Wood pellet boiler and oil boiler

kenneth2

I'm building a house at present and i'm thinking of putting in an oil boiler
and at some later point putting in a WPB
(when they are priced correctly..
at present they are really overpriced,
i was in finland and they are half the price over there...)

anyway i'm off my own topic
:-)

I was wondering if anyone else has put in an oil boiler
and also put in a WPB either at the same time or later.

Is there anything you would recommend to do now while building and putting in the oil burner,
so that when i do put in the WPB,
the WPB can work as the primary burner and the oil burner can work as a back up.

Any experience/recommendations appreciated.

RVR

One option would be to install a buffer or combination tank at the same time as the oil boiler and you could then add the pellet boiler at any time later.

The boiler(s) then heat the Central heating water in the buffer tank and this is then used to heat the rads or underfloor.



The advantage of using a buffer is that you can add several heat sources later, e.g. solar, pellet, solid fuel etc, as long as it is large enough to store the energy

Your buffer / combination tank could also have a coil to heat the domestic water. In this situation the boiler(s) heat the central heating water in the tank. This in turn inderictly heats the domestic water for the taps via a coil in the buffer tank. This lets you integrate all the heat sources in your house into the one buffer and use them to provide both central heating and domestic water.

Your plumber would be able to explain the ins and outs of it but this is a simple way of integrating multiple heat sources (assuming you have some space for the buffer tank!)

Evergreen

kenneth2 wrote: »

at some later point putting in a WPB
(when they are priced correctly..
at present they are really overpriced,
i was in finland and they are half the price over there...)

You get what you pay for!!!

PeteHeat

Hi,

We have combined the two systems without any problems, usually it was a matter of keeping the oil boiler as a reserve because they were too good to dispose of and very hard to sell second hand.

Regarding prices in Finland you don't have to travel that far to find a wood pellet boiler half the price of another, we have the same scenario in our showroom.

As Evergreen said :

"You get what you pay for"

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No6

I have an oil boiler and a wood pellet boiler, I can use one or the other but not both at the same time, all it involved was a few valves to isolate one boiler from the other. That siad I havn't used the oil boiler for two years now as the pellet boiler is a lot cheaper to run.

Alexandr

There is one more option. You can place only one(!) boiler and use two different burners for oil and for pellets.

PeteHeat

Hi,

There are boilers with double doors, others have seperate chambers for using both oil and pellet burners.

The problem with such systems is they are usually reasonably efficient when burning one fuel and a total waste (maybe 50% efficiency) when using the convenience option which is one of the burners usually the oil.

It appears to be difficult to engineer a boiler capable of being easy to adapt to different fuels, also take care not to favour the installation for oil over pellet as the flue is different for the pellet fuels.

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Evergreen

Alexandr wrote: »

There is one more option. You can place only one(!) boiler and use two different burners for oil and for pellets.

The other problem with this is that such a boiler is not eligible for the SEI grant

gears

Evergreen wrote: »

The other problem with this is that such a boiler is not eligible for the SEI grant

SeemS to be a new build so grants wouldn't be an issure for the OP.

PeteHeat

Hi,

The grant may not be an issue for the O.P. but other people read this thread and it may be important to them.

What is important to everybody is the efficiency of the dual fuel systems.

In most of the data sheets I have read for dual fuel they are at best 75% efficient with the wood products and as low as 50% with the oil burner.

In money terms that translates to approximately €5.00 out of €10.00 through the oil burner and €2.50 out of every €10.00 in wood products is lost up the flue for the next 15 > 20 years.

To me that makes for a very expensive boiler, it may be a better idea to fit the best you can afford today leaving provision for a second good quality boiler to be added later.

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