Totally off-topic, but with a flash and a very loud bang our back-boilered central heating has breathed its last. I'm too old and scared to install anything new myself, but have to consider the estimates that we have had, which are contradictory. It's difficult, but I can decide myself between combi or trad gas boilers, I think, but am totally confused by the replacement for the fire part of the old system. One estimator said definitely gas, the other said definitely electric both because of the running costs today.
Does anyone know of anywhere to get guidance on comparative costs between gas and electric since the price hikes? Is there a web site anywhere that will compare amounts of heat produced per £1?
Ironically, British Gas were the ones advising electric.
Our central heating hasn't lasted as long as our Land Rovers.
When my gas boiler went phut three years ago I installed a wood burner. I've never looked back. I needed a registered fitter to do the flue, but I did the rest.
Your bills will show how much you are currently paying per unit for both= gas and electricity. For the replacement fire is the room heated only by= that fire and how much is the room used? If the answers are yes and ofte= n then go for gas as gas is 1/2 to 1/4 the price of electricity.
Energy is bought by "units" or kilowatt/hours. You bills will quote so many pence per kWHr. Generally the lower the better but watch out for standing charges.
There are websites that will show which supplier is likely to give you t= he best tarrifs for energy. It's a bit of a mine field and you really need = to have a pretty good idea how much energy (gas and electricity) you consum= e, preferably over a year. If you haven't switched supplier you could well =
make considerable savings but always do your own maths with your consumption figures and the actual tariff details before switching. Don'= t trust the headline "savings" the sites quote.
Cheapest deals normally involve monthly fixed direct debit, managed onli= ne and no paper bills. "No standing charge" almost invariably means that th= e first x units/qtr (Tier 1) cost considerably more than those over x (Tie= r
2). If you consistently use all those tier 1 units there is very little =
difference between "No standing charge" and "Standing charge" tarrifs as= the extra amount paid at the tier 1 rate over the x units is the same as= paying the standing charge. Tier 2 rates are normally the same as the ra= te on a standing charge tarrif. But check!
If you don't consistently use all the tier 1 units then take a look at Equipower and/or Equigas. These tarrifs have no standing charge at all a= nd all energy is charged at a flat rate, pay for what you use. The rate is =
above the cheapest but well below tier 1 rates and below many tier 2 rat= es as well!
Wotcher, is that one in the lounge, e.g. a stove-like thing, or a boiler fed with wood-chips? I'm thinking of fitting a wood-burning stove in place of my open fireplace given that the chimney doesn't seem to be suitable to open fires (shame the PO didn't check that before fitting it!).
A chap I know recently had a 12kW geothermal system fitted, it's going to cost a total of 20 grand! Might be worth it if he can get a tap from the water table to save the water bills too, but otherwise it seems very pricey at the moment.
Be careful that the rate you get quoted isn't about to escalate, there are reports of hard sellers shifting supplies at good current rates that beat their competitors except they have hikes in the pipeline for a few weeks down the road, whence the competitiveness is out the window or reversed!
I'll look into that, however my fireplace is on a wall that backs out onto a shared piece of driveway so I can't have any hoppers or anything like that out there, so if the feed mechanism is only short-haul then I'd be a bit stuffed. I'd need at least a 20ft feed path. Once the finances are steady I'll start peering at all that stuff properly.
Needs to be a big woodburner as in traditional type to provide enough heat for the whole house. The one that broke my ankle at the end of June is roughly a 2' cube and is rated at 4kW to the boilier and 3kW to the room. It's the heat to the room that is the problem, most rooms don't need anything like that amount of heat to keep them warm and 4kW is not a lot to heat a house. 7kW might but half of it is in the wrong place...
The other problem with a traditional woodburner is fuel supply, if you don't have a cheap relaible source of wood and somewhere to store it by the loose tonne buying the bags of logs from garages or sheds is very expensive. They are also dirty from the ash and timber being brought into the house if you worry about that sort of thing.
Wood pellet boiler will effectivly work like a normal boiler but with a much slower response time, I think they'd work best coupled to a thermal store or heat bank. Again wood pellets are quite bulky and supply can be difficult in some parts. I'm not overly convinced about the "greenness" of wood pellets either a lot of energy is used in manufacture and drying. Logs dry naturally...
I use lumps of trees, not pellets. They are delivered to the drive and a "half transit" load is =A385 and will last around 4-5 weeks. I like the fact that our boiler is in the dining room and also as we are a mid terrace the heat it gives off heats the whole infrastructure of the house (much more so than a gas boiler that is designed to keep all its heat in!) It's also a much "nicer" heat (and smell). The dogs love it. We can keep it in overnight if we need to and it supplies nearly all the hot water we need. We only have the electric immersion on occasionally. I can't remember the size, but we have a three floor, 4 bedroom mid terrace. It does central heating and hot water. We also bought a wood burner only - we were advised that the "dual fuel" (wood and coal) are not particularly good at either!
Anyway, if it gets too cold, we just throw another clumber on the bed!
Gone up a bit since we imported them then, was GBP800 plus GBP 600 grant back if you had it fitted by "accredited" installer, 'cept those all charged GBP600 more than the non accredited ones!
Hopper is in the stove, which is a bit bulky, noise is the real issue, it's worse than a noisy pc with 2 fans and geed motor.
I'm not so sure about the response time, it's probably in the oreder of half a minute difference, the reason they're best used at constant power into a high thermal mass load is to do with the fact they cannot be run in condensing mode, so keeping the heat transfer about constant and hence flue exit temperature around 150C gets around a number of problems, especially to do with corrosion.
Not so really, the total energy used for pelletting from joinery waste is about 5% of the energy in the pellet, albeit half of this is electric.
Not as well as you might think unless small cross section, covered and well ventilated
Typicaly a tranist will carry 1500kg, logs occupy around 2m3 per tonne wet, and most logs are delivered more than 40% mc wwb. 3m3 of logs is about 1m deep in a truck body and a normal truck only has 60cms sides.
Assuming you do have your 1/2 tonne of logs then the calorific value to you will be in the order of 2.5Gwh if they are bone dry, more likely 1 GWhr is unseasoned, so at 5p kWhr that's about 50 quids worth of gas if your wood burner is as efficient as a gas burner.
In fact I was working for a firm supplying logs in dumpy bags and I ran some tests, the delivered cost was at least twice their fuel value compared with gas (0.7m3 bag containing 150kg dry matter plus 120kg water).
I'm not knocking wood burning but you need to be aware of the wrinkles.
I buy energy for our a number of large and small buildings in the south east and the best domestic rates I get are a shade under 3p/kWh for gas and 8.5 p/kWh for electricity. Oil, which we use as a standby fuel is about 2.5 times the cost of wholesale gas. Also look out for a possible 9 - 18% increase in electricity costs post
2013 caused by the large electricity producers having to buy all their EU Emissions Trading Scheme units at auction
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(section 3.3.8) if you must.My preference would be for natural gas and a traditional hot water cylinder. I do not like combination boilers as they are heat raw mains water for domestic hot water and will scale up fairly quickly, loosing efficiency - unless you fit a softener (£1,000 ish fitted). Whilst it is true that a hot water cylinder does become scaled, the effects of this are that the primary heating circuit returns are a little warmer and the cylinder takes longer to heat. Eventually the cylinder will need replacing but this is cheaper than fitting a new boiler or even heat exchanger to a boiler. There are many other issues to consider which will depend on the building you are heating. i.e. heat loss from a tank of stored hot water, space, standby heating by an electric immersion heater, The time it takes for water to run hot at a tap. Choosing a supplier is tricky. There were a few good fixed price deals about last year, however the market is more volatile now and these deals are no longer available. Unless you are better at guessing energy prices than EDF/British Gas etc I suggest you stay away from them. I chose Uswitch for price comparison. It's worth looking at the customer satisfaction part of the site as a lousy supplier is a nightmare to deal with. Cocked up bills/wildly incorrect estimates are all too common these days and If the company you deal with have a direct debit against your bank account you have real hassle and you could be tied into a long term contract.
And another one, no stored water. Mains water fails and you have to dash out to the supermarket to buy expensive bottled stuff to flush the loo! That is always assuming you manage to get there before the shelves are cleared by everyone else... Oh and tea made with anything calling itself a mineral water is 'orrible.
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