new build

jimmy b

Hi I'm building a 2500 sq foot house in south east Ireland. My engineer is pushing me to install a air to water heat pump but I was hoping to go with wood pellet boiler backed up with a condensing oil burner also evacuated tube solar panels any thoughts or ideas would be greatly appreciated

ltdslipdiff

Its pot-luck with pellet boilers I reckon ! I'm just about to sell mine in place of a gas/oil system. Main reason is the maintenance side, with working away a bit,herself doesn't want to have to go out emptying ash/filling pellets silo's etc. Sell it to you cheap ha ha !

corkgsxr

I dont know anyone long term that was happy with wood pellet. Id put it this way. If someone gave me one for free I wouldn't fit it in my house

Id just insulate as much as you can. Go oil and solar.

The amount you need to insulate to make a heat pump work the house wont need huge heating anywhere.

iankell1984

jimmy b wrote: »

Hi I'm building a 2500 sq foot house in south east Ireland. My engineer is pushing me to install a air to water heat pump but I was hoping to go with wood pellet boiler backed up with a condensing oil burner also evacuated tube solar panels any thoughts or ideas would be greatly appreciated

Hi jimmy b,
I went woodpellet on its own no solar.
It'll be crazy money if your putting all that in. I've no experience of heat pumps so no comment.
I've a 25kw woodpellet 300kg store beside boiler in the garage with underground insulated pipe to house.
Only in 2 weeks but happy so far.
There is more work to woodpellet, clean ash tray fortnightly, top up store weekly, shut down and clean out burner monthly. There's more hands on work but nothing to time consuming. Your talking about 8k for boiler, flies, fitting and buffer tank. I've attached a pic, was just setup Friday before Christmas so not fully finished but drying out my underfloor nicely.

scudo2

The only wood pellet boilers I see are broken or not used.
But do have a nice shiny new high efficiency oil boiler next to them.

esox28

iankell1984 wrote: »

Hi jimmy b,
I went woodpellet on its own no solar.
It'll be crazy money if your putting all that in. I've no experience of heat pumps so no comment.
I've a 25kw woodpellet 300kg store beside boiler in the garage with underground insulated pipe to house.
Only in 2 weeks but happy so far.
There is more work to woodpellet, clean ash tray fortnightly, top up store weekly, shut down and clean out burner monthly. There's more hands on work but nothing to time consuming. Your talking about 8k for boiler, flies, fitting and buffer tank. I've attached a pic, was just setup Friday before Christmas so not fully finished but drying out my underfloor nicely.

your going to need a 3 ton storage hopper, other wise you'll be driven made refilling that boiler hopper with bags which are more expnsive than a bulk delivery.

nothing to expensive ive seen most just built with wooden posts and osb 3 18mm, oh and a secondary auger to transfer.

nice looking boiler though, nothing like walking into you new build with the smell of the drying out process. best of luck.

iankell1984

esox28 wrote: »

your going to need a 3 ton storage hopper, other wise you'll be driven made refilling that boiler hopper with bags which are more expnsive than a bulk delivery.

nothing to expensive ive seen most just built with wooden posts and osb 3 18mm, oh and a secondary auger to transfer.

nice looking boiler though, nothing like walking into you new build with the smell of the drying out process. best of luck.

Planning a stainless tank on stilts in the attic area over the boiler, putting a chute to feed hopper beside boiler save 800€ for auger. Like we used to have to for the cows years ago.

shane0007

iankell1984 wrote: »

Planning a stainless tank on stilts in the attic area over the boiler, putting a chute to feed hopper beside boiler save 800€ for auger. Like we used to have to for the cows years ago.

That won't work. You must have an auger to feed a pellet boiler. The auger is wired through the boiler controls that feeds the boiler when required. Just gravity feeding the boiler hopper will lead to blockages & disaster.

You must also give consideration to dust blockages. These are frequent.

Most importantly you must give consideration to CO poisoning from the wood pellet storage. Wood pellets naturally give off high amounts of CO & when you disturb the pellets to get to the blockage, there is a high risk of CO poisoning. There has already been 2 high profile deaths on this & numerous near death cases. One death in Ireland & the other in Germany. It was also the reason you can no longer obtain SEAI grants for wood pellet boilers.

A CO alarm is also useless in this case.

DenisCork

That's an interesting fact about the CO Shane, I'm just curious to know why an alarm won't activate?

shane0007 wrote: »

That won't work. You must have an auger to feed a pellet boiler. The auger is wired through the boiler controls that feeds the boiler when required. Just gravity feeding the boiler hopper will lead to blockages & disaster.

You must also give consideration to dust blockages. These are frequent.

Most importantly you must give consideration to CO poisoning from the wood pellet storage. Wood pellets naturally give off high amounts of CO & when you disturb the pellets to get to the blockage, there is a high risk of CO poisoning. There has already been 2 high profile deaths on this & numerous near death cases. One death in Ireland & the other in Germany. It was also the reason you can no longer obtain SEAI grants for wood pellet boilers.

A CO alarm is also useless in this case.

esox28

yea we have one of those lofts for the nuts, its now a pool room and place for the brothers birds (don't ask).

anyways shane is right about feeding the pellet directly into the boiler primary storage from your over head storage the inherent downwards pressure will clog the movement of pellet.

what you could do is install a drop bucket into the chute, im sure dairymaster supply them, its automatic and delivers a set kg of pellet, you could in addition to this add a timer and no. of drops which you will need to calculate by trial and error.

I dont see co as an issue if the storage area has it required ventilation, lots of vents required as pellet are delivered at variable moisture content.

shane0007

DenisCork wrote: »

That's an interesting fact about the CO Shane, I'm just curious to know why an alarm won't activate?

CO as a gas is ever so slightly lighter than air, 0.97, so as the pellets are cold it lingers just above the pellets in the hopper. Plants & humans give off CO naturally but in a confined space, it can build up to dangerous levels.
The room maybe ventilated but the hopper is rarely as if it were full of holes, the pellets would just fall out!
You can buy very expensive hoppers that are material made & do allow some limited ventilation, but most are DIY homemade I'm afraid.
So, if you had a CO alarm in the room it would not go off as the hopper air is not warm so the CO will not rise.
If the CO alarm was in the hopper it would never turn off. Catch 22.

So a blockage occurs from dust build up at the bottom of the hopper. The only way to unblock it is to get in & pull back the pellets to get to it. This is the critical time as the CO layer is now very much disturbed & the homeowner may only have seconds before being overcome.

This is what happened in Laois, where the homeowner sadly died, his wife, neighbour & I think two ambulance crew were hospitalised for treatment of CO poisoning. The 3rd ambulance crew luckily saw everyone down & recognised the problem. She was able to put on a breathing apparatus & pull them out.

So for me, I absolutely detest wood pellet boilers because of the storage risks, the constant poor quality of pellets in this country & the absolute unreliability of them which thus teaches the homeowner to become a self-fixer of them, which opens a whole other thread.

I have removed 2 of them this year alone. One where on two occasions, the homeowner whilst unblocking the auger shoot into the burner set fire to unit & nearly took himself, his garage, his house & his neighbours house out. After that he said it was time to get rid.

corkgsxr

They were designed for industrial scale for huge plants or a district of a city where they more or less never turn off.

Not for single houses.

trobbin

jimmy b wrote: »

Hi I'm building a 2500 sq foot house in south east Ireland. My engineer is pushing me to install a air to water heat pump but I was hoping to go with wood pellet boiler backed up with a condensing oil burner also evacuated tube solar panels any thoughts or ideas would be greatly appreciated

I have no knowledge on the air pump, is that a type of geothermal? There's two types ground source heat pumps and air.

I personally like your idea of the dual heating system, and I don't see why you shouldn't go ahead with it. It all really depends on personnel. I would stick with the dual system design, but I would consider a wood burning stove instead of the wood chip boiler. They are much cheaper to maintain, and cheaper to buy and install, but they require manual fill ups!

Personally on the solar panels, I wouldn't get them installed! I will admit that the technologies have improved but when you consider all the relevant factors they don't pay for themselves. Now don't take my word as gospel, I could be wrong! But you really need to draw up a cost (pay back period) plan, for the panels. On average these panels take 17years to repay for themselves. That's without maintenance. And many of the panels both flat and evacuated tubes only have a life expectancy of 15 years. Be careful where you research your information on these solar panels, as most of the information provided is by companies selling them and installers.

Having said all that, if you're heating a lot of domestic hot water panels can pay for themselves sooner, which is why you personally must calculate your costs and the amount of water you'll need heated. Then compare that with what it will cost to heat with your dual system on it's own!

Hope that helps a little.

iankell1984

esox28 wrote: »

yea we have one of those lofts for the nuts, its now a pool room and place for the brothers birds (don't ask).

anyways shane is right about feeding the pellet directly into the boiler primary storage from your over head storage the inherent downwards pressure will clog the movement of pellet.

what you could do is install a drop bucket into the chute, im sure dairymaster supply them, its automatic and delivers a set kg of pellet, you could in addition to this add a timer and no. of drops which you will need to calculate by trial and error.

I dont see co as an issue if the storage area has it required ventilation, lots of vents required as pellet are delivered at variable moisture content.

Thanks for the feedback, its not in the budget for this year. I'll be making do with bags until then.

esox28

jimmy b wrote: »

Hi I'm building a 2500 sq foot house in south east Ireland. My engineer is pushing me to install a air to water heat pump but I was hoping to go with wood pellet boiler backed up with a condensing oil burner also evacuated tube solar panels any thoughts or ideas would be greatly appreciated

Have you done a provisional ber assesment ?
You need to calculate your heat requirment for the build facturing in all the elements and fabric of the build, your eng can do this for you using deap software.



Ok, in relation to your heating a good place to start is compliance.
Your 230*mtr house will need 10kwh/m*/yr which equates to 2300 kwh/year, this can be produced form a no. Of sources, your eng. is pushing atw heatpump as this will afaik comply, or most solar panels will produce 500kwh/m* .

Atm our most popular new build set up comprises of oil/gas boiler condensing, solar panel/tubes, woodburning stove, combibuffer tank.

ltdslipdiff

iankell1984 wrote: »

Thanks for the feedback, its not in the budget for this year. I'll be making do with bags until then.

May I ask where you are sourcing your bags from? I'm buying in bulk (collecting from depot, with 8 wheelie bins!) but have found last few loads of bad quality causing blockages and other difficulties....

iankell1984

ltdslipdiff wrote: »

May I ask where you are sourcing your bags from? I'm buying in bulk (collecting from depot, with 8 wheelie bins!) but have found last few loads of bad quality causing blockages and other difficulties....

Sticking with brites so far, got a tonne included with the boiler.
Local lad in Clonard has them in the yard and can get them delivered. No experience of other brands, told by my boiler installer that to ensure the pellets have the en mark or equivalent. Grant boliers specify brites only afaik. Going with the old phrase you get what you pay for.

Jack180570

iankell1984 wrote: »

Sticking with brites so far, got a tonne included with the boiler.
Local lad in Clonard has them in the yard and can get them delivered. No experience of other brands, told by my boiler installer that to ensure the pellets have the en mark or equivalent. Grant boliers specify brites only afaik. Going with the old phrase you get what you pay for.

Hi iankell.... what size and cost are the bags? Also, is that delivered or collected price?
Thanks

iankell1984

Jack180570 wrote: »

Hi iankell.... what size and cost are the bags? Also, is that delivered or collected price?
Thanks

I'll know tomorrow haven't called in to the local lad yet. Theres a good bit of difference in price between suppliers even with the same product. Saw woodies with 15kg bags didn't check if they have bs standard or en mark.
I'll post tomorrow with update

ltdslipdiff

From what I can tell, the main suppliers of pellets in Ireland are - Laois Sawmills, Bord na Mona (imported Argentenian-very good quality but expensive), and Balcas/Brites. Unfortunately Dpellet in Kilkenny no longer produce pellets, for now anyway, there's a chance they'll be up and running soon again. Most of the Staffords/TOP Oil/Woodies Pellets are from Laois Sawmills I believe, open to correction on that one.

iankell1984

ltdslipdiff wrote: »

From what I can tell, the main suppliers of pellets in Ireland are - Laois Sawmills, Bord na Mona (imported Argentenian-very good quality but expensive), and Balcas/Brites. Unfortunately Dpellet in Kilkenny no longer produce pellets, for now anyway, there's a chance they'll be up and running soon again. Most of the Staffords/TOP Oil/Woodies Pellets are from Laois Sawmills I believe, open to correction on that one.

Local lads a rob. Checking out others. Large DIY store on roscommon road in athlone has a great deal on €2.70 for brites for Jan. Checking them out tomorrow see what they'll charge for delivery

ltdslipdiff

iankell1984 wrote: »

Local lads a rob. Checking out others. Large DIY store on roscommon road in athlone has a great deal on €2.70 for brites for Jan. Checking them out tomorrow see what they'll charge for delivery

Where are you Iankell ?

iankell1984

ltdslipdiff wrote: »

Where are you Iankell ?

Kinnegad area in westmeath

ltdslipdiff

Would it be worth your while getting the loan of a van and get yourself a helper and 5-8 wheelie bins and fill-up loose at Laois Sawmills? From memory you'd be paying around €230-ish per tonne? 7 wheelie bins are roughly 1000kgs of loose pellets.

iankell1984

ltdslipdiff wrote: »

Would it be worth your while getting the loan of a van and get yourself a helper and 5-8 wheelie bins and fill-up loose at Laois Sawmills? From memory you'd be paying around €230-ish per tonne? 7 wheelie bins are roughly 1000kgs of loose pellets.

I'm going for the simple option sites still a building site it'll be bags until I'm sorted with ground works and get the garage sorted. 1100 litre wheelie would be easier to handle if you had a ramp for the van

kscobie

All good pellets should have the EN PLUS logo, this is the European Standard pellets should be made to, Balcas have it, so do the Laois pellets. I have fitted two Grant pellet boilers, one 2 years ago, one last February, they only have to go near the boiler once a year as it is self cleaning. A lot dearer than an oil boiler, but seems to be cheaper to run