A discussion for the holiday - Struggling with recommendations for our OWN property!!

[Worcester]

We are on oil and are looking for our ideal solution - mains gas is in the street, £1500 to connect up (long drive..) We've got lots of spare PV output (on a sunny day) and an immersun unit -love it) We've got adequate area of land.

Maximum loft insulation, cavities filled on 1/4 of house, 3/4 of house solid walls, suspended wooden floors.

So our choices are:
Air Source Heat Pump
Condensing Gas Boiler
Ground Source Heat Pump with slinky coils (Not doing a borehole, way too expensive)
Thermodynamic Panels
Large Solar Thermal Array (we have the space) though poor angle of incidence
Log Burning Back Boiler
Biomass

We really don't want to redecorate the whole house as it's also got the small (not micro) bore piping to about half of the radiators.

So we really want a solution that can economically give us a high heat output for the exisitng radiators.

The high output Daikin and Panasonic ASHP's spring to mind, and possibly a large solar thermal array, however yesterday never got about -4°C here and today wont either.

At this instant 9:30am overcast, 13th December 2012 we are breaking even on generation / consumption of the PV

Now, seeing as we are struggling to come to a BEST solution, it gets difficult to recommend as the majority of our local domestic renewable energy marketplace will have similar challenges.

What are your thoughts...

 

[TedM]

Re: A discussion for the holiday - Struggling with recommendations for our OWN proper

Floor area? Current EPC score?

 

[Worcester]

Re: A discussion for the holiday - Struggling with recommendations for our OWN proper

Current EPC irrlevant (85 - B) due to massive PV! See Attached, anonymised (I hope)
Fllor Area, Ground Floor, 1400 sq ft First Floor, 600 sq ft (129 m2 + 54 m2)
View attachment EPC_Anon.pdf

 

[BruceB]

Re: A discussion for the holiday - Struggling with recommendations for our OWN proper

Connecting to gas is rarely wrong if available, rather like buying ibm 20 years ago.
With radiators, heatpumps are out really as your radiator system needs higher temperatures than they will economically provide.
I would investigate Biomass - it gives high temperature output and RHI is available.
If you have or can have a granny annex (ie x2 council taxes) then potentially commercial rhi is available now rather than waiting for domestic.

 

[dansk]

Re: A discussion for the holiday - Struggling with recommendations for our OWN proper

or electric UFH with all that pv ;-)

 

[MCS Renewables]

Re: A discussion for the holiday - Struggling with recommendations for our OWN proper

Danfoss DHP AQ heat pump with MIDI unit and buffer cylinder serving Smiths Eco rads.


Danfoss DHP-AQ
Ecovector® Low Level Fan Convectors - Smith's Environmental Products

with twin coil or hot water cylinder and a solar thermal system. (we use Barilla - Wholesale Solar Thermal Supplies Barilla Solar )

Done this combination recently on a house that had a gas supply which has now been removed.
Property has a 4kW solar PV system getting FITS and heat pump and solar thermal will qualify for RHI (if it ever happens!)

 

[Worcester]

Re: A discussion for the holiday - Struggling with recommendations for our OWN proper

It's the age old problem, we need the heat when we're not generating the leccy' I'm thinking that a big thermal store should be part of the solution.
Update we've got 16 existing radiators plus the towel rail.. (and a dual coil cylinder )

 

[jason121]

Re: A discussion for the holiday - Struggling with recommendations for our OWN proper

All three keeping existing radiators, my heat pump struggled last night on existing radiators still maintaining 21 degrees in house but shouild be 22

Large Solar Thermal Array (we have the space) though poor angle of incidence
Log Burning Back Boiler
Biomass
put them into one thermal store

 

[Worcester]

Re: A discussion for the holiday - Struggling with recommendations for our OWN proper

@jason121 - Well that sucks .........

And just started importing power, up to 200 Watts now ..

 

[Gavin A]

Re: A discussion for the holiday - Struggling with recommendations for our OWN proper

It's impossible to advise without knowing the heatloss rates.

If you've done a lot of insulation work since the rads were installed then it's possible the heat load has dropped sufficiently to allow the existing rads to be reused, but it'd need minimum cavity wall insulation, loft insulation and decent double glazing all round all round vs virtually none of this when the rads were installed.