Heating?

[shanghaismog]

Hard to think about in this weather...

If you had a house with a tiny heat requirement (passive house), no gas and a small budget, what heating would you go for? Hot water is already taken care of via small ASHP on our mechanical ventilation exhaust.

a) Woodburner (going to have this anyway) with a back boiler to run a few radiators. Worry here would be the effort involved re logs and potential lack of early morning heat if needed.

b) Electric panel heaters, working in the theory that we really won't need much heat at all and zero installation costs.

c) Lay UFH pipes in the foundation slab (already budgeted for) and connect to expensive ASHP when finances allow, using wood burner to heat downstairs and nothing upstairs. Basically experiment for the first year to see if the house performs as well as it should.

What of you reckon? Bearing in mind that we are building a super insulated (0.11 u value walls and 0.7 u value 3G windows), so significantly more insulated than your average new build plus pretty much airtight so no draughts whatsoever. We have been going round in circles with this for months but have trouble reconciling the huge up front costs with such minimal heat reqts.

[shanghaismog]

Quite specialised, I know.....anyone??

[oricella]

We have a single woodburner which heats most of the house (all rooms lead off from central space/void over 2 floors. Panel heater for one isolated bedroom. MVHR should be able to distribute warm air to most rooms. I would stick with the burner in your case - our walls are 0.15 and windows 1.2 and the woodstove does just fine - we light it late afternoon and last logs at 10 means it's warm enough in the morning.

[oricella]

ps- might not work if you have a 10 bedroom mansion though, but 3-5 bedroom medium size house should ok

[oricella]

ps2 - what MVHR/heatpump do you have? Hope not a Nibe Fighter set-up, have heard bad experiences with those. Best i.me. to not link hot water & ventilation

[PigletJohn]

if you are buying an ASHP you obviously have plenty of money. Do you live in an area which gets frost and it stops working?

If you want a stove, get a multifuel not a woodburner. There is much more energy in a shovel of solid fuel than in the same amount of wood, and it burns longer.

You might consider night storage heaters, they are not much good but the only kind of electric heating that is anywhere near economical to run.

I don't know if you can still get a thermal store.

[oricella]

In a passive house I'd steer clear of storage heaters, as you cannot control them and likely end up using more energy than you need. I know the arguments against electric heaters, but ime experience you can heat a room up in 5 minutes with a small panel heater and it will stay warm for a long time.

[IbbleObbleOut]

Look at the new Dimplex Quantum heaters if thinking of NSH. Air source can be extremely economical if you have a very well insulated house.

[SquinkiesRule]

If it's super insulated you may well be fine with just the woodburner.
We had one in our not quite super insulated home and used it pretty much exclusively in winter. We stacked more wood in before bed, then turned it down and it lasted all night, and I would throw a new log in first thing.
The only room I could have done better in was our ensuite bathroom, it needed some instant heat so I could shower at 6am before the sun came around and warmed it. We could have probably got away with an electric fan heater for 20 minutes a day on the few times it was needed each winter.

[shanghaismog]

Thanks for your replies. We're getting close to decision making time. It's so hard to know...

Not much money unfortunately, otherwise the ASHP/wood burner would be a no brainier...

I don't remember the make of the MVHR but do think the company, Earth Save Products, know what they're talking about so hopefully it's ok...

In terms of resale value, I guess keeping it most like a conventional heating system is safer.