House Renovation plumbing advice

Alfagtamini

Hi all

We are in the process of renovating and extending an old cottage,
New roof is on and windows and doors are in. We need to make a decision on the plumbing side of the build this week.
House is 120sqm 3 bedroom. 2 people living in the house.

Walls, floors and roof are insulated well above building regs.

We are debating between 2 systems but will take advice on any other solutions.

1:
18 evacuated tube Kingspan solar panels
Stove with back boiler
Oil or gas powered boiler
Triple coil Ss tank

2:
Gas with a combi boiler and pressurised system.

House has no mains gas connection so if we go the gas route we will require an lpg tank from calor or flo gas

Doing the sums with 2 of us living in the house the payback on the solar panels is close to 15 years so I'm tempted to shelve that idea.


Also the plumber is suggesting using aluminium pipes instead of copper or qual per pipe, what are your views on this ?

Dtp1979

paulryanmini wrote: »

Hi all

We are in the process of renovating and extending an old cottage,
New roof is on and windows and doors are in. We need to make a decision on the plumbing side of the build this week.
House is 120sqm 3 bedroom. 2 people living in the house.

Walls, floors and roof are insulated well above building regs.

We are debating between 2 systems but will take advice on any other solutions.

1:
18 evacuated tube Kingspan solar panels
Stove with back boiler
Oil or gas powered boiler
Triple coil Ss tank

2:
Gas with a combi boiler and pressurised system.

House has no mains gas connection so if we go the gas route we will require an lpg tank from calor or flo gas

Doing the sums with 2 of us living in the house the payback on the solar panels is close to 15 years so I'm tempted to shelve that idea.


Also the plumber is suggesting using aluminium pipes instead of copper or qual per pipe, what are your views on this ?

Combi boilers are limited in certain areas. how many bathrooms do you have?
Aluminium pipe and fittings are in my honest opinion overpriced and unnecessary. Yes they won't leak under X amount of pressure and so on, but no fitting will if installed correctly. You're paying way more for this system that really has no advantages over standard pex with oxygen barrier in it and properly lagged

Alfagtamini

j

Dtp1979 wrote: »

Combi boilers are limited in certain areas. how many bathrooms do you have?
Aluminium pipe and fittings are in my honest opinion overpriced and unnecessary. Yes they won't leak under X amount of pressure and so on, but no fitting will if installed correctly. You're paying way more for this system that really has no advantages over standard pex with oxygen barrier in it and properly lagged

Thanks for your reply.

1 bathroom downstairs with bath (can't remember the last time we had a bath) and shower
1 en suite upstairs

That was my thought on the aluminium pipe also. In such a small house I don't think we will see the benefit

K.Flyer

If you have no mains gas, then go for oil.
Grant Vortex feeding into a 3 zone system.
Dual coil 200 - 230 s.s. cylinder, larger capacity for later increase in occupancy and extra coil for solar if required later on.
Large capacity water storage tank feeding the cylinder and the cold services through a high cap pump with a speed controller.
My own personal preference would be to do it all in copper. Multi-Layer pipe (aluminium) would be my next preference, due to the method of how the seal is made in comparison to tec fittings.

Alfagtamini

K.Flyer wrote: »

If you have no mains gas, then go for oil.
Grant Vortex feeding into a 3 zone system.
Dual coil 200 - 230 s.s. cylinder, larger capacity for later increase in occupancy and extra coil for solar if required later on.
Large capacity water storage tank feeding the cylinder and the cold services through a high cap pump with a speed controller.
My own personal preference would be to do it all in copper. Multi-Layer pipe (aluminium) would be my next preference, due to the method of how the seal is made in comparison to tec fittings.

Thanks for your reply.
We also have a gas hob in the kitchen, but having a seperate gas bottle for this is no issue. If you don't mind me asking why don't you reccomend non mains gas?
Also one more question, we have no attic space due to the upstairs bedrooms, the options are to lower one bedroom ceiling to fit a cold water tank or go for a pressurised system, what do you think?

K.Flyer

paulryanmini wrote: »

Thanks for your reply.
We also have a gas hob in the kitchen, but having a seperate gas bottle for this is no issue. If you don't mind me asking why don't you reccomend non mains gas?
Also one more question, we have no attic space due to the upstairs bedrooms, the options are to lower one bedroom ceiling to fit a cold water tank or go for a pressurised system, what do you think?

Historically Oil has been cheaper than LPG. There are a few threads on here that go into the costings, and overall the Oil system works out cheaper.
If I was going for a pressurised system, I would look at keeping everything in the one place. If you have an adjoining garage or similar, I would consider putting your large capacity cold storage tank, cylinder, pump and boiler etc in there.

Alfagtamini

K.Flyer wrote: »

Historically Oil has been cheaper than LPG. There are a few threads on here that go into the costings, and overall the Oil system works out cheaper.
If I was going for a pressurised system, I would look at keeping everything in the one place. If you have an adjoining garage or similar, I would consider putting your large capacity cold storage tank, cylinder, pump and boiler etc in there.

Thanks, ill look into the threads on oil Vs gas.

Plus side of oil is it will be easier to get serviced locally.

We have planned to build a shed next to the house but had not planned on doing this until next year due to our budget.

I have set a meeting up with the plumber for tomorrow to nail down the system.
I think oil, triple coil tank and run pipes from tank to crawl space below the south facing roof for a solar install later on is the way to go.

thanks again for the advice.