Wood Pellet Boiler Recommendations

ninjaBob

I am currently looking into Boilers (Oil and WoodPellet). I was just wondering if anyone could recommend a good brand / company for wood pellet boilers.

(Please PM)

Gurgle

ninjaBob wrote: »

I am currently looking into Boilers (Oil and WoodPellet). I was just wondering if anyone could recommend a good brand / company for wood pellet boilers.

I recommend you don't get one.
They're flying pigs.

ninjaBob

Can you PM me any alternatives that you might recommend, it is a new build and thus we require some degree of renewables energy source.

gears

Gurgle wrote: »

I recommend you don't get one.
They're flying pigs.

Sounds like you might have some personal experience here, care to elaborate.

Gurgle

gears wrote: »

Sounds like you might have some personal experience here, care to elaborate.

I didn't get as far as personal experience, just looked into them.

Installation, maintenance, fuel costs are all way above any other home heating option - and thats before you even consider the space required and keeping the pellets dry, and all this for whats effectively an automated wood burning stove.

Real renewables - a properly installed ground source or air source heat exchange, solar-thermal panels, wind turbines have great potential but you need a damn smart electrician to configure a worthwhile sytem for you.
Hint: If you hear the word 'battery', forget it.

No6

Gurgle wrote: »

I didn't get as far as personal experience, just looked into them.

Installation, maintenance, fuel costs are all way above any other home heating option - and thats before you even consider the space required and keeping the pellets dry, and all this for whats effectively an automated wood burning stove.

Real renewables - a properly installed ground source or air source heat exchange, solar-thermal panels, wind turbines have great potential but you need a damn smart electrician to configure a worthwhile sytem for you.
Hint: If you hear the word 'battery', forget it.

No offence Gurgle but I dont think you have looked far enough into all of the systems, a properly installed ground heat pump system costs a fortune and still uses electricty to run, in addition you must have underfloorheating for these which cost more that standard rads.
Solar thermal panels will give you hot water to wash your hands with, they do not heat your house unless you have an acre of them which would be very expensive and a swimming pool to heat for the summer when you don't need the space heating!!!
Domestic wind turbines have a long way to go before they are reliable, cost effective and when smart metering finally arrives you might be able to omitt the dreaded battery.
There is also photovalics which are very very expensive for the power returned.
Woodpellets boilers are middle of the range cost to install, the price of the fuel is pretty steady, still cheaper than oil and electricty when you use bulk storage and yes they do take up space and have to be kept dry and theres a bit of work to them maintance and cleaning.

Woodpellet stoves are on the other hand expensive to run using bag pellets and cant heat a full house so I would avoid these like the plague.

gears

Gurgle wrote: »

I didn't get as far as personal experience, just looked into them.

Installation, maintenance, fuel costs are all way above any other home heating option - and thats before you even consider the space required and keeping the pellets dry, and all this for whats effectively an automated wood burning stove.

Real renewables - a properly installed ground source or air source heat exchange, solar-thermal panels, wind turbines have great potential but you need a damn smart electrician to configure a worthwhile sytem for you.
Hint: If you hear the word 'battery', forget it.

Heat pumps of any kind are hardly what I would call a renewable technology. They use electricity, and lots of it which is mostly generated from non renewables. Then if you take into account the losses at the point of generation and the losses from the poor transmission system and your looking at a ratio of 1:1 in terms of the power generated to whats supplied to the home for heating. The only benefit is that you only pay for what electricity you use not what is generated.

PeteHeat

No6 wrote: »

Woodpellet stoves are on the other hand expensive to run using bag pellets and cant heat a full house so I would avoid these like the plague.

Hi No6,

We have a lot of customers who would not agree with you.

Good quality pellet stoves with boilers ranging from 12 Kw to 25 Kw output to radiators properly installed will provide the heat for a whole house.

