How to heat a very old house?

Hey hey.

Last month my family and I moved into this epic 450 yr-old listed brick building. A farmhouse surrounded by fields (latter not owned by us).

I mention listed because no double glazing possible. Has shutters and thick curtains instead.

Over its history, a bunch of heating methods have been used, inclu a massive incinerator-style boiler, long since gone, supplying large cast-iron radiators via thick pipes, currently decommissioned.

The house is in a U-shape, with the entrance at the bottom of the U. North wing and south wing. North wing has damp problems due to neglect, being north facing, and earth that sits just below window level in most G/F rooms (not removable).

North wing has an old Rayburn (sp?) oven off mains gas running 24/7 in the kitchen, heating the hot water for the bathroom, and heating the kitchen. Running very low volume.

South wing has a serious wood-burning stove in that kitchen (no 2, lol), supplying radiator heat to a series of newer radiators on copper pipe, plus hot water for the bath / kitchen taps. It's not very efficient. The showers in the south wing have electric instant hot water.

A heating specialist came around last week, and gave us these options:

1) new gas mains boiler, plus 30 new radiators and plumbing. Annual heating bill £2,800
Cost: £27,000 inc

2) a 45Kw Okofen biomass 7-9 ton system, using wood pellets. Annual bill £2,300, plus a RHI of £11,000 over 7 years.
Cost: £27,500 for boiler & £17,000 for new central heating system - the radiators etc

3) Geothermal energy hybrid ground source borehole system with back up gas boiler. Annual bill £2,000 plus a RHI of £30,000 over 7 years.
Cost: £39,500 for the kit plus the radiators at £18,000 (£57,500) overall (if you did horizontal trenches the price would reduce by £10,000)

If we can get the previous owners to let us use a field to lay the geothermal pipework horizontally, it wouldn't impact their sheep farming, as approx 1m below the surface, though presumably we'd have to pay them something.

I'd also want to use solar &/or wind energy to reduce electricity costs, esp for the geothermal pump, aside from the overall desire to save electricity costs. Wife is very keen on solar, but that would never be sufficient for heating.

The house needs to be warmed up after all these years, to restore its health. No damp proofing, and not possible. Previous owners used the bare minimum of rooms, and sold the house to concentrate on farming, and now live down the road.

What would you do? Money is an issue.

:)

KISS. #1

I think the idea of importing wooden pellets from america to burn is horrendous, and it's not a environmentally sound method. #3 sounds neat, but to me spells a nightmare of complexity - especially legally as you wouldn't just need right to lay the pipes, you'd need rights to access for maintenance.

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Originally Posted by kalniel

KISS. #1

I think the idea of importing wooden pellets from america to burn is horrendous, and it's not a environmentally sound method. #3 sounds neat, but to me spells a nightmare of complexity - especially legally as you wouldn't just need right to lay the pipes, you'd need rights to access for maintenance.

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Good points, though in this case, the wood pellets come from just down the road, where pellets are produced from waste at a telephone pole-producing factory. I just don't like the idea of being dependent on something like that compared to geothermal.

There are already access rights for sewage, road access and water/electricity. This wouldn't make it any worse or complex, really. The purchase took a LONG time to sort due to these issues, so now am well versed in it, plus would simply be a further paragraph in the covenants.

Cheers. :)

Edit: those access rights aren't just held by the previous owners - we own some. A sharing thing.

https://www.nerdalize.com/heating/ ?

I'm sure I've seen similar in the UK....

Well what I mean by the pellets is that while you may have a local source, nationwide we don't have enough to burn, so we do actually import from the US. If you take your local supply then fine for you, but that was previously filling a demand from elsewhere that's now not being supplied so overall imports will still have to increase.

Hope you're sure about the rights.. a friend of mine is a solicitor for a company that deals with exactly those kinds of things and even the most trivial thing sounds a complete nightmare.

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Originally Posted by b0redom

https://www.nerdalize.com/heating/ ?

I'm sure I've seen similar in the UK....

