oil burner or solid fuel for home heating?

gre_soul

Hi any input or you thoughts on this subject would be great,

we are building a new house (small bungalow) and when it come to heating we are unsure which i the best option we were concidering the wood pelets but were told that it not as good as it could be and to hold off. with the price of oil increasing yearly heating costs are going up with it so anyway our builder mentioned that its up to us to work out the pros and cons or oil and conventional solid fuel for the heating any advice?

Chimpster

The only negative with the wood pellets is having the facilities to hold 3 tonne of pellets. If you have a shed/garage adjacent to the house then this area could be used for this purpose. An area of 6 cubic metres would be sufficient for this.

You also have the option of buying pellets in bags but this wont be as cost efficient as buying in bulk.

A standard Wood pellet boiler allows you automatic ignition, so that you can set your timer in your house to come on and off as you wish. Ash cleaning is also kept to a minimum so that you only really need to clean it ever 2/3 weeks. More expensive boilers have a facility which means you only need to clean it every 6 months or so. This is alot more hands off than solid fuel.

I commission Wood Pellet boilers in the Galway area. PM me if you want any more details.

gre_soul

Thanks for the info. leaving pellets for a while, do you think solid fuel is a better choice than oil as a future investment?

mjffey

Being foreigner, what do you mean by a burner. Is that your range? We have an oil burned range for hot water at the moment, but will go for a multi fuel stove with back buner, in combination with solar panels this year because it's cheaper for us to run, having access to wood and turf.

We also don't want to rely on one source for our warm water and with a multi fuel burner you can burn logs, shavings, pellets, turf etc.
Oil won't get any cheaper, neither will wood pellets.

Chimpster

gre_soul wrote:

Thanks for the info. leaving pellets for a while, do you think solid fuel is a better choice than oil as a future investment?

Its a hard one to call. The price of oil is just too volatile for my liking. Saying that, oil is a very hands off solution. You also have the carbon emissions issue which may mean a you house having a lesser energy rating in the future, the importance of this may not mean much to alot of people but it may be a strong selling point for a house in the future.

Unless you have a local cheap supply of wood and turf then multi fuel can work out quite expensive. And I am wondering how long more people are going to be allowed to cut turf?

Solar is no brainer in my opinion, assuming you get a good price on it and a quality product installed correctly.

Your call gre_soul, You needn't ask what I have installed!

Dummy

Hi - We have just finished our new build and put in both Oil and a wood burning stove. The oil is solely for heating the house before we get home (we have a very young family) and hooked it up to a Seitron GSM interface (http://www.seitron.it/eng/prodotti/scheda.php?sectionid=51&itemid=355&begincount=0&pathtype=sectiontree&SID) which allows me to switch the oil system on from my mobile. When we get home, the oil is switched off and the wood stove lit which has a back boiler and heats rads and water.

I put 200 litres of kerosene in the tank in January last and it is still 3/4 full.

But we put in considerably more insulation than normal which saves a lot. Also the back of the house is south facing and is mainly glass which generates all the heat for the house for most of the day. The snowy March 17th was the last time we had heating on.

I really regret not putting solar panels up. Have a good look at these. I think they are worthwhile.

The best of luck with the new build - it's a lot of work but a lot of fun in the end.

chuckles30

Just one comment I have on going for solid fuel only - you will only have heat in the house when you are there to light the fire yourself. My mother has it and whenever she goes away for a couple of days, or even for one night, you go back to a freezing cold house (ok this is worse during the winter obviously). Then you have the fact that you cannot set the heat to come on before you come home in the evening/get up in the morning. I guess it depends on what you're heating requirements are, but I have oil myself and find it very convenient.

galwaytt

my 0.02.........none of the above........for me, gas & solar. If it's a small bungalow, you'd get away with a small one of each unit.