Thank-you for telling me about your experiences with heating systems. As we have time - our fioul boiler is a third full we are asking for devis but armed with the knowledge from this site we can ask the right questions. Next year and from then on our revenue is going to be so tight we will fulfill the requirements for a sizable grant. I hope to teach landscape painting and my husband is retire plus I am partially handicapped so don’t feel too guilty! We may well mix and match as we will be in the hills and will need back up for power cuts.
All this takes our minds away from covid!
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We installed a chauffe-eau thermodynamique last year - which is essentially an air source heat pump just for hot water. Very neat and not much bigger than a normal ballon would have been, and so far seems to be super efficient on energy costs. We are very pleased with it.
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I must admit I went through a phase of thinking that the heat pump was a terrible idea (I inherited it), it was erratic, didn’t heat the house well when we arrived (as noted they’re best run with lower temperatures over longer time-frames and backed with plenty of insulation.
For some reason it was installed without a room thermostat - well, thermostat is a misnomer for this system, it is a remote room temperature sensor. Having drawn a blank with the original installer (he didn’t even bother with a quote) I managed to source one (the system was only 8-9 years old and I had difficulty - another demerit) and fitted it myself which improved things immeasurably.
On balance I think it is probably the best compromise for the house though - gas is expensive and needs a big tank which would be difficult to hide and oil is a) on the way out and b) I would not want to leave an oil fired system on when were were not in residence.
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Hi Fiona, we’re in 05 just down the road from you and have been renovating a farmhouse. We installed a Weishaupt granules de bois heating system and fitted a 3.5T silo so it’s automatically fed. Its a good system - we have old rads in the old part of the house and new underfloor heating in the new part. hot water is fed from solar. Would recommend - expensive to fit but the granules work out quite economical and there is a vrac system which is delivered by truck. Regards, Lynn
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We have had two heat pump systems for heating the ground floor of 180m². Upstairs (66m²) is unheated. Most of the ground floor has 5m ceiling height.
When we built the house we put in underfloor heating pipework and connected this up to an 8kW ground source heat pump (brought over from UK, made in China, poor instruction manual). We also have two woodburners; the heat pump was just about background heat. The floor is zoned, so we can select which parts to warm. The ground works in the sloping, rocky garden for the ground source heat were, to put it mildly, difficult. But it all worked fine. For three years. Then I opted to move the controller for the heat pump from the basement to the kitchen, where it would be more convenient. In doing so I managed to ‘break’ the system. A new controller and a lot of time later, still not working. A very lucky break when I saw a quality Air Source Mitsubishi / Yak 16kW system advertised in Leboncoin. It was in Paris. I am in Eymet. So … hire a van, drive to Paris, uninstall (rip out) the system from the bungalow, drive back and install it. No great problem except I had to get it gassed and recommissioned. Ripped off, but little choice. Since then (5 years) … no probs, set to run at about 40°C and this gives a floor temp. of about 27°C. This is perfectly adequate. While the running costs depend on outside temperature, the heatpump uses 45 to 70 kWh a day (I have an ‘Owl’ meter that monitors kWh used). At about 14c/kWh that is 6 to 10 euros a day.
Does anyone know someone that could have a technical look at our GSHP ? As I said, it was working perfectly until I changed the controller. Someone gifted in electronics might find the problem quite easily.
Also I recommend the artificial wood logs, made from sawdust. They are pretty efficient and cost effective; 100 times easier to handle and store than wood logs; all the same. We use them in our woodburners, sometimes with a log for a bit more cosy look. Virtually no ash or soot.
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Just had a look at them. Page said “Il doit être posé dans une pièce de 20m3 minimum et non chauffée ou dans un local chauffé inférieur à 20m3 (dans ce cas l’air est prélevé à l’extérieur de l’habitation ou dans une autre pièce).” Which did you go for?
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Actually neither! Ours is in our garage which is bigger than 20m3 and non-heated (some residual heat from boiler) but the intake and outtake go into the adjacent barn. That we we don’t have super cold air being pushed back into the garage. Although one bonus we found this summer was unhooking the outtake pipe and getting lovely cool air in the garage. Our dog appreciated it when temperatures rose…and would lie beside it.
We wanted it there as easy to then fit to piping for hot water system, and also leaves us free to augment with extra hot water from oil boiler if we wish to. We got a 220l one which is perfectly adequate for normal use for 2-4 people, but would be pushing it if we had a full house. So if that happens (one day…one day…) and if people are all showering at same time we can restart hot water circuit on oil fired boiler and feed that in too.
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Thanks.
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Now we have had a good few posts I will thread wander a bit.
Obviously with the current situation and with brexit making it tricky as well not to mention being out of paid work for a bit the hopeful project is to heat the water for the hot cylinder via evacuated solar thermal. The larger array 60-80 tubes will run the underfloor heating in winter and be diverted via a heat exchanger to the pool when required.
I will retain the hot cylinder heating element as backup and the pompe de chaleur added later if required
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Fiona
We installed an air to water heat pump (Daikin) 8 years ago to replace an old unreliable oil boiler - connected to the existing rads. It’s a low temperature system so gives background heat supplemented on really cold days with a wood burner. Initial cost high but running costs one third of the oil system and on for many more hours each day -17 hours. We are happy we made the change.
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All true, I learned that post change. I fear the mad rush to alternative energy may not be the panacea claimed. And my rads are enormous. It is not that I cannot heat comfortably it is, however, very expensive. In my last house 120m2) I had underfloor heating downstairs and rads upstairs, all electric. That was 10 years ago but the bill was still 250€ a month. I think being warm here is expensive. That was a new build.