We have one of these heating a house with a floor area of 3,200 square feet,
http://www.ecostoves.ie/psibextraflame/ecologicaidro.html

In fairness that achievement has more to do with the excellent level of insulation and the build quality of that particular house, the customer is using a DIY pellet storage tank in the back of the garage, no problems with damp pellets in three years.

There are a lot of people in smaller houses who could not justify the cost of a storage tank based on the cost difference between bagged and bulk pellet fuel.

Like the boilers, when properly installed they do exactly what they are supposed to, yes they must be kept clean which takes about 10 > 15 minutes once a week (depending on the make and model).

Like oil or gas boilers they should be serviced once a year, the heat distribution is only as good as the plumbing system / controls.

In the past few weeks we have been getting calls to service units that have been working without any service by a professional for over three years.

They may not suit every person, or every house but they serve many very well.

.

Gurgle

gears wrote: »

Heat pumps of any kind are hardly what I would call a renewable technology. They use electricity, and lots of it which is mostly generated from non renewables. Then if you take into account the losses at the point of generation and the losses from the poor transmission system and your looking at a ratio of 1:1 in terms of the power generated to whats supplied to the home for heating. The only benefit is that you only pay for what electricity you use not what is generated.

You may note my emphasised use of the word 'properly'. What you describe is what you will generally get in Ireland - A deep-bore geothermal system installed 5-20 miles above any geothermal heat source. In other words, you're mostly heating your house with electricity.

In Ireland, air-source is a real runner - for that large proportion of the year when the outside temperatures are between 9° and 15°, i.e. cold enough that you need the heating on, but warm enough source air that a heat exchange can run efficiently.

Likewise shallow run ground source heat collectors, which absorb the heat soaked into the soil from the sun not geothermal heat which just isn't available here.

No6 wrote:

Solar thermal panels will give you hot water to wash your hands with

One sunny day and I have a 200 litre tank full of hot water with 4 square meters of flat-plate collectors.

No6 wrote:

they do not heat your house unless you have an acre of them which would be very expensive and a swimming pool to heat for the summer when you don't need the space heating!!!

Yes, absolutely right. But with a 10,000 litre insulated underground heat storage tank and a heat exchange pump....
Never mind, I'll get back to that one when I have the time and money to experiment.

No6 wrote:

Domestic wind turbines have a long way to go

Another interesting one - the actual wind turbines are effective and reliable, the drawbacks are: cost of battery, lifetime of battery, voltage-down transformer inefficiency, rectification inefficiency, battery charging inefficiency, alternator inefficiency, voltage-up transformer inefficiency. You end up getting to use only a fraction of the power generated, and the battery wears out before you've paid for it with generated power.

A smart system would involve direct supply to always-on electricals (fridge, freezer, (heat exchange pump :b)) or storage (hot water tank electric element), and automatic switchover between your turbine and mains power depending on whether the wind is blowing.

No6 wrote:

photovalics

Not yet is all I'll say to photovoltaics. Give it a decade or two, they're getting there.

Gurgle

PeteHeat wrote: »

excellent level of insulation and the build quality

You would think that SEI and the Green Party would push the insulation angle a bit harder.

ninjaBob

To be fair everything needs to be installed correctly, be it Oil Boiler, Gas Boiler, Wood Pellet, GeoThermal or Solar. They all need to be installed correctly to yield the returns you expect from them.

Additionally they all need servicing, you simply can't put in a heating system and expect it to work indefinately.

What I am finding is:

---

GeoThermal : €12,000 - €15,000 install (GroundCollector, Pump, Buffer Tank etc)

Oil Condensing Boiler - €1000 - €3000 (Would require Solar or a renewable for section L compliance, additionally would require a buffer tank)

Solar : €4000 - €8000 (depending on the size and number of units)

Wood Pellet : €8000 - €13,000.

Wind Turbine : €8000 - €14,000

With the Exception of Solar and Wind Turbines all 3 other heating options are dependant on fluctuating sources (Electricity, Oil and Wood). This 3 sources go up and down in price and can vary from week to week.

So by the time you have installed your Wood Pellet Boiler and have it up and running you could have just gone for GeoThermal as the price isn't as much.

With Oil if you add in the Solar Panels and the ability to change out oil down the line you are a few thousand euro less than GeoThermal, but do you think that within 4 - 5 years oil will be at the same price.

So if I could get a good recommendation on a Wood Pellet boiler I could sit down and compare all 3 systems and figure out which is the most viable. I am concerned that with GeoThermal the HeatPump could burn out and that's an expensive piece of kit to have burn out. Boilers are the same but I suspect repairing them is far cheaper.

Obviously I am talking from a new build point of view and with my own build in mind. So again if anyone can recommend a decent Wood Pellet boiler that hasn't caused them any issues it would be appreciated.

No6

PeteHeat wrote: »

Hi No6,

We have a lot of customers who would not agree with you.

Good quality pellet stoves with boilers ranging from 12 Kw to 25 Kw output to radiators properly installed will provide the heat for a whole house.

We have one of these heating a house with a floor area of 3,200 square feet,
http://www.ecostoves.ie/psibextraflame/ecologicaidro.html

In fairness that achievement has more to do with the excellent level of insulation and the build quality of that particular house, the customer is using a DIY pellet storage tank in the back of the garage, no problems with damp pellets in three years.

There are a lot of people in smaller houses who could not justify the cost of a storage tank based on the cost difference between bagged and bulk pellet fuel.

Like the boilers, when properly installed they do exactly what they are supposed to, yes they must be kept clean which takes about 10 > 15 minutes once a week (depending on the make and model).

Like oil or gas boilers they should be serviced once a year, the heat distribution is only as good as the plumbing system / controls.

In the past few weeks we have been getting calls to service units that have been working without any service by a professional for over three years.

They may not suit every person, or every house but they serve many very well.

.

Pete my point on pellet stoves is unless you have bulk storage they are expensive to run. True you can get them big enough to heat an well insulated house but what happens when they are retro fitted into an older poorly insulated house with no bulk storage, the householders use oil to warm up the water and then the stove to keep it warm. (My Neighbours!!)

Gurgle when you come accross to many badly installed heat pump systems which cost a fortune to install and are now costing a fortune to run you get a bit spectical. In therory its amazing in practice I have found it's generally not. With all the money you are spening / planning on spending why didn't you just build a passive house instead, they do actually work!!

The Op was refering to his house now so a decade or two for photovalics may be a bit too long.

Ninja Bob what size is your house? the cost for the heat pump seems a bit low, don't undersize them or it will cost a fortune to run.

gears

Gurgle wrote: »

You may note my emphasised use of the word 'properly'. What you describe is what you will generally get in Ireland - A deep-bore geothermal system installed 5-20 miles above any geothermal heat source. In other words, you're mostly heating your house with electricity.


You may not have noticed my point that regardless of whether a heat pump (air, water or whatever) is correctly installed or not when you have the huge losses due to transmission I don't believe it makes sense. To get 1kW to a home 3kW-4kW needs to be generated, so with a COP of 4:1 you are are ultimately generating what is used in the home for heating.

I believe that a log gassifier, wood pellet or wood chip boiler are true renewable heating options, not heat pumps.

lastbuilders

Hi ninjaBob,

I have had a wood pellet boiler installed since early 2006 and have not had any real issues with it. I should add that PeteHeat suppplied and commisioned it for me who is also on this thread. It was installed under the original grant scheme from SEI which also made it less expensive.

The maintenance is a bit more than oil and it takes a bit longer to heat up the house than oil but I believe the costs are lower. The houseis tember frame, has a HRV system and significant hemp insulation throughout. This is my first house so not sure of comparision but from talking to my brother who has an oil heating system for a similar sized house (around 2700 sq ft) it is less.


I have the boiler and bulk store in my garage. The plumbing is the same as would be used in an oil heating system so if I wished I could always change to this if required but I have no plans to do so.


If you have any specific queries let me know.


Cheers
Lastbuilders

ninjaBob

No6 wrote: »

Ninja Bob what size is your house? the cost for the heat pump seems a bit low, don't undersize them or it will cost a fortune to run.

It's around 3000sq foot and TBH I'm taking the word of the companies that it's sufficient and well designed system.

damian1250

Hi,
I have installed a <SNIP> €6900 + flue €1000 with underfloor and a 1000 liter buffer tank with outlets for a solar panel at a later stage and 700 liter domestic hot water cylinder. Total cost for the plumbing domestic and heating excluding the above prices was €35000. Installed in a 2800 sq ft house and runs 24/7 365 days a year for now after drying out totally €1800 per annum. You will need lots of room in your garage and will need a storage bin for pellets, i made my own for very little and it hold 6 tonne of pellets. All tanks etc are in garrage and pumped to the house meaning all taps hot and cold are pressurised and dont need electric pumped showers also no water tanks in house !

Chimpster

You burned approx 7 tonne of pellets in year 1 and the house is 2800 sq foot?

I have a 2300 sq foot house and I burned 3 tonnes last year though the house was well dried out before installation.

Your usage seems very high?

ninjaBob

damian1250 wrote: »

Hi,
I have installed a Mescali PB28 €6900 + flue €1000 with underfloor and a 1000 liter buffer tank with outlets for a solar panel at a later stage and 700 liter domestic hot water cylinder. Total cost for the plumbing domestic and heating excluding the above prices was €35000. Installed in a 2800 sq ft house and runs 24/7 365 days a year for now after drying out totally €1800 per annum. You will need lots of room in your garage and will need a storage bin for pellets, i made my own for very little and it hold 6 tonne of pellets. All tanks etc are in garrage and pumped to the house meaning all taps hot and cold are pressurised and dont need electric pumped showers also no water tanks in house !

Do you mind if I ask exactly what your final price was for your heating system & plumbing?

So far my system is:

General Plumbing (inc 2 back boilers and all storage tanks, raditors, excluding wares) : €6000

Underfloor Heating (including all manifolds, valves, stats etc) : €5500


The final step is to decide on the heating syste itself, this will dictate exactly what kind of DHW Tanks and if any buffer tanks are required.

If I go GeoThermal, I can get the heat pump and ground collector for around 10,000 - 12,000

If I go wood pellet I can get a suitable boiler with Flue, Auger and Bulk Storage for just over €8000 (but need to clean it regularly) or €10,000 for the self clean system.

The DHW tank would cost anywhere from €1500 - €3000 depending on what system we select.

So all in all I am looking at around €26,000 for a geothermal heating system and plumbing.

€24,000 for wood pellet based system.

Extracting the actual facts based on all the postings is very difficult. As you said in your other post if someone spends €40,000 euro on a car they are hardly going to tell you it's rubbish. So this is why I am trying to wade through all the crap to find the best system for my house within my budget.

damian1250

Hi,
Total cost for my plumbing excluding wares = €42500. Sounds expensive but i think its worth it, includes,

• boiler €6900
• Flue €1000
• Pellet bin to hold 6 tonne €100
• buffer tank 1000 litre
• Domestic hot water stainless steel 700 litre tank
• 1100 litre cold water storage tank
• High pressure pump for all taps hot and cold
• All under floor heating 1st and 2nd floor, manifolds, programable stats etc
• plumb 4 bathrooms
• plumb kitchen
• plumb utility
• plumb garage

Plus the plumber has signed a lifetime warranty on his work, and i have made use of it in the last 2 years for checkups, fine tuning etc.
It was an expensive system and we could have saved money by cutting out some of the above, but you only do this once and i think it was worth it, lots of people think the same when they see the the whole system. Only downside is that i used to have a garage, now its a boiler house !

damian1250

Chimpster wrote: »

You burned approx 7 tonne of pellets in year 1 and the house is 2800 sq foot?

I have a 2300 sq foot house and I burned 3 tonnes last year though the house was well dried out before installation.

Your usage seems very high?

3 tonne in a year !! unheard off in a 2300sqft house running 24/7 365 days a year space heating and constant hot water.
Your must have a very very effecient system or very effecient insulation

Chimpster

damian1250 wrote: »

3 tonne in a year !! unheard off in a 2300sqft house running 24/7 365 days a year space heating and constant hot water.
Your must have a very very effecient system or very effecient insulation

House is well insulated alright. But boiler wouldnt be any great shakes to be honest. Its an <SNIP> 24kw (running @ 12kW).

Wall U Value 0.18
Roof U Value 0.16
Floor U Value 0.14
Air Tightness Level 2.8 m3/hr/m2
Glazing DG/16 Gap/Argon Filled

OPOP Boiler, UFH all over house. Stats set @20 in Living areas and @ 18 in bedrooms.

Heat didnt come on since last Apri until last week when Temps dropped slightly.


Just one thing....

2.2 Tonne of Pellets gives you the same kW Hours as 1000 litres of oil. So if you had an oil boiler you would be burning over 3000 litres a year.

Thats high usage for a house built to Building Regs since 2005.

sculptor

Chimpster,
Please elaborate.

rossmore

I would be interested to know if anyone else who has installed a wood pellet burner for heating their house is experiencing problems? Our unit seems to need excessive cleaning because of a build up of tar and soot. According to the commissioning agent there are no issues with the boiler. We had expected a little ash to be cleaned out, but, the baffles and flu tend to get a build up of this tar and soot quite frequently. We are using what are supposed to be high quality wood pellets. These pellets are stored in a storge unit made specially for this purpose.

AmcD

We had a wood pellet boiler installed in 2006. We had just bought a 1940s bungalow with no insulation. There were a lot of teething problems with the boiler for the first three months, but eventually the installer took me seriously and found out that the control panel was faulty.
Once the control panel was replaced it ran fine until summer 2008. A torrential downpour/flooding then flooded our auger. We then had to manually fill the boiler on a daily basis until we had got through the remaining 1.5 tons of pellets. Then we got the impacted flooded pellets out of the auger.
We got 3 tons of pellets in Feb 09. These turned out to be of rubbish quality. The boiler hasn't really worked since then and constantly thinks its empty.

I am very close to seriously considering getting a high efficiency gas boiler. The pellet storage issue doesn't bother me in urban Dublin- 3 tons are easily stored in what was a small lean-to conservatory. Unfortunately there are no guarantees about pellet quality. The boiler is very sensitive to crap pellets.

It is a SHT boiler, for the record. Suitable acronym I think

Seanbec

damian1250 wrote: »

3 tonne in a year !! unheard off in a 2300sqft house running 24/7 365 days a year space heating and constant hot water.
Your must have a very very effecient system or very effecient insulation

I also have a <SNIP> boiler on a 1800 sq foot hse mine is set at 24kw insulation is only standard with the attic not finished yet. I have solar for dhw and run the heat for around 8 hours a day from october to march no elec showers or immersion and I wouldnt burn 3 tonne a year. I currently buy 1/2 tonne bags from <SNIP> for €115 which I collect myself so my yearly cost will be between €600 and €800.

Poor Uncle Tom

Seanbec, I've already warned you on a thread with the same name as this. I've had to edit the same company name out here too so you've just earned an infraction.

Sailorlad

Hi

Chimpster.....how do you regulate / adjust the KW output?
I have an 18kw <SNIP> with bio-comfort display

Thanks

Read the charter about naming companies etc., infraction given

ninsaga

AmcD wrote: »

........We got 3 tons of pellets in Feb 09. These turned out to be of rubbish quality.

