Ground Source Heat Pump (NLC)

[MacK]

Too late, PM's have been exchanged




Will update here after discussing further.

[Scotty C]

You need to talk to Iain Thomas of SE1 fame. I will point him across here.

Scotty C

[Kev]

You need to talk to Iain Thomas of SE1 fame. I will point him across here.

Scotty C

Thanks Scotty

Too late, PM's have been exchanged




Will update here after discussing further.

Spoke to John today, thanks for the info

I'm basically stuck until I get this survey done, if they ever phone me back.

[timmsky]

Hi All,

I cover Highlands, Islands, Aberdeenshire and Moray for our company Ecoliving Ltd, based in Glasgow.

http://www.ecolivinguk.com

We provide energy efficiency advice, supply install and commission ground source heat pumps, air source heat pumps, exhaust air heat recovery units and solar panels.

I am more than happy to provide full written quotes, perform site surveys etc based on your location. If you are not in my 'patch' I will certainly pass on any details to my colleagues who cover further south.

In terms of technical advice, its a wide remit, given that all houses/lifestyles/demands are different. There's loads of info on our website and i'm happy to offer any advice or tech help on here if there are specific questions.

We deal with a number of installers of underfloor heating to, so if you are thinking new build and need the full heating design package, we can work it that way too.

In Scotland a grant is available through the Energy Savings Trust for 30% of the total install cost (not the distribution system, i.e rads or underfloor) up to a max of £4K. I can hep with your grant application and our company and products are fully grant accredited.

So - fire away and i'll help in any way I can

Cheers,
Iain

PS - Thanks for the heads up Scotty

[Shug]

Hi All,

I cover Highlands, Islands, Aberdeenshire and Moray for our company Ecoliving Ltd, based in Glasgow.

http://www.ecolivinguk.com

We provide energy efficiency advice, supply install and commission ground source heat pumps, air source heat pumps, exhaust air heat recovery units and solar panels.

I am more than happy to provide full written quotes, perform site surveys etc based on your location. If you are not in my 'patch' I will certainly pass on any details to my colleagues who cover further south.

In terms of technical advice, its a wide remit, given that all houses/lifestyles/demands are different. There's loads of info on our website and i'm happy to offer any advice or tech help on here if there are specific questions.

We deal with a number of installers of underfloor heating to, so if you are thinking new build and need the full heating design package, we can work it that way too.

In Scotland a grant is available through the Energy Savings Trust for 30% of the total install cost (not the distribution system, i.e rads or underfloor) up to a max of £4K. I can hep with your grant application and our company and products are fully grant accredited.

So - fire away and i'll help in any way I can

Cheers,
Iain

PS - Thanks for the heads up Scotty

Quite possibly the most serious post Iain has ever made - bookmark this kids, you'll never see another like it

[timmsky]

Shug you... you... well, you know

[timmsky]

Id be tempted to put one in a new build but if you are installing one into a house that's already there I would think very carefully.

It will destroy your garden and require a large space to house the pump etc. Have you thought about solar panels as an alternative.
Dont think oil prices will increase much this year so may also be worth waiting.

Strictly speaking the heat pumps are not large - i.e. if you have an average hot water demand, we do a unit with self-contained hot water storage tank of 170L (usual domestic size is 160-200L) and the whole unit is no larger than a normal fridge-freezer at 600mmW x 610mmD x 1800mmH.

They are straightforward to fit into an existing house, as I did in mine, simply replacing the existing boiler. The major consideration is the sizing of radiators as a heat pump (in general) will need larger radiators to account for the lower running temperatures. Having said that I have been through a heating year with mine, and I didn't replace a single rad. My rads are 18 years old, so not high efficiency by any stretch of the imagination...

As for destroying your garden, that really depends on how careful your digger man is - i've seen some very neat installs and then i've seen some right dog's breakfasts!

HTH,
Iain

[timmsky]

Absolutely no experience but they do seem like a good idea.

All the ones I have seen on grand designs involve digging trenches over large areas and putting in lots of shallow pipe. It has always seemed to me that you would get better results from drilling 2 or 3 holes down a couple of hundred feet and pumping the water through a vertical pipe. Much better heat gain. Given the manageable cost of sight investigation type drilling I can’t see why it wouldn’t work, unless you live on a rock of course.

Post up when you find out. I’m interested in avoiding big heating bills if possible.

Again another couple of slight urban myths - boreholes give a more constant heat, year round because they are not subject to solar gain/cold atmosphere losses like ground loops are. However a typical bore hole will set you back between £3-5K depending on ground conditions. A 100m bore hole will suit a heat loss of up to around 5kW, but a typical 150-160m2 house with about 8kW heat loss could require 2x bore holes at 80-100m deep. Therefore your bore costs could be around £6-7K.
Weigh this off against ground loops which give a higher incoming brine temperature and are around 1/3 to half the cost of bore holes. That is, if you have the space - for the scenario above, a house requiring 2x100 bores would equate to 2x 250m trenches (or one 250m trench if double-trenched). A double trench (i.e. 2x 250m) would need to be at least 1m deep with the pipes a minimum of 1m apart. A single trench where the pipes are stacked would need to be 2m deep for the first set of pipes, then backfilled to 1m and the second set of pipes laid in.

