new heating system required

[brett71]

I have bought a 3 bed house that currently has night storage heating, I want to remove this, but what to replace it with? The house also has solar water heating so my thoughts were should be ok with planning to have solar power to run central heating and electric or just put mains gas for heating, either way it's quite an outlay but having always had gas heating is solar comparable

 

[sooey]

No

 

[brett71]

So gas central heating is the way to go even though I have to get mains connected? I have spoken to national grid about this so I know it can be done

 

[Rad1o]

If you have a little bit of drive or garden think about ground heat if it is a completly new system and you are considering more outlay than just a gasboiler.

 

[Agile]

The normal and cheapest to operate system is gas heating.

Unless a new gas supply is going to cost over £3000 then I dont see how any other system is going to be worthwhile considering.

Tony

 

[dcawkwell]

Air source heat pump. It will be as economical as a condensing boiler and run off normal electric. Small 3 bed house with loft insulation and double glazing. 12kW should do you.
Alternative is lpg bottles and an lpg combi to save on having mains gas installed.
Would suggest lpg gas fire as a complement to the air source heat pump.

 

[Agile]

Air source heat pump. It will be as economical as a condensing boiler and run off normal electric. Small 3 bed house with loft insulation and double glazing. 12kW should do you.

An ASHP sounds ideal when you read the specs!

The reality seems to be that their efficiency falls off severely just when you need most heat and worst the heat output also falls off too, in some cases quite badly.

The reliability and warranty length is also seemingly pretty poor too. The capital cost is much higher than a gas boiler system.

Only with under floor heating are they reasonably satisfactory! But thats very expensive to install in an existing property.

LPG is also very expensive compared with nat gas too and the storage tank is another high cost.

So if you can get a nat gas supply for less than £3000 then thats what you should choose!

Tony

 

[dcawkwell]

Air source heat pump. It will be as economical as a condensing boiler and run off normal electric. Small 3 bed house with loft insulation and double glazing. 12kW should do you.

An ASHP sounds ideal when you read the specs!

The reality seems to be that their efficiency falls off severely just when you need most heat and worst the heat output also falls off too, in some cases quite badly.

The reliability and warranty length is also seemingly pretty poor too. The capital cost is much higher than a gas boiler system.

Only with under floor heating are they reasonably satisfactory! But thats very expensive to install in an existing property.

LPG is also very expensive compared with nat gas too and the storage tank is another high cost.

So if you can get a nat gas supply for less than £3000 then thats what you should choose!

Tony

Just been to a house with a 18kw trianco air source. Much bigger than a 3 bed house. All nice and toasty. Customer has had it installed right through the cold spell year before last. Never even noticed it.
lpg: You can run off lpg bottles that are free no rental although the gas is a little more expensive. Ideal for smaller houses. Up and running with boiler for around £1300-1400 pounds. £3000 buys an awful lot of fuel and would take ages to pay back
the difference.

 

[Agile]

Anyone who thinks that ASHPs are always a good solution should look up the installation cost and then look at this recent thread:-

//www.diynot.com/forums/plumbing/not-happy-with-air-source-heating.352753/

 

[Agile]

I was going to use LPG bottles for a house of mine which did not have a mains gas supply.

Bought a used LPG boiler cheaply from Ebay.

It was removed because he was needing two 47 kG cylinders every week in cold weather at a cost of about £57 each and decided using oil was going to be far cheaper for him! That was a three bed semi.

Since got a far more economic quote for a new gas supply from Nat Grid for my house. They rather cocked up the installation and I got compensation payments reducing the cost to about half !

Tony

 

[brett71]

Thanks for all the input, to be honest I think i am going to go with what we know which is mains gas, but not sure what to do with the solar water heating system thats there already. anyway whats a rough install time? 1980/90 terreced 3 bed 7-9 rads?

 

[Agile]

The solar water system can be retained as it is ( using electricity to top up and ideally off peak if you can configure your useage to make the most of the tarriff ).

Or you can have a new water cylinder costing about £800 which can be heated by the solar/electricity/gas boiler. BUT I dont think thats worth spending money on as the capital cost is quite high.

I never know why the installation time is seen by customers as so important. It all depends on how many people work and how fast they work.

Perhaps 2-3 people taking time to do it neatly about 3-5 days.

Most always take longer that they estimate anyway!

Tony

 

[brett71]

Tony

i was just interested how long it takes to see if I would need alternative accomodation or not, i have no idea of the size of job/mess

 

[Agile]

Its rarely necessary for anyone to move out.

But if your house is very cluttered then that can be a bad problem.

Generally I always say that its necessary for a room contents to be moveable to half the room area!

I turned down a wet system install to replace warm air because the Indian tenants had virtually all the floor area covered with furniture and black bags of clothes!

Tony