Heating System Upgrade Help

barryleonard79

Hi All hoping to get some independent advice from some of you knowledgeable folk. I recently moved into a house (3000 sq ft and build around 2006). The heating system is oil fired we have a Grant Euroflame 90/120 bolier. We only have some rooms in the house heated at the moment as we don't use them all. We still manage to spend a large amount on oil. The way i see it I have 3 options

(1) Upgrade boiler to condenser type, upgrade heating controls to 3/4 zones also add a stove with back boiler. Quotes I got for this are up to €7000.

(2) Just go with condenser boiler and controls upgrade. €2500 - 3000.

(3) Put in stove and heatings upgrade €3560. Minus the price of the stove i'm guessing up to €2000.

We are only really in the house evenings and weekends. We have a plot and can get turf handy enough. The boiler is new and 85% efficient as far as I know. Upgrading to a 97% would seem like a waste of money for just a 12% reduction. The controls are already separated out in terms of electrics so the controls upgrade is simple enough. There is quite a bit of work adding a stove a plumber suggested an insert one. I would imagine we will need a 30Kw stove is turf a good enough fuel to heat the rads sufficiently? The room the stove will be located is L 5m x W 3.9 and H 2.6.
Any feedback would be greatly appreciated have had a lot of conflicting advice and really don't want to pick the wrong option. Thanks in advance.

Irish Steve

Do you have a BER certificate, and has anyone looked closely at the insulation of the walls, roof and windows. It will not matter that much how efficient the heating system is if you are losing a significant portion of the input due to poor insulation or draughts or both.

What do you regard as "too much oil"?

MicktheMan

Irish Steve wrote: »

Do you have a BER certificate, and has anyone looked closely at the insulation of the walls, roof and windows. It will not matter that much how efficient the heating system is if you are losing a significant portion of the input due to poor insulation or draughts or both.

What do you regard as "too much oil"?

This is good advice, but I wouldn't put much trust in a BER cert to guide you.
A full heat loss survey (thermal imaging and depressurisation test) will pinpoint where the real heat loss issues are with the thermal envelope and advise on best solution.

Irish Steve

MicktheMan wrote: »

This is good advice, but I wouldn't put much trust in a BER cert to guide you.
A full heat loss survey (thermal imaging and depressurisation test) will pinpoint where the real heat loss issues are with the thermal envelope and advise on best solution.

Well, we had to start somewhere, and I would agree on the suspect nature of a BER, having had one done here a while back.

Depressurisation would be ideal, but I suspect horribly expensive on a 3000 sq Ft house, and 2006 could mean anything in terms of how well (or otherwise) it was sealed.

Here is 1990, just had cavity wall insulation put in by SEAI, and even though I need to do a job on the dormer roof, I have already noticed an improvement, and we've not had a cold winter yet. If I could sort the roof out to get rid of the draughts that get in from all directions, it would make another significant difference, and with the price of oil the way it is, and few real alternatives, to coin the advertising phrase, "every little helps". Went to the Ideal Home exhibition a few weeks back, and it was "interesting" to see how different companies suggest dealing with a dormer roof, and slightly worrying that most architects are not happy with the spray foam systems that are being pushed so hard, due to the risks of water being trapped against timbers and causing rot problems.

I will be interested to see what the OP comes back with on the figures.

barryleonard79

Thanks Steve/Mick for getting back to me much appreciated.

Do you have a BER certificate, and has anyone looked closely at the insulation of the walls, roof and windows.

House has a B2 energy rating. I have yet to get the full report so am a bit skeptical. The walls are insulated 300mm cavity. Windows are double glazing and attic has 300mm of blown rock wool. This has been trampled down in a lot of places.I was hoping to add another 200 - 400mm of insulation to the attic.

Any idea how much would a full heat loss survey cost? There are wall vents in all the rooms I don't these are helping much for air tightness.

We spent about €1000 so far on oil. This is with only half the rads on and only on for limited periods. Reckon it would be €2500 min to heat whole house for winter.

MicktheMan

pm sent

Irish Steve

I am hoping that Mick will have come back with some thoughts, and ideas for you,

We;re 3000 Sq ft dormer bungalow here, and I'd not expect to use anything like that on the winter, that's equating to over 2500 ltrs of oil, I'd expect that to give us 12 months, with the oil boiler being used right through the year for hot water.

So, if the B2 is to be believed, you're well up the ratings, we've a couple of coal effect gas fires here, and from comments, they did us no favours on the BER, chimneys don't help a lot, we're C2, which for a 1990's dormer that still needs the roof draught proofing isn't too bad, but I will have to do some work on the roof side of things but not this time of the year, a dormer roof is not a fun place to be in winter with the sorts of winds we've been having recently.

Ventilators are a necessary evil unfortunately, if they are all sealed up, condensation becomes an issue, and can cause a lot of problems.

I think Mick will have made some suggestions on Infra red and air tightness, and I would suggest that will be the next step, as for sure, your oil burn does look high, we're not running things hard here, can't afford to, but since the cavity wall insulation went in here, I reckon we've only used half of the €500 of oil we put in before the winter season kicked in, which is not bad, and the burner hours are down on previous usage. so it looks like the cavity insulation has done what it said on the tin.

Thinking laterally, have you checked to make sure that there's not a leak somewhere on the oil side, either in the pipework, or (sorry, it has to be said) out of the top of the tank into someone's barrel, 1000 Litres of oil on a boiler that size should represent close on 200 hours of burner on time, and if the boiler is anything like mine, that's close on 400 hours of boiler active time, unless your boiler is burning for a higher percentage of time, it might be, if it is, that's indicative of a serious heat loss somewhere, our boiler hours are less than 30 hours a week, so max of 15 hours burner time, so on that basis, 1000 Litres should be close on 14 weeks, or 3 months of "normal" use, and it's not been that cold yet this winter. Your BER is in theory considerably better than ours, so something is wrong somewhere.

Keep us posted, I'm interested to see how this develops