For all geothermal heat recovery, the rule of thumb is 'the wetter the better' (shut up Shug, tut, et al ). If your house is on rock, that's no problem for bore holes providing your water table is fairly high. The bore hole need to be as full of water as possible otherwise the costs begin to spiral and you may need to grout the top of the bore and/or get into very long collectors to have the correct active collection depth for the system.
Similarly, wet ground is the best, so if you live on a sandbank be wary, as the amount of pipe you will need to get the active collection length could be massive.
Also - a note about clay soils: Although clay soils are wet, that wetness will not leak away and you run the risk of freezing the water around the collection pipes during winter when the heat pump is working hard. As ice is an insulator, the heat pump can't be as effective or efficient as extracting the heat from the ground.

All this is dependent on the heat loss calcs for your house and given a little information I can run this for anyone to give you the of the size of heat pump you would need, how many bores/how much collector pipe and a guide on costs (obviously subject to site survey).

All FOC

Cheers,
Iain

[Scotty C]

Remember my cut

[Kev]

Hi All,

I cover Highlands, Islands, Aberdeenshire and Moray for our company Ecoliving Ltd, based in Glasgow.

http://www.ecolivinguk.com

We provide energy efficiency advice, supply install and commission ground source heat pumps, air source heat pumps, exhaust air heat recovery units and solar panels.

I am more than happy to provide full written quotes, perform site surveys etc based on your location. If you are not in my 'patch' I will certainly pass on any details to my colleagues who cover further south.

In terms of technical advice, its a wide remit, given that all houses/lifestyles/demands are different. There's loads of info on our website and i'm happy to offer any advice or tech help on here if there are specific questions.

We deal with a number of installers of underfloor heating to, so if you are thinking new build and need the full heating design package, we can work it that way too.

In Scotland a grant is available through the Energy Savings Trust for 30% of the total install cost (not the distribution system, i.e rads or underfloor) up to a max of £4K. I can hep with your grant application and our company and products are fully grant accredited.

So - fire away and i'll help in any way I can

Cheers,
Iain

PS - Thanks for the heads up Scotty

Just the man I need to speak to

Basically I've got a 4 bed house with electric panel/storage heaters with immersion heater hot water and I'm looking to replace these with a GSHP and low temp radiators. All I know about them is what I've found on the interweb and speaking to John.

As a part of your Survey do you work out what size of pump and radiators I need? I phoned Earthenergy in Kemnay yesterday and they told me to contact Renewables Connection for them to do the Survey as they are unable to quote me until they have the info from the survey i.e. Kw figure for the pump size.

Edit: Just re-read your other reply, what info do need to work out a rough quote. wonder if it's going to be as scary as I'm expecting

Cheers
Kev

[timmsky]

Kev,

Basics for a sizing and quote would be the following:

Size of house (m2) heated floor area
Age of house
Construction type (timber frame, brick, log cabin, tin shack etc)
Level of insulation/glazing
Hot water requirement (I'm guessing average family use, i.e. not B&B levels)
Area of land around the house - this determines whether you could accommodate loops or not

This will allow me to run a heat loss calc and give you a quote on the heat pump supply, install and commission. The install price can be firmed up after a survey but at least this will give you something to go on.
Renewables Connection (SCARF) will just pass the enquiry straight to me anyway, so best to cut out the middleman

If you think the quote looks anything like, then we can look at the next stage of having a site visit by an installation crew who will size the radiators and provide an overall cost for that.

BTW - depends on what you think is a scary quote, of course healthy SE discounts apply

PM me the info if you like as for a full quote i need to know your address and contact numbers and email address.

Cheers!
Iain

[graeme]

Hi Iain,

I take it Forres falls under your patch? Victoria's folks just got planning permission for an awesome eco-home build of her dad's own design so I'll pass your details on.

Cheers,
G

[Kev]

Iain

I'll post up the basics for a rough quote as there are other people on here that are interested and then I'll PM you my other details:

Basics for a sizing and quote would be the following:

Size of house (m2) heated floor area 141m2 got that figure from the energy survey
Age of house Built in 1983-1984
Construction type (timber frame, brick, log cabin, tin shack etc)Concrete block thats rendered, got that from the valuation survey
Level of insulation/glazing Insulation not sure but has double glazing
Hot water requirement (I'm guessing average family use, i.e. not B&B levels) Yeah average family use
Area of land around the house - this determines whether you could accommodate loops or not My plot is about 0.4 hectare including the house and garage, got that from my deeds

Will your quote including fitting all the pipework and radiators in the house or will I have to get a seperate plumber in for that?

BTW - depends on what you think is a scary quote, of course healthy SE discounts apply

I like this

[MacK]

Hi All,

I cover Highlands, Islands, Aberdeenshire and Moray for our company Ecoliving Ltd, based in Glasgow.

http://www.ecolivinguk.com

We provide energy efficiency advice, supply install and commission ground source heat pumps, air source heat pumps, exhaust air heat recovery units and solar panels.

Hi Ian,

I'll try and get in touch next week.
We might be of use to each other!



John

[ed]

Happy to be corrected, just was commenting on what I had read in the past.

Ps rough cost for a 10KW wind turbine?!