Heating Advice

[Barnrenovationhelp]

We are in the process of trying to decide what heating to install and I wondered if anyone else out there has gone through the same situation.

To briefly explain, we have a house with barn attached. We are converting the barn into living space so could easily install central heating.

House part is made of granite and therefore extremely hard to drill through walls etc.

We are setting up a B&B with 3 bedrooms.

The easiest and cheapest (initially) way would be woodburners and electric heaters in bedrooms.

However, we are worried about the electric costs long term and the cost of heating water electrically (although we would install electric showers that heat water as required). We will not keep rooms heated if not occupied, but need to turn on if guests arrive unexpectedly etc.

Total number of rooms is in whole place =
kitchen (already heated by an insert)
dining room
hallway x 2 (including upstairs)
sitting room x 2
3 guest bedrooms
1 own bedroom
4 bathrooms

Any advice on experiences would be gratefully received.

Thanks

[suzi04]

hello

a couple of things that might be helpful (sorry if you already know all this):

-Our hot water is electric & only heats up at night when we pay the cheaper rate - probably worth looking at if you plan to heat your water this way as our difference is 0.0453euros at night to 0.076euros in the day.

-we have a portable liquid fuel heater & an electric portable plug-in heater which we use occasionally. although we're not sure how much teh electric one is costing us yet (only bought it this year) it is nowhere near as good at warming up our lounge (which is 40sqm & has a concrete floor) as the petrol one. This cost us about 75euros & we buy a new tub of fuel (at about 12euros a time) about once a fortnight. we don't keep it on all day... obviously if you use it more it costs more...

-electric showers - i think i'm right in saying you can't buy them here & be careful about the law with regards to electrical equipment in bathrooms in France. We tried to buy them last year for our gites & were confronted with lots of tutting, sharp intakes of breath & head shaking from our local suppliers.

apart from that, our radiators run from a wood burner which we highly recommend, although it is ancient & i have no idea if you can still get them installed!

hope this is of some help & good luck with your project

suzi
www.patiras.com