Question:
I am after some advice please. We plan to replace our heating system
in a major house refurb next year. We are not in a mains gas area, currently
we have an uninsulated house with very expensive LPG heating. I am looking
at maybe using wood pellet heating, but these boilers are large and require
a big store of pellets to be quite adjacent. We plan to have a garage sited
5m from the main house so if we put the boiler in the garage we would be
running approx 7m to the house with 5m under exposed ground. Does anyone
have any idea of heat loss to expect from this? In the US boiler houses are
quite common I believe but in the UK boilers seem to only be sited in the
main body of the house.
We plan to clad the house which has solid 10"walls (approx 100 years old)
with EZClad insulated brick slip system to ground floor top of window height
and then insulated battened vertical tiles to the roof. We will also be
insulating the roof and double glazing all windows, after which I calculate
we will need a 20KW boiler system. We will also be adding a small celcon
extension. Has anyone any experience of I-Beam TJI floor joist systems too?
We think they may be the best solution for the 1st floor floors with celcon
floors for the ground floor. really we are almost rebuilding the house!
Look forward to any comments.
Answer:
-Is the ground floor solid? If so dig down at the side of the external walls
about 1 metre and install Jablite insulation against the foundations up to
ground level. This greatly reduces thermal bridging to the cold earth around
the sides of the house.
Concentrate on the insulation, thermal bridging and air-tightness. Get the
fuel usage down and then running an LPG boiler will not be so expensive.
The money spent on a wood stove could be used to greater effect elsewhere in
the house to reduce heat loss. Also insulation keeps a house cool in
summer.
-Re double glazing I presume sure youre aware of the question mark over
them ever paying their cost back in savings.
Draughtproofing I dont much like myself, health comes first for me.
But there is one trick that might interest you. It is not difficult to
make a wood powered heater that delivers hot air into some open or
communal area in the house. It is basically just a brick built closed
furnace attached to the back of the house (or wherever), with a basic
metal heat exchanger, big enough that it will take 4' or 6' logs. This
would burn wood, greatly reducing the lpg bill, but without the cost
of buying a wood pellet burner.
The size means most waste wood can just be dropped in whole: tree
trunk sections, pallets, whatever.
If you build it so its partially inside the house, you can add metal
cooking plates to it and you have an aga type arrangement.
Another plus with long logs is that you can burn them at one end, and
the fire will move along the wood over time, giving you a long burn
time.
