Wood pellet stove boiler

riddles

Hi

i was investigating replacing the oil boiler with a wood pellet boiler. It’s to heat 13 rads in a 4 bed two story house.

it says online you’d need 150 bags a year three pallets 15kg which is nearly a grand. Then the MCZ boiler stove is 5/6k installed. Would that need a service annually? Online it suggests pellet stoves are good for ten years?

at moment I’d burn 700 l/800 litres of oil and use a solid fuel in the living space but that doesn’t cost much.

id also need to put the pellet boiler on the utility in a converted garage which I’d be concerned with the flue etc in an estate setting.

zg3409

In order to save money you need to buy wood pellets by the lorry load. Otherwise you are paying over the odds. Then wood pellets store less energy per size than oil, so you need a store much larger than your oil tank. Ideally you need a feed system between the store and the wood boiler. The store ideally needs to be kept dry as in block built but plastic options exist.

Ideally you want a good brand wood boiler. Your budget would want to be 10/15k. If you have a working oil boiler it might make no financial sense to switch. Putting the money into insulation, heating time and temperature controls and maybe PV panels to heat water in summer may be better bang for buck. Oil is not getting cheap any time soon but ripping out a working new oil burner may not make sense. Is existing oil burner condensing as in does it release white "smoke"/steam as more modern oil burners are condensing which are slightly more efficient than older non condensing boilers. Generally I would say wait until boiler is in last legs. Wood pellets burners do require maintenance, most need ash bucket emptied monthly and they are more complicated and harder to get fixed than oil burners.

riddles

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119335268#Comment_119335268

Thanks the oil boiler is the old grant one must be 25 years old white smoke out the back we are using it for 16 years and just a service is all it had and a new water pump in that time. Space is at at premium as the garden is only 11*11 metres. Will do as you say flog the oil boiler to death and make the hard decision and investment then. I suppose the deep retrofit ultimately the solution as house is currently c3 but prices would need to fall a lot for that type of outlay.