what heating system to go for

spik r

hi everyone.i have small four bed house with ufh down stairs and rads upstairs .solar panels and condenser oil burner heating system,finding the oil to expensive and thinking of changing to an air to water system or solid fuel burner in garage .I wondering how they compare to each other and how much it would cost to run the atw system per year on electricity

Wearb

With you current setup you would be far better putting in good controls and insulation etc. you already have what should be an efficient heating system if properly set up.

Dardania

Wearb is absolutely right - you have a very good setup presently - DHW taken care of by solar, and a condenser boiler for space.

The cost per kWh for oil isn't too bad in comparison to what you would get with air to water: http://www.seai.ie/Publications/Statistics_Publications/Fuel_Cost_Comparison/Domestic-Fuel-Cost-Comparisons.pdf and you can buy alot of oil for the cost to upgrade...

SEAI have grants for heating controls and insulation:
http://www.seai.ie/Grants/Better_energy_homes/

For the controls, you could put TRVs on the rads upstairs, and zone upstairs differently to downstairs - and run on different schedules...

For the UFH, you are probably running the boiler for quite a bit each day, and it has a mixing valve to reduce flow temp? In cases such as that, the mixing valve presents an inefficiency as your boiler is supplying water at a higher temop than required, pushing it out of the condesing return temp zone...if you can reduce the flow temp such that you can natively supply the water at a lower flow temp(45C?) you wouldn't need the mixing valve, and so the boiler will condense much better, pushing it's efficiency up.

For this to be feasible to heat upstairs with the existing rads, if you insulate such that the heat loss is less, the existing rads would give out a lower amount of heat at the lower temp, maintaining comfort - this would be achieved by improving the insulation.

ANd if you're using the boiler as a backup to the DHW cylinder when the solar isn't producing, depending on the boiler, some of them have a different flow temp contact to temporarily increase the flow temp to say 65C...and at that time you could temporarily not supply the UFH...

scudo2

What make, model and age is the oil boiler ? Condensing or non-condensing ?
Your system sounds good, most times I'm called for boilers been heavy on oil it's generaly a system control issue with the underfloor rather than a bad boiler.

But if boiler is not tuened up properly, or capable for the heat load then that can be an issue.
But I'd first suspect controls.

MicktheMan

spik r wrote: »

hi everyone.i have small four bed house with ufh down stairs and rads upstairs .solar panels and condenser oil burner heating system,finding the oil to expensive and thinking of changing to an air to water system or solid fuel burner in garage .I wondering how they compare to each other and how much it would cost to run the atw system per year on electricity

Have a proper heat loss survey of the thermal envelope fabric done and address the issues that show up rather than changing what seems to be a pretty good setup.