Our house has a rather primitive heating system, powered by solid fuel (logs/coal) and running off a back-boiler from the open fire in the lounge. Whilst logs are a sustainable energy source, and it's great fun to light the fire most of the time, it would be nice to have a bit more flexibility - in particular when we're not tending the fire there isn't any heating, meaning that if we go out for the day (or a weekend) the house gets very cold in the winter.

Anyway, since we're not serviced by a gas main, the original plan was to upgrade the wood-burning stove in the kitchen to an oil-fired range which would give us the ability to run the heating on a timer, and also to cook, etc., on the range.

However, I recently heard about Ground Source Heat Pumps, which sound absolutely ideal for a 90% renewable and mostly free way of heating the house. We have a big enough garden to easily get plenty of piping into the ground, and it would give us (apart from the minimal cost of running the heat pump) effectively free hot water and central heating throughout the year. Installation cost seems to be about £2-3k by the time you've claimed your Clear-Skies grant, which is probably significantly less than it would cost to buy/install a decent range.

So, question is, anyone know anything about these? Anyone got one (unlikely, since I believe there are only about 400 in the UK so far)?

 

Should've known not to post this on a Friday and expect any responses.

 

MarkO,

Have a look here for assistance:

http://www.est.org.uk/schri/

Mike

 

MarkO. You have several choices in the UK, my personal recommendation would be to speak to The Heat Pump Association or better still John Cantor who is one of the UK's leading proponents of these types of systems.

If you truly want a genuine environmental solution then John will provide as system using HC refrigerants, not the crappy synthetic stuff most would fob you off with.

 

Excellent. Thanks for that. I'd seen John Cantor's site, but wasn't sure which of the various installers/manufacturers would be better than the others. I'll drop 'em a line.