Feedback Geothermal UFH & bill

blondie29

Hi guys/gals

In the process of sending plans out to builders for new build..it's nearly 2,800sqf, storey and half build.

We are still undecided on the heating system and finding it hard to pick. We have quite a large open plan space living/kitchen/dining area to the rear (southfacing) and would love not to have rads as feel they may look out of place. We will have stove in living room & sitting room.

Our architect gave us a provisional BER rating of A3. I don't have the other details (my OH knows more about that side of things)

We like the idea of Geothermal UFH but are afraid after the high cost of installing it how much our ESB bill would be every couple of months.

I'm just wondering what an average bill is for other boardsie's and how do you generally find it?

We have called to a few houses that have Geothermal UFH installed & 99% of them tell us it's great & they love it (I suppose there not really going to fault it when they spent big money on it)
I'm just concerned on the bills afterwards.

Any advice appreciated. Thanks.

BarneyMc

I'm in the process of building a house with a very similar spec as yourself - 2800 sq feet, provisional A3 rating, 2 storey, south facing living/kitchen/dining area.

I will certainly be installing UFH - no question about that. Rads don't work well with low temp systems like heat pumps I'm told.

It's then a debate whether to go with the large upfront investment for ground source or air to water HP. Although ground source, in general, have better efficiencies I really don't know if you'd ever get payback over the lifetime of the HP.

One installer recommends an air to water HP and put the savings into PV cells some time in the future. The generated electricity could be used to power the HP and thus help reduce running costs further and hence make yearly savings of the ground source just too small to ever pay for itself. It's really hard to know though. My instinct is that the air to water HP is the best bet. The installer supplies both types of HP by the way.

Not sure if this helps but something to consider.

AdamAntsy

Not quite what you asked but I'm running an A2W Heat pump. UFH, 5000 sq foot. The installer also added an electricity meter to the HP as I was more than worried about runaway bills and wanted to make sure I knew what the HP was using.

In the year 9/12/12 to 8/12/13 I used 10024 units in total. This included a number of months where we had some air issues, and coming into this winter I reduced stats by a degree or two as we were a little too generous with the heat.

This is split between day/night at 6609/8176 units.

Overall I'm pretty happy with this as a number, it may not be amazing but below where I thought I'd be spending annually on heating. Geo should be more efficient, but I also saved about 9K on the well bores as my site won't take horizontal collectors.

In terms of maintenance and feel in the house it's excellent. I had one issue where air was entering, a leaky value that was a quick tighten. No running maintenance, and UFH is really nice... before we built I could immediately feel if a house had UFH.

Going again I'd do the same thing. HTH.

BarneyMc

AdamAntsy wrote: »

In the year 9/12/12 to 8/12/13 I used 10024 units in total. This included a number of months where we had some air issues, and coming into this winter I reduced stats by a degree or two as we were a little too generous with the heat.

This is split between day/night at 6609/8176 units.

HTH.

How much was this in €?

AdamAntsy

With Airtricity @ €0.173 Day and €0.086 Night that comes to €1840 for the year.

fclauson

AdamAntsy wrote: »

....

In the year 9/12/12 to 8/12/13 I used 10024 units in total. ....
This is split between day/night at 6609/8176 units.

....

Is that just for the HP?