geothermal or oil

llpoolh

hi, started building my house and am lookming for views on geothermal or oil, does anyone have geothermal and is it worth the massive cost of installing ect, or should i just go with oil cause ill still be paying majer interest on the geothermal system, prob 30,000 to get geothgermal underfloor installed, any ideas please, thanks

skuzzb

Feel free to correct me if im wrong!

Firstly the cost of geothermal installation added to pump running costs makes the payback period pretty high.

Site location is also very important as you could end up just getting a few degrees of heat from the system meaning you would still have to have a boiler system running. The cost of running such a large pump for this cancels out the saving in gas/oil.

Spending your money on triple glazing and low infiltration rate paired with a high efficiency boiler and a decent control system might be a better route.

Final things is, you have a huge amount of piping required so maintenance is high cost if needed. I wouldn't like to have to find a leak in that amount of piping.

Get a site survey carried out at least and do some maths before ruling it out.

endplate

Agree with above. Going with high efficiency oil boiler as can't justify cost of new heating toys in my new build. If your heat pump packs up after a few year it'll cost you about €5000 to replace that's something your never told

copper12

Condensing oil boiler under floor heating
Boiler will work at it’s most efficient

metalscrubber

copper12 wrote: »

Condensing oil boiler under floor heating
Boiler will work at it’s most efficient

Copper,

Not contradicting you, in fact would be delight if this is the case but it is not what others have said here in Boards and other Fora.

I thought the accepted wisdom was that Cond oil boiler and UFH were NOT a good mix as the boiler output temp is way too high for the UFH and so the boiler is continually turning on / off trying to maintain a low temp which is very inefficient.

Com' on lads who has the answer?

Metal

copper12

The efficiencies of an oil or gas boiler; is totally dependent on the dew point’ of it’s flu gases
When in condensing mode’ the return form the heating’ needs t be as cold as possible’ in order for the boiler to condense’ while there seems to be a perception’ that a 20 degree differential will suffice’ this is a misconception
Natural gas’ because of the amount of moisture in it’s flu gasses’ is the most efficient’ followed by petroleum gas’ followed by oil
Dew point of the flu gases’ of a natural gas boiler’ is roughly 57 degrees’ oil boiler is 50 degrees
If you can run your boiler’ so that the return’ is at’ or close to, these temperatures; then the boiler will condense’ giving up it’s latent heat’ this is what makes a condensing boiler so efficient
Putting in a condensing boiler’ without designing the system’ so that the return temperature to the boiler’ is low enough to keep the boiler firing in condensing mode; is like halving a car with five gears; and only using four; and expecting the same fuel economy
Under floor heating; because of it’s low temperature’ will allow the oil boiler’ to easily stay within the temperature range; that will allow it to work at its most efficient i.e. condensing

llpoolh

cheers, am now thinking of going with underflow heating with the air to water system,meeting a lad that deals with them systems on site during the week so will c how i get on, would have to go with the bore hole with geothermal and that mightent work, cause of the area, im building on filt in pit,with a hill at back, the air to water is currently coming in at around 10grand cheaper than geothermal 2, thanks for your help guys, mite yet buy a plot off bog and go with the good old turf.. or sell up and move to sunny climite, keep in touch:cool: