Best Heating Options for 20 year old House

munsterkerryfan

Hi,

Can anyone advise on what would be the most efficient heating system for a 20 year old house I am looking at buying. It currently has an old oil burner in an outhouse. This heats the rads and the water.

Main queries would be:

-If we stick with oil, should I replace the existing burner and put in a condenser burner? Also, does it make more sense to move a new burner inside the house rather than having it outside.

-I am going to put a stove in the sitting room. Both of us work and neither is home before 6 any evening. Given that we usually only need hot water in the mornings and for an hour between 6-7 in the evenings, would it make any sense to connect it to the heating system?

-Are there any other options available?

Any advice/thoughts would be appreciated.

dathi

with a 20 year old house i would look at the levels of insulation first make sure you have 300mm of rock-wool/glass fiber in the attic and pumping your cavities this will reduce your heating demand. then your boiler if you are getting a new boiler and leaving it in shed you must replace the pipe work between shed and house with modern insulated pipe. also you must have separate control of your hot water from your rads so that you can just heat hot water for showers etc without turning on the rads . a room stat to control the central heating and a tank stat to control the hot water temp is also required or your boiler will not preform as expected .

munsterkerryfan

Thanks for that Daithi.

I am currently looking for a quote on the insulation. I'm thinking about doing the attic and the walls. 3 block walls should be ok but i'm not sure how they would work on the brick wall at the front without doing too much damage. The company I have requested the quote from also install heating controls so I must ask them about those also.

In relation to the boiler, would you think there is any particular advantage to housing it inside or outside the main house?

bbam

Put the boiler outside.
We had an issue recently where tennant rang about carbon monoxide alarm going off.
Turns out a split in the indoor boiler was spewing exhaust into the house and the engineer said they'd all have been killed in their sleep without the alarm, parents and 3 kids under five!

We moved it just outside the next day. Safety is a big thing.

We were lucky I put in the alarms after that poor family in Galway all died last year. So lucky.

munsterkerryfan

Thanks for the feedback. The house does need to be insulated and I had planned to do that. I need to get some quotes from different suppliers.

Any recommendations on the best company to use for insulating the house? I am based in the Limerick area.

bbam

munsterkerryfan wrote: »

The house does need to be insulated and I had planned to do that. I need to get some quotes from different suppliers.

Try and plan the insulation in conjunction with the heat source.. When we were building the approact was more on minimising heat loss and the need for heating, then the heat source was secondary and things like convenience could be taken into account as the usage of the heating was minimised..

Unless its poorly fitted then any money spent on insulation AND airtightness is well spent.. Remember the airtightness aspect too as lots of insulation put into/onto a structure that isn't airtight is mostly wasted..

munsterkerryfan

Thanks for the info Bbam. Getting insulation quotes this week for cavity walls and attic so that should make a big difference.

Unfortunately, we don't have an unlimited budget so we need to make some decisions on what we can afford to do now or what might have to wait. One thing we had budgeted for was to change the double glazed alumininum framed windows that are currently in the house.

However, this may now have to wait as to change all the windows would cost a lot. Are the aluminium framed windows really that inefficient compared to the more modern windows?