We use Certas Energy… I think it bought out our local oil supplier some time back.
Tonight’s Grand Design on More 4 featured a rather modern home in Midlothian that had a small mention at the end of using a heat store. No mention of GSHP. The work started in 2006.
What I learned about the recent experimental earth heat store was that it’s insulated. I wonder if clay from footing is equally good which could save the cost of disposing of it off site!
My Bulb electric is rising to 18p/kWh for 19 April, which puts me off ASHP which give 2.2 kWh for 1 of electric. For some unknown reason most adverts don’t say much about the efficiency! GSHP are off course much more efficient.
Phil
2 Likes
I really thought using Oil for domestic heating was being phased out in the UK, seems I was mistaken.
There are many places that do not have gas. And electricity is a lot more expensive for space heating (at least without a heat pump). So oil is very common in areas without gas. “Oil” these days is kerosene.
According to Which?, the running cost heating a house with an air source heat pump typically is higher than either gas or oil with an A-rated boiler. The Renewable Incentive scheme may mitigate that of course if it at least nearly recovers or the full installation cost, vs no repayment for the gas or oil boiler.
Meanwhile no-one knows the relative cost of different fuels in a decade and more when the systems would still be in use and green grants and incentives long past…
The technophile in me leans towards heat pumps, but I am still not convinced about air-source and may not have the option of ground source (if the incentive scheme is still running when the time comes for me to decide, if it clearly will repay at least most of the installation cost then the upfront cost doesn’t worry me, but otherwise it is a non-starter. Depending how things develop in the coming 12-18 months, I suspect that in my next house I’ll go for a boiler system, supplemented by solar thermal, however designing the central heating system so that conversion to a heat pump source would be easy and minimally disruptive, future-proofing as I guess heat pumps will become the norm (and drop a lot in price) in the next decade or two.
2 Likes
No, it’s gas that is being phased out for new builds in the UK… though in many non urban and suburban locations one doesn’t have the option of gas, and domestic heating oil is the main fuel alternative.
As said above, oil burning technology and efficiency has massively improved in recent years… no doubt influenced by legislation. Although high tech (ie very efficient) oil boilers usually cost more than their gas equivalents.
One does need the space for oil, for the location of the tank, and building regs have tightened for them as well. So if you don’t have the space, as is the case in many rural new builds then air source heat pumps is the primary choice.
LPG is another source, but is expensive… and with modern tech, it doesn’t have much if any advantage over heating oil. I know of a few locally who have upgraded from LPG to oil, but keep LPG for cooking.
Indeed, there are a lot of older houses in rural areas for which oil (or calor gas) is the only realistic option. Not that there aren’t any alternatives, of course, but apart from being unsuitable, they will be unaffordable for many, and not necessarily better for the environment in many cases.
1 Like
Yes… and ‘they’ say cheap oil is here to stay, until it’s completely gone anyway and that looks a long way off. Apparently with things like shale gas and the rush to electric the demand for oil is dropping like a stone and, hence, the price. Doing the maths (I mean pence and pounds) then running on oil HW/DH is really rather attractive.
1 Like
I was told by a Bosch engineer (and there are white papers on their web site to support this) that the future is H2 piped through the existing gas network. There is also talk from HMG with support for this. Bosch have a boiler up and running where a simple burner change swaps it from CH4 (natural gas) to H2.
I’m going to guess the current cessation on extending the natural gas network will continue until this idea starts to become a reality… perhaps 10-20 years, and then the network role out will continue with agusto 
Story… my research at Uni. was into the catalytic conversion of coal gas (largely carbon monoxide) into CH4. This was done in conjunction with British Gas. At the time (35 years ago) it was thought that NG was only here for 20 years but the UK has massive reserves of coal. However CO has multiple issues so sticking to CH4 was easier. In fact BG had several trials of the system running using fluid bed catalyst systems. However the research was shelved due to a) the discovery that new reserves of NG was going to keep natural gas going for a lot longer. b) the ruckas with the UK coal mine(rs) and the perceived ‘not-green’ problem with coal - though, to my mind, converting coal to natural gas was not that bad as far as ‘green’ credentials go.
2 Likes
I didn’t know Deuterium was being considered as a replacement for natural gas… interesting. I guess it would require large infrastructure to create it. Isn’t Deuterium rather explosive? Or would it be mixed with something inert?
1 Like
Actually deuterium is ‘heavy’ hydrogen. But, yes, the talk is very much for H2 to replace NG. I don’t suppose H2 is any more explosive than CH4 and at least H2 is ‘cold’ flame. As to creating it the ideas that I’ve read about seem to be large scale production on off shore wind farms. This has a secondary advantage that you loose less energy piping H2 to the shore than you do electricity to the shore.
A problem with hydrogen compared to methane is that because it is a very much smaller molecule pipework is more prone to leaking, and can diffuse through many plastic materials, so I don’t know what difficulties and risks that would cause piping through an existing complex network.
2 Likes
I would hazard a guess that what gas pipes are still being installed or replaced due to wear and tear are almost certainly good for H2. Perhaps there’s some way to coat the insides of the current pipes much like they can do with old water pipes? I don’t know.
Deuterium is only an very low proportion of raw hydrogen, and hydrogen, deuterium and methane are all highly explosive - but only when mixed with air, in the right range of mixtures. Hydrogen is odourless so a major risk of leaks and resultant explosive mixtures going undetected until too late, though the same with is true of methane (natural gas) which is why chemicals are added to give the characteristic odour before distribution.
Yes 
The first major contract my first company had was to supply testing machines to monitor the levels of the smelly additive in the gas. CH4 (natural gas) is naturally odourless so the gas companies adds mercaptan to the gas before it hits the network. This makes the natural gas smell much the same as the old, raw, coal gas. However it’s crucial to get the amount of dosed mercaptan correct. Although it’s quite harmless, if you add too much then you can get ‘nose blind’. Also mercaptan is quite expensive! Too little and you might not smell a gas leak. So our machines analysed all the dosed natural gas to ensure it was kept at exactly the right level. For a while we were sending out 2 or 3 machines (actually a BBC computer rehoused with enhanced ADC and controlled relays &c.) a month.
1 Like
That is irrelevant to explosions, but with lower calorific value more volume of gas would be needed for the same heat output.
It burns with an invisible flame in air, which could be a safety issue if used for gas hobs.
If happy to do so could you please identify the brand name - there is a local problem here and I’m just about to look into whether existing lab capability can do it and if not find a means.
There are some parallels here to the electric car thread for me.
Oil may now be ‘cheap’ but it has rather wider costs for the climate and environment. We would not have considered replacing an oil system with another irrespective of costs. We are in the fortunate financial situation to make that choice, although the lifetime financial difference of the system we chose may not be that different actually. The upfront costs are greater though.
Green solutions at the moment are not exact copies of old dirty technologies. The new systems require changes beyond just the white box in the cupboard but are people ready and willing to choose them, and how does society and government promote that?
Bruce
Just to give an estimate, we will receive approximately £12,500 from the RHI in seven years. Our fuel costs in the first year are about 15% less than the average oil costs from the last few yeard despite being at home more and a very cold Jan/Feb here. The pellet boiler cost about £18k
2 Likes
What for our old machines? This was 30 years ago and our company went tummy up a long time ago. If there are any of our original instruments still running I shall be totally gobsmacked
Yes… I meant the calorific value is lower.
1 Like