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lol, yes cryptocurrency mining is the crazy answer! £27000 buys a lot of graphics cards and they earn back their running costs :D

Just be wary of listed building consent. You will need it for alterations inside, outside, and in the ground of the house. Friend had to get consent for the gas boiler flue when they had heating installed. Unlike normal planning permission listed building alterations do not have an enforcement time limitation, so you can be forced to put right things done 10 years ago.

Sent from my SM-G950F using Tapatalk

3. Cheapest to install, thanks to that RHI, and cheapest to operate.

Yes, I’d say 3 - although geothermal produces fairly low temperatures so you may need to top that up - use the wood pellets in the wood burner! Ground thermal rather than geothermal makes it an even more attractive option - if you can negotiate the access rights.

Of course some of these decisions depend on how long you plan to live there.

Plan is to live here looooong term.

:)

Wood stoves. Period.

Good log stores, and a good wood supplier.

Fitted well, with flues in the house as high as possible before going through the wall and up further.

You can create gravity fed water systems for radiators if you choose stoves with back and side boilers. Remember that warming water via a stove lowers the burning temperature resulting in tar inside the stove.

I'd sugest you look at:

http://www.clearviewstoves.com/stove.../clearview-650 with one of the boiler options

If you have a central space, a stove windowed on both sides is a good idea.
https://woodwarmstoves.co.uk/stoves/fireview-double

Another great solution to longer term heat is a soap stone covered stove. It takes longer to heat, but hlds heat a looooong time

http://www.contura.eu/english/stoves...one-Stove-34T/

What I'm saying is: wood fired stoves and a good firewood supplier WITH great storage at home for wood.

AMD GPUs... :rolleyes:

Please don't burn wood :( The particulate emissions are horrific. I\'ve woken up to terrible chimney smoke several times, and now keep my windows closed at night because of it. I could post charts from the SDS011 particulate sensor I\'ve had running for the past several months, but there\'s not much point - nobody cares.

There have been three major air pollution events in England & Wales so far this year. If you burn during another one in the future, I will give you a stern look of disapproval through the smoggy ether, while cycling to work wearing my mask.

At some point many *many* years in the future, there will be restrictions on residential wood burning, probably starting nearer London or around the current air quality management areas. Will there be exceptions for wood-only homes? Maybe... or maybe not.

Go for gas.

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Originally Posted by smargh

Please don't burn wood :( The particulate emissions are horrific. I\'ve woken up to terrible chimney smoke several times, and now keep my windows closed at night because of it. I could post charts from the SDS011 particulate sensor I\'ve had running for the past several months, but there\'s not much point - nobody cares.

There have been three major air pollution events in England & Wales so far this year. If you burn during another one in the future, I will give you a stern look of disapproval through the smoggy ether, while cycling to work wearing my mask.

At some point many *many* years in the future, there will be restrictions on residential wood burning, probably starting nearer London or around the current air quality management areas. Will there be exceptions for wood-only homes? Maybe... or maybe not.

Go for gas.

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Can you post the graphs with some explanations? You\'ve got me interested now

To paraphrase the great Terry Pratchett: Give a house a fire and it\'ll be warm for a day, set it on fire and it\'ll be warm for the rest of its life.

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Originally Posted by smargh

Please don't burn wood :( The particulate emissions are horrific. I've woken up to terrible chimney smoke several times, and now keep my windows closed at night because of it. I could post charts from the SDS011 particulate sensor I've had running for the past several months, but there's not much point - nobody cares.

There have been three major air pollution events in England & Wales so far this year. If you burn during another one in the future, I will give you a stern look of disapproval through the smoggy ether, while cycling to work wearing my mask.

At some point many *many* years in the future, there will be restrictions on residential wood burning, probably starting nearer London or around the current air quality management areas. Will there be exceptions for wood-only homes? Maybe... or maybe not.

Go for gas.

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yeah.. go for non renewable fossil fuels...not.