AmcD - what brand of pellets were they (I need to buy more now & am on the look out but want to be sure I don't get bad ones. PM me if you wish rather than name them here. Cheers

Sailorlad

I too would like to know a a good supplier of quality pellets, the company I used to now were importing their pellets from Germany, now they are using Irish ones which are terrible in comparison.

AmcD

I have nearly used a different company for each load of new pellets. Unfortunately I have not found any consistent good quality pellets. Leinster pellets supplied me with some really bad ones, but to be fair they apologised for giving me some of a known bad batch and dug out the last bits and gave me a pallet of bagged ones instead.
I recently tried Firestixx, but found out that the company has been sold on and they now use Irish instead of imported ones as they did before.
In retrospect I am not sure now exactly how much the quality of pellets affects the boiler. It turns out I spent the last nine months swearing at and manually resetting the boiler, for the sake of a €15 capacitor. Since this little part was replaced, the house has been blazing with heat. It's a pity I spent the whole of the big freeze without any discernible heat.

billy_beckham

Hello AmcD,
I have one of these aswell and have trouble with auger jams no matter what type of pellet I use, now the auger seems to have given up the ghost totally:(... Who did you get or how did you fix your's??

Thanks....

big bad brew

I have never had any problems with the auger or any other parts of the boiler I use Balcas pellets and hve emptied the ash twice in 8 months

Big bad b

sheilugs

AmcD wrote: »

We had a wood pellet boiler installed in 2006. We had just bought a 1940s bungalow with no insulation. There were a lot of teething problems with the boiler for the first three months, but eventually the installer took me seriously and found out that the control panel was faulty.
Once the control panel was replaced it ran fine until summer 2008. A torrential downpour/flooding then flooded our auger. We then had to manually fill the boiler on a daily basis until we had got through the remaining 1.5 tons of pellets. Then we got the impacted flooded pellets out of the auger.
We got 3 tons of pellets in Feb 09. These turned out to be of rubbish quality. The boiler hasn't really worked since then and constantly thinks its empty.

I am very close to seriously considering getting a high efficiency gas boiler. The pellet storage issue doesn't bother me in urban Dublin- 3 tons are easily stored in what was a small lean-to conservatory. Unfortunately there are no guarantees about pellet quality. The boiler is very sensitive to crap pellets.

It is a SHT boiler, for the record. Suitable acronym I think

Hi AmcD I have been through the hoops with this boiler too - tried every pellet etc. but still get auger jams. This winter we bought Brites and they seem to be working out ok though on Christmas eve the auger jamed again. The guy who services it has been trying to get a capacitor with no luck. You say this has solved your problems? Like you I am at the end of my tether with it - have even phoned and emailed the manufacturer in Austria!

AmcD

billy_beckham wrote: »

I have one of these aswell and have trouble with auger jams no matter what type of pellet I use, now the auger seems to have given up the ghost totally:(... Who did you get or how did you fix your's??

sheilugs wrote: »

I have been through the hoops with this boiler too - tried every pellet etc. but still get auger jams. This winter we bought Brites and they seem to be working out ok though on Christmas eve the auger jamed again. The guy who services it has been trying to get a capacitor with no luck. You say this has solved your problems? Like you I am at the end of my tether with it - have even phoned and emailed the manufacturer in Austria!

I presume Neils (MA services) is working on these boilers? To be fair, since I last ranted, we have doing ok with the SHT boiler using Leinster pellets. They have a soft delivery system which is able to deliver our pellets over 24 metres without mashing them. Neils has also been excellent- he sorted out a new ignition coil recently. My husband also cleared a small internal auger jam without too much difficulty.

sheilugs

AmcD wrote: »

I presume Neils (MA services) is working on these boilers? To be fair, since I last ranted, we have doing ok with the SHT boiler using Leinster pellets. They have a soft delivery system which is able to deliver our pellets over 24 metres without mashing them. Neils has also been excellent- he sorted out a new ignition coil recently. My husband also cleared a small internal auger jam without too much difficulty.

We bought bagged pellets this winter as the loose ones had caused so much hassle. They are Brites, the highest rated that are on the market though expensive - might try Leinster pellets next time. What about the capacitor you mentioned? Where did you source that? Thanks.

billy_beckham

AmcD wrote: »

I presume Neils (MA services) is working on these boilers? To be fair, since I last ranted, we have doing ok with the SHT boiler using Leinster pellets. They have a soft delivery system which is able to deliver our pellets over 24 metres without mashing them. Neils has also been excellent- he sorted out a new ignition coil recently. My husband also cleared a small internal auger jam without too much difficulty.

Hi,

I use Neils as a source of spares, I have had to replace an ingitor, the metal plate in top of chamber (it warped badly, new one going same way ) and an augur/motor in the last 12 months. The cost of spares from SHT is ridiculous, €120 i think for an ignitor and they are only good for a couple of years!

Key to them I think is keeping them clean, if not you will get augur jams....especially the "smoke tubes"

sheilugs

billy_beckham wrote: »

Hi,

I use Neils as a source of spares, I have had to replace an ingitor, the metal plate in top of chamber (it warped badly, new one going same way ) and an augur/motor in the last 12 months. The cost of spares from SHT is ridiculous, €120 i think for an ignitor and they are only good for a couple of years!

Key to them I think is keeping them clean, if not you will get augur jams....especially the "smoke tubes"

Yes I've learned the hard way with regards to keeping the boiler clean but cheap pellets clog it up very quickly - it's not worth the savings for all the grief they cause. I have spent a bit on parts too, which has led me on a hunt for alternative suppliers but no luck so far!

billy_beckham

Hi Folks,

I've been trying to contact MA Services, does anyone know if they still exist?

Thanks,

Dante79

I bought a wood pellet stove two years ago while starting my self build, the local plumbing store was closing down so i got an ex display model at half price for €2500.
I bought it thinking i was getting a bargain but sold it again once i added up all the extra costs involved, flue €1500, buffer tank€1500, pellet store etc
Instead i put this money into insulation,82mm insulated board and 60mm cavity insulation. I installed a condensing boiler, and a stove with back boiler. I hope to install solar panels next spring to reduce the depence on oil.
I am very happy so far with this system. My oil spend last year was €1400, i put thermostats on every rad and basically just heat the rooms we occupy and have little or no heat going to empty rooms. I got my stove going properly this year so hope to reduce the oil bill futher by using this more. The stove heats downstairs rads and i also have a valve in place to divert some of this heat to my hot water cylinder. The system is simple and works just as i want it.
In my opinion this is the best and most economical system. I got prices for underfloor heating(3000sft house) and also geothermal but when i took into account the initial outlay and what it would actually cost me by time i pay my mortgage off, i didnt make sense. Some say radiators are dated and old fashioned but they heat up within 15 mins of turning on boiler and dont used fuel when no needed unlike underfloor.

Dante79

@Ninjabob

"What I am finding is:

---

GeoThermal : €12,000 - €15,000 install (GroundCollector, Pump, Buffer Tank etc)

Oil Condensing Boiler - €1000 - €3000 (Would require Solar or a renewable for section L compliance, additionally would require a buffer tank)

Solar : €4000 - €8000 (depending on the size and number of units)

Wood Pellet : €8000 - €13,000.

Wind Turbine : €8000 - €14,000"

---

Looking at your prices i think there is room for improvement if you shop around.
Here is what i have paid (excluding installing )

My 35kw oil condensing boiler €1000
Stove with back boiler €1200 (ex display) €1600 new
40 tube solar kit €2000
Triple coil cylinder €750

There is your complete system(more or less) for less than what you will pay for a good wood pellet boiler. I know oil prices are going to rise but if in a few years time i find that oil is too expensive i will then look at an alternative, i will only be down the price of the boiler €1000.....