member Since: 27 Feb 2013 Location: Peak District Posts: 3373
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I agree that biomass 'green' credentials are dependant on where the pellets are sourced from.
Compared to burning oil however, still a better option. With regards to reliability, they are more fiddly to set up than air / ground source and the installers need to know what they are doing. Both of my neighbours have them and have been running them for 5 or 6 years now. IF you get a cowboy to install it, you will have trouble with it as the combusion of the pellets has to be set just right to ensure minimum ash, otherwise everything gets blocked up. If it's a larger / less well insulated property, having the pellets delivered in 20kg bags on a pallet isn't really an option. If you're using 3000 litres of oil a year at the minute this is in the region of 30,000kW of heat. Given the calorific value of the pellets, this is in excess of 6 tons of pellets a year. In this case you'd need a hopper driven system, filled by tanker and the boiler is fed by an augur driven pump. It's a smaller / well insulated house, the boiler would be much smaller and you can feed the pellets directly into the top of it 20kg at a time;. With regards to commercial use, many operators jumped on the bandwagon because the rhi grant for commercial biomass (and heat pump) is paid over a 20 year period and is metered (albeit at a lower p/kwh than the domestic grant). The more you burn, the more you get paid up to a limit. In addition, many power stations have now converted to biomass (in 2019 more power came from biomass than wind / solar). |
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9th Jan 2021 4:12pm |
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| Rashers Member Since: 21 Jun 2015 Location: Norfolk Posts: 3508 
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And what makes it worse as you, the great British tax payer, paid a large percentage of the purchase and installation of these units so a company / business / individual may get planning permission for their building or score brownie points for being environmentally friendly - even if the thing never ever works again. What a complete waste of money and resources to tick boxes!
That is a fair point Darren. I remember watching a programme on Discovery Channel about shipping Biomass from Canada to the UK. i Believe that originally the idea was to use waste wood to make the pellets but as time went on, it was found that acres of woodland were being felled to make them  |
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9th Jan 2021 4:16pm |
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| Rashers Member Since: 21 Jun 2015 Location: Norfolk Posts: 3508
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Most of the Biomass plants around my way burn Chicken Poo and Straw rather than wood pellets.
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9th Jan 2021 4:22pm |
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| lohr500 Member Since: 14 Sep 2014 Location: Skipton Posts: 1317 
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Well now that the ASHP option seems like a no go, I'm going to look at other options including biomass and just a more efficient oil boiler.
I'm also looking at getting the most out of the old boiler by balancing the radiator flows, running it for longer to keep the house aired overnight (which will eliminate the need for the electrical immersion heater) and improving the controls. Spent some time on the system today cleaning out the feed/expansion tank, flushing the pipework prior to adding some Sentinel X400 cleaner and fitting a new Hive programmable smart thermostat. I'll drain down the system again in a week or so to flush through the Sentinel cleaner and then refill, adding an appropriate amount of inhibitor. I am thinking though that probably the best thing to do is to keep the old boiler running for as long as I can. A decent quality replacement unit is going to be around £1800, plus I guess somewhere around £1200 to fit. Based on the amount of oil we use and the relative efficiencies between our old boiler and a new one, I think I could save around £250 a year on oil at today's price. So a long payback period. And as it seems with most modern appliances, a new and more complex boiler probably won't last 12 years anyway. |
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9th Jan 2021 6:14pm |
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| Huttopia Member Since: 23 Feb 2016 Location: West Midlands Posts: 1972
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I now involved with a group of businesses, one of which does controlled environments- everything from domestic ASHP to £500k cold room suites. It has been in the business for 30+ years. Happy to help if we can, it will at least provide a benchmark for you. Drop me a PM if interested.
Thanks Huttopia |
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9th Jan 2021 6:39pm |
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| alwoodley72 Member Since: 14 Mar 2010 Location: salisbury, wilts Posts: 724  
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Hi
Reading this all with interest, great info from some very knowledgable people. About to move into a grade 2 listed place, oil boiler, we are keen to green up our act and the ASHP are on our radar, but is it viable on a listed place? There’s no DG on the front facade, no ECP, but we’d be keen to up the insulation on work we are planning.. Any thoughts appreciated Cheers alex 98 300 tdi 90 project 94 Range Rover vogue 4.2 lse 79 911 sc 08 130 double cab utility |
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10th Jan 2021 12:13am |
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| Huttopia Member Since: 23 Feb 2016 Location: West Midlands Posts: 1972
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Alex- look at the Grant Vortex Air systems, a hybrid of oil and ASHP. You might struggle to get the house insulated sufficiently to work comfortably with an ASHP alone.
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10th Jan 2021 9:32am |
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| camelman Member Since: 27 Feb 2013 Location: Peak District Posts: 3373
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I don't believe you will get the rhi grant for a combination oil / ashp installation. As this is worth over £10k its usually a deal breaker
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10th Jan 2021 11:11am |
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| Huttopia Member Since: 23 Feb 2016 Location: West Midlands Posts: 1972
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/\ agreed. Some properties just aren’t viable.
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10th Jan 2021 12:33pm |
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| Rashers Member Since: 21 Jun 2015 Location: Norfolk Posts: 3508
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That’s why it’s worth getting good advice rather than a sales rep selling you the dream of £10k for free.
The incentive to most would be long forgotten once the reality of a poorly specified heating system that doesn’t work has been realised. It happens a lot more than you may think. We were asked to look at an ASHP with underfloor heating in a property that didn’t heat the house sufficiently. The owners had been sold a pup and a the specifier and installer were nowhere to be seen. Sadly, the house owners only option was to break up the floors in their lovely new house and fit a larger external unit and replace the underfloor heating pipes. Scandalous and a complete of money and resources. The sales person gets his/her bonus, the installer gets paid but they never have to live in your poorly heated house. |
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10th Jan 2021 1:38pm |
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| jonny Member Since: 10 Mar 2013 Location: North Wilts Posts: 159 |
it looks like you already have Hive, but we made a fairly big difference to our heating bills (old WB non condensing oil boiler) by fitting Honeywell Evohome. Similar concept to Hive, each Radiator has an electronic rad valve which means you can control the temp independently in every room on a schedule - so you are only heating the rooms you need, when you are actually using them.
I reckon it saved it's cost (~£500) in the first couple of years in saved oil costs.. Also, although it's got a phone app etc, if the internet goes down your heating control doesn't go down, there's a control unit that lets you program everything locally... |
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10th Jan 2021 2:13pm |
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| lohr500 Member Since: 14 Sep 2014 Location: Skipton Posts: 1317
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Good info jonny. We already have thermostatically controlled valves (TRV) on some of the radiators in rooms we don't use often.
I might fit a few more when I drain down the system next week to empty the Sentinel X400 cleaner solution. Looks like Hive also offer smart rad stats which replace the standard TRV heads, controlled by the App or locally. So if I fit the TRV valves now, I could look at Hive controlled ones later. |
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10th Jan 2021 7:58pm |
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| jerseyman Member Since: 21 Jul 2009 Location: Jersey Posts: 279 |
Also look at the Drayton Wiser system. I have it on 17 rads and I'm very pleased with it.
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11th Jan 2021 7:22pm |
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