Another home heating question!

Jimmywangyang

Hi all,

While there is loads of posts on this about upgrading home heating, it's a mine field, just when I think i have a decision made, someone gives advice or see another post and back to square one!

My house was built in 2003, 3200 sqft dormer. Currently has oil central heating split in 3 zones, 21 rads, no thermostats on rads or around the house. 2 open fires in two sitting rooms, one small room, one reasonably big room. The oil burner is an old fire bird which has been there since day 1. Serviced twice since i moved in 2 years ago, not sure of the service history before that.

We pumped the walls and spray foam insulation in crawl space and attic areas last year, this has made a massive difference to the house. The house has standard vents, i.e. just hold in the walls which annoys me and some of these can be draughty. Will probably consider adding single room heat recover units over time, but these are expensive. No plans to upgrade windows/doors at this point as just can't afford it.

Currently we just burn coal in one of the open fires, one is never used and typically the oil is used for maybe an hour in the morning and 2 - 3 hours in the evening. Since we got the installation done, the house is warm once the heating is on, but i want it warmer, shorts and t-shirts in the middle of the winter is the aim
I just want to be able to get the main rooms to a good standard of heating and not break the bank.

These are my options, i think in order of preference:

1) External wood pellet boiler.
Install a wood pellet boiler, upgrade rads with TRVs, update the controls. This is the only option i have got a quote for, won't have much change out of 10K :eek:

We want the external boiler as the internal stoves, the size we need, 30KW are not the best looking even though the price will be about €1500 cheaper.

2) A2W
Realistically as much as I would love to go down this route, I don't think it is an option. I have all steel rads in the house and as it's a house built in 2003, its not air tight enough. (draughty vents).

3) Update oil boiler to condensing oil boiler.
Replace the existing oil boiler with a new condensing oil boiler, add TRVs, update controls.

4) In place of one of the open fires, put multi fuel stove with boiler.
We have 2 open fires in two sitting rooms, in the larger room, put in a multi fuel stove with boiler, burn turf/coal/timer,etc.


Regardless of which option, the smaller room will get an insert stove soon enough.

Any advice is appreciated!

H.E. Pennypacker

Jimmywangyang wrote: »

the house is warm once the heating is on

Is it only warm when the heating is on and soon after? If it was me, I'd work on improving airtightness. You'll need to think about your open chimneys and how you'll feed air to any fuel burning appliances if you do that. Open chimneys are a huge heat loss factor as are your open wall vents.

Jimmywangyang wrote: »

I just want to be able to get the main rooms to a good standard of heating and not break the bank.

The cheapest option by far is to get a new condensing boiler and upgrade controls. With any money left over, improve airtightness and ventilation options. Spending on stoves is using up money that if spent elsewhere could save you more in the longer term.

If you're aiming for living area temps of over 21C then you're probably aiming too high if money is a factor.

Iderown

We had a wood pellet boiler installed in place of a very elderly oil boiler. That was maybe 10 years ago. We returned to oil boiler after about 2 years.
Things to remember about wood pellet burning:
1. You need a storage tank for the pellets. The tanks are big , heavy and need a well-founded concrete base to stand on. They need to be accessible to public road for filling.
2. You need space beside the pellet burner for a local hopper to supply the burner. You need some means to fill this local hopper from the main storage tank. I got muscles on my muscles by carrying buckets of pellets.

3. Pellet burning creates soot in the boiler and its flue. You need to clean these maybe every 4/6 weeks. This along with the ash to be emptied.


The main reason we abandoned wood pellet burning was the unreliability of the burner. Specifically, the pellet igniting arrangement was an electric heater. It got red hot of course when ignition was called for by the control arrangement. Was expensive to replace.


I took the opportunity when we returned to an oil burner to re-organise the control gear (thermostats for two zones - domestic hot water and one space heating zone - and zone valves).


The poster above commented about draught-proofing and insulation. We also did these to good effect.

blackbox

Cheapest option is to put the heating on an hour earlier.

If current boiler is at end of life (it shouldn't be) replace with condenser type.

Block chimneys not in use.

Replace open fire with stove to minimise air going up chimney.

Close vents where condensation is not an issue.