Get a good wood burning stove that runs hot and efficiently, and warms the house properly, with radiant heat and the pleasure of the flames through the glass, radiating a different type of heat.. Something that you can store the fuel for ever, with no leakage.... with no danger apart from splinters in your fingers. Fuel that can be carried by a child, or an adult, that needs no compressed cylinders nor tanks nor pipes. A fuel that, when spilled can be re stacked. Can be borrowed from a neighbour and given back a year later in a diff shape.

Make sure its DEFRA certified, run it hot and the smoke will be negligble.

Learn to light it from the top down, like the Swedish authorities teach, so you have a good flame ABOVE the large wood below.. then as the wood heats up and emits the combustible gases they DO ignite. Later when the whole stove is hot they will ALL ignite automatically

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zG_urpcjp7M

Mr Khan in London is right to start looking at wood burning stoves being banned in CENTRAL LONDON...but in other communities? nope.

A single bloke on his allotment having an autumnal burn up creates more particulate on one Sunday than my stove creates all winter long. I get my flue swept every two years, and the soot is negligible. Looking from outside, the emmission are less than any cold started diesel.
log stove.

Wood is good.

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Originally Posted by smargh

Please don't burn wood :( The particulate emissions are horrific. I've woken up to terrible chimney smoke several times, and now keep my windows closed at night because of it. I could post charts from the SDS011 particulate sensor I've had running for the past several months, but there's not much point - nobody cares.

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here's a thought... track down the neighbour making the smoke, and go see their fire.

I bet it's an OPEN fire, not a stove and it might even be cheap firewood, like fence panels, or badly /non seasoned wood.

Is air source an option? Basically the same process as ground source, but without needing to dig trenches or bore holes.

As someone's mentioned, you end up with a lower heating circuit temperature using ground (or air) source. It's better for underfloor heating, although in a house that old you'll probably be better running the heating 24/7 at a constant low temperature anyway.

If you do go ground/air source, definitely invest in solar and small scale wind will help power the heat & water pumps. In fact, invest in them anyway - I suspect you'll be using enough electric to make the money back.

Don't rule out installing some solar hot water as a backup system. The evacuated tube systems work with surprisingly little sunlight.

If you really want to go low carbon, see if you can dig out the details of some specialists. Sadly the company I used to work for in Brum seems to have die the death, but I'll have a dig and see if I can find out if any of them are still working in the field. There's all sorts of directions you can go (including things like biomass CHP which I suspect might be an interesting option for you) and there are ways to get multiple types of renewable feeding in to the one system.

I certainly wouldn't go for a system based on quotes from one person, particularly for a job that size. With two wings of the house it might even be the case that running a split system will actually produce better results overall. It costs nothing and does no harm to get a second opinion :)

Have someone else ready to call tomorrow for a second opinion. Yep, wasn't going to go for just one quote.

Thanks for the air source heating idea. Not heard of that before.

Splitting the system is def a possibility, esp as I want to develop the north wing into an AirBnB option. The electricity is currently on 2 diff setups (north vs south), and same with gas currently.

Running at low temp 24/7 is the preferred option.

There are awesome old cast iron radiators around the house. Prob 15 at least. At a low heat, with iron pipework, they could work real well.

:)

Thanks everyone for the feedback. This is one loooong project, so I want to do it right.

:)

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Originally Posted by Mason.Lyons

Can you post the graphs with some explanations? You've got me interested now

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It's difficult to get accross what the numbers in the charts actually *mean*. But you asked, so here's my attempt: https://imgur.com/a/EvBdk

30-50ug is someone, say, five meters away blowing cigarette smoke towards your face.

At 30ug there is a noticeable mist in the distance. Most people don't notice this slight mist.

At 80ug+ it looks like a very misty day. When there's this background level, usually one of my work colleagues gets a headache/migrane, even if it passed through over a few hours while he was asleep, since he keeps his bedroom window open.

At over 100ug the visibility distance can be just a few hundred meters.

Over 300ug is basically the smoke from a BBQ or bonfire that you can see drifting past your window.

