Heating choices

[PaulT]

I have seen the thread extolling the benefits of heat pumps but, ignoring that at the moment......

 

Took a day trip to our house in the SW to see how it had fared over the winter. On our last trip at the end of November / beginning of December the boiler burner that had been giving trouble decided to conk right out. The boiler is a chunky oil fired Dedietrich with inbuilt hot water storage.

 

We left an oil filled radiator and a convector heater both set low to prevent anything happening to the house over winter, not expecting the winter to be so harsh.

 

Discovered that either the main trip had tripped or I had inadvertently turned it off when we left!

 

Delighted to find that a piece of 14mm copper with a stop end had split and the boilr heat exchanger had cracked.

 

We were contemplating fitting an electric hot water cylinder and debating whether to have the burner overhauled or to replace the boiler. It will now be the latter.

 

Brico Depot sells a cheap boiler and burner:

 

http://www.bricodepot.fr/montauban/node/1326551

 

burner:

 

http://www.bricodepot.fr/montauban/node/1326550

 

has anyone any experience of these?

 

We did buy a number of a/c and heating units so could remove the rads and use these for heating. Any ideas on how costs of this would compare with oil heating – our time will be split between France and the UK.

 

So to the heat pumps, they look very efficient but are they effective?

 

Paul

[JohnRoss]

For what it is worth last Winter we went to visit a friend who had a heat pump system running but he told us he needed his wood burner running in the coldest part of the year as well. I think that the heat pump system is ok as background heat but some additional heat source would also be needed at the coldest times. This sytem was reversible to provide cooling in Summer. No good during power cuts of course!..............JR

[Fridgeman]

As a retired R.A.C. engineer I have to agree with John on most of what he says but a few things I would like to point out.

Quote [No good during power cuts of course!..............JR] Quote

Dead right there John but neither are gas or oil central heating, both need electricity to work.

Heat-pumps are cheap to run, at -7 Deg C you get approx 3kW heat for 1 kw electricity, some units now can give 4 for 1, OK you might need a wood burner as well, a bonus is you also get cooling during the hot weather.

[AnOther]

CH boilers generally don't need a lot of electricity to run, the burner linked to is rated at 90w for instance and a CH pump is probably not a lot more, so in the event of a power cut a relatively small standby UPS or inverter can be employed to keep the heating going for many hours.

For longer cuts you could even use a 12v/240v inverter plugged into your cars cigar lighter running the engine as necessary. Like this you could keep a system going almost indefinitely.

[markthespark]

Hi,

If it's a holiday home, it may be worth considering electric heating in conjuction with a wood burner.....Whilst electric may not be the cheapest to run "full time" it's a quick heat and a relatively cheap install and it won't freeze up during the winter.

Mark.

[Quillan]

[quote user="markthespark"]

Hi,

If it's a holiday home, it may be worth considering electric heating in conjunction with a wood burner.....Whilst electric may not be the cheapest to run "full time" it's a quick heat and a relatively cheap install and it won't freeze up during the winter.

Mark.

[/quote]

Better still if your not going to use the place when it's really cold you could go on the TEMPO tariff which will give you really cheap electricity the rest of the year. The problem comes between 1st November and 31st March where you can get up to 22 days of 'red' charges which are incredibly expensive. You also get white days (43 days between October and May) which are about the same cost as 'normal' electricity and then 300 blue days which are a lot cheaper than 'normal' rates. The links below show the rates so you can compare and the last one shows the historic data for the last year so you can see when the different coloured days have been so far. You should note that the days differ from one year to the next. The colder the weather the more likely you are to have red days. Personally we use the wood burner on red and white days with petrol (paraffin) heaters on red days.

Electricity Tariffs

TEMPO Historic data

It also depends on where you live. For example because colour is decided for the whole country you can have terrible weather up north, snow, frost and low temperatures but down south it can be a nice sunny day like it was in Feb quite a bit this year. So everyone got red days but we didn't have to heat the place much as temps were between 18 and 23 deg at the time down here. It's definitely something to consider especially if you don't plan to visit much when it's really cold. I forgot to mention the standing charge for TEMPO is a little lower than the rest.

[eternal optimist]

Hi all,

Couldn't resist joining this discussion as we're looking at all things heating and HW at the moment. Our house is big, draughty and will be our second home - i.e. we're probably not going to go there in the freezing winter months, as we've bought it to get away from the English drizzle. It currently has 'central heating' - well 3 radiators and a towel rail - but in estate agent speak apparently thats CH! We need something that we can control room by room - as there will be times when ALL the family is there and all the rooms will be used, and other times when it'll just be the two of us. The Tempo tariff sounds ideal for us but I dont know whether - since we need to put heating into the rest of the house (5 beds in total!) - to put in electric CH (there is no gaz and we have nowhere to put an oil tank) or just individual radiators in each room. I have seen systems where you can control up to 14 individual electric radiators (not in a 'system' as such) off one remote...does that even make sense?

And to add the the dilemma, we would like Air-con in the hottest parts of the summer in some of the rooms (prob just Living room, Master bedroom and kitchen)... All suggestions from all the wise people on this forum gratefully received. Oh, I should just add that the garden is teeny tiny so geothermal won't work. We have beautiful terrazzo floors on the ground floor so not keen to lift them for underfloor, and no sensible place I can really think of to put an air source pump (can they go in the attic?).

[Quillan]

I believe that ground source pumps can have the pipes vertically installed via a borehole but somebody more knowledgeable may be able to confirm this.

You cant really place an air source pump in the loft because in summer it will heat the loft and in winder cool it. They are primarily designed to be externally wall or floor standing. You could I guess cut in to the roof to make a step to fit the outside units but it depends how much money you want to invest.

The electrical heaters I have seen and the ones I had have a built in thermostat or, by removing a link, be connected to a room thermostat. Ours used the built in one. Should you switch to Tempo they will fit a new meter from which you can control the immersion heater for the water and also the heating. By this I mean you can say if to come on for night or day tariff or both and also what colour days it will come on. We had the electrician fit a timer with two zones so one part of the house (day living area) is on from morning to night and the other zone, the bedrooms, come on at 06:00, off at 09:00 then back on at 20:30 and off again at 22:30. A good electrician could install such a system for you and it all fits in to the consumer unit (fuse box).

The electric heaters can be installed on individual breakers on the consumer unit so if it's easy to access you can switch them off from there for the rooms not in use. We normally simply turned the thermostat down to zero on each heater if the room is not used. Like other types of heater they have a frost stat and so can come on when the weather gets really cold to keep the place just above freezing which helps stop frozen pipes.

[Halldfandid]

Ground source heat pumps pipes can be installed vertically in a borehole. I believe it is normally a more expensive option presumably because of the need to get boring equipment on site. However that is the option that we hope eventually to go with - just have some concerns about going into bedrock on which the house also sits - expected installation still 5-6 years away for us - I am hoping that it will all be a bit more mainstream by then.