Obviously the closer you get to the source, the higher the numbers. I've only seen it a few times in a couple of years, but on wind-free winter evenings in my village, with "perfect" atmosphere conditions, it only takes a few chimneys to create a very dense stinky local smog that genuinely looks like this photo of the Great Smog of London, but obviously with significantly less sulphur: http://www.historytoday.com/sites/de.../greatsmog.jpg

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Originally Posted by Zak33

here's a thought... track down the neighbour making the smoke, and go see their fire.

I bet it's an OPEN fire, not a stove and it might even be cheap firewood, like fence panels, or badly /non seasoned wood.

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I think the main offender uses pallets. The problem is that the entire village burns nasty stuff. Once, on a summer day, I came home to raining carbon - someone was burning paper and it was literally raining down. Every day I commute past one house in particular while it's lighting up, presumably using the damp wood they have piled up outside. Stinks up a busy junction.

In terms of *good* seasoned wood and smokeless coal.... my mother & sister both burn those, in modern eco-approved burners. The partculate readings are still high and I can smell it when I'm walking to their house while downwind. Most people on my street also incinerate outdoors, and have outdoor burners. A few weeks ago my immediate neighbour actually MIG welded a new DIY outdoor stove from scrap metal.

Almost every time I go into any nearby village I can smell burners. It's not nice. Scientific evidence is slowly building up on the types of problems that particulates can cause.

To OP on the subject of air source heat pumps: my sister had one prior to having gas mains. She found it to be extremely loud and hated it.

A couple of friends of mine have air source heat pumps. They are quite noisy as there is a fan to blow warm or through the cooling line coils (it’s essentially a fanned fridge in reverse). I don’t think they are as efficient as ground source, particularly in winter when the ambient air temperature is low anyway.

Hug a sheep?? :p

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Originally Posted by fuddam

... Thanks for the air source heating idea. Not heard of that before. ...

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It's not as popular as as well-known as ground source. I didn't really know about it until I ended up with a colleague who had it, and I used to work for a company that specialised in energy efficiency and low-carbon in housing stock.

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Originally Posted by peterb

... (it’s essentially a fanned fridge in reverse) ...

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My colleague always described it as air conditioning in reverse, which I think makes a lot of sense. But yes, it does mean a couple of big chunky fans outside somewhere.

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Originally Posted by peterb

... I don’t think they are as efficient as ground source, particularly in winter when the ambient air temperature is low anyway.

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I raised that with my colleague and he seemed to think that, as it uses a heat pump to extract the heat anyway, as long as the air is above absolute zero the efficiency doesn't vary that much. I'm not sure how convinced I am of that argument, although I can kind of see what he means. I'm not interested enough to dust down my A-level physics and do the calculations for it, though ;)

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Originally Posted by fuddam

... Running at low temp 24/7 is the preferred option.

There are awesome old cast iron radiators around the house. Prob 15 at least. At a low heat, with iron pipework, they could work real well. ...

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They probably look a lot nicer than modern radiators would, too :D It does sound rather like the setup my ex-colleague had (and he lived just one side or other of Snake Pass, so will have had some challenging conditions to deal with!)

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Originally Posted by smargh

I think the main offender uses pallets. The problem is that the entire village burns nasty stuff. Once, on a summer day, I came home to raining carbon - someone was burning paper and it was literally raining down. Every day I commute past one house in particular while it's lighting up, presumably using the damp wood they have piled up outside. Stinks up a busy junction.

In terms of *good* seasoned wood and smokeless coal.... my mother & sister both burn those, in modern eco-approved burners. The partculate readings are still high and I can smell it when I'm walking to their house while downwind. Most people on my street also incinerate outdoors, and have outdoor burners. A few weeks ago my immediate neighbour actually MIG welded a new DIY outdoor stove from scrap metal.

Almost every time I go into any nearby village I can smell burners. It's not nice. Scientific evidence is slowly building up on the types of problems that particulates can cause.

To OP on the subject of air source heat pumps: my sister had one prior to having gas mains. She found it to be extremely loud and hated it.

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at least you know it's lots of people doing the wrong thing.

But I have to defend the modern wood burning stove. For the first 10 minutes you CAN smell wood smoke (something I think smells lovely tbh) outside, but once it's hot that goes. If I run my stove all day on a Sunday, which I often do in winter, there is no smell in the street. Even on a calm windless day. When a stove it HOT, it's v v efficient.

The best advice I was given was "buy the smallest stove you can and run it hot" ...ie dont buy a big one and run it half power .

I have a 4 bedroom house, and with a 4 KW stove in the living room, I use no central heating at all, all day mid winter. Just gas to heat water.

It costs less in firewood than the gas equivalent, and I am utterly incharge of it. The window is always clean, the catyltic bricks in it are all white clean after 6 years use as they are always super hot and v efficiently burning freshly added wood.

The trick for reloading is to open the air wash wide to super heat the stove, then add the wood, then once it'a burning right, slide the airwash back down.

Ground source can use sunk thermal piles as well as laid out shallow pipes, but they aren't cheap. Whereabouts geographically is the place? Are there any bodies with an interest in it (English Heritage etc) whose hoops you also have to jump through?

Glad to hear you're going for sensible heating rather than trying to super insulate. Those old buildings need to breathe and need internal heat to keep the dew point sufficiently far out so the walls don't get damp and to prevent timber decay etc.

buy a few £12 heaters that think about it later, the following on ebay will heat up a 20 foot square room in 5 mins

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/2KW-100W-2...4AAOSwYIxX9Nao

even on the coldest -10c winter days with gaps in council flat balcony doors

leave them on for a hour, and all the bricks will heat up, and then you can turn them off for a few hours

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Originally Posted by me-yeah

buy a few £12 heaters that think about it later, the following on ebay will heat up a 20 foot square room in 5 mins

leave them on for a few weeks, and all the bricks will heat up, and then you can turn them off for a few hours

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Fixed that for you. The heaters will heat up the air in the room quickly because air has a low specific heat capacity. The thermal energy needs to transfer to the bricks, which have a high thermal heat capacity ( they store a lot of energy but the temperature doesn’t rise) and they also need to dry out the bricks, so some of that energy is going to evaporate the water - so you will use some of that energy in latent heat of evaporation.

I use electric oil radiators and after a while they put out a fair amount of heat. Could try looking into those.

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Originally Posted by peterb

Fixed that for you. The heaters will heat up the air in the room quickly because air has a low specific heat capacity. The thermal energy needs to transfer to the bricks, which have a high thermal heat capacity ( they store a lot of energy but the temperature doesn’t rise) and they also need to dry out the bricks, so some of that energy is going to evaporate the water - so you will use some of that energy in latent heat of evaporation.

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nope, it really is 5 minutes, they have a fan they can blow a good 8 feet, and on need your TV on volume 5 to over hear it

if you have the heater set to maximum, its probably as loud as a 80mm delta fan back in the day

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Originally Posted by peterb

Fixed that for you. The heaters will heat up the air in the room quickly because air has a low specific heat capacity. The thermal energy needs to transfer to the bricks, which have a high thermal heat capacity ( they store a lot of energy but the temperature doesn’t rise) and they also need to dry out the bricks, so some of that energy is going to evaporate the water - so you will use some of that energy in latent heat of evaporation.

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The problem is, those bricks also conduct heat well, especially when damp. Without a cavity, or any kind of insulation, it will be incredibly difficult to heat them up to the point of starting to push out that moisture.

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Originally Posted by TeePee

The problem is, those bricks also conduct heat well, especially when damp. Without a cavity, or any kind of insulation, it will be incredibly difficult to heat them up to the point of starting to push out that moisture.

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Solid walls will do ok with a reasonable room temp due to the low (but not crazy low) temps outdoor in the uk winters. A 300mm/12in solid wall with external render to reduce direct water penetration is perfectly sufficient in the uk provided normal internal heating is applied (standard domestic central heating etc). Solid walls are still permitted in the building regulations, but you have to demonstrate compliance with part L thermals (U value targets) etc for the overall room, so most new builds will go for cavity walls, either masonry-masonry or masonry-metsec since the insulation can go in the cavity/internal skin rather than as an external layer or more fiddly as an internal layer, which leaves the internal plaster skin/dry wall kind of floating. Existing buildings do not need to meet these super-low targets but are still capable of performing adequately in terms of user comfort and avoiding undue damp etc.

edit - that said there are some bad buildings with cold bridge issues - tends to be where things like concrete floor slabs run through to the exterior, particularly those which continue into projecting concrete balconies. Those have such an exposed area vs the internal that they form a condensing surface for the internal air moisture and off goes the damp+ all that goes with it.

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Originally Posted by peterb

A couple of friends of mine have air source heat pumps.

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We had those in NZ (also known as AirCon in Australia). Ok until it got too cold and would have to have a 'defrost' cycle for 15 minutes oh or go completely when the power went (5 times in 2 years, reminded me of the 70's). Anyhoo...

We also had a fire and electric heaters, waking up in 12 degrees with a numb head isn't great fun in the winter, above all else sort out insulation before heating.

The house we were in, great location, but built like a shed - back in the UK with similar temps and I barely have to have the heating on because our insulation is so good. Yeah it's not as old as the one you're dealing with (very envious btw) but I would try and figure out your insulation first (there must be options even for old buildings) otherwise you'll be throwing cash out the window.

Oh yeah, and insulation. :)

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Originally Posted by Mason.Lyons

I use electric oil radiators and after a while they put out a fair amount of heat. Could try looking into those.

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Classic mistake. With plain electric heaters (including these oil filled ones), electricity in = heat out. The oil filled radiators are just quieter than fan heaters.

On the subject of Air source heap pumps, I have air conditioning in my house that operates in a revers cycle. When 700 Watts of electricity goes in, about 2.5 kw of heat (or cold) is transferred. However even though my evaporators are supposedly decent, even at their quietest, during the night I wouldn't call them quiet. They seem silent during the day though.

I believe ground source uses less energy because there is less heat pumping to do. At the depth the pipes are buried (2 ish meters IIRC) the ground is a constant 12 degrees C all year round. During the winter, pumping hear from 12 degrees to 22 degrees will take less energy than from 0 degrees to 22 degrees.

I will also speculate* that during the summer, maybe ground source could be used as air conditioning just using the heat exchanger - no heat pumping.

The area used for ground source is directly proportional to how much it is going to be used - the ground it is under/around heats up/cools so it loses effectiveness if the circuit isn't big enough.


Speculate - as in I haven't a clue if this is the case to me. It just seems logical.

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Originally Posted by badass

.... I believe ground source uses less energy because there is less heat pumping to do. At the depth the pipes are buried (2 ish meters IIRC) the ground is a constant 12 degrees C all year round. During the winter, pumping hear from 12 degrees to 22 degrees will take less energy than from 0 degrees to 22 degrees. ....

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Common misconception - you're not heating the ground, or the air, or even heating water from ground/air temperature to room temperature. You're heating a separate transfer loop, using a heat exchanger, which pulls heat from the source, making the source colder. In air source the transfer loop essentially runs through a radiator that is warmed by the air around it (or blown over it); in ground source the transfer loop is literally a lot of hose that runs cold water into the ground where the ambient ground temperature warms it up again (cooling the ground as it goes).

Since rate of heat transfer is proportional to delta-T, as long as the temp difference between the source and the transfer loop is the same both systems would be equally efficient. The temperate within the transfer loop probably doesn't vary that much between exchanger and source (in the same way that the water temperature in a water cooling loop doesn't actually vary that much) because water has a very high specific heat capacity. So for air source the difference will be that the transfer loop runs colder, but it should carry the same energy to the heat exchanger.

Gotta be option 1.

Stick with safe, cheap (rare to get cheaper then mains gas for heating) and guaranteed heating long term. No headaches with land issues, newish technology, or relying on payment's from the government to ensure it is financial viable.

Then supliment it with quality, properly installed and specced wood burners in sensible locations in the house, following Zak's advice back